Report: U.S. drawdown allowing ISIS to regroup

Turkey’s military offensive in northern Syria after President Donald Trump’s order for U.S. forces to pull back aided the Islamic State group and damaged ties with Kurdish-led militias, according to a new assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The agency’s assessment, part of a quarterly report, concluded that Islamic State “exploited the Turkish incursion and subsequent drawdown of U.S. troops to reconstitute capabilities and resources within Syria and strengthen its ability to plan attacks abroad.” The report was released Tuesday by the Pentagon’s inspector general.

The report’s preparation was delayed beyond its scheduled Sept. 30 deadline, according to Pentagon Inspector General Glenn Fine, due to the “significant developments” last month that resulted in the drawdown of U.S. troops. Since then, Defense Secretary Mark Esper has said about 500 to 600 of 1,000 American forces will remain in Syria, some at a base in the south of the country and others in northern oil fields.

Trump’s abrupt decision to begin withdrawing forces, following an early October phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, drew bipartisan criticism for abandoning Kurdish allies the U.S. has counted on to fight Islamic State militants and for giving an implicit approval of Turkey’s offensive into the region. Turkey views the Kurdish-led forces in Syria as terrorists.

The intelligence agency report added that the Islamic State group is “postured to withstand” the recent death of leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and probably will maintain “continuity of operations, global cohesion, and at least its current trajectory.” Absent U.S. “counterterrorism pressure, ISIS will likely have the ‘time and space’ to target the West and provide support to its global networks and branches,” the report said. ISIS is an acronym for Islamic State.

Syrian and Russian forces that moved into northeastern Syria “are unlikely to prioritize fighting ISIS,” the intelligence agency said. It said that the forces aligned with Syrian President Bashar Assad “had not conducted operations against ISIS in the areas that they had moved into, and that these forces probably prioritize limiting Turkey’s incursion into Syria over counterterrorism operations against ISIS.”

In Iraq, U.S. commanders told the Pentagon inspector general that the Islamic State group continued last quarter “to solidify and expand its command and control structures, although it had not increased its capabilities in areas where the Coalition was actively conducting operations against.”