It has undoubtedly been a whirlwind couple of weeks since the President’s October 6th statement announcing that Turkey was launching an operation in Northern Syria and that U.S . forces would “no longer be in the immediate area”.
Here’s where we are now :
- The U.S. Treasury Department says it is lifting sanctions on Turkey
- The sanctions were targeting Turkey’s Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources along with several Turkish government ministers
- A day before President Trump’s sanctions lifting and permanent ceasefire announcement, the U.S.’ top envoy to Syria, Jim Jeffrey (a former Cipher Brief expert) testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the U.S. is looking into war crimes allegations against Turkey
- The allegations include the killing of Hevrin Khalef, a Kurdish politician
- Jeffrey also said during testimony that he had not been consulted before the President announced a U.S. withdrawal from the area
Key concerns remain:
A few days before The White House’s original announcement that President Trump was pulling U.S. troops out of northeastern Syria, a team of researchers led by The U.S. Institute of Peace delivered a mandated report to Congress that included policy recommendations for Congressional consideration.
The Syria Study Group’s Final Report concluded that the U.S. could not avoid or ignore the conflict in Syria, and that reducing the U.S. presence there would make safeguarding U.S. national security interests even harder.
Key findings from that report provide much needed context to understand the seriousness of where we are today and why the experts from this group (along with members of Congress from both parties) agree that the U.S. can’t afford to walk away.
According to the report, the Syria conflict has:
- Provided a vector for Russia's resurgence in the Middle East
- Allowed for direct hostilities between Iran and Israel
- Provided safe havens for al-Qaeda
- Allowed for the region to become home to the largest concentration of foreign terrorist fighters since Afghanistan in the 1990s
- Fueled the rise of ISIS, which has been resurfacing as an insurgency
- Spawned a regional refugee crisis
“The Assad regime and its partners may seek to cross the Euphrates River, which could in turn breathe life into the ISIS insurgency and allow Iran to consolidate its land routes from Iraq to Lebanon. All of these scenarios become more likely without U.S. forces in Syria and without committed U.S. leadership to avert these scenarios.” – Syria Study Group Report
We asked the report’s principal authors what concerns them the most now, given the President’s recent decisions.
Michael Singh, Lane-Swig Senior Fellow and Managing Director at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
I'm worried that we will see a cascade effect resulting from the U.S. withdrawal – the SDF will refocus its efforts northward to counter the Turkish incursion, which in turn relieves pressure on ISIS and creates a vacuum that will be backfilled by the Assad regime, Russia, and Iran. It also creates a diplomatic vacuum that we have already seen Moscow rush to fill – with the US perceived as disengaging, Russia wants to position itself as the key mediator between Assad, the SDF, and Turkey.
Dana Stroul, Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
On the strategic plane, I am worried about diminishing views globally regarding U.S. credibility and leadership. The U.S. policy position for 5 years has been to defeat ISIS, and the withdrawal of U.S. military before that mission is complete seriously undermines our ability to build future coalitions for counterterrorism or other missions. The decision to halt support to the Syrian Democratic Forces as the local partner and remove ourselves as the meditator between the SDF and Turkey is very damaging – this will greatly complicate our ability to earn the trust and cooperation of future local partners, and may deny the U.S. these types of “by, with, through” options as an alternative to deploying our own service members in future contingency situations.
"On the operational level, I am worried about diminishing options for the United States in the D-ISIS fight or CT operations against Al Qaeda in Syria. If the SDF and Assad move forward with their agreement enabling the regime to return to northern and eastern Syria, it is unclear how the United States will continue to pursue its interests. Not to mention the severe humanitarian implications of regime return to areas liberated from ISIS," adds Stroul.
So what comes next?
The original report pointed to 4 areas of U.S. leverage:
- U.S. military partnership with the SDF to deny one third of Syrian territory to Assad and his backers
- Political isolation of the regime
- Economic sanctions
- Denial of reconstruction aid
Dana Stroul, Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
The United States may still have options if it quickly pulls together its allies and partners to hold the line against normalizing Assad politically or economically. Moreover, Russia and Iran still lack the finances and expertise to rebuild Syria – that can only come from the U.S., Europe, and the international financial institutions. Therefore, denying reconstruction assistance until there are behavioral changes by the Assad regime could provide important leverage if resources and prioritized appropriately.
Michael Singh, Lane-Swig Senior Fellow and Managing Director at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
There will be a tendency now in Washington to regard all as lost, but the fact that the U.S. has key interests at stake – outlined in our report – has not changed, and that means our policymakers have an obligation to use the tools remaining at their disposal to safeguard those interests. This will mean continuing the air campaign against ISIS – which will be made harder if we lack partners on the ground – maintaining our military presence in Iraq and trying to shore up the coalition we had built to isolate Assad in hopes of securing the best possible political settlement. But all of that becomes undoubtedly harder without US forces in the mix, which shows you just how much bang for very little buck we were getting from this military deployment.
Read also:
The Limits of U.S. Influence in Syria from Cipher Brief Expert, General Jack Keane (Ret.)
The Far-Reaching Danger of ISIS in Syria by Dr. Kimberly Kagan, Founder and President for the Institute for the Study of War
Read more national security focused insights, analysis and opinion in The Cipher Brief
