The Kurds Spotted Baghdadi. The U.S. Abandoned Them Anyway.
Back in March, America’s closest allies in Syria were telling the world where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was. If Team Trump found the information valuable, they didn’t show it.
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The American allies recently abandoned by the Trump administration played a key role in hunting down ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and warned as far back as March that the terror chief had taken residence in Idlib, Syria.
The mostly-Kurdish troops known as the Syrian Democratic Forces helped American special operators find and kill the man who had laid waste to much of their homeland in northern and eastern Syria, but the relationships and intelligence networks they forged with American counterparts now appear in doubt after the Trump administration greenlit a Turkish invasion of SDF-held areas and announced a U.S. withdrawal. Adding insult to injury, Baghdadi was found just a short trip across the Turkish border in Idlib-province.
That’s exactly where the SDF said he would be.
