The Turks could wait no longer and the Syrian Kurds wanted too much from America:
The Americans, unable to get the Turks and Syrian Kurds to work out a compromise deal, finally did what they had long said they would, and pulled their troops out of Syria. The compromise offered was continued military support, but very few Americans in Syria, if the Kurds would pull back and allow the Turks to establish their long sought security zone.
This was not a spur of the moment Trump decision.
America should not have decided to go to war with Turkey to protect the Syrian Kurds, as much as I like the Kurds and dislike Erdogan. And our 50 troops in northern Syria in the battle zone were not going to stop the invasion. Even our thousand in the rest of Syria are not enough. And if we start bombing our Turkish NATO ally--which does have a legitimate security worry about some Turkish Kurds who are hard core terrorists--the Turks can respond by taking a lot of American troops in Turkey hostage. Oh, and the nukes.
Plus the Kurds didn't do us a favor by fighting ISIL. We helped the Syrian Kurds as much as the Kurds helped us. And after we (plus non-Kurdish Syrians in the SDF) jointly defeated ISIL in Syria, the Kurds would be thrilled to have America fight for an independent Kurdish state carved out of Syrian territory. We do not have an obligation to fight that war for the Kurds.
We had a common interest in destroying ISIL. After that, what? The Kurds won't help us overthrow Assad--and we won't as Obama and Trump made it clear. And we won't support an independent Syrian Kurdish state--which our Iraqi and Turkish friends would not appreciate.
So don't tell me that the result of our decision is that the Kurds turned to our enemy Assad:
Kurdish forces long allied with the United States in Syria announced a new deal Sunday with the government in Damascus, a sworn enemy of Washington that is backed by Russia, as Turkish troops moved deeper into their territory and President Donald Trump ordered the withdrawal of the U.S. military from northern Syria.
We--both Obama and Trump--have operated on the theory that you can strike a king (Assad) without killing (overthrowing) him, and all will be fine.
And I've long said that in the absence of a serious American effort to topple Assad that the Kurds would have to cut a deal with Assad (I noted that in this post and in this post, for example). The Kurds have finally started to do what I knew they had to do because the Kurds weren't going to help overthrow Assad and we weren't going to fight for their independence from Assad. We didn't have a serious effort to topple Assad before Russia intervened on his side in 2015. But now we will fight Russia, Iran, and Syria to save the Kurds?
Also, if you are blaming Trump for the escape of hundreds of ISIL fighters, the Australians say it is Turkey's fault:
Australia's foreign minister says Turkey is solely responsible for the escape of Islamic State group fighters from custody in Syria.
Foreign Minister Marise Payne was commenting in the Australian Senate after hundreds of Islamic State families and supporters escaped from a holding camp on Sunday amid fighting between Turkish forces and the Kurds.
And there is the added detail that families and supporters of ISIL fighters were part of the escapees. So how many actual terrorist were there?
When I say this is complicated, I'm not kidding. That's why I called it a multi-war rather than a civil war. A lot of actors are involved:
We aren't abandoning the Syrian Kurds. We are abandoning the Kurds' goal to hold the border region which anti-Turkish Kurds need to fight Turkey.
We've been trying to protect the Kurds in that border area but we've run out of stalling tactics. The Turks were coming in and we could fight the Turks or get out of the way. What should we have done under those circumstances?
This is bad. I don't like siding with Erdogan over the Syrian Kurds. I don't deny that. But it could be worse.
Again, America is not abandoning the Syrian Kurds, as our officials have stated:
The impulsive action of President Erdogan to invade northern Syria has put the United States in a tough situation, given our relationship with our NATO-allied Turkey, who has fought alongside the United States in the past; the Syrian Democratic Forces, who helped us destroy the physical caliphate of ISIS; and the safety of U.S. military personnel.
Rather than get pulled into this conflict, we put the welfare of our soldiers first, while urging Turkey to forego its operation, and working hard with us to address their concerns through the development of a security zone along the border. ...
We have not abandoned the Kurds. Let me be clear about that. We have not abandoned them. Nobody green-lighted this operation by Turkey -- just the opposite. We pushed back very hard at all levels for the Turks not to commence this operation. But Lord knows they have opposed this relationship between the United States and the YPG since its infancy in 2014. The Turks have opposed it all along the way, and so we should not be surprised that they've finally acted this way.
Remember too that the Kurds still want our help despite America's decision to get our fewer than 100 troops out of one corner of that buffer zone Turkey wants to control. The Kurds can't afford to trust Assad despite turning to him. And if the Kurds know we won't go to war with Turkey for them, that's a good dose of reality for the Kurds to have.
There is the claim that the Turkish invasion will prompt a full American withdrawal of our thousand troops in Syria. The United States will pull 1,000 troops out of Syria and put them in Iraq to watch ISIL in Syria. Our Tanf garrison will remain in southern Syria. But Turkey's operation is thus far small and not going farther than a border belt. Why would we have to pull out of the rest of Syria because of Turkey's actions? Maybe we will, but with our forces on the border inside Iraq, we could quickly move back into Syria to support the SDF fight against ISIL after the Turkish invasion settles in to hold their border zone. If the Kurds decide not to trust Assad, Syria, and Iran.
Do you really think this is a simple Orange Man Bad issue? Turkey is the country that started this crisis:
The U.S. did not “green light” the Turkish incursion. In practical terms, there was little the U.S. could do to prevent Turkish action without becoming more directly embroiled in the Syrian conflict. The irony was that, by helping crush ISIS, the U.S. has created conditions for Turkey to act more boldly.
This is a problem provoked by Turkey's long-delayed decision to invade Syria that is exposing a lot of competing interests left over from the Syrian multi-war (the term I've used to call the conflict with its civil war of multiple factions and multiple foreign actors fighting for conflicting, parallel, and overlapping objectives) and our lack of interest in really fighting for any of our interests or the interests of our allies.
What were we supposed to do?
Turkey will have to defend their buffer zone. And not just against Syria Kurds but against Syria which formally owns the territory and against the Iranians, Russians, and jihadis:
Building this buffer zone, however, comes with costs, from rising tensions with Syria, Russia and Iran to problems with the United States and Europe, to an ongoing Kurdish insurgency. And the more Turkey expands the buffer, the more of these costs it will incur.
Already the Syrians are reacting:
Syrian government troops moved into a series of towns and villages in northern Syria Monday, setting up a potential clash with Turkish-led forces in the area, as U.S. troops prepared to pull out.
The Syrian army's deployment near the Turkish border came hours after Syrian Kurdish forces previously allied with the U.S. said they had reached a deal with President Bashar Assad's government to help fend off Turkey's invasion, now in its sixth day.
And remember that Erdogan has gutted the Turkish military with ongoing purges following the small coup attempt several years ago. How well can the Turkish military defend and police the zone? Will their local proxies be reliable Turkish hand puppets?
If the Kurds, Syrians, Iranians, Russians, and jihadis start to probe and attack the zone, does Turkey really expect their NATO allies to trigger the alliance in defense of Turkey who launched the attacks and occupation? Nice work if you can get it, I suppose.
Remember too that Turkey holds the threat of sending another massive wave of Syrian refugees (and people claiming to be Syrian refugees) to Europe--as Turkey already did. So do you think European outrage about Turkey will translate into support for fighting Turkey or even taking real, as opposed to symbolic, countermeasures? Especially when Turkey is saying the buffer zone will be a place to put Syrian refugees--that is, the refugees won't be cocked and loaded ready to be fired at Europe?
This isn't the first time I've pointed out the problems with the Syrian Kurdish issue. This is hard. Perhaps Trump didn't make a good decision. But I'm hard pressed to deny he may have made the least-bad decision.
But hey, I'm at least glad we didn't further militarize the Syria conflict back in 2012 by supporting the rebellion then-untainted-by-jihadi rebels.
Although I'll say again that we really need to decide what we are doing in Syria. Let's see how this unfolds. I'm open to this being a mistake. But a lot needs to happen before I know if good or bad things flow from Turkey's decision to invade and Trump's decision not to stop Turkey.
Now let's work the problem.
UPDATE: The American vice president and secretary of state went to Turkey to try to get a ceasefire. So we're working the problem.
And of course at some point when the Turks have the ground they want for their buffer zone, they want a ceasefire.
UPDATE: The Turkish invasion (so far mostly proxies on the ground and Turkish firepower) to fight Syrian Kurds so far hasn't resulted in any Kurdish public complaints about America abandoning them. I haven't heard it, anyway. That's odd, isn't it?
UPDATE: There will be a 5-day ceasefire to allow our allied Kurds to withdraw from the buffer zone area.
UPDATE: I'm hearing that a "permanent" ceasefire will begin after the withdrawal and that our sanctions will be withdrawn.
UPDATE: We did not betray the Kurds. As I said, I'd rather not side with Erdogan over the Syrian Kurds.
But I'm not willing to go to war with a NATO ally to defend the Kurds who want an independent state. Who wants to rattle NATO like that when Putin's Russia looms in the east?
UPDATE: Statement from our secretary of defense.
