Middle East

Defeating ISIS in Syria Is Just the Beginning

As the world watches the Syrian government’s relentless bombing of Ghouta, 300 miles to the east, the United States remains focused on eradicating the last vestiges of the Islamic State. On February 11, Secretary of Defense James Mattis stressed that, following the group’s defeat, there is no plan for a deeper U.S. commitment in Syria. Several weeks later on February 23, President Donald Trump echoed Mattis’s message, saying that the 1,700 to 2,000 U.S. troops in the country would “go home” after isis had been beaten.

Yet on February 7, just a few days before Mattis’s remarks, Major General James Jarrard, the commander of U.S. special forces in Syria, told the media that his mission is to support the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Syrian Kurdish militia-led force that has been instrumental in the fight against isis. The SDF, however, has enemies beyond isis that include Turkey and its Syrian rebel allies, as well as the Syrian government and its Iranian allies. In an interview with CNN on that same day, Lieutenant General Paul Funk, the commander of U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq, promised that Americans in the town of Manbij, which the Kurdish-led SDF captured in August 2016, would “defend themselves.” Both he and Jarrard were aiming their messages not at isis—which has been absent from Manbij for months—but at Turkey.