A U.S. Army Green Beret provides security from an abandoned rooftop in the Middle Euphrates River Valley's Deir Ezzor province, Syria, Oct. 11, 2018. (Sgt. Matthew Crane/Army)
Reports of a total and immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria come amid heightening tensions — and growing risk of military confrontation — between the U.S. and Turkey.
Turkish forces want to push their troops into Syria. The U.S.-backed Syrian Kurds want to keep the Turkish forces out. And the U.S. has struggled for months to keep both players happy.
A confrontation between the U.S and Turkey, officially NATO allies, would create a geopolitical crisis at the heart of the world’s most powerful military alliance.
Pentagon officials did not immediately confirm reports that Trump has ordered a total withdrawal of troops.
By: Kyle Rempfer
Northern Syria has been popping up in the news a lot over the past year, with periodic developments in a tangled web of paramilitary group acronyms and overlapping allegiances.
Caught in the middle are an unknown number of U.S. troops — estimated to be around 2,000 — who man outposts in the region for the stated purpose of preventing a resurgence of the Islamic State.
However, it’s often said that U.S. forces play another role as well: preventing a clash between the Kurds and Turkey.
A withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria would potentially cede control to Turkey, resolving tensions between the two NATO allies. However, the drawdown would also abandon the Kurds, who provide the backbone of the defeat-ISIS ground campaign. While ISIS is definitely routed from their physical caliphate, the group has the potential to re-group, and re-emerge.
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The dynamics among the U.S., Turkey and the Kurds aren’t really that hard to explain.
The U.S. has been backing a group of fighters called the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, in order to defeat ISIS. The SDF is a mix of ethnically Arab and Kurdish Syrian locals, but the Kurdish fighters definitely appear to dominate the SDF’s chain of command.
The SDF, with backing from U.S. ground forces, air and artillery strikes, has won hard-fought victories over ISIS and has retaken almost all territory held by the terrorist proto-state in eastern Syria. This has netted the SDF considerable influence over towns and regions where they gained footholds, particularly in the country’s northeast near Turkey’s border.
To Turkey, the SDF’s Kurdish fighters are replacing one security threat — ISIS — with another — the People’s Protection Units, or YPG.
YPG fighters are mostly Kurds, and they exist within the SDF coalition. The U.S. backs the YPG, and many westerners, often veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, went to fight alongside the YPG in their battle against ISIS.
But Turkey labels the YPG as a terrorist group. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, claims the YPG is closely aligned with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, another Kurdish militant group that operates inside Turkey and is considered a terrorist organization by both Turkey and the U.S.
The U.S. doesn’t consider the YPG terrorists, but the Pentagon does acknowledge Turkey’s frustration with the situation.
“Turkey has legitimate security concerns,” U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said in January. “[Turkish leaders] have been very supportive of our Defeat-ISIS campaign, allowing us to use Incirlik [Air Base] to fly out of. ... The area where we’ve had disagreement [is] on our tactical collaboration with the Syrian Democratic Forces ... a sizable percentage of which is YPG."
A U.S. soldier discusses the 240B machine gun with a group of Turkish soldiers on Oct. 9, 2018, in Gaziantep, Turkey. U.S. and Turkish troops rehearsed and trained together prior to beginning joint patrols in northern Syria. (Staff Sgt. Timothy R. Koster/Army)
After all, Mattis added, the PKK has carried out a several decades-long insurgency in Turkey’s southeast.
Mattis has recognized that the YPG has had some historic connections to the PKK, but “by having our officers and NCOs on the ground, we monitor that they are using what we are giving them for support to go against ISIS.”
U.S. and Turkish troops have been conducting “coordinated independent patrols” along the demarcation line north of Manbij since June 18, officials from U.S. Central Command said this week.
By: Kyle Rempfer
“It has cost them [the Kurds] thousands of casualties, but you have watched them, with the coalition support, shred ISIS' caliphate in Syria,” Mattis added. “I mean, that’s a matter of arithmetic.”
The U.S. has played the back-and-forth game with Turkey over support for the Kurds for more than a year. And every time tensions appear to be cooling, Erdogan inflames them once again.
The U.S. didn’t put up much of a fight to stop that offensive, mainly warning that such a move was distracting Kurds from their fight against ISIS. But U.S. forces weren’t present in Afrin. They are in Manbij, which lies in Syria’s northeast.
A fighter from the U.S.-backed SDF looks through his binoculars to Turkish-backed fighters' positions at the front line of Halawanji village, north of Manbij, Syria, in March 2018. (Hussein Malla/AP)
Erdogan has oft-repeated threats that he will send Turkish forces into Manbij, where U.S. troops, Kurdish fighters, and even a mix of British and French forces, are known to operate.
There, Turkish proxy forces, but likely not Turkish uniformed personnel, have been known to not only shell U.S.-backed Kurds with artillery rounds, but also shoot at U.S. troops on patrol.
Some of Turkey’s proxy forces have also been accused of being Islamist radicals. But Turkey has found them particularly useful as foot soldiers during its large-scale operations in Syria.
Erdogan warned of another coming attack this week, this time into the Manbij region. The warning comes after the Pentagon already took several steps to pacify Turkey.
Under an agreement known as the Manbij roadmap, YPG fighters reportedly left in July. The militia governing Manbij has repeatedly said there are no more YPG fighters, only some YPG military advisers.
Tensions persist between the U.S. military and its NATO ally in the Syrian region of Manbij.
By: Kyle Rempfer
During the fall, U.S. troops trained for joint patrols with Turkish regular forces. The goal was to eventually maintain security and stability around Manbij together. Taking further steps to placate Turkey, the U.S. began building observation posts in northern Syria to help put to rest Turkish concerns by securing their border, according to Pentagon officials who announced the move in late November.
However, those efforts didn’t seem to pay off, as Erdogan has renewed threats of sweeping through the area to clear out the alleged YPG fighters.
“The Americans are not being honest; they are still not removing terrorists [Kurdish fighters],” Erdogan said of the situation in Manbij this December. “Therefore, we will do it.”
In addition to the important role Kurdish troops play in fighting ISIS, the U.S. has also made it clear that it wants to maintain a foothold in eastern Syria in order to block Iranian proxy forces from moving through the region.
Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, backed the long-term presence of U.S. troops in Syria to balance against Iran this fall.
“We’re not going to leave as long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian borders, and that includes Iranian proxies and militias,” Bolton said in September.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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