The White House announced Sunday that President Trump will endorse a Turkish military operation near the border with Syria that will target Kurdish forces. Turkey sees the forces as a terrorist insurgency but many of those forces fight alongside the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (S.D.F.) battling ISIS in the region.
Before the White House made the announcement, The Cipher Brief spoke with our expert, General Jack Keane (Ret.), who also serves as chairman of the Institute for the Study of War about the situation in Syria and what risks and opportunities remain for the U.S. some 8 years after the conflict began.
The Cipher Brief: Can you give us an overview of the nations with the most influence in Syria and what position they are in today?
Keane: The Russians and Iranians gained the upper hand in Syria and have had the momentum there since 2015 when they were able to turn around what the opposition forces were achieving. Since that time, they've been trying to consolidate most of the country. Today, the regime forces are focusing on two key areas. One is in Idlib Province, and the other is in the south near the Golan Heights. In Idlib Province, the Russians have brought in special operation forces called the Spetsnaz, to assist the regime forces. They've also brought in the Wagner Group, which is a privatized military firm, trained by the Russian military.
Russia has used the Wagner Group in Crimea, Eastern Ukraine and once before in Syria, where they approached a U.S. coalition-led base at Al-Tanf and U.S. troops ended up killing a couple of hundred of them in 2018. They're used because of their expertise in urban warfare, and they have considerably more experience than the regime forces, which are somewhat inept at urban warfare. They're also inept at the use of air power, compared to the Russians.
There's going to be a real struggle there. The Turks are pushing back against the regime forces and assisting the opposition forces in the area. I doubt if they'll have as brutal and bloody a campaign as they did in Aleppo. I think they're going to go slower with it and try to take it village by village, and town by town. And not have the wide-scale bombing campaign that they had in the past, that got them so much adverse publicity. So that's one aspect of it.
Then in the south, they've got the Fourth Division. This is the one that's commanded by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's son, and they're also trying to consolidate in the south. But having these two major campaigns going on at the same time stretches regime forces very quickly. It has always been their problem, right from the outset when the civil war began, that as long as the opposition forces were able to conduct operations in multiple places, it would always cause a problem for the regime. And that really hasn't changed. So, that's what's happening in the western part of Syria. The regime is trying to literally eliminate the remainder of the opposition forces. But it's going to be a struggle.
The Cipher Brief: What about the Iranian influence there? How significant is that today?
Keane: The Iranian influence is very significant. There are a number of IRGC generals in the country and a number of them have been killed. They have tens of thousands of forces represented there from Hezbollah to Iraqi Shia militia. They also brought in the radical Islamists from Afghanistan. They're actually a more formidable ground force, by far, than the regime forces. And the IRGC generals really call the shots. They have significant influence over Assad's generals.
They also have a lot of say when it comes to the use of air power. Now, of course, the Russians are really the principle delivery of air power in Syria, and they have a say as well. But it's in support of the ground operations that the Iranians are literally running. So they have tremendous influence over the war and it's not well understood, how significant it is.
The Cipher Brief: One thing we haven't talked about yet is the terrorist threat still operating there from ISIS and al Qaeda. How closely should the U.S. be watching what's going on with those two groups?
Keane: The ISIS threat is there. While some of the ISIS fighters are located in western Syria, their concentration is largely east of the Euphrates River Valley. When the final attacks were being made on Mosul in Iraq to drive ISIS out and also in Raqqa in Syria, ISIS took the majority of its force in both of those places and got them out of the area. They kept a residual force to stay and fight right to the end, but the majority of them were preserved.
The Inspector General and the Pentagon will say that the number of ISIS forces is somewhere between 20 and 30,000. Some others think it might be closer to 15,000. But nonetheless, ISIS has somewhere between half or three quarters of the force it used to have operating between Iraq and Syria. So they still obviously have presence, but their presence is very different. They're not controlling territory, as they did in the past. They're operating as a terrorist network, and they're hiding from the Iraqi security forces, and also, from the U.S. coalition-led Syrian Democratic forces, in eastern Syria.
The Cipher Brief: And what are they trying to do?
Keane: ISIS forces are trying to influence the tribal forces that are in eastern Syria, particularly the Arab forces. The Arabs occupy most of the land and the Kurds are in the very northern part of the sector. Even though the Syrian Kurds were decisive as part of the Syrian Democratic forces - not only in number but in quality of fighting - the Arabs represent the largest population in eastern Syria, and ISIS is undermining local governance and trying to influence it.
That's typical of what they've always done. They don't see themselves taking control of territory again, at least for another year or more. But they've never lost the intent, when the opportunity presents itself, to reestablish control over the territory, principally in Syria, but also possibly in Iraq. That is unlikely to happen as long as the United States and some coalition forces are there assisting the Syrian Democratic forces, and providing air power. If the U.S. and the coalition forces, which are small in number – less than 2000 - pulled out of there completely, the air power would evaporate. Russian air power would be introduced, and Syrian Democratic forces would likely withdraw from the battlefield and hide among the population. Iran would take over the eastern part of Syria. So, ISIS has a presence there, and it's something that we really have to stay on top of.
The Cipher Brief: You retired as a four-star general after an incredible military career. You’ve followed this issue for a long-time. What opportunities are there for the U.S. to have any impact in Syria moving forward?
Keane: We have squandered all of our opportunities to make a difference in Syria going back to the early days of the Civil War, when the opposition forces were appealing to the United States for assistance. The entire national security team from the Obama administration that included Secretaries Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton, Director of the CIA, General David Petraeus, Chairman and Joint Chief of Staff Martin Dempsey, recommended to the President that we provide lethal aid and training to the reliable moderate opposition forces and he rejected that. So, we don't know if that would have been decisive, but I think most of us looking back at it are upset that we didn’t even try. Clearly we abdicated influence at that point, and we began to turn Syria over to the Iranians and eventually also to the Russians.
There is little left in terms of what we can do at this point because we don't have much political influence. We have some, because as long as we stay in eastern Syria, that gives us something of a seat at the table in trying to negotiate a final political settlement in Syria. If we walk away completely, the Iranians and the Russians will do what they want. Syria is a failed state, and I don't see it changing for the better in the foreseeable future.
The United States has lost, to a large degree, the ability to influence the political outcome in Syria because we have focused exclusively on ISIS. Strategically, we would like to contain Iran in Syria from gaining the kind of dominance they want. They want Syria to be a strategic anchor point for them in the Middle East. But at this point, I don't see us being able to do anything more than what we are doing and that is to contain ISIS.
The Cipher Brief: What haven't we talked about that should be on our radar when it comes to Syria?
Keane: Well, I think there's a real threat in Syria to Israel. The Iranians have attempted many times to move literally thousands of rockets and missiles into Syria. They've got somewhere in excess of 130,000 of them in Lebanon, and tens of thousands in the Gaza Strip. Those weapons are there to encroach on the sovereignty and stability of Israel.
Iran wants to do the same thing in Syria. That's why Israel has conducted, in the last couple of years, close to 200 air strikes. Principally to go after the Iranian's proxies, Hezbollah, as they try to establish bases, or transport missiles and rockets. They've actually gone to the Damascus Airport to knock out a warehouse that was located right at that airport. And by the way, while they're doing it, there's not a single Russian air defense missile that has ever been fired at them. And believe me, the Russians are tracking them on radar from the time they come across the border in Syria, all the way to the target and back into Israel.
They have gone as far east as Iraq, to take out Iraqi proxies, which sort of surprised us, because Iran were preparing to launch operations against Israel from Iraq. And the Israeli Mossad picked up on that and struck. So that's one of the major dangers here, in terms of Iran trying to encroach on the sovereignty and stability of Israel, and Israel's response. That can always lead to a much larger confrontation as a result.
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