US disarray on Syria policy leaves it a helpless spectator

The downfall of the 50-year-old Assad family rule in Syria took Washington by surprise, and has left the US – which is in the delicate period of transition between the outgoing Joe Biden administration and the incoming second term of Donald Trump – struggling to develop a coherent Syria policy.

Mr Biden, like his predecessors including Mr Trump and Barack Obama, had a series of discrete policy approaches to different aspects of the situation in Syria after the uprising against former president Bashar Al Assad began in 2011. But none of them ever had a comprehensive approach to events in Syria. And that has left Washington in the unenviable position of being a largely ineffectual spectator despite having at least 900 troops in the country, mostly in the northeast and near the Iraqi border, as well as an undisclosed number of "contractor" mercenaries, not to mention the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

The Obama administration resisted pressure to get militarily involved in the Syrian civil war, claiming it could not identify any reliable partners. However, when Mr Obama declared the further use of chemical weapons by government forces to be a "redline" that Washington would not tolerate, Mr Assad called his bluff. After such weapons were brazenly used again the following year in an attack on Ghouta that killed about 1,500 civilians, including more than 400 children, rather than enforcing his demand, Mr Obama negotiated a humiliating deal with Russia and Mr Assad that began to first raise serious doubts about US reliability in the Middle East.

A Syrian holds his cat and waits with other people to cross into Syria from Turkey. at the Cilvegozu border gate, near the town of Antakya, southern Turkey, on December 10. AP

US military involvement in Syria began in 2014 as part of the international, but Washington-led, coalition battle to destroy ISIS's "caliphate" that stretched between parts of Syria and Iraq. Operation Inherent Resolve effectively concluded as a ground battle in March 2019 when the final remnants of the original "caliphate" were liberated from ISIS control. But Washington considers the battle to prevent remaining pockets of ISIS activity from coalescing into a renewed terrorist threat to be ongoing and incomplete.

The ongoing US military presence, which most Americans tend to forget about – assuming they were ever aware of it at all – has persisted for several reasons. Washington is committed to continue using force to prevent the re-emergence of ISIS in Syria's north-east. It controls most of Syria's small, but productive, oilfields. It remains to help the Kurdish-led SDF remain viable and as effective as possible. And, perhaps most important of all, the US garrison at Al Tanf sits alongside the crucial M2 highway linking Baghdad and Damascus, just beyond the main crossing point between Iraq and Syria.

When Mr Trump ordered all US forces to leave Syria in December 2018, declaring the battle against ISIS successfully concluded, he was dissuaded. "We’re keeping the [Syrian] oil," he said, "We want to keep the oil, $45 million a month. Keep the oil." US military and civilian officials winced at this declaration, which arguably constitutes the war crime of pillaging under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the US War Crimes Act of 1996. But at least they had found some way to talk him out of a terrible blunder.

US President-elect Donald Trump during his first term tried unsuccessfully to withdraw US troops from north-east Syria. AFP

The Al Tanf garrison lies in an area seized from ISIS, but maintaining control of the M2 highway just past the Iraq-Syria border crossing eventually became more important for denying Iran control of this crucial transportation hinge that links the eastern Middle East – Iraq and Iran – to the western Middle East – Syria and Lebanon. There were other ways for Iran to get weapons and supplies to Hezbollah in Lebanon, but the ideal scenario for Tehran was a militarily secured corridor of large highways leading from Iran through Iraq and Syria down into Lebanon and to the Mediterranean. This would have been the most important infrastructural manifestation of a potential arc of Iranian hegemony across the northern Middle East from west to east and back.

Under Mr Biden, the US was not going to leave this area either to Iran – although its deeply weakened condition, and a likely new Syrian government hostile to Tehran, has eased that concern – or ISIS, or any other malign actor. It’s too strategic an asset to be surrendered. Nor would Mr Biden's foreign policy team, including former anti-ISIS coalition head Brett McGurk, have abandoned the Kurdish-dominated SDF after its crucial and courageous role in the battle against that terrorist group and alongside US and allied forces in Syria.

That's why the US Air Force is now striking so many ISIS targets, no less than 75 on Sunday, fearful they could regroup in chaos following Mr Assad’s ouster, and why Mr Biden has vowed the US military will remain in Syria. Concern over the fate of the SDF and Syrian Kurds was exacerbated by a massive attack on them in the strategically and historically crucial city of Manbij, which was overrun by Turkish-backed militias on Monday. Turkey deems the SDF, despite its close US ties, a terrorist organisation to be eliminated.

There's every danger none of this will move Mr Trump. In 2019, he dismissed Syria as "long bloodstained sand," and keeps insisting the US should have nothing to do with it. He apparently doesn't understand the profound strategic significance of what happens in Syria, and how much it tends to drive events across the Middle East.

It will be very surprising if he does not once again seek to remove all US forces early in his second term, citing the end of the former government, as well as dismissing the ongoing threat from ISIS on the dubious grounds it has already been destroyed. In his first term, he appeared content to view Syria as "Russia's problem" and may now consider it "Turkey’s problem," with no genuine US interests at stake.

If officials cannot again talk him out of that folly, he's likely to be surprised at how badly it goes, sooner rather than later. He’s unlikely to care about the fate of the SDF, or Kurdish Syrians, or any other Syrians, but his casual dismissal of this strategically crucial country is a manifestation of ignorance rather than strategic sophistication.

At least Mr Biden understood some of the stakes in play. Mr Trump's instinct will likely be to leave it to Turkey, Iran, Israel, Russia and Arab countries to guide and shape events in Syria. If he does, he's in for a rude awakening.