Trump minimizes Kurds’ role in Baghdadi raid, adding insult to injury

By Aaron Blake
Oct. 28, 2019 at 5:01 p.m. EDT

President Trump has been widely accused of abandoning the Kurds by withdrawing from Syria. And now he appears to be adding insult to injury by downplaying the role they played in Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s death.

Trump did credit the Kurds for their contribution to the Islamic State leader’s death on Sunday, but he did so in some strangely muted ways. He even seemed to strain to emphasize what they didn’t do. To wit:

• He first mentioned four countries that helped — including Russia — and then added as almost an addendum, “I also want to thank the Syrian Kurds for certain support they were able to give us.”
• Later in his address, when asked generally what role the Kurds had played, Trump said only that “they gave us some information that turned out to be helpful” but emphasized that they played “not a military role at all.”
• And finally, when he was asked whether the United States had relied upon “foreign intel,” he suggested it had not. “So, we had our own intel,” he said. “We got very little help. We didn’t need very much help.”

Both the tone and substance of Trump’s comments about the Kurds are in question now. The Kurds have suggested they played a much bigger role than Trump indicated, and U.S. officials have acknowledged the instrumentality of the information provided by the Kurdish-led Syrian Defense Forces.

The SDF’s effort to join in the credit began even before Trump’s news conference Sunday, when the SDF commander, Gen. Mazloum Kobane Abdi, described the Baghdadi raid as the fruit of a months-long “joint intel cooperation.” It was understood at the time that the Kurds had provided at least some intelligence that had allowed for locating Baghdadi in northwest Syria.

-snip-