Kurds in Syria are in desperate need of humanitarian aid and protection

I am a Kurdish professor living and teaching in Chicago. Every morning, like many in the Kurdish diaspora, I wake up torn between two worlds: the safety of my life here and the deepening anguish of my people in northern Syria.

Even during quiet moments — walking along the shores of Lake Michigan in the cold — my thoughts drift thousands of miles away, to families facing fear, displacement and uncertainty.

The distance between these two worlds is not only geographical; it is emotional and moral. Comfort here does not cancel responsibility there.

The calm of the lake contrasts painfully with the turbulence endured by my people, reminding me that safety, when unevenly shared, carries an obligation to speak and to act.

Recently, I spoke again with a colleague, a Kurdish academic still in Syria. What he described confirmed what many of us have been seeing online and then some. Beyond the images and posts are deeper, harsher realities: ongoing displacement, targeted abuses and fear intensified by the collapse of protection and the steady drying up of humanitarian aid.

These are not isolated incidents. They form a pattern.

For more than a decade, Kurds in northern Syria have endured repeated displacement, political abandonment and cycles of violence. Families who once rebuilt their lives after the Islamic State group now face renewed insecurity. Aid corridors are shrinking. Schools, clinics and basic services are struggling to function. Civilians — especially women, children and older people — are paying the price of decisions made far from their lives.

I want to remind everyone what is clear: From Chicago, this crisis may feel distant. But it should not be invisible.

It is not a secret that the United States has been deeply entangled in Syria’s recent history. Kurdish communities were critical partners in the fight against the Islamic State group, a fact acknowledged by American officials across administrations. Yet partnership must mean more than words offered in wartime and forgotten in peacetime. Abandonment after sacrifice leaves scars — not only on those left behind, but on the moral credibility of those who turn away.

This is not a call for military intervention. It is a call for moral clarity and civic responsibility.

As Americans — and as Chicagoans — we understand what it means when communities are treated as disposable, when security is invoked to excuse suffering and when silence becomes a form of consent. Our city’s history teaches us that justice begins when ordinary people insist that distant lives still matter.

What can be done?

First, humanitarian access must be protected and expanded. Aid should never be politicized or withheld from civilians. Second, U.S. policymakers must use diplomatic leverage to press for civilian protection and accountability for abuses. Third, American civil society — universities, faith communities, human rights groups — must help keep this crisis visible, grounded in facts and human stories, not slogans.

I write not only as a Kurd but also as a scholar who believes that knowledge carries responsibility. When suffering becomes normalized, speaking becomes a duty.

Today, Northern Syria stands at a crossroads. One path leads toward further neglect, radicalization and despair. The other — harder, but necessary — leads toward dignity, humanitarian protection and the recognition that Kurdish lives are not bargaining chips in a regional power game.

Chicago is a city built by immigrants, survivors and strivers. We know that solidarity does not stop at borders. The question is whether we will choose to act on that knowledge — or look away.

Today, there is a moral imperative to say this clearly and without hesitation: Kurdish Lives Matter.

İbrahim Özdemir, Ph.D., is a Kurdish professor based in Chicago who writes on environmental ethics, environmental justice, human rights, politics and the Middle East.