Trump Was Wrong: The Kurds Did Help in World War 2

Recently, Donald Trump announced that the US would be pulling its troops out of Syria, more particularly the areas in the north of the country inhabited mostly by ethnic Kurds. What this meant was that the US would be abandoning its most reliable ally in the region, one which was instrumental in displacing ISIS from the region. Cynically, Trump followed this up by saying: “the Kurds didn’t help us in the Second World War, they didn’t help us with Normandy.”

This statement probably tops the list of the most bizarre excuses ever, but it turns out that it isn’t even true. In fact, the Kurds did help the Allies in World War 2, both directly and indirectly. While you might not find the Kurds listed among the official Allies, what we have to remember is that the Kurds don’t have their own country, but instead form significant chunks of the population in Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran. During the times of the Second World War, Syria was a French mandate, while Iraq was a British one, so any local troops would have fought in the army of those two countries.

The French took over Syria and Lebanon from the Ottoman Empire after the end of World War One and immediately formed a force made up of local recruits called the Army of the Levant. After the capitulation of France to Nazi Germany in 1941, the French became divided between the part of the…