Why did the US pass the buck to Russia in north Syria?

It was clear for some time before October that the United States had no desire to retain forces in northeast Syria long-term to prevent conflict from breaking out between Turkey and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). It is therefore hardly surprising that it essentially opted to pass the buck to Russia.  

At the time of writing, Russia has just completed its fifteenth joint patrol with Turkey in northeast Syria. The patrols are the result of an agreement reached between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Russian resort city of Sochi on October 22. 

Putin praised the Syrian Kurds for their compliance with this agreement, which resembles the safe zone the US and Turkey began implementing before US President Donald Trump’s decision to pull back troops on October 6. 

When Turkey was poised to invade northeast Syria last August, the US scrambled to establish the ‘safe zone’ it had previously promised Ankara in January. 

The SDF dismantled its defensive structures and pulled back its heavy weapons from the border. The US carried out at least three joint patrols and seven joint helicopter overflights with Turkey in northeast Syria, allowing Ankara to verify the SDF’s compliance with the arrangement. 

Earlier, the US carried out a series of joint patrols with Turkey in the Syrian Arab-majority city of Manbij following numerous threats from Ankara to attack it. This was part of the eponymous roadmap agreement that sought to convince Turkey that the Kurdish YPG retained no presence in that northwestern Syrian city. 

In recent years, Washington has urged Turkey and the SDF to keep their attentions focused on the campaign against the Islamic State (ISIS), all too aware that a Turkey-SDF conflict would give ISIS breathing room to resurge. 

In retrospect, it seems the US only established the so-called Manbij Roadmap and northeast Syria safe zone to prevent other conflicts interfering with its sole objective of destroying ISIS in Syria. 

Trump repeatedly made clear the US was only in Syria to destroy the ISIS caliphate. He announced he wanted a complete US withdrawal from Syria in April 2018, but was convinced by officials in his administration and the Pentagon to stay. 

In December 2018, he again announced he wanted a prompt withdrawal, but instead settled for a gradual drawdown. 

This October, he ordered an immediate withdrawal following a phone call with Erdogan – and the results were dire. 

This was predictable. As Turkey analyst Aaron Stein noted: “The longer the president’s own staff continued to treat the world’s most powerful man like an infant, the more likely it became that he would simply order a hasty withdrawal.”

“This chaotic US exit from Syria was obviously coming, for anyone paying attention to the opinion of the man who matters most in the United States: the president.”

Of course, Trump has not completely withdrawn from Syria. The US retains a few hundred troops and also deployed Bradley Fighting Vehicles to the country for the first time to help guard the oilfields of Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria.

The Americans maintain a working partnership with the SDF and the two have resumed anti-ISIS operations since Turkey’s invasion. 

After the US pullback in October, Russia stepped in and began filling the power vacuum. Video footage of Russian troops walking around abandoned US bases, where there was ample evidence that the Americans had left in a hurry, aptly demonstrated just how rapidly things were changing in the region. 

Russian troops also entered Raqqa this month, where the US-backed SDF fought ISIS for months in a costly urban battle to rout the militants from the caliphate’s de-facto capital city. 

The Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad has also begun re-establishing a presence in the northeast, the most significant since it withdrew the bulk of its forces in 2012. 

Early this year, the US Special Representative for Syria Engagement James Jeffrey was frank when he declared that the purpose of the US-led coalition in Syria was not to maintain safe zones. 

“We’re not really looking at a coalition to be peacekeepers or anything like that,” Jeffrey told a press conference in March. “We’re asking coalition personnel to continue to contribute and to up their contribution to our de-ISIS operations in Syria, and we’re getting a pretty good response initially. But the mission is de-ISIS, defeat of ISIS, it’s not to operate in any safe zone.”

His dismissal of the very notion of any safe zone being enforced by the US or coalition troops was another indication of how increasingly reluctant Washington was to commit resources to such projects. 

In Syria today, US forces are once again focusing on targeting ISIS remnants in partnership with the SDF. The US no longer needs to commit any of its resources in Syria to preventing further conflict breaking out between Turkey and the Kurds. 

Instead, Russian troops are carrying out that task. Russian Military Police vehicles routinely patrol the northeast with Turkish military forces, effectively relieving the Americans of that task. 

Moscow has also sent helicopters and equipment into northeast Syria and may well establish a long-term presence there, perhaps including an airbase in Qamishli. It will likely continue coordinated patrols across the region with Turkey for the foreseeable future. 

Under the October agreement in Sochi, Turkey gets to retain control over the territory it seized during Operation Peace Spring, which is more than 100km wide. However, it is unlikely to conquer any more territory while Russia retains its forces there.

In the meantime, the regime will continue gradually re-establishing itself in northeast Syria.  

This inevitable outcome has been clear for several years. As one prescient unnamed US official told The Wall Street Journal back in May 2017: “We won’t be in Raqqa in 2020, but the regime will be there.”