The Trump administration is struggling with the contradictions of its own policy for Syria, insisting that it’s not creating a permanent Kurdish enclave inside the country but vowing that the U.S. will stay involved indefinitely by training a Kurd-majority ground force to maintain security and prevent a resurgence of Islamic State.
Reports this week that the U.S. was ready to help establish a 30,000-strong “border security force” led by Syrian Kurds provoked a furious reaction from Turkey, which has long battled its own Kurdish separatist movement, and condemnations from Syria, Russia and Iran. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and other administration officials scrambled to deny the reports.
“We never said our policy is to stand up a Kurdish enclave in Syria,” one senior U.S. official told The Washington Times. “There was a mischaracterization by some officials in the media about this. Our policy is to defeat the Islamic State and promote stabilization in liberated areas to ensure the terror group cannot re-emerge and to foster a political process that involves all the different groups on the ground, not just the Kurds.”
Mr. Tillerson told reporters Wednesday evening that the “entire situation has been misportrayed, misdescribed, some people misspoke. We are not creating a border security force at all.”
He said he had spoken personally with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu to explain that Washington is merely “trying to ensure that local elements are providing security” to areas liberated from the Islamic State.
But Mr. Tillerson said there was now an open-ended commitment by the Trump administration to remain in parts of Syria to contain Islamic State, and the Pentagon’s best allies in that fight have been Syrian Kurds who have resisted the control of President Bashar Assad’s government.
Turkey, a NATO ally, did not appear to be mollified by Mr. Tillerson’s reassurances.
“Did this satisfy us in full? No, it did not,” Mr. Cavusoglu told CNN-Turk television Thursday. “The establishment of a so-called terror army would cause irreversible damage in our relations. … It is a very serious situation.”
The Turkish minister said Ankara is working with Russia and Iran on imminent bombing operations against U.S.-backed forces in the Syrian Kurdish enclave of Afrin, near the Syria-Turkey border.
Complicating the situation, Syria said Thursday that its own air force will shoot down any Turkish fighter jets that attack the enclave of Afrin.
On the campaign trail in 2016, Mr. Trump was sharply critical of the Obama administration’s response to the brutal Syrian civil war and the rise of Islamic State. The U.S. and its allies have scored major battlefield gains against Islamic State over the past year, but finding a stable endgame to the Syrian war, keeping Turkey appeased and curbing the rising influence of Iran and Russia has proved more difficult.
The prospect of a long-term U.S. military training and support presence in Syria also would clash with Mr. Trump’s campaign-trail criticisms against entanglements in the region’s wars.
Appeasing Turkey
U.S. officials say Turkey’s furious response — and a possible military strike — have only escalated the crisis.
“We have been completely transparent with Turkey about what we’re trying to do,” insisted a State Department official who has worked on the problem under Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump. U.S. policymakers are aware of the sensitivities in Ankara even as the Pentagon stepped up its ties to the Syrian Defense Force, which is roughly 60 percent Kurdish.
The Pentagon denies Turkish charges that the force will bolster the ability of Kurds to traverse the Syrian border to support Kurdish separatists inside Turkey.
“We are keenly aware of the security concerns of Turkey, our coalition partner and NATO ally,” the Pentagon said in statement Wednesday night. “Turkey’s security concerns are legitimate. We will continue to be completely transparent with Turkey about our efforts in Syria to defeat ISIS and stand by our NATO ally in its counterterrorism efforts.
But the statement made no specific mention of Kurds. Instead, it simply stressed that the “U.S. continues to train local security forces in Syria” and that “the training is designed to enhance security for displaced persons returning to their devastated communities.”
“It is also essential so that ISIS cannot re-emerge in liberated and ungoverned areas,” the Pentagon said. “This is not a new ’army’ or conventional ’border guard’ force.”
But Joshua Landis, a longtime Syria analyst who heads the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, said the Kurdish controversy marks a more profound break between the U.S. and the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“The State Department has turned the page on Turkey for it no longer views Ankara as a reliable U.S. partner,” Mr. Landis wrote Thursday on his widely read Syria Comment blog. “Many argue that Washington will abandon Syria’s Kurds in order to assuage Turkish anger. I doubt this.”
Many in Washington “believe that Turkey’s rising Islamism, hardening dictatorship and worsening anti-Israel rhetoric will only increase in the future,” Mr. Landis wrote. “They do not hold out hope that Washington can reverse this trend.”
Open-ended engagement
Mr. Tillerson attempted to lay out the Trump administration’s wider policy goals for Syria in remarks Wednesday that marked the first clear admission by the administration of a policy of open-ended military engagement in Syria. The secretary of state said Mr. Trump was determined to avoid mistakes made by the Obama administration in dealing with security threats in the region.
“We cannot make the same mistakes that were made in 2011 when a premature departure from Iraq allowed al Qaeda in Iraq to survive and eventually morph into ISIS,” Mr. Tillerson told an audience at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
“We cannot allow history to repeat itself in Syria,” he said. “ISIS presently has one foot in the grave, and by maintaining an American military presence in Syria until the full and complete defeat of ISIS is achieved, it will soon have two.”
The Pentagon revealed last month that about 2,000 American troops are deployed inside Syria — roughly four times the number previously disclosed by U.S. officials. While some of the troops are believed to be directly fighting Islamic State elements still active in the war zone, officials have said troops are staying to train local forces in what is technically still sovereign Syrian territory.
“We understand that some Americans are skeptical of continued involvement in Syria and question the benefits of maintaining a presence in such a troubled country,” Mr. Tillerson said.
“However, it is vital for the United States to remain engaged in Syria for several reasons,” he said, adding that the Trump administration intends to see through a resolution between opposition groups and Mr. Assad’s regime.
An open-ended U.S. presence is needed to diminish Iranian influence in Syria — specifically to ensure that Iran’s “dreams of a northern arch” of Tehran-backed militias stretching across the region are denied, Mr. Tillerson said.
Mr. Tillerson also said the administration is committed to allowing Syrian refugees to return home and to verifying that Syria is “free of weapons of mass destruction.”
Some analysts were skeptical, saying Mr. Trump’s approach was starting to resemble the much-criticized Obama policy.
“Here’s how they’re the same: other-worldly goals without the will or capacity to achieve them,” said Aaron David Miller, a Middle East analyst with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a former adviser to a number of secretaries of state.
Mr. Miller told Voice of America on Thursday that the change in the Trump administration’s policy is that the U.S. is now considering staying in Syria for a very long time.
⦁ Carlo Muñoz contributed to this report.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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