Elizabeth Tsurkov writes:

The looming Turkish offensive on northeastern Syria is the culmination of incoherent U.S. policy concerning the conflict in Syria, which has prioritized finding short-term fixes over attempting to address any of the dynamics driving the violence.

The scope of the Turkish invasion, made possible through the withdrawal of U.S. troops from parts of the border region, remains unclear. The offensive will likely precipitate mass displacement, and if the military action extends beyond the takeover of a few border towns, it could also result in demographic re-engineering, empower Iran and the Syrian regime, and deprive the United States of whatever leverage it had left in trying to shape the outcome of the civil war in Syria.

The Turkish operation is driven by fears of the growing strength of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the umbrella of militias that gained control of much of northeastern and eastern Syria owing to U.S. backing. The SDF is led by the Syrian Kurdish militia, the YPG (the People’s Protection Units, part of the Öcalanist-armed movement that has waged an insurgency against Turkey since the 1980s). According to the SDF, the force lost over 11,000 fighters, men and women, in the campaign to liberate almost a third of Syria from ISIS control…

A regime and Iranian takeover of northeastern Syria and its oil will effectively end whatever leverage the United States still possessed in trying to shape the outcome of the war in Syria. The Americans will have nothing to offer to the regime in return for concessions on issues the U.S. cares about such as an Iranian presence in Syria or the fate of the tens of thousands of political prisoners languishing in regime prisons. Trump, who likes to consider himself a great negotiator, unilaterally disarmed the U.S. of its pressure tools.

How did America reach a situation in which it is about to squander most of the gains it made in the war on ISIS? The U.S. administration, both under Barack Obama and Trump, did not attempt to develop a long-term strategy concerning Syria. After muddling through the first years of the uprising and war, the Obama administration settled on a policy solely focused on defeating ISIS in the battlefield. The root causes that allowed ISIS to flourish in Syria and Iraq, such as the oppressive, corrupt and discriminatory regimes ruling these countries, were apparently deemed too complicated to be addressed or mitigated.

The seeds for Trump’s decision to allow for the Turkish invasion were sown under the Obama administration, when the Democratic president and his team decided to limit their involvement in the civil war. Only after ISIS invaded Iraq in mid-2014, carried out a genocide against the Yazidi community and beheaded foreign hostages did the Americans decide to directly intervene in the war in Syria by backing the YPG, starting in September 2014. The United States abandoned the plan to rely on Arab rebels to take on ISIS — in part due to the rebels’ refusal to commit themselves to fighting ISIS alone — while ignoring the Assad regime, responsible for most civilian casualties and destruction in Syria. [Continue reading…]