Turkey’s president and Kurdish militia members said Monday that American troops had started withdrawing from positions in northern Syria. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke hours after the White House said U.S. forces in northeast Syria would move aside and clear the way for an expected Turkish incursion into the neighboring nation.
While the U.S. move is a gift to Erdogan’s government, it will be seen as a stark betrayal by the Kurds, who have fought alongside U.S. forces for years to defeat ISIS.
U.S. forces, “having defeated the ISIS territorial ‘Caliphate’ will no longer be in the immediate area,” the White House said in a Sunday evening statement. It wasn’t clear whether that meant the U.S. would withdraw its roughly 1,000 troops completely from northern Syria.
The U.S. announcement made no mention of the fate of the Kurdish fighters who led the charge to retake the ground ISIS militants had captured in the region. The Kurds have warned for years that if their U.S. allies pulled out, they could be subjected to an onslaught by Turkish forces.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) bore the brunt of the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS militants, and Republicans and Democrats alike have warned that allowing the Turks to attack the militia members would send a troubling message to American allies across the globe.
But Turkey has threatened for months to launch a military operation to drive away Syrian Kurdish fighters from the border region east of the Euphrates River. Erdogan didn’t elaborate on the planned Turkish incursion but said Turkey was determined to halt what it perceives as threats from the Syrian Kurdish fighters, who Ankara considers terrorists linked to a Kurdish separatist movement based in southern Turkey.
The SDF vowed in a statement released Monday to defend itself against any Turkish attack, and noted it had sought to “avoid any military escalation with Turkey” by trying to establish a joint operation to secure a buffer zone along the border.
“We will not hesitate to turn any unprovoked attack by Turkey into an all-out war on the entire border to DEFEND ourselves and our people,” SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali tweeted Saturday.
“After we fulfilled all our obligations in this regard, the American forces did not fulfill their obligations and withdrew their forces from the border areas with Turkey, and Turkey is now preparing for an invasion operation of northern and eastern Syria,” the SDF command said in the statement. “This Turkish military operation in northern and eastern Syria will have a significant negative impact on our war against ISIS and will destroy any stability that has been achieved over the past years.”
The U.S. announcement followed a phone call between President Trump and Erdogan, the White House said. Erdogan’s office said after the call that he’d accepted an invitation from Mr. Trump to meet in Washington next month, according to Reuters.
Before Erdogan confirmed the U.S. withdrawal had begun, Kurdish militia leaders posted images and messages on social media saying two U.S. outposts near the border towns of Ras al-Ayn and Tal Abyad had been left vacant on Monday.
The call came a day after Erdogan said a military operation into northern Syria was at hand and followed Ankara accusing Washington of dragging its feet on creating a “safe zone” in the region together, Reuters pointed out.
Erdogan also repeated his insistence that the safe zone was needed due to what Turkey deems threats from the Syrian-Kurdish fighters, known as the YPG, and to facilitate the conditions necessary for the return of Syrian refugees, Reuters added.
Ending a war at any cost?
The U.S. decision is a stark illustration of Mr. Trump’s focus on ending American overseas entanglements — one of his key campaign promises. But his goal of swift withdrawals in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan has been stymied by concerns from U.S. officials and American allies about the dangerous voids that would remain. As he faces an impeachment inquiry at home, Mr. Trump has appeared more focused on making good on his political pledges, even at the risk of sending a troubling signal to American allies.
In December, he announced he was pulling American troops out of Syria but was met with widespread condemnation for abandoning Kurdish allies to the Turkish assault. The announcement prompted the resignation in protest of then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and a coordinated effort by then-national security adviser John Bolton to try to protect the Kurds.
At the beginning of this year, CBS News “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo whether Erdogan had agreed not to attack America’s allies in Syria.
“The Turks have made clear that they understand that there are folks down in Syria that have their rights,” Pompeo told Brennan. “We also want to make sure that those in Syria aren’t attacking, terrorists aren’t attacking Turkey from Syria. We’re fully engaged. Ambassador Jeffrey is fully engaged in conversations with the Turks as well as with the SDF in Syria to make sure that we accomplish all of those missions. We can do each of those things.”
ISIS prisoners a threat
Mattis and other Pentagon leaders had worried that a U.S. withdrawal from northern Syria would lead to a resurgence of ISIS in the country, particularly if the SDF abandon a number of prisons holding thousands of the fighters across the region to battle Turkey.
The White House statement Sunday said Turkey would take custody of foreign fighters captured in the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS who have been held by the Kurdish forces supported by the U.S.
The prisoners include about 2,500 highly dangerous foreign fighters from Europe and elsewhere whose native countries have been reluctant to take them back, and another 10,000 or so captured fighters from Syria and Iraq.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly demanded that European countries, particularly France and Germany, take back their citizens who joined the militant organization, but CBS News’ Holly Williams recently visited one of the prisons — the first U.S. network correspondent to do so — and she found at least two detainees who said they were American citizens.
There are about 5,000 prisoners at that one facility run by the SDF. The guards told Williams that many of the detainees were dangerous. They said they faced regular escape attempts, and warned that if any of the prisoners did manage to flee, they could re-join the ISIS insurgents who continue to carry out attacks in the region.
In a recently released audio recording, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi called on members of the extremist group to do all they could to free detainees in jails and camps across northern Syria.
SDF commanders told CBS News last month that if foreign governments won’t take their citizens back, they should help secure the prisons to prevent mass escapes, or set up an international court in Syria to try them.
It was unclear what plan Turkey might have to try and control the more than 10,000 ISIS detainees in the facilities spread across the region if the SDF forces currently running them turn their attention to fending off a Turkish incursion instead.
