U.S. policy on Syria unravels as Turkish ceasefire doesn’t hold

The ceasefire that the US claimed it had helped bring in on Thursday did not seem to hold the next day. Turkey viewed it as a “pause” in military operations and Turkish-backed groups on the ground didn’t seem to have to adhere to it. This leaves Syrian civilians, including many Kurds, in the crossfire in towns such as Sere Kaniye.

The unraveling of US policy on Syria is continuing almost two weeks after US President Donald Trump decided to withdraw US troops from the border with Turkey and enable a Turkish invasion that targeted US partners on the ground. These partners were part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a group the US helped create in 2015 and which the US trained around 100,000 members of. However the US decided that its Turkish ally could then bomb and bombard the same group it was training. Now Washington, caught in this unclear policy, is struggling to put the toothpaste back in the tube. It has not succeeded, despite sending Vice-President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike going to Turkey.

By Saturday evidence was mounting that civilians had suffered “chemical burns” during the Turkish offensive into eastern Syria. The town of Sere Kaniye has been under siege for days and Turkey is asserting that it will “crush the heads” of anyone who resists its continued operations. The United States, which had been working with the SDF before opening the airspace to have them bombed and their families forced from their homes, was able to condemn an attack on a mosque in Afghanistan but could not bring itself to condemn that widespread attacks on civilian areas in northern Syria.

Among the mounting evidence of war crimes is the autopsy report for Hevrin Khalaf, a female politician. She was murdered by Turkish-backed groups operating in Syria, dragged by her hair until parts of her scalp were ripped out. Meanwhile US troops are still withdrawing from eastern Syria, an area they had been operating in against ISIS and had helped secure over the last five years. Civilians looking to the American flag for protection have seen it quietly vanish from outposts and vehicles that used to be a normal sight.

With the US a party to what Washington initially called a “ceasefire” but was actually a pause in Turkey’s military operations, Washington now finds itself in a contradiction, with some elements of policy working closely with Turkey to help pave the way for the removal of the civilian population in places like Sere Kaniiye under the guise that the civilians are a “security threat” to Turkey, while others voice concern for the continued attacks in Syria. This is because the White House has backed Turkey’s narrative about the conflict and sees Ankara as the main avenue of discussion about what is happening in Syria. Turkey’s Defense Ministry said Saturday that “unless the terrorists pull out of the safe area, as the agreement reached with the United States says, we will go ahead with the operation.” The US, after working with the SDF since 2015, an organization the US helped create, now has signed on to an agreement which Turkey sees as ordering it to leave areas along the border so Turkey and extremist Syrian rebel groups can run those areas. 

Lines of ambulances were assembled on Saturday to help take the civilians out. They have no guarantees for their safety, only Ankara’s threats to “crush the heads” of those caught in the way of war. Meanwhile the Turkish-backed Syrian rebels have continued to be filmed driving toward the frontline vowing to “kill the kuffar” or infidels, but the US in the awkward position of working with its NATO ally which support groups that appear to be engaging in the same religious-ethnic-cleansing that first got the US involved in fighting ISIS in the first place. US policy appears to have reversed itself since October 6 from fighting ISIS to finding a way to give a stamp of approval to attacks on the group that fought ISIS and ignoring the ISIS detainees escaping in eastern Syria. This is alarming to US lawmakers who now want an intelligence assessment on the threat ISIS foreign fighters who escape in eastern Syria, now pose.

Since October 6 the US has systematically abjured responsibility for eastern Syria in a policy reversal that stunned even hard core Trump supporters. But the unraveling has not stopped because western powers seem incapable of galvanizing the UN or anyone to do much. International organizations are leaving eastern Syria, not coming in to monitor the unfolding crisis. Thousands are already crossing into northern Iraq. Other bubbling crisis like protests in Iraq and Lebanon threaten to obscure the crisis in Syria. Domestic politics in Europe from Brexit in the UK to Catalan protests in Spain mean the spotlight cannot shine on Syria.

US President Donald Trump on Saturday was more concerned with impeachment than Syria, doing what he said he would do, reducing US involvement abroad. He expects either Europe to  deal with the Syrian problem or for Turkey and the SDF to solve things themselves. No one seems to want to deal with eastern Syria, not NATO, the UN or EU.

The Syrian regime meanwhile continues to gobble up parts of the former SDF areas that the SDF agreed to turn over to them on October 14. The SDF, facing attacks by Turkey and the US deserting it, signed a deal with Damascus. However the deal appears to mean that the Syrian regime, backed by Russia, and Turkey will divide the spoils, with the Syrian regime getting Hasakah and some cities while Turkey gets the border region. There is no solution for the 200,000 or so people forced to flee. But the Syrian regime keeps raising its flag at key points. The SDF appears to be paying the price of having worked with the US for years. Russia has discussed Turkey’s operation and may accept Turkey’s demand to run parts of Syria along the border. The Syrian regime still wins by getting back a huge swath of eastern Syria easily, its greatest gain since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011. The SDF, having partnered with the US thinking the US would support it after it sacrificed more than 11,000 lives fighting ISIS found that the US had used it as a tool, against ISIS, then turning to Turkey to destroy the SDF once the anti-ISIS campaign was largely finished. The US goal, whether planned or by accident, was to make sure that its former partner disappears amid the rubble and partition of eastern Syria, gobbled up by the regime or crushed by the Turkish air force. The only question is what to do with the ISIS detainees, some of whome are going back to Iraq or will be quietly released.

Russia is tight-lipped about what it might have agreed on with Turkey. Russian President Vladimir  Putin spoke with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday, with Russia saying it wanted the long-term stabilization of Syria “based on respect for the principles of the country’s national unity and territorial integrity.” However it could take years to get to that goal of territorial integrity. A Constitution Committee to discuss Syria will be held in Geneva on October 23. Russia says it wants each ethnic and religious group considered at the talks. However it is clear now that the exclusion of the SDF from those talks, which was reported last month, was done with foreknowledge that by the time they take place the SDF would largely be either defeated near the border or under Syrian regime control in Syria. They US had never suggested its Syrian Kurdish partners be allowed at talks about the future of Syria, making sure Kurds aligned with the SDF had no say. The SDF never understood that the writing was on the wall that the US would eventually abandon them after having excluded them from diplomatic discussions, even when those discussions included other non-state actors. The unravelling in Syria after October 6 has hastened that process.