The recent major news on the Syrian theater has been the long-planned Turkish invasion of northeastern Syria, which aside from the regular army involves a large number of Sunni Arab militias.
It had been postponed due to strong opposition by the United States, backed by a U.S. military presence in the Kurdish-controlled areas.
Now, U.S. President Donald J. Trump has greenlighted the move. It was 10 months ago that Trump first announced the troop withdrawal from Syria. Now what happened appears to be a replay of that day. Back in December 2018, James Mattis, then secretary of defense, stopped the Turkish invasion from happening, but sacrificed his post for his stand.
Trump’s decision has wreaked havoc, including among his own GOP supporters, such as U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The critics believe America is failing its allies, thus weakening its stance in the Middle East and even globally.
The decision was made by the president alone, against the advice of the administration’s security and defense experts. The decision was made outside of any comprehensive strategy vis-à-vis Syria and, hence, the entire Middle East. As evident from Trump’s earlier moves in Syria, the 45th president believes in the power of his own instincts. Such an approach is unlikely to lead to a sustainable outcome.
US ignores Syria
But the plight of Syria doesn’t bother Trump anymore. For all the criticism his actions provoke, this administration has simply adopted the track of his predecessors. In fact, the current U.S. move follows the same logic as U.S. President Barack Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq in 2010 and is likely to provoke a similarly negative outcome.
Even when it comes to the “abandonment of allies,” it is similar to what Obama did in relation to Sahwa – a U.S.–sponsored Sunni Arab militia that had been fighting the precursor of ISIS – the al-Qaida in Iraq.
If the U.S. Arab allies should feel let down, they had already felt this way since Obama, who did not help efforts to stop Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Moreover, Obama paid no heed to the Iran threat and made a deal with Tehran without regard to their concerns.
No sympathy for Kurds
Arab allies are hardly sympathetic to the Kurds anyway. So they may even be happy for their embattled Sunni Arab kinsmen who fought against Assad and lost and who now have a chance to regain some ground.
The current U.S. withdrawal is in line with the recent lack of proper response to the Iranian attack on Saudi oil production centers. For the Saudis, hopes that Trump’s approach would be an improvement over Obama’s Middle East policies are in vain. While it may sound strange at first glance, both Trump’s position and his detractors vis-à-vis the Syrian Kurds is essentially the same – they both pin their interest in the plight of their Kurdish allies only on their utility as proxies in the fight against ISIS.
It is also true that the Kurds never in modern history had any stronger support than from the U.S.
Once the military partnership was formalized in 2015, the Syrian Kurdish PYD (Democratic Union Party) set about creating an ethnic statelet Rojava along the Turkish border, inspired, probably, by the Iraqi Kurdistan that had blossomed in the shadow of the U.S.-provided no-fly zone.
Syrians to return
In both cases, however, the strength and length of the U.S. friendship was a function of the power of the U.S. enemies – Saddam and, later, al-Qaida in Iraq – and, in the case of the Syrian Kurds, ISIS. Now it’s over, the Rojava dreamland of the Kurds will just cease to exist.
Now the Turks are planning to take control of the strip of land down to the M4 belt road and stretching further towards the Iraqi border – some 30-miles deep.
What they also intend to do is to bring in from Turkey and resettle up to 3 million Syrian refugees (triple the initially declared figure).
These will be primarily Sunni Arabs, which will change entirely the ethnic landscape of what used to be a mainly Kurdish area.
The Syrian Kurdish population is less than 2 million, who will, therefore, be outnumbered by the newcomers, as also significant numbers are expected to flee to areas still under the YPG (Kurdish militias) control in the southeast. What suggests a potential ethnic cleansing is being touted by the Turks outside, primarily, for the European Union’s sake, as a humanitarian operation. As the EU has failed to live up to its commitment to help offset Turkey’s refugee-related expenses, the Turks’ now leverage the threat of a renewed influx against the mounting EU criticism of the invasion, and will probably succeed in silencing much of the EU opposition.
It will, however, be quite problematic to resettle such large numbers to an area, where tiny spots of farmable land and urban zones mix with immense swathes of barren Syrian desert.
The logic of the operation – despite the officially declared Turkish plan – suggests, therefore, an immediate extension further south – to the fertile triangle around the former ISIS capital Raqqa and, also, perhaps, to the oil-rich Deir al-Zor, to deprive the Kurdish-led SDF of its main resource base.
Bloody war ahead?
The scene is thus set for a bloody war between the Kurdish militias now holding these areas and the Turks allied with the local Sunni Arab tribes and militias.
The U.S. troops have now only withdrawn from the northern 30-mile zone but the logic and wording of Trump’s decision suggest that they will soon be leaving the entire eastern Syrian terrain.
The areas now under the Kurdish control also host large detention camps with thousands of former ISIS fighters and families inside.
ISIS threat
A problem that also had been outsourced to the Kurds and which is now seen as a source of ISIS imminent resurgence, as it is more than likely that the detainees will now all go loose.
The risk is real, but current assessments predicting ISIS resurgence are also affected by the heat of the impeachment debate.
Turkey, with its well-trained police, the experience in countering terrorist threats and NATO’s 2nd largest military, is far better equipped to combat the ISIS threat than a Kurdish-led militia.
This may be a key issue to discuss during the planned Trump – Erdogan summit. Now, that the decision has been taken, for better or worse, from an offhand move, a sustainable strategy should emerge between the two NATO allies, irrespective of the problems that have been plaguing the bilateral relations for already a long time.
If that does not happen, however, the situation may become truly chaotic. The manner in which the invasion will be executed would also matter a lot. It is hard to expect that the Turks will be able to execute sufficient restraint. Hedging against the excesses, the U.S. has threatened Turkey with economic sanctions.
Clash with Russia?
It is also likely that Assad, with Russia’s prompting and support, will try to stop a Turkish invasion of deeper eastern Syria and get hold of its single major oil field – something they had already tried and were prevented from doing by the U.S. forces.
While Kurds are no great fans of Assad, in the face of a greater threat, they might now welcome such a move. The Turks will hardly prevent that from happening, as since 2015, they seem to have completely lost their appetite to challenge Russia.
On the contrary, they believe that they can use it in as much as may appear to maintain rapport.
The current shakeup will, therefore, likely end up with enlargement of the Assad–Russia zone of control towards the east, and Turkey establishing its long-aspired buffer area while securing a stronger bargaining position on behalf of what remains of the Syrian opposition for future peace talks.
Oleksandr Bogomolov is the director of the Institute of Oriental Studies in Kyiv. He speaks Arabic, Persian, Russian, Ukrainian and English fluently. He graduated from St. Petersburg State University with a master’s degree in Arab and Middle East studies and from the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies with a Ph.D. in Arab linguistics.
