Maya Jabali

God help me, bring me back home safe.

The U.S.

has had to essentially recalibrate its alliances in Syria over the past 15 months.

The Kurds were their main ally.

They helped them defeat the Islamic State over years of fighting in the north and east of the country.

But since shut-out forces ousted Bashar al-Assad from power, Washington has been building increasingly close ties with him and his government.

So a battle in which those two U.S.

allies are being pitched against one another has been very complicated for the U.S.,

But overall, it does look like the Americans have sided just a little bit more closely with Shaddaa than they have with the Kurds.

And what we're hearing from Kurdish officials is the sense that the U.S.

has abandoned them and that it did not intervene to stop this offensive in the ways that the Kurds were hoping it would.