It all seemed clear on 6 October, at least to Donald Trump: ISIS had been defeated; he could ‘bring the boys home’ from Syria. Only a few weeks later, however, his own Defense Intelligence Agency is disagreeing with him.
These government analysts, who work for the Department of Defense, this week reported that the US withdrawal from Syria gives ISIS time and space to regroup. Then ISIS could start attacking targets in the West again. As the US military journal Military Times puts it, ISIS is “likely to exploit the reduction in counterterrorism pressure to reconstitute its operations in Syria and expand its ability to conduct transnational attacks”.
What part will the Kurds play? There is the accusation that Trump has betrayed the Syrian Kurds, who lost at least 10,000 people in their war with the common enemy of ISIS. Although the US forces in northern Syria were small, their presence deterred Turkish moves against the Kurds. Now they have left, Turkey has sent forces across the border and the Russians have quickly established a helicopter base at an airport south-west of the Kurdish-controlled city of Qamishli on the Turkish border. Assad, meanwhile, has been able to move his own forces closer to the Kurdish region. Because of this the Defense Intelligence Agency assesses that the Kurdish-linked Syrian Democratic Forces will prioritise defending their own people against the Turks and Assad’s forces, greatly limiting their support for any action against ISIS.
