US weighs further Isis raids
Trump stumbles over details of operation as he puts focus on ‘keeping the oil’
Pentagon leaders have indicated that the United States could carry out more operations targeting Isis (Islamic State) figures, aided by video and other information gathered during the raid in Syria that led to the death of Isis leader Abu Bakr alBaghdadi.
Officials said two men were captured during the weekend raid who could provide intelligence about the group. Al-Baghdadi’s remains, which were tested to confirm his identity, were buried at sea within 24 hours of his death in accordance with Muslim custom, one official said.
The new details emerged as Trump Administration officials sought to place the operation in the context of an overall strategy to bring peace to Syria while ending the terrorism threat in the region.
“There is a logic to this,” a senior State Department official said, even though “sometimes it may not seem clear to everybody”. In addition to the military attacks, “what we’re trying to do diplomatically and politically in the region . . . basically is part of a fairly well-thought-out effort to deal with the underlying causes” of the rise of Isis, the official said, speaking to reporters under conditions of anonymity set by the Administration.
Al-Baghdadi’s death has “everything” to do with that goal, the official said. “If the international community does not deal with the feelings of oppression” among many Syrians under the Government of President Bashar al-Assad, “they turn to others who will give them easy answers”, including militant leaders such as Baghdadi.
But the US strategy has often been overwhelmed by President Donald Trump’s public approach to the Syria crisis. On Monday, Trump described the live-stream video of the raid in graphic terms akin to an action movie, saying al-Baghdadi “died like a coward . . . whimpering and crying and screaming all the way”. In a speech to police chiefs yesterday, he erroneously spoke of “tens of thousands” of captured Isis fighters, actually believed to number about 10,000.
Trump said the militant movement — whose territory in Iraq and Syria had been cut at least in half by the US military and its local allies by the end of 2016 — was growing “big, big, big” until he became President.
Summing up the second reversal of his twice-announced withdrawal of all US troops in Syria, Trump said that “we don’t want to be the policeman” there but that “we are keeping the oil”. Trump has suggested that, in addition to keeping the oil — in a desert region in far-eastern Syria — US energy companies could exploit it.
The United States, Trump said on Monday, “should be able to take some”.
Defence Secretary Mark Esper said the oil would continue to be sold by the Syrian Democratic Forces — the Kurdish-dominated US allies who routed Isis — to pay for the administration of territory now under SDF control, as well as “their ability to secure Isis prison camps and conduct operations against Isis”.
The US mission will also include
ensuring that the Syrian regime and its ally Russia do not gain access to the energy resources.
“That’s our mission,” Esper said, “to secure the oil fields.”
In one of the many ironies of Syria’s complicated battlefield, the SDF sells most of the oil to Assad’s Government, which in the past received much of its energy supplies from Iran, which is now under US export sanctions.
One US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to address internal discussions, said the Pentagon had not finalised plans for the mission in the oil region of Deir al-Zour province. A US official familiar with the plans said they almost certainly include Bradley Fighting vehicles along with, potentially, hundreds of troops, in addition to about 200 already there.
Esper and Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declined to provide a total figure but said there would be fewer troops overall in Syria than the approximately 1000 there before Trump made his withdrawal announcement earlier this month.
The announcement came after Trump yielded to a Turkish invasion into northeastern Syria to drive out the Kurdish force, which Turkey considers a terrorist group, at least 30km south of the border.— Washington Post