The fall of the Assad regime in Syria will not impact U.S. support, at least for now, for one of Washington’s most steadfast allies in the fight against the Islamic State terror group, according to senior American officials.
Speaking just hours after Russian officials confirmed former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad had fled Damascus and taken refuge in Moscow, and a day after rebel forces entered the Syrian capital, U.S. officials insisted there are no plans to alter the U.S. military footprint in Syria, which includes some 900 troops, most of them working in the country’s northeast with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces or SDF.
Maintaining U.S. positions across eastern Syria “is something we will continue to do,” a senior U.S. administration official said Sunday, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive information.
“We think that presence is critically important for the stability of those areas and for denying the efforts of ISIS to resurge, and also for the integrity of the SDF and the groups that we work with in the East to maintain stability out there,” the official said, using an acronym for the Islamic State group, also known as IS or Daesh.
The SDF, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias formed in 2015, mustering a force of 30,000 to 40,000 fighters that played a key role in eroding IS’s hold on large swaths of territory, including the terror group’s self-proclaimed Syrian capital of Raqqa.
Four years after its creation, in March 2019, the SDF announced the fall of the town of Baghuz, IS’s last stronghold in Syria.
But the defeat of the self-declared IS caliphate in Syria came at a cost. SDF officials estimated some 11,000 fighters were killed in the yearslong campaign. And fighting with remnants of the terror group has persisted.
Intelligence shared both by the U.S. and by United Nation member states earlier this year indicated an uptick in IS activity, especially by small cells in Syria’s central desert, describing it as a growing logistic hub for the terror group.
Various estimates warn the number of IS fighters across Syria and Iraq has grown to between 2,500 and 5,000.
This past July, U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq, warned IS was on pace to “more than double the total number of attacks they claimed in 2023.”
And IS has made repeated attempts to free some 9,000 of its fighters being held in about 20 SDF-run prisons across northeastern Syria, described by one senior U.S, official as “the largest collection of terrorist fighters in the world.”
Additionally, the SDF has been charged with overseeing security at displaced persons camps, like al-Hol and al-Roj, which house about 30,000 people, most of them children under the age of 12, and many from families loyal to IS.
U.S. President Joe Biden on Sunday said Washington has no intention of letting Syria, or the SDF, face those challenges alone.
"Our mission against ISIS will be maintained, including the security of detention facilities where ISIS fighters are being held as prisoners,” the president said.
“We're clear eyed about the fact that ISIS will try to take advantage of any vacuum to reestablish its capabilities, to create a safe haven,” Biden added. "We will not let that happen.”
To underscore the U.S. commitment, Biden said U.S. forces Sunday carried out dozens of airstrikes against IS camps and operatives.
U.S. Central Command said the operation struck more than 75 targets using a combination of long-range bombers, fighter jets and close air support.
“We targeted a significant gathering of ISIS fighters and leaders,” the senior administration official said, adding U.S. war planes dropped about 140 munitions during the strikes, which were authorized earlier Sunday.
“It's a significant strike, I think, just given the collection of ISIS individuals in that area and the size of the area," the official added.
But U.S. concerns about instability extend beyond the threat from IS itself.
There are fears that ongoing tensions between the SDF and Turkey could also bring additional instability and danger.
Already, there have been reports of clashes between Turkish-backed forces and the SDF in northern Syria.
Turkey has also long voiced objections to the U.S alliance with the Kurdish-led SDF, arguing many of the fighters are also 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.
And though the U.S. views the SDF and YPG as different entities, in Turkey's view, they are one and the same.
U.S. officials said Sunday that there have already been high-level talks between officials at the Pentagon and State departments with their Turkish counterparts, describing the calls as “constructive.”
"Additional conflicts, additional fronts opening up, not in anybody's interest," the official said.
Some analysts, however, worry the Turkish-Kurdish tensions will not be so easily resolved, pointing in part to Biden’s failure to mention Turkey Sunday while discussing U.S. outreach to Syria’s other neighbors.
“[It] indicates that behind the scenes there's continuing to be ongoing machinations between American diplomats and Turkish officials about their aims for occupying portions of north and east Syria and thereby jeopardizing the Syrian Democratic Forces and civilians who live under the [Kurdish-led] Autonomous Administration,” said Myles Caggins, a nonresident fellow at the New Lines Institute and former spokesperson for the U.S.-led, anti-IS coalition in Syria and Iraq.
“President Biden made it very clear that U.S. forces will remain in north and east Syria in the foreseeable future to continue the anti-ISIS mission,” Caggins told VOA. “The United States government has an opportunity to showcase and highlight its strong support of the Syrian Democratic Forces and people of Northeast Syria.”
