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Turkey's war of attrition against Syria's Kurds

Alongside shelling and drones, Turkey is weaponizing water supplies in northeast Syria, turning an already horrible situation into a nightmare

DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images
This picture taken on July 27, 2021, shows an aerial view of water pumps drawing water from the Lake Assad reservoir (unseen), in the village of al-Tuwayhinah near the Tabqa Dam along the Euphrates river in Raqqa province in eastern Syria. — DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images

KHABUR VALLEY, Northeast Syria — A concrete shack pockmarked with bullet holes and with no running water, electricity, windows or doors is what Faslah Hussein Osman, her husband and five children call home.  

It faces the carcass of Saint Mary’s church in Tel Nasr, a village that was mainly inhabited by Syrian Orthodox Christians who fled en masse shortly before the Islamic State struck in February 2015.

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