By SETH J. FRANTZMAN

The US role in eastern and southern Syria is increasingly precarious amid the UN decision to continue to cut off aid to eastern Syria, where US forces are present and the US works with the Syrian Democratic Forces. This is an area where the US-led anti-ISIS Coalition worked with Kurdish, Arab, and Christian fighters to liberate millions from ISIS control. However, Russia, Turkey and Iran have allied to cutoff eastern Syria to make sure that aid can only come from Damascus. Turkish-backed groups continue to cut off water to eastern Syria, harming millions.

It looks increasingly like an Iranian-Turkish and Russian plan to strangle and starve eastern Syria until the US leaves and these areas come complete under the control of Damascus. When the Syrian Kurdish fighters decided to work with the US in 2015 things were very different. The Kurdish People’s Protection Units with support from Kurdish Peshmerga and others helped to stop ISIS from taking Kobane. The US and Kurds worked together to create the Syrian Democratic Forces, a broader coalition that would go beyond the Kurdish areas of eastern Syria. In 2017 the SDF liberated Raqqa.

Turkey has long sought to force the US to stop working with the SDF, alleging the SDF is tied to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and are “terrorists.” There has been no evidence presented by Turkey of any “terrorist” attacks from Syria by Kurdish groups. Yet Turkey has used this excuse to invade the Kurdish area of Afrin in 2018 and then Tel Abyad in 2019. This was designed by Turkey’s leadership to force the US to choose the SDF or Turkey. Turkey’s leader Recep Tayyp Erdogan, in a dozen calls with US President Donald Trump, pressured the US to let Turkey takeover eastern Syria, promising to fight ISIS. In fact what happened is that ISIS fighters fled the SDF via Turkey to Idlib and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was found hiding near the Turkish border. US special forces killed him in October 2019.

US policy to eastern Syria is shaped by several competing agendas. The Defense Department’s CENTCOM has been close to the SDF, valuing their partnership fighting ISIS. The US State Department is pro-Ankara and has often worked against the SDF to sideline the group. For instance US diplomats, working to support Turkey, made sure the SDF could not participate in any of the conferences related to a Syrian constitution or at Geneva where opposition Syrian groups gathered.

The US envoy to Syria James Jeffrey told the SDF that the US work with them was temporary, transactional and tactical and their future was to work within Syria. That forces the SDF to work with Damascus politically. Yet, at the same time, US security officials told the SDF the US would stabilize Syria and asked them to keep hold of ISIS detainees, who they had captured in the thousands. The US also hinted it would stay in eastern Syria until Iran left.

This has put US policymakers in the strange position of telling the SDF not to work with Damascus because working with Damascus would be working with Iran, while the US also works with Turkey to sideline the SDF, under the theory that Turkey will help the US against Iran. The US demanded the SDF and other groups in eastern Syria sever ties with the PKK, and the US put a bounty on the heads of the PKK in 2018 and supported a Turkish offensive in 2020 against the PKK in Iraq. But the US gave the SDF no route to work within a diplomatic system that would see them be part of a future Syria. Now this isolation politically has also led to isolation on humanitarian ends as well.

Since January, UN aid to eastern Syria has been cut off. While human rights group deplored this, it was Turkey and Russia that wanted to make sure no humanitarian aid goes independently to eastern Syria. Turkey and Damascus want to use aid as a tool. Damascus trades aid for support. The US was silent at the UN as aid was cut off in January and then this week to eastern Syria. This forces those in need to get aid via Damascus. That boosts Damascus, and thus Iran’s hand, in eastern Syria.

At the same time the US does not speak out when Turkish-backed groups continue to cut water off to 700,000 people living in eastern Syria. Over the last week water has been cut off again. The goal here is clear: Turkey will use the one border crossing that UN flows through via Turkey to support groups it works with. The US role, despite having a seat on the UN Security Council, has been ineffective in making sure areas it has influence over receive aid and support. This was made brutally clear this week as water was cut off and aid continued to be permanently cut off to eastern Syria.

The Jerusalem Post