Is the United States pulling out of Syria\u2014again?<\/p>\n
That was certainly what President Donald J. Trump seemed to say in a\u00a0five-tweet rant<\/a>\u00a0on Monday morning. Hours earlier,\u00a0the White House had announced<\/a>\u00a0that U.S. forces would no longer block a Turkish intervention in northeastern Syria: \u201cTurkey will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into Northern Syria,\u201d the press statement said, clarifying that the U.S. military \u201cwill not support or be involved in the operation, and United States forces, having defeated the ISIS territorial \u2018Caliphate,\u2019 will no longer be in the immediate area.\u201d<\/p>\n Pentagon officials were reportedly \u201cblindsided<\/a>\u201d by Trump\u2019s decision, but Turkey was jubilant.<\/p>\n For years, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pushed the United States to step aside and let Turkey attack the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The multi-ethnic, secular SDF has been America\u2019s chief local ally in its war against the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS, but it is led by a Syrian section of the anti-Ankara Kurdistan Workers\u2019 Party (PKK). Disputes over the SDF are at the heart of a sharp deterioration in the Washington\u2013Ankara relationship, to the point where\u00a0Turkey\u2019s commitment to NATO is being questioned<\/a>.<\/p>\n As recently as August,\u00a0the United States and Turkey struck a deal<\/a>\u00a0to manage their differences through joint patrols in northern Syria, and U.S. troops forced the SDF to destroy fortifications close to the border. But Turkey was not satisfied, and kept pushing for more.\u00a0On September 24<\/a>, Erdogan treated the UN General Assembly to a map of a future Syria in which Turkey had seized virtually every Kurdish town in the country. And on October 5, he\u00a0said Turkey would send troops across the border within days.<\/a><\/p>\n The relentless Turkish brinksmanship seems to have been designed to pressure Trump to ditch the SDF in order to avoid U.S.\u2013Turkish clashes or costly additional deployments. And it appears to have worked.<\/p>\n It is still unclear exactly what Trump has agreed to. U.S. government rhetoric is so muddled at the moment that no one can quite figure out whether the White House has just begun a total pullout, or is merely taking a tactical step back to let Turkey have its way with a small part of Syria.<\/p>\n So far, U.S. forces have only retreated from\u00a0a short stretch of Syrian-Turkish border land<\/a>\u00a0in the mostly Arab-populated region between Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ain. The\u00a0100\u2013150 U.S. soldiers<\/a>\u00a0involved aren\u2019t even leaving Syria, just relocating from the \u201cimmediate area\u201d to stay clear of Turkey\u2013SDF clashes. \u201cWe\u2019re gonna get out of the way,<\/a>\u201d a U.S. official told the\u00a0Washington Post.<\/em><\/p>\n However, the\u00a0White House statement<\/a>\u00a0was unclear about the ultimate scope of the U.S. withdrawal, and also spoke about Turkey becoming responsible for holding SDF-imprisoned jihadis, most of whom are detained in the al-Hol camp on the other side of the SDF enclave.<\/p>\n How to handle\u00a0the al-Hol detainees<\/a>, including tens of thousands of family members of suspected Islamic State fighters, in addition to smaller numbers of Syrian and foreign combatants, has long bedevilled the United States. Trump has complained that European nations refuse to take back their citizens, and the White House statement kept hammering the point, insisting, in a flourish that seemed to betray the direct influence of the president, that the United States \u201cwill not hold them for what could be many years and great cost to the United States taxpayer\u201d and concluding that \u201cTurkey will now be responsible for all ISIS fighters in the area captured.\u201d<\/p>\n Turkey appears to have little interest in sorting out the al-Hol issue, and would, at any rate, not be confronted with it unless Turkish troops occupy the entire SDF-held region in northeastern Syria. For now, Erdogan has simply brushed the problem away by insisting that the number of detainees is \u201ca bit exaggerated.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s Monday morning<\/a>\u00a0tweets added to the confusion by signalling an end to the U.S. involvement with Syria altogether. The United States needs to \u201cget out of these ridiculous Endless Wars\u201d and \u201cbring our soldiers home,\u201d Trump wrote, adding, \u201cTurkey, Europe, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Russia and the Kurds, will now have to figure the situation out.\u201d<\/p>\n So is this a limited redeployment from one part of the Syrian-Turkish border, or the beginning of the end of America\u2019s five-year intervention in Syria? It looks like the former, but it sounds like the latter.<\/p>\n In part, this confused messaging might be intentional. By raising the prospect of a full-scale withdrawal, Trump may be calling Erdogan\u2019s bluff. The Turkish leader is being informed that, unless he abides by past agreement, he will be on his own in sorting out the Syrian mess.<\/p>\n For all of Erdogan\u2019s maximalist rhetoric and his UN antics, Turkey may have little interest in controlling the entire SDF-held region\u2014nearly a third of Syria\u2014unless it can do so with the support and approval of the United States, the EU, and perhaps Russia, too. The al-Hol detainee issue alone is daunting, and Turkey would run up against international objections and internal insurgencies. Ankara\u2019s capacity to administer areas beyond its borders is limited, its economy is in bad shape, the military is stretched as it is, and the Syrian rebels Erdogan wants to use as proxies are\u00a0pinned down by Russian and Syrian government forces in Idlib<\/a>. For Turkey to seek full control over northeastern Syria on its own would be a violent, costly, and politically fraught undertaking\u2014which is why Erdogan\u2019s bark may be worse than his bite.<\/p>\n The SDF, however, seems to fear the worst, complaining that it fulfilled all its obligations under the August 2019 deal but is still deprived of promised U.S. protection. Rather than backing down,\u00a0the group struck a militant note<\/a>: \u201cWe in the SDF will not hesitate for a moment to defend ourselves and call upon our people of all sects, Arabs, Kurds and Syriacs, Assyrians to join forces and stand with their legitimate forces to defend our country against this Turkish aggression.\u201d<\/p>\n Strangely enough,\u00a0we\u2019ve seen this happen once before.<\/a>\u00a0In December 2018, Trump shocked his national security staff by suddenly announcing that he would withdraw from Syria and let Turkey take over.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t happen, that time. Trump came under immediate pressure to reverse his decision, which was opposed by a curious constellation of forces: strong voices in the Pentagon were unwilling to abandon the SDF fighters they had fought alongside for so long; the intelligence community warned that the Islamic State could respawn; and a variety of politicos and penfighters insisted that the United States must remain in Syria for reasons related to Iran, Israel, or some other Washingtonian pet cause. Last but not least, a large contingent of administration insiders, politicians, and pundits who actually did want to exit Syria felt that Trump was doing it the wrong way\u2014they wanted to\u00a0leave in an orderly and controlled fashion<\/a>, to limit blowback to the United States, its allies, and interests.<\/p>\n Internal outrage led Trump\u2019s jihadi-hunter-in-chief, Brett McGurk, and his secretary of defense, James Mattis, both to\u00a0resign in protest<\/a>. The president was angry but impressed and, step by step, his decision was watered down to buy the mission more time. In the end, Trump agreed that some U.S. troops could stay while the SDF snuffed out remaining jihadi pockets, and the Department of State went panhandling in Europe and the Gulf for aid money and troops to cover U.S. cutbacks.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t work out very well, since, unsurprisingly, few U.S. allies were willing to put much on the line for so fickle a president. Ten months later, the United States is still the only pole holding up the tent in northern Syria\u2014and Trump seems to be saying that time is up.<\/p>\n If Trump really did try to call Erdogan\u2019s bluff, it may have worked, to a degree. Despite recently warning that an invasion was imminent, the Turkish leader has shifted to saying he will \u201cdiscuss the depth of the operation<\/a>\u201d when he meets Trump in Washington early next month.<\/p>\n Erdogan may still end up launching a cross-border incursion, to stick his foot in the door while he can. But the Turkish leader also seems to fear that Trump will simply collapse the security architecture in northeastern Syria without putting anything in its place, and without giving Turkey time to develop its options.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Trump will come under renewed pressure to keep troops in Syria. Roughly the same cast of people as last time are now crying foul again, and the U.S. president may settle for a more limited pullout. But\u00a0Trump\u2019s isolationist instincts are real<\/a>, and his view of America\u2019s post-9\/11 wars as no-good quagmires is one of the few political ideas he has\u00a0held with something approaching consistency<\/a>. Continuing to prop up the SDF\u2019s autonomous government will also grow harder and harder, once Turkey begins to develop its own proxies inside the northeast.<\/p>\n If Trump starts walking toward the exit, he may, whatever his original plans, soon find that the easiest choice is to just keep going.<\/p>\n Ultimately, however, what happens in Syria isn\u2019t just up to Donald Trump. The rulers of Ankara, Damascus, Moscow, and Tehran, and a host of non state actors, including the SDF and whatever remains of the Islamic State, also have a vote. Their actions and reactions will shape U.S. options in the coming weeks, and, as many have learned by now, setting Syria\u2019s chaos in motion is easy. Making it stop is a lot harder.<\/p>\nMuddled Messaging<\/h2>\n
This Has Happened Before<\/h2>\n
What Happens Now?<\/h2>\n