So it was the fall of 2013. I was in this very small town near the Turkish border with Syria.

Atlantic staff writer Mike Giglio. with Syria.

Atlantic staff writer Mike Giglio.

And the smuggler that I'd hired to take me to Syria met me at a hotel.

A sketchy looking guy in a leather jacket, just kind of like the cliche of what you would imagine as a smuggler.

And he takes us outside and there was a school bus standing in the parking lot.

I followed the smuggler and I walked up onto the school bus with my

my rucksack and my body armor and I was surprised because I saw school children

sitting in the seats looking up at me. I thought that the bus

was just cover for the smuggler but he also happened to be the bus driver and it

must have been the end of the school day so on the way down to the border with Syria, we made all the stops and the kids got off until we got to the place where they did nightly crossings into Syria through a minefield that they had actually cleared a small path through.

And that's how the border into Syria.

He spent the next five years in the region, reporting on ISIS and spending time understanding the

dynamics between the Kurds, Turkey, and the Islamic State. His new book about the

reporting is called Shatter the Nations, ISIS, and the war for the caliphate.

So this week I asked him to join me to explain how one phone call President Trump had

has led to an abrupt 180 in U.S. Middle East policy, and now an right now. Just days after President Trump announced a withdrawal of U.S. troops from a key

part of Syria after a phone call with Turkey's president, Turkey is now striking, the

very U.S. allies, the Kurds, who helped the U.S. fight ISIS. Turkey's military

first launching airstrikes on Kurdish targets and tonight there are reports that

civilian targets have been struck as well.

This is Radio Atlantic.

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