America’s hidden war faces dangers
With little reconstruction activity and financial support public anger is rising against the US
With little rebuilding activity and financial support public anger is rising against US |
This ruined, fearful city was once Daesh’s capital, the showcase of its caliphate and a magnet for foreign fighters from around the globe.
Now it lies at the heart of the United States’ newest commitment to a Middle East war.
The commitment is small, a few thousand troops who were first sent to Syria three years ago to help the Syrian Kurds fight Daesh. President Donald Trump indicated in March that the troops would be brought home once the battle is won.
In September, however, the administration switched course, saying the troops will stay in Syria pending an overall settlement to the Syrian war and with a new mission: to act as a bulwark against Iran’s expanding influence.
That decision puts US troops in overall control, perhaps indefinitely, of an area comprising nearly a third of Syria, a vast expanse of mostly desert terrain roughly the size of Louisiana.
The Pentagon does not say how many troops are there. Officially, they number 503, but earlier this year an official let slip that the true number may be closer to 4,000. Most are Special Operations forces, and their footprint is light. Their vehicles and convoys rumble by from time to time along the empty desert roads, but it is rare to see US soldiers in towns and cities.
The new mission raises new questions, about the role they will play and whether their presence will risk becoming a magnet for regional conflict and insurgency.
The area is surrounded by powers hostile both to the US presence and the aspirations of the Kurds, who are governing the majority-Arab area in pursuit of a leftist ideology formulated by an imprisoned Turkish Kurdish leader. Signs that Daesh is starting to regroup and rumblings of discontent within the Arab community point to the threat of an insurgency.
Mounting challenges
Without the presence of US troops, these dangers would almost certainly ignite a new war right away, said Ilham Ahmad, a senior official with the Self-Administration of North and East Syria, as the self-styled government of the area is called.
“They have to stay. If they leave and there isn’t a solution for Syria, it will be catastrophic,” she said.
But staying also heralds risk, and already the challenges are starting to mount.
A Turkish threat to invade the area last month forced the United States to scramble patrols along the border with Turkey, which has massed troops and tanks along the frontier. Turkey regards the main Kurdish militia, the YPG, which is affiliated with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party inside Turkey, as a terrorist organisation and fears the consequences for its own security if the group consolidates power in Syria.
Syrian regime troops and Iranian proxy fighters are to the south and west. They have threatened to take the area back by force, in pursuit of President Bashar Al Assad’s pledge to bring all of Syria under regime control.
This is a part of Syria where tribal loyalties often trump politics, and the tribes are being courted by all the regional players with an interest in ultimately controlling the area, according to Shaikh Humaidi Al Shammar, the head of the influential Shammar tribe.
“Everything is uncertain. We are part of a global game now, and it is out of our hands,” he said.
Kurdish leaders say they are working hard to convince the Arab community that their plan for governing will include it. All the challenges and complexities of northeastern Syria seemed to be concentrated in the small, strategic town of Manbij. Located beside the Euphrates River, it was liberated from Daesh by Kurdish forces over three years ago. Now, to the north, lies territory controlled by Turkish troops and their Free Syrian Army allies, and to the south by the Syrian regime and its allies, Russia and Iran.
Anger rising
In the middle are the Americans. It is one of the few places where the US military has a conspicuous presence.
It is in Raqqa, the biggest city in the part of Syria where US troops are based, that the frustration is most keenly felt. The city was devastated by the US-led air strikes that accompanied the SDF’s four-month offensive to drive out Daesh, and a year later the city is still in ruins.
Signs of life are returning, with shops and markets reopening in some neighbourhoods. About half the population has returned, squeezing into the least damaged buildings, sometimes living without walls and windows. Most roads have been cleared of piles of rubble that were left by the bombardments, but blocks on end are wrecked and uninhabitable. The water was restored in September, but there is still no electricity.
Without more financial support, there is a risk that Raqqa will “devolve into the same vulnerability Daesh found when it first arrived, a ‘fractured city ripe for extremist takeover and exploitation,’ “a report by the Pentagon’s inspector general said last month, quoting a State Department official.
The anger on the streets is palpable. Some residents are openly hostile to foreign visitors, which is rare in other towns and cities freed from Daesh control in Syria and Iraq. Even those who support the presence of the US military and the SDF say they are resentful that the United States and its partners in the anti-Daesh coalition that bombed the city aren’t helping to rebuild.
And many appear not to support their new rulers.
“We don’t want the Americans. It’s occupation,” said one man, a tailor, who didn’t want to give his name because he feared the consequences of speaking his mind.
And there is graffiti, often appearing overnight, a sinister reminder that Daesh is trying to stage a comeback.
“Remaining in spite of you,” said the writing scrawled in black paint on the collapsed wall of a destroyed building on one recent morning, a reference to Daesh’s slogan, “Remaining and Expanding.”
The paint was fresh.
They have to stay. If they leave and there isn’t a solution for Syria, it will be catastrophic.”
Ilham Ahmad | Senior official with the Self-Administration of North and East Syria