Summary: they are somewhat certain to die when Assad's army takes over northern Syria and manages to identify them as aid workers, even remotely connected to anything we would consider "good". The agencies are trying to burn all their local paperwork to protect their employees' identities.
[0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/10/am...
Let me present an alternative outcome: when the SyGov enters into joint-control of Northern Syria, nothing will change. And the bulk of the SDF will be incorporated into the Syrian military... exactly as the same as what has happened every single time this has happened in the last 8 years.
There is not a single reason to suspect otherwise, and propagandists like Hassan Hassan and co. will just find a new talking point next week.
It's actually ridiculous that the inner-circle of Twitter MENA propagandists, led by Henry Jackson Society notables like Michael Weiss, are still the go-to "experts" people depend on and still have a platform to spread their poison in 2019.
> First it was protesters chanting for democracy—many took encouragement from Barack Obama’s statement in the summer of 2011 that the country’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, should step down. But the U.S. government looked on as protesters were killed or disappeared into the regime’s teeming prisons.
It’s as though the US government is on a mission to prove they should not be trusted. I hope most can get out of there somehow, this is very unfortunate
I would consider that mission solidly accomplished at this point.
That doesn't mean the US was flawless before Trump. It had its flaws, just like any other government. But generally, they were trusted in scenarios like above, but also, for example, by diplomats to at least try to keep their word even across administrations, or by travellers not to be asked for bribes at the border.
People have become rather cynical and won't believe me, but still it is worth mentioning: before Trump, politicians, including the presidents, almost never lied. On occasion, they would try but fail to make good on a promise. Or they would err, or go to great lengths to avoid answering a question.
But actual lying, as in saying something wrong and repeating it even after it was pointed out to be wrong? It barely ever happened.
Trust isn't binary, nor does it exist on a single dimension. I might use the products and services of US companies, I might conditionally trust the judgement of some US government bodies, but there's always a heavy set of caveats.
I wouldn't trust a drug that had been approved by the FDA until it had also been approved by the European Medicines Agency. I would trust a NIST standard for metrology, but I certainly wouldn't trust a NIST standard for cryptography. I wouldn't ever allow a European customer's data to be stored in the US, or to transit US networks in plaintext. I trust US-made hardware and software about as much as Chinese-made hardware and software, which is to say I assume it's heavily backdoored. I haven't ever trusted the words of a US administration, red or blue; I do broadly trust that Merkel or Macron will mostly keep their word and mostly honour international law.
Or Watergate.
You have a very short memory, the cognitive dissonance is beyond me unless you also supported the invasion of Iraq too? The indefinite nature of that should be a point that this can go on forever and it will. If we're going to stop being the world police, we have to actually stop getting involved and back away as we've been doing slowly over the past decade. This isn't a big surprise.