San Diego County is home to many Kurdish Americans concerned by the latest developments in northeastern Syria.
El Cajon resident Nahayat Mostafa said she’s not in support of President Trump's decision to lift sanctions on Turkey because there is no real ceasefire for the Kurdish people on the ground in Syria.
“They're attacking, they're still using chemical weapons, they're still doing that, but America's president doesn't know what's going on really there,” she said.
French President Emmanuel Macron is helping victims who Mostafa said were injured by chemical weapons.
The victims are civilians, some Kurdish children, simply trying to live in Syria, according to Mostafa. It was difficult to be Kurdish in Syria when Mostafa lived there 20 years ago, but she called today’s violence heartbreaking.
“Kids should play with toys, you know what I mean? It’s not right. He really betrayed us,” Mostafa said of President Donald Trump.
Mostafa said she believed President Trump, who she voted for in the last election, was going to help the Kurdish people in Syria because of their relationship in the fight against ISIS. She lost two family members in that fight.
Local
“We helped President Trump defeat ISIS. And now that we need Trump to help us, he just left us,” she said.
The Kurdish people thought a victory over ISIS could bring them close to achieving their dream of having their own home country in the Middle East, Mostafa said.
Now, she just wants the violence against her people to stop.
“It should stop somehow, somehow, and the only country that has power, the powerful country is the USA,” Mostafa said.
Other members of the San Diego Kurdish community say they are working with members of Congress to get aid to Kurdish people in Syria.
