Bewildering twists and turns around Trump’s Syria withdrawal decision
The decision added another wound to the credibility of the United States in the Middle East” NICHOLAS HERAS Senior fellow at the Centre for New American Security
Only a week ago, a senior United States official insisted that the Trump administration was not about to withdraw troops from Syria.
But that was upended by President Donald Trump on Sunday as American forces prepared to leave the country.
US authorities, diplomats and a Kurdish official described to The National a chaotic and unco-ordinated process that evolved at the weekend.
The Kurdish official and a European diplomat said that they were not consulted before US Defence Secretary Mark Esper’s statement on Sunday.
“We heard it on TV,” the diplomat said.
Mr Esper announced the withdrawal on CBS’s Face The Nation.
“I spoke with the president last night after discussions with the rest of the national security team, and he directed that we begin a deliberate withdrawal of forces from northern Syria,” he said.
The statement marked the beginning of the tour’s end for more than 1,000 American troops sent to the country since 2014, during the war against ISIS.
The withdrawal is expected to take place over the next 30 days, when safe routes are established through Turkey.
It is unclear if the US will leave a small force at Tanf airbase, which is regarded as a critical asset for countering Iran.
Across Washington, there was a sense of confusion and surprise in watching the process unfold, despite State Department officials insisting over the past two years that the US would not withdraw hastily or abandon its allies.
Experts who followed the process attribute it to Mr Trump.
“It is politically embarrassing and, for many watching the US, it is bewildering,” Aaron Stein, director of the Middle East programme at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told The National.
Mr Stein said it was becoming “very hard for the world to keep up with the gyrations of an unwell president”.
But he did not anticipate any effect on America’s goals around the world. The US did not have a military presence in Syria before 2014.
“If we look beyond Syria, it won’t really impede what the US is trying to do globally. Syria is an irritant and pales in comparison with US efforts in Asia and Europe,” Mr Stein said.
“As we watch the tragedy, I suspect that within six months it will have turned out that not much of the core US objectives will have been truly impacted.”
But Nicholas Heras, a senior fellow at the Centre for New American Security in Washington, predicts direct damage to America’s standing when it comes to supporting its local partners. “Mr Trump’s decision will scare away other potential local partners [similar to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces] around the world at a time when the US military wants to work by, with and through local partners as its main line of effort in future conflicts,” Mr Heras said.
“This decision is a disaster for American strategists, now and in the future.”
Mr Heras said the SDF was abandoned in a surprisingly quick and unexpected way.
“It was chaotic and caused immense harm not only to the people of north-east Syria,” he said.
“It added another wound to the credibility of the United States in the Middle East.”
Mr Heras said “a responsible drawdown” would have given the SDF more time to negotiate with the Assad government, but this withdrawal “almost guarantees” the SDF will be at the regime’s mercy.
In another turn, Mr Trump has said he is working with Congress to impose sanctions on Turkey, days after inviting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to visit him in three weeks’ time.
The New York Times reported on Monday that state and energy department officials “were quietly reviewing plans for evacuating about 50 tactical nuclear weapons that the United States had long stored, under American control, at Incirlik air base in Turkey”.
The new US sanctions were expected to be imposed yesterday but their scope and targets are still unknown.