QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Nearly 48 hours after Friday’s attack against Mazloum Abdi, Commander in Chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and despite the presence of US forces at the site, Western press has been slow to pick up the story.
On April 7, a convoy included Mazloum Abdi, forces of the Sulaymaniyah-headquartered Counter-Terrorism Group (CTG), and personnel of the US-led Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS were targeted by a drone strike on the perimeter of Sulaymaniyah International Airport.
According to Abdi, he visited the Kurdish city in the KRI to meet with Coalition officers and members of the KRI’s and Iraq’s counter-terrorism forces.
Iraq accused Turkey of being behind the attack. Reportedly, no-one was injured or killed.
English-language news outlets focused on the Middle East were quick to report on the attack and the likely perpetrator. Middle East Eye, a Qatari-funded organization based in London, wrote about the incident, including Turkey’s culpability and previous Turkish assassination attempts against Abdi.
Likewise, Al-Monitor, as US-based news website focused on the Middle East, published an in-depth piece on Friday, followed by an interview with Abdi himself a day later. In the latter article, Abdi clearly pointed towards Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as the culprit, arguing that he is “constantly seizing any opportunity to strike at our partnership with the international coalition led by America.”
All published accounts say that US military advisors were with Abdi at the time of the attack. Had the convoy been hit, it would have led to the first US military personnel deaths in Iraq since 2020, and at the hands of a fellow NATO member, no less. Despite the possible deadly outcome of the drone strike, American news outlets have been slow to report on it. The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times – some of the most widely-read papers in the country – have not covered the story.
Among the US’ leading newspapers, only the Wall Street Journal reported covered the attack in a timely manner, highlighting the presence of American service members and quoting Western officials suspecting that Ankara was behind the attack.
Fox News, a right-leaning news station, published an account under the headline ‘Explosion reported at Iraqi airport at center of Kurdish conflict’, making no mention of Turkey’s culpability or the presence of US forces, but instead focusing the attack through the lens of intra-Kurdish strife. PBS, a public US broadcasting station, published a nearly identical account under a similar headline, though it mentions that the drone was likely Turkish.
The European press has been similarly lethargic. The UK’s, Germany’s, and Spain’s main daily newspapers have not covered the attack. France’s AFP, a leading news agency reported the strike. France24, a state-owned news organization, also wrote about it. The latter’s report mentions Turkey’s role, however concentrates on Ankara’s war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which was not involved in Friday’s events.