Syria’s Kurds feel abandoned by Trump and US: NPR

QAMISHLI, Syria – The motion of children running in a schoolyard in this northeastern city is blurred. But they are not students on leave – they are members of displaced families living here after public schools were turned into shelters in January.

Instead of a school bus, there is an antique red Nissan pickup truck with black flames painted on the sides. It’s clearly an American export – judging by the large sticker of an American flag depicting the 14 states and the year 1791 when the Bill of Rights was enacted. On the windshield, above the green faux fur glued to the dashboard, “Allah” (God) is written in flowing white Arabic script.

Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was overthrown by Türkiye-backed opposition fighters in late 2024. But its impact is still felt across Syria, especially in the Kurdish-led breakaway region, where Syrian government forces retook the area amid fighting in January.

Pickup trucks carried two displaced families – a total of 15 people – to safety in January as the Syrian army advanced near the Kurdish city of Afrin.

Children play on the steps of an abandoned school where displaced families are now living.

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“We crammed all the kids on top of us and into the back of the truck, and I put all my stuff on top,” says the displaced father, a former shopkeeper. For most of the families here from the Tabaka displacement camp, this was at least the third time they had been uprooted.

This is a Kurdish region in northeastern Syria., which ran its own autonomous region for 12 years after breaking away from Syrian rule in 2012, is now back in play.

A US-brokered ceasefire halted fighting this year but the terms of the ceasefire – the Syrian government taking over Kurdish-held borders, security and oil fields in exchange for promises of Kurdish rights – have still not been fully implemented.

Saba Hassan Biro (left) stands at the entrance of an empty school as children play.

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The owner of the red pickup is holding a 2-year-old girl wearing a fuzzy pink jacket. Her blonde hair is tied into a ponytail at the top of her head.

He says about the girl, whose real name is Barfi, we jokingly nicknamed her Trump because she is fair.

The shopkeeper was afraid to hand over his goods due to the risk of retaliation by government security forces. Near the entrance of the school, he has set up a small table selling snacks.

“I used to like Trump but not anymore,” he says of the US president. “You saw what he did to us – he sold us out.”

A man is weighing pumpkin seeds to sell to earn some money.

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The White House did not respond to an NPR request for comment about Kurdish allegations that the US had abandoned them.

Syrian Kurds provided ground troops to fight alongside US forces to defeat ISIS seven years ago. Kurdish leaders say at least 10,000 Kurdish fighters were killed in the war. Iraqi Kurds and Iraqi forces helped defeat the terrorist group in Iraq.

In January, as Turkish-backed Syrian forces moved into Kurdish-held territory, the US announced it no longer needed Kurdish help fighting ISIS; Effectively flagging in advance.

The perceived betrayal is being felt deeply in the Kurdish-led region that has been besieged for more than a decade by the Syrian regime, Russian forces, Turkish forces and ISIS.

Loss, Difficulty and Unanswered Questions

Families here say conditions in other camps were harsh but the school shelter is particularly difficult. there are small kerosene–Heaters are running in the classrooms but there is no fuel for cooking. Not only is it cold but it also means there is no way to cook donated rice and lentils or boil water for tea.

In one of the classrooms converted into living quarters, Saeed Mohammed Mustafa, a 63-year-old sanitation worker from Afrin, has collected some sticks to burn. When he can’t find them, they pour a little gasoline on old clothes, set them on fire and burn them.

Saba Hassan Biro (left) sits with her husband Saeed Mohammed Mustafa, 63, in the classroom where they live after being displaced from their home in Afrin.

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He and his wife, Saba Hassan Biro, were among the last people to leave the camp from which they were displaced in January. They were searching for their 15-year-old daughter, Zainib, who had undergone heart surgery a year earlier, and were given just two hours’ notice to leave.

“Since then we have completely lost contact with him,” says Mustafa. “So we don’t know if he was killed or what happened to him.”

Biro says that since he has not seen a body, he does not believe what his daughter’s friends have told him: that the girl joined Kurdish fighters and was killed in an ambush by Syrian forces.

Mohammed Mustafa was said to look at pictures of his 15-year-old daughter, Zainib, whom he and his wife lost touch with after leaving Tabqa displacement camp. Later his body was returned to them.

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“The important thing is that they bring us his body so we can know,” she says.

The parents received the body a few weeks later. The teenager was buried as martyrs along with four others in Qamishli in mid-April.

A comeback for some, a state of limbo for others

In mid-April, 800 displaced families returned to Afrin under a ceasefire agreement in which Syrian government forces have taken over former Kurdish-held areas. The families of this school in Qamishli were not among them.

After being displaced several times, most people here have almost nothing. Mustafa and Biro had no transportation and fled the camp on foot on the night the Syrian army arrived.

Biro cries as she talks about her daughter, Zainib, who joined Kurdish fighters and was killed in an ambush by Syrian forces.

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“We were running and being bombed. Sometimes we had to lie down on the ground,” says Mustafa.

When Biro became unable to walk, she asked her husband to leave her. He refused and eventually they got the chance to travel in a truck full of sheep – they sat on the bed of the truck covered in urine in the rain among the animals.

Schools have not been in session since the fighting in January and a group of children were roaming in the courtyard. Many are traumatized by the displacement that occurred nearly a year and a half ago, when the regime was overthrown.

“They were all dead,” says 10-year-old Hassan Hussein, describing the scene on a roadside near Afrin in December 2024.

Gulistan Rasheed helps run a shelter in an empty school.

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His aunt, Golestan Rashid, who helps run the shelter, says that when he was evacuated from the Shahaba camp near Afrin, she saw burned bodies of regime soldiers along the highway.

“When he saw those bodies he became very ill for three days – he was in hospital,” Rashid says of her nephew. “He’s seen everything.”