In the past few days, high-ranking officials of the Trump regime have all said, in one way or another, that the United States has a long-term commitment to continuing its military and diplomatic efforts in the Syrian civil war. At a meeting on Tuesday, however, Pr*sident Donald Trump told military leaders to get ready to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. He set no date.
Such a withdrawal would certainly be greeted favorably by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his allies in the Kremlin, who have been involved militarily in the civil war on the side of al-Assad, including with ground troops, Syria having been a Russian ally for decades.
Around 2,000 U.S. soldiers are now in Syria, part of a coalition to regain territory held by the militant ISIS group. Various sources say the coalition has taken back more than 90 percent of the territory ISIS once held. U.S. fatalities in that effort have been low, although two coalition soldiers, one American and one British, were killed over the weekend in northern Syria by an improvised explosive device.
Karen DeYoung, Josh Dawsey and Paul Sonne report:
Trump stressed that U.S. troops can be involved in current training tasks for local forces to ensure security in areas liberated from the Islamic State, the official said.
But the president said that the U.S. mission would not extend beyond the destruction of the Islamic State, and that he expects other countries, particularly wealthy Arab states in the region, to pick up the task of paying for reconstruction of stabilized areas, including sending their own troops, if necessary. [...]
Trump said at a White House news conference that “I want to get out. I want to bring our troops back home.” [...]
On Tuesday, speaking at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Gen. Joseph L. Votel, head of U.S. Central Command, said, “A lot of very good military progress has been made over the last couple of years, but the hard part, I think, is in front of us.” Upcoming efforts, he said, include the military’s role in “stabilizing [Syria], consolidating gains” and “addressing long-term issues of reconstruction” after the defeat of the Islamic State.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has also recently noted that the U.S. would be, needs to be, committed militarily in Syria. Ignoring his advisers and other appointees is, however, nothing new to Trump. His approach is contrary to Votel’s view and to that laid out in January by former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a speech at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Tillerson outlined five points for continued U.S. involvement which indicated an indefinite stay there beyond the destruction of ISIS, which used the chaos of civil war in an attempt to advance its own radical objectives. But Tillerson is, of course, no longer secretary.
On Wednesday, the presidential press secretary’s office issued a statement:
“The military mission to eradicate ISIS in Syria is coming to a rapid end, with ISIS being almost completely destroyed. The United States and our partners remain committed to eliminating the small ISIS presence in Syria that our forces have not already eradicated. We will continue to consult with our allies and friends regarding future plans. We expect countries in the region and beyond, plus the United Nations, to work toward peace and ensure that ISIS never re-emerges.”
Last month marked the seventh anniversary of the beginning of the war that was sparked when peaceful protests were violently crushed by the government of Bashar al-Assad who has ruled the country since 2000. Since the war started, at least 400,000 people have been killed, 5.5 million Syrian refugees have fled the country for Lebanon, Jordan and places farther afield, and another 6.1 million are displaced inside Syria.
When the war erupted in a manner not dissimilar to what had occurred in the so-called “Arab spring” in Tunisia and Egypt, the U.S. provided humanitarian and non-lethal military aid, such as meals-ready-to-eat. When Assad began to falter in 2012, there was widespread support in Washington for supporting the rebels, among both Republicans and Democrats. The question was whether to confine that to humanitarian aid or include weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades and Stinger missiles designed to knock down aircraft and used with great effect by Afghan fighters during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Included among those in support of this approach was the Arms for Rebels group, CIA Director David Petraeus, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But not President Barack Obama. His fear, and that of some of his advisers, was that the Arms for Rebels approach would put the United States on a path toward a decades-long intervention in Syria that would include American ground troops. And Obama had promised there would be no ground troops sent there.
One reason he and others didn’t want to provide many weapons was fear that they would end up in the wrong hands.
Not until early 2014, when the war was nearly three years old, did a U.S. program begin to train some 15,000 Syrian rebels in Jordan in marksmanship, navigation, and other military skills.
In September 2014, the U.S. conducted its first air strikes against ISIS. Thirteen months later, Obama approved the sending of 50 special operations forces to provide logistics and other assistance to Kurds fighting ISIS in northern Syria. Over the next two years, more special operations forces were added before reaching the current level of about 2,000.
Withdrawal of U.S. troops worries the Kurds. They have been fighting ISIS in both Iraq and Syria with U.S. military assistance. But in July, Trump stopped funding this. Martin Chulov reports:
Donald Trump’s surprise announcement late last week that US troops would be “coming out of Syria … very soon” has placed further stress on an already troubled partnership between Washington and a Kurdish-led force it had assembled to push Isis from north-east Syria. [...]
Kurdish leaders, already troubled by a Turkish assault that last month drove the Kurds from an enclave in the north-west of the country – which the US did not oppose – are also now privately questioning the viability of the alliance fighting Isis.
“They want us to finish what’s important to them, but they won’t concern themselves with what’s important to us,” said a senior Kurdish figure who has liaised regularly with US officials. “Let them fight Isis. Let us fight for ourselves. Do they really know what they’re doing?”
That seems to be what Trump has in mind. But his fickleness can make predictions mere guesswork for what will really happen with American troops in Syria—and just about every other policy, foreign and domestic.