It appears that
President Trump was a bit off the mark Monday morning when he tweeted a theory that Kurdish forces were releasing prisoners with ties to the
Islamic State in an attempt to get the U.S. to continue fighting alongside them. Trump's suspicions were likely derived from the fact that the Kurds, longtime U.S. allies in the
Middle East, were disappointed in
Washington for removing U.S. troops from the region, providing
Turkey — which considers Kurdish forces a national security threat — an opening to invade.U.S. officials have said that prisoners with
ISIS ties are being deliberately released, but it's actually
Turkish proxy forces in the Free Syrian Army — a decentralized rebel group that has been linked to extremists groups and was once recruited by the CIA to aid the U.S. in its fight against ISIS — who are behind it, rather than the Kurds, Foreign Policy reports. The Free Syrian Army has also been accused of executing Kurdish prisoners and killing unarmed civilians.As for the Kurds, one U.S. official said the Kurdish-led Syrian
Democratic Forces have not abandoned or released any prisoners with ISIS ties and, in some cases, the SDF has reportedly moved detainees to other facilities further south.Subsequently, Trump's theory is not sitting well with U.S. and Kurdish forces. "That has enraged our forces in
Syria," another senior U.S. administration official said. "Kurds are still defending our bases. Incredibly reckless and dishonest thing to say."