As the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria comes to an end, the U.S. is faced with difficult choices.
Some two weeks ago U.S. administration wanted U.S. troops to stay in the country after the fall of the terrorist organization as a insurance that ISIS will not be able to regain some of its strongholds.
As Washington wants to build a nation according to its own rules, Turkey which is our NATO ally begun bombarding Kurdish forces that were previously trained by the U.S. to fight against the Islamic State. Lawmakers described the situation as an example where Washington chickens out after it chose to support a force that Turkey and all of our European allies see as a terrorist group.
“We need to have a hearing on this, we need to find out what have we done here. What is our Syrian strategy? Our Syrian strategy cannot be to hold Arab territory with a bunch of YPG Kurds…who are seen by Turkey and people inside of Syria as being unacceptable,” Senator Lindsey Graham said.
Graham comments come after Turkey’s offensive against the U.S. backed YPG in Afrin. YPG that are essentially Kurds, are considered by Ankara to be terrorists which are responsible for a number of insurgency attacks in Turkey.
Meanwhile, Washington sees the Kurds as the most effective force to fight ISIS on the ground in Syria.
According to The Hill, Turkey has long complained about U.S. support for the Kurds, but the tensions came to a head this month after U.S. officials described a “border security force” — a term they later walked back — that Ankara worried would legitimize and cement Kurdish presence at its border.
On Wednesday President Donald Trump called the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urging for Turkey to “de-escalate, limit its military actions and avoid civilian casualties,” and proposed “closer bilateral cooperation to address Turkey’s legitimate security concerns.”
Jim Phillips a respected senior researcher for Middle East affairs states that Turkey has made the U.S. plans much more complicated.
“It appears that the administration is pivoting from a primary focus on ISIS into more of a broader Syria policy that is also focused on — in addition to preventing the resurgence of ISIS — that is also focused on pushing back against Iran, Turkey has made that even more difficult.”
However with ISIS losing 98% percent of their territory in Iraq and Syria now Trump’s administration is fighting a war against Russia and Turkey of who will have the better influence over the nation now left in ruins.
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