President Biden has moved quickly to end America’s “forever wars” in the Middle East with one very glaring exception: The counterterrorism mission in Syria, where a withdrawal does not appear to even be on the table and a high-stakes geopolitical standoff between Washington and Moscow has greatly complicated the U.S. calculus.
About 900 American troops now are deployed inside Syria, Pentagon officials said recently, with no indication that the number will drop substantially anytime soon. Their stated mission, in partnership with Syrian Kurdish rebel forces, is to battle the Islamic State, which remains a serious threat despite having been reduced from a legitimate land army to more of a covert terrorist network.
But the U.S. troops are also just one more force in a raging Syrian civil war, in which Syrian, Russian, Iranian and Turkish forces and proxies are all battling amid a domestic political uprising against President Bashar Assad and a surge of jihadist groups such as al Qaeda.
There are no clear indications when, if ever, the U.S. would declare ISIS defeated and proceed with a pullout from Syria. Former President Trump tried and failed twice to withdraw all U.S. forces from the country, with one attempt even leading directly to the resignation of then-Defense Secretary James Mattis.
Quietly, the Syrian military mission appears to have expanded: When Mr. Trump first declared the Syrian mission over, the Pentagon said that about 450 troops were still there. Today, the number is over 900.
Having so far survived two presidents anxious to bring troops back from the region, Syria stands in stark contrast to Afghanistan, where Mr. Trump negotiated and Mr. Biden has followed through on a withdrawal that paved the way for a rapid Taliban takeover of the country. The final U.S. troops left Afghanistan this week, capping a 20-year campaign that stands as the longest war in American history.
The Biden administration also has wound down the long-standing war in Iraq. The U.S. will keep about 2,500 troops in the country but relabel them as advisers and military trainers and has essentially declared the American combat mission there is over.
But Syria is a different case, some specialists say, populated with a unique cast of international actors and fragile alliances that have turned the nation into one of the world’s most complex powder kegs. No short-term solution appears on the horizon.
For starters, Syria‘s proximity to Israel makes it appealing territory for enemies of Jerusalem such as Iran, which has moved its own forces into the country and subsequently found itself in a low-level conflict with Israeli air power. Iran-backed militias operating on both sides of the Syria-Iraq border also have regularly targeted U.S. forces over the past several years, leading Mr. Biden to order several retaliatory airstrikes against those groups.
Meanwhile, Russia has found Syria to be a welcoming home for its own military expansion across the Middle East, with Russian troops having been a key force behind the survival of Mr. Assad’s embattled Syrian government during the country’s 10-year civil war. In exchange, the Russians have built up permanent military bases in Syria and enjoyedwhat Russian military officials say has been an extensive real-world test of their military equipment and tactics.
The presence of Turkish forces is yet another factor in a volatile equation. The Turkish military operates so-called civilian “safe zones” in portions of Syria, but Ankara also has found itself at odds with Russia, Assad’s government and even the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF], parts of which Turkey considers to be terrorists.
American troops are to some degree acting as a stabilizing force amid that chaotic scene. And regardless of why the U.S. sent troops to Syria in the first place, pulling out now would have major ramifications for American competition with its greatest foes, according to Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a leading Washington think tank.
“Great-power competition with both China and Russia is a global competition, and that includes the Middle East. The idea that we need to get out of the Middle East so we can compete with China and Russia is a foolish one,” Mr. Bowman told The Washington Times in an interview. “Russia has a major role in Syria. We know Assad probably would not be in power were it not for Moscow. We know Russia’s primary interests are the bases that their patron Assad provides them.”
“If we withdraw, we will have even less influence … and the primary influencers will be Tehran and Moscow,” he said. “And another core American interest is standing with Israel … we know Tehran has tried for years to create a land bridge” to supply its regional allies such as Syria and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement.
And some analysts say Mr. Biden and his aides have left the Syrian deployment in place largely for lack of any better alternative.
Since taking office, Mr. Biden “has been operating with an interim Syria policy that has lacked purpose and direction thus far,” Abdulrahman al-Masri, a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs, wrote last week.
“It has largely been a continuation of the previous administration’s policy — namely, maintaining a low-cost stabilization mission in northeastern Syria and economic pressure on the [Assad] regime without a clear policy objective.”
Counterterrorism mission
Indeed, even if Biden administration officials won’t publicly say so, it seems clear that the U.S. is driven at least partly by a desire to use its Syrian presence to check Russia, Iran and other actors. Top administration officials have insisted in recent days that the U.S. can conduct a major counterterrorism presence all over the world — including in Afghanistan — without troops on the ground, raising questions about why exactly the U.S. still needs a physical presence in Syria.
“We’ll maintain robust counterterrorism capabilities in the region to neutralize those threats, if necessary, as we demonstrated in the past few days by striking ISIS facilitators and imminent threats in Afghanistan — and as we do in places around the world where we do not have military forces on the ground,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week, citing the Syrian conflict as a prime example.
The Pentagon has also rejected talk of a drawdown, and even went public with a denial of an Iranian media report that U.S. forces had pulled back from three bases inside Syria.
“This is not true. The standards of our mission in Syria remain the same,” a Pentagon spokesman said last week.
ISIS-K, the group’s Afghan affiliate, is believed to be responsible for an attack last week on the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 160 Afghans. It’s not clear how much of a relationship exists between ISIS-K in Afghanistan and the other Islamic State factions, particularly those still active in Iraq and Syria.
In both of those countries, American forces played a central role in dismantling the once-mighty terrorist group, which at its height in 2014 and 2015 controlled a massive swath of territory straddling Syria and Iraq. U.S. ground forces, air power and logistical support for anti-ISIS groups in both nations have reduced the extremist network’s territorial footprint to a shell of its former self, though Pentagon officials warn the group remains a threat and is still capable of waging a low-level insurgency.
Biden administration officials have said recently that they do not envision any looming changes to the U.S. posture in Syria. American personnel are expected to continue training and working beside the SDF and other allies in the fight against ISIS.
The U.S. remains the leader of the global anti-ISIS coalition, but the SDF and other allies are doing much of the heavy lifting on the ground with the support of U.S. intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance. That partnership was seen in action again late last month.
“In two successful raids against [Islamic State], our SDF partners w/the @Coalition ‘s ISR support, were instrumental in arresting 5 terrorists & seizing weapons & equipment east [of] Deir Ez-Zor” in eastern Syria,” Col. Wayne Marotto, spokesman for the U.S.-led Operation Inherent Resolve mission, wrote in a Twitter post, announcing some of the latest joint U.S.-SDF missions in Syria.
“Together, we remain united in our pursuit of ensuring the lasting” defeat of ISIS, he said.
But the U.S. approach in Syria has ratcheted up already high tensions with Moscow. In July, top Russian officials blasted U.S. claims that Washington has a right under international law to conduct counterterrorism missions in Syria, even without the Assad government’s permission.
“It’s a matter of fact that U.S. armed forces have no legal mandate to stay in Syria,” the Russian Embassy in Washington said in a Twitter post.
The Pentagon has countered that the U.S. has a clear right to operate in Syria as a matter of self-defense.
U.S.-Russia tensions in Syria have occasionally led to near-disaster. In August 2020, for example, a collision between U.S. and Russian military vehicles left four American service members injured.
The Defense Department says U.S. and Russian military leaders are in regular communication to prevent any such incidents in the future.