I'm John Batchel. I welcome my good colleague, Akamma Shirari, of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy,

helping me especially watch Syria through a glass darkly.

Ahmed, have a very good evening to you. We spoke at great length about the collapse of Kurdish

security in Syria. Kurds named the U.S. as a strong ally. However, the Kurds have been in retreat

at least since last week, and that continues. I'm told disturbingly that the U.S. has approved

this retreat and leaving questions such as, if the Kurds are retreating, who is guarding the ISIS prisoners? Thousands of them.

If the Kurds are retreating, retreating to where, and how is it that the U.S. is standing back

and watching Al-Shara's government make war, or threaten to make war, not just on the Kurds,

but also on the Druze and the Alawites, on everybody in Syria.

Help me understand what's going on. Good evening to you.

Good evening, John. It's a very complicated picture that you just painted.

Let's start off with the Kurds, with the SDF.

There's been a ceasefire in place. It was extended on Saturday for 15 days in order to finish or complete the U.S. plan to transport ISIS fighters from Syria to Iraq.

So according to CENTCOM, the U.S. will be transporting about 7,000 ISIS fighters to Iraq, to Iraqi prisons.

And that itself is a testament to the fragility of the ceasefire and the lack of confidence that the US has in terms of preventing a conflict in northeast Syria between Shara's government and the SDF.

The Kurds or the SZF have been retreating to Kurdish majority areas.

If you had looked at a map of Syria two weeks ago,

the SDAF had controlled 30% of of serious territory in the northeastern region.

Following a government or following a military advance by the government, the SDF lost two provinces

or two provinces and a half, so the majority of these areas.

These areas where the population of these areas are mainly Arabs of tribal and Bedouin origin.

And so the SDF is now concentrated in Kurdish majority areas.

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