Pax Russica: as Trump abandons Syria’s Kurds, Russia is ready to expand its empire

While American troops were hurriedly leaving north-eastern Syria, a young female Kurdish politician called Hervin Khalaf was pulled from her car and executed by the side of the road. Actually, the Kurdish media said she was raped and then stoned to death. They blamed one of the Arab militias being used by Turkey in its invasion. A grim video posted online shows a man holding a Kalashnikov nudging her body with the tip of his boot, as you would a dead animal. The video has not been authenticated and the militia accused of doing this says it was miles away at the time. But in Khalaf the Syrian Kurds have found a martyr to the American ‘betrayal’. She was a human rights activist who formed her own political party to bring Arabs and Kurds together. Foreign diplomats would visit to talk about her quixotic dream of a secular, multi-ethnic Syrian democracy.