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A woman and a child react as the body of a man killed during Turkish shelling in the area surrounding the Syrian Kurdish town of Ras al-Ain arrives at a hospital on October 18, 2019.
Delil Souleiman/Getty Images
Trump’s decision to pull US forces from Kurdish-controlled areas in northeastern Syria on October 6 left the civil-war-torn country open to Turkish attack, which followed on October 9.Syria has been caught in a civil war since 2011 — some 500,000 people have perished and 12 million have been displaced, according to the Human Rights Watch.Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.What has been happening in Syria?President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to pull US forces from Kurdish-controlled areas in northeastern Syria, officially announced by the White House on October 6, left the civil-war-torn country open to Turkish attack.
Here’s a 30-second explanation of what’s been going on:
Smoke and fire rising from the Syrian town of Ras al-Ain during the Turkish offensive against Kurdish groups in northeastern Syria on October 17, 2019.
Ozan Kose/Getty Images
Syria has been caught in a civil war since 2011. What started as as an uprising against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was further complicated when ISIS declared its new caliphate in parts of Syria in 2014.Some 500,000 people have perished and 12 million have been displaced because of the war, according to the Human Rights Watch.The situation was exacerbated when President Trump ordered on October 6 that US soldiers be removed from the Kurdish-controlled areas of northeastern Syria, leading Turkey to invade the northeastern part of the country shortly thereafter.
Turkey invaded northeast Syria on October 9 in a military operation called “Operation Peace Spring.”
Turkish-backed Syrian opposition fighters on an armoured personnel carrier drive to cross the border into Syria on October 18, 2019.
Emrah Gurel/AP Images
Turkey’s goal is to create a buffer zone at the Turkish border of Syria between the Turks and Kurds, and to repatriate the 3.6 million Syrian refugees who have come to Turkey as a result of the civil war. The Turkish incursion — led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who many call authoritarian — against Syria continues.The Kurds are a minority ethnic group in the Middle East, living mostly in Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. Turkey considers the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) a terrorist group. Turkey also considers the YPG (Kurdish People’s Protection Unit), which is the backbone of Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) controlling the northeast, to be a terror organization as well. Read more about who controls Syria, the Syrian-Turkish border, and ISIS in Syria here.
And finally, here’s a 5-minute explanation of the events leading up to and through October, via a timeline of our past coverage:
A Syrian woman who is newly displaced by the Turkish military operation in northeastern Syria, carries her son upon her arrival at the Bardarash camp, north of Mosul, Iraq, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2019.
Associated Press
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