With U.S. policy on Syria in turmoil, will ISIS win?

“The recent decision by the president came as a shock and was a complete reversal of policy,” he wrote in an email reported by the Associated Press. It leaves US coalition partners confused and bewildered, he noted.

McGurk took pride in the work the anti-ISIS coalition had accomplished, particularly in Syria. His pinned tweet shows him visiting coalition-supported projects in Raqqa, including schools that he says helped “thousands of children traumatized by ISIS.”

U.S. envoy in fight against ISIS resigns over Syria withdrawal, December 23, 2018 (Reuters)

He had recently welcomed a $57 million contribution from the EU that was going to help Mosul recovery projects. Much of the work McGurk concentrated on in the last year, since the coalition liberated the ISIS capital in Raqqa, was “stabilization,” the idea that one would have to invest in local communities to prevent ISIS from returning. On December 12, he welcomed support from Denmark for stabilization programs.

McGurk was an Iraq policy expert who had served as the White House senior director for Iraq issues in 2008. He had dealt with issues then that would plague Iraq later during the ISIS war. For instance, he was aware of the Iranian encroachment in Iraq and its attempts to confront the US. He knew Adil Abdul Mahdi, the current Iraqi Prime Minister, when Abdul Mahdi was vice president in 2008. He also dealt with the Kurdish region and was aware of Turkey’s concerns as well as Syria’s role in allowing jihadists to transit into Iraq via the Euphrates valley.

McGurk comes across as taciturn in US State Department cables from 2008 and 2009, rarely expressing an opinion but clearly abreast of the Iraqi political playing field. Many of these players have not changed 10 years later, whether it is the Kurdish political leadership in the north, or Iranian attempt to influence politics, or the lack of security along the Syrian border.

McGurk’s role as anti-ISIS envoy therefore came with some political baggage, particularly with regard to Iraq, where he did not gel with the Trump administration’s view on the Iranian threat. However, McGurk did play a key role in 2017 of reviving Iraq-Saudi Arabia relations. This was important to the Trump administration, which was working closely with the Saudis.

The anti-ISIS envoy was passionate about his work, particularly on continuing to remember the ISIS genocide of the Yazidis in 2014 which had compelled Obama to act. The Obama administration had left Iraq in 2011 and McGurk had played a role in that, hoping Iraq’s future would be stable. Instead, Iraq was ripped apart by an ISIS offensive in the summer of 2014 that destroyed Iraqi army divisions, captured around 2,000 vehicles, most of them supplied by the US to Iraq, and captured a third of Iraq. McGurk said in early December that the US would remain committed to the victims of ISIS genocide and crimes against humanity. He praised Trump for signing into law the Iraq and Genocide Relief and Accountability Act. 

The US was able to lead a coalition that defeated ISIS on the battlefield. McGurk pointed out that in 2014 ISIS had controlled territory the size of the United Kingdom and ruled more than eight million people. It even was making revenues of $1 billion a year, according to US estimates.

“Today ISIS is down to its final town in Syria and Iraq,” he wrote.

For Trump, the ISIS campaign was a success. The group was “largely defeated,” the president tweeted on December 22. “We’re coming home.” Trump claimed not to know McGurk after he resigned. He noted that he was appointed by Obama in 2015 and “was supposed to leave in February but he just resigned prior to leaving. Grandstander? The Fake News is making such a big deal about this nothing event.”

McGurk’s leaving will likely spook US coalition partners who are already concerned about the abrupt change in US policy and by the Mattis departure. Mattis said he would stay on until February to smooth the transition and also because US troops should be out of Syria by then.

But US coalition partners, such as the UK and France, who both have troops in eastern Syria, are left with holding the line now and they don’t know what to do. Paris has hosted a delegation from eastern Syria to discuss what to do, according to reports. The UK, dealing with the Brexit crisis, will be faced with tough choices.

The rest of the coalition, even though it contains 74 countries and several international groupings, has focused primarily on Iraq. In fact, the coalition, despite its anti-ISIS posture, is not really involved in fighting ISIS globally. There are no coalition troops, for instance, helping Egypt in Sinai confront ISIS. But US leadership was the glue that help this massive group of countries together. Trump wants these countries to do more and doesn’t think the US should be a global policeman.

However, the US was the country that led efforts to create this coalition. If Trump didn’t know who McGurk was and hadn’t met with him, that indicates a wider policy issue in Washington of not being committed to the coalition or the key leaders of it. McGurk would have left anyway, but the question now is whether Trump will find a successor to him that shares Trump’s worldview, or whether the coalition will be left to wither.