John Holland McCown
Absen of the US forces in Syria leaves political and a security vacuum and will quickly emerge actors hostile to US Interests
“I think this is an excellent time to reflect upon these issues because of course, those who are interested in us politics know in about a hundred days, there may be a new president that will come into office, or the president will be reelected, president Trump, of course. And so I think that to think of what foreign policy interests are at stake in the next hundred days, and then before a new president or president Trump gets reelected comes into office, what are the priorities that we have for the US led coalition in Iraq and Syria? And so building on governor Karim’s excellent perspective on the fight for Kirkuk, Matthew’s great survey of the Peshmerga research, I wanted to pivot to talk more about the serious side of the fight against ISIS coalition.
I think it’s important to recognize that the Syrian Democratic Forces and their sort of YPG People’s Protection Units sort of predecessors, but also sort of the YPG-led SDF nature. Their partnership with the US-led coalition was remarkably successful for a couple of reasons. And I think we should reflect upon those and why that came about. First, I think it’s worthwhile keeping perspective that Department of Defense and CIA initiatives to try to find palatable Arab opposition groups that would fight ISIS and the Assad regime utterly failed. Prior to the partnership with the YPG and the SDF years later. Hundreds of millions of dollars were sent to these groups’ weapons that were intended to fight against ISIS. We’re unfortunately co-opted by many of the more radical extremist groups in the midst of the Syrian civil war, and very few vetted forces were able to emerge from these programs.
So it became pretty clear by 2015, certainly by 2014, that the US-led coalition needed to rely on another ground force to fight against ISIS and not fight against the Assad regime and thus the SDF, theSyrian Democratic Forces who were found in October, 2015, wore the perfect tool in that regard if a flower organization, certainly the most effective one. And with that partnership, we’re able to secure by March of 2019, approximately a third of the country that was not under the rule of the Assad regime, that was not under extremists, and were the primary tip of the spear, the US-led coalitions and fight against ISIS. Now, I think we should recognize how little military and political engagement relative to larger operations that the US had had in Iraq. For instance, with the Iraq war, there was much less resources being spent on this partnership. You had about 2000 US special forces that cooperated with the SDF for much of this period. You had of course, close air support that was provided. And you had the YPG and SDF ground forces that were able to defeat what was the greatest terrorist threat to the region and I would say the world in recent memory. And so with virality little cost, the US coalition was able to find a very well suited partner, help build their capacity and substantively defeat ISIS. Certainly short term with the seizure of Baghouz Syria in March, 2019. Now, of course, the SDF continues to play important roles for the US-led coalition’s fight against ISIS. They’re continuing to conduct operations against sleeper cells in the country. We know that there are 10,000 foreign fighters that are under their control and these prisons that have been erected from scratch essentially.
So there very much is a role to play for the SDF and US-led coalition to stabilize a country where the civil war is still ongoing, if have a very different nature than in previous years. Now, I want to pivot then to say on my second point is what were some lessons that were learned in the aftermath of October, 2019 operation peace spring, where Turkish-backed forces went in Northern Syria and occupied a large swath of that border land. And Wladimir can certainly go into more details on this, but I think it’s worth noting the fact that as soon as president Trump made that quite unilateral decision to pull US forces away from that Turkish border, Turkey continued their prerogative since the beginning of Syrian civil war to focus their fight on a weakening or countering their Kurdish adversaries South of their border, and immediately drove a wedge. And what had essentially been a US protectorate in Northeastern Syria with the help of course of the Syrian Democratic Forces and Syrian Democratic Council , their political wing. Overnight the SDF and the SDC were obligated by necessity to appeal to the Assad regime and Russia to come back into the country. The case of the Assad regime, a place in Northeastern Syria, they had largely abandoned since July, 2012, to re-enter these areas to prevent further Turkish incursions. And this I think was only resorted to because the US- led coalition through the President Trump’s administration’s support faltered for the SDF. Now, since then, I would say that iT much of what had been this largely homogenous control and Northeastern Syria has been divvied up between Turkish backed forces, the Russian forces and the Assad regime, but we still have 600 us in Syria, according to open source data that remain our principle point of leverage in the context of the Syrian civil war, and trying to ensure that against ISIS.
So all is not lost though. We’re certainly in a much worse position than we were in September, 2019, for instance. Which pivots to my last general point in the a hundred days to go before perhaps a new administration comes into power in the United States, or if the administration is reelected under President Trump’s leadership, we’re going to have to think very clearly about what our U S interests in Syria and Iraq are moving forward. And I think that from my research and my time on the ground, there, it seems remarkably clear to me that having minimal political and military support relatively with continued engagement with the SDF or the Iraqi Peshmerga forces is a force multiplier for stability in the region. Absent those 600 US forces in Syria, It seems clear that a political and a security vacuum could quickly emerge with actors hostile to US Interests could quickly fill that void, whether it be ISIS, whether it’s the Russian forces, the Assad regime, more radical components of the Turkish backed opposition. These are all concerns that I think that Washington should be thinking about as we’re potentially going into a new administration or re-upping the past three and a half years of policy. “
Can the SDF cooperate with the Syrian regime and Russia?
“In my opinion, the Assad regime is the author of most of the problems in Syria. They very much aggravated Islamic extremist threat from the onset of the conflict, whether it’s releasing thousands of jihadists into Eastern Syria, not contesting with any strength, ISIS has control over that part of the country. Of course they also, on the other hand, seeded much of Northern Eastern Syria to the Kurdish forces in July, 2012, in order to focus the fight on what they believe was sort of the economic and political core of Syria in the West. So the prospect of working with the Assad regime, I have zero confidence that they have any determined efforts to stabilize Northeastern Syria that would in any way reflect US national security interests in the country. I think they are inimical to each other diametrically opposed. And so, in my opinion, the Assad regime and the United States have no great prospects for cooperation the fight against ISIS, because I believe the Assad regime has no great interest in stabilizing or being able to stabilize Eastern and Northern Syria versus try to win it sort of stalemates that it has in Western Syria at the current moment. I think there’s an understandable lack of conviction that such a partnership could work and I believe that’s a good thing.”