U.S. diplomats and military officials have intensified their outreach to groups vying to chart a new course for Syria, as well as to Syria’s neighbors, in an effort to ensure the fall of the regime of former President Bashar Assad does not give way to a more unstable and dangerous future.
A number of key meetings took place Monday in Jordan, where senior U.S. diplomatic officials held consultations with their Jordanian counterparts following similar meetings a day earlier in Doha, Qatar.
And U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said more diplomatic missions are in the works.
“Senior officials from this department are fanning out through the region as we speak, working with counterparts on how the United States can help support the Syrian people as they decide their own path for the future” Blinken told an audience at the State Department Monday.
“This moment presents a historic opportunity, but it also carries considerable risks,” he said. “History shows how quickly moments of promise can descend into conflict and violence.”
As evidence of the U.S. concern, the commander of U.S. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East, also engaged with allies in the region.
General Michael “Erik” Kurilla met in Amman with Major General Yousef Al-Hunaiti, the chairman of the Jordanian Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to a U.S. readout, Kurilla promised U.S. support for Jordan should the situation in Syria deteriorate.
Other U.S. officials on Monday likewise emphasized the need for a calm and orderly transition in Syria.
“We want to make sure that our allies are safe and secure,” U.S. Deputy United Nations Ambassador Robert Wood told reporters at the U.N. in New York.
“We want to make sure that there isn't a humanitarian catastrophe,” Wood said. “So, we're going to be working over the coming days and weeks to try to make sure that we can ensure all of those things happen.”
But officials at the State Department and the Pentagon caution there is ample reason to worry that hopes for a better future for the Syrian people could disintegrate, with differences leading to new waves of violence and even migrations out of Syria.
They say that while the words and actions of Syrian rebel leaders, including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s Abu Mohammed al-Golani, seem promising, pledges for a new, inclusive government will be tested if tensions between rival groups continue to simmer or escalate.
And the State Department officials said Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a U.S.-designated terror group that grew out of the al-Qaida terror group’s Syrian affiliate before cutting ties, has yet to show that it deserves to have the terror designation removed.
So too, there are concerns about the Islamic State terror group, which commands between 2,500 and 5,000 fighters across Syria and Iraq, and which has been growing stronger in recent months.
“ISIS will try to use this period to reestablish its capabilities, to create safe havens,” Blinken said Monday, using an acronym for the terror group, also known as IS or Daesh. “We are determined not to let that happen.”
U.S. allies on the ground in Syria, however, warn IS has already begun ramping up its attacks, seeking to take advantage of the collapse of Syrian regime forces over the past week.
“We are worried,” the U.S. representative for the political wing of the U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) told VOA, pointing to an uptick in attacks across northeastern Syria.
“They are targeting our internal security forces,” said Syrian Democratic Council representative Sinam Mohamad, noting efforts by IS sleeper cells in places like Raqqa, Deir el-Zour and even Hasakah, home to one of the SDF-run prisons holding thousands of IS fighters captured after the fall of the terror group’s self-declared caliphate in 2019.
She also warned of increased activity, and new escape attempts at al-Hol, a displaced persons camp that holds tens of thousands of IS wives and other family members, many of them children.
Mohamad praised U.S. forces for lending support to the SDF but said there are indications of additional IS activity in areas abandoned by Syrian regime forces along with their Russian and Iranian allies.
U.S. military officials hope a series of airstrikes, carried out Sunday at five locations across central Syria, will help to blunt the threat.
The strikes are “a way to certainly prevent them [IS] from taking advantage of the dynamics within Syria and the current situation,” said Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh, briefing reporters at the Pentagon Monday.
But U.S. counterterrorism officials have long warned that IS is capable of demonstrating both patience and resilience and is well-aware of the types of fissures that could still serve to derail a transition government in Syria.
And perhaps nowhere are those tensions more palpable at the moment than in Syria’s northeast, where fighting has broken out between Kurdish militias and the Syrian National Army, or SNA, a coalition of Turkish-backed militias.
Turkey has defended various efforts to strike at the SDF, claiming it is led by fighters with the People's Protection Units, or YPG, a Syrian-based offshoot of the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), labeled by both Ankara and Washington as a terrorist organization.
The SDC and SDF, in return, have accused the SNA of attacking civilians in Manbij, and other nearby areas.
“The United States, now, they are trying to stop this,” the SDC’s Mohamad told VOA.
“There is some negotiation,” she said. “We hope they [the U.S.] can succeed in that.”
The State Department Monday said it has been clear with both sides, echoing warnings from the SDF that ongoing clashes could hurt the ability of the U.S.-backed force to contain IS.
“We don't want to see an escalation,” said spokesperson Matthew Miller of the clashes between Kurdish groups and the SNA. “We don't want to see anyone take advantage of this period of instability to try, and further their own position.”
Nike Ching, Margaret Besheer and Carla Babb contributed to this report.
