Although Americans fought mostly from the air, tens of thousands of Syrians pushed the Islamic State back on the ground, village by village, until its final stronghold fell in March 2019. More than 11,000 members of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) lost their lives in the battles that broke up the caliphate, whereas 9 U.S. troops have died in Syria since 2014. Rather than stand by the allies who contributed so much, former U.S. President Donald Trump sought to withdraw U.S. troops from northeast Syria, a situation Turkish forces exploited to attack the SDF and displace hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process. There is no easy way to reverse the consequences of Trump’s mistake, but there is something far more important the White House can do to alleviate suffering among SDF fighters and their families: Put the 3 million inhabitants of northeast Syria first in line to receive the COVID-19 vaccines that Washington will soon start shipping around the globe.
At the G-7 summit earlier this week, U.S. President Joe Biden pledged to donate 500 million doses of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine to low-income countries on top of the 80 million doses Washington is already in the process of shipping abroad. The other members of the G-7 will donate an additional 500 million doses, and the United Nations-backed COVAX initiative will handle distribution. That is a sensible plan overall but one likely to prolong suffering in northeast Syria since COVAX has to route its shipments through Damascus and the regime of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad has systematically blocked the distribution of United Nations assistance to areas outside of its control.
