There is a military rule that says: if you are facing defeat and want to cut your losses, the shortest way out is to declare victory and promptly retreat. US President Donald Trump may not be familiar with this dictum, as his expertise is confined to business deals and property brokering. But some of his…
Trump justified this move in a tweet explaining that the war against terrorist groups, which was the only reason for the US forces’ presence in the first place, had achieved its aim with the defeat of the Islamic State (IS) group, so he had decided to bring them all home from Syria.
The claim that US forces have eliminated IS, which maintains bases and a military presence in northeastern Syria, is false. The group remains strong, and it poses a threat to the mainly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which the US has been supporting and arming. Two days ago it retook villages it had lost in earlier confrontations between the two sides. So it is hard to accept this explanation.
To understand why Trump took this decision to withdraw from Syria, and to vacate the Middle East conflict zone generally, a number of points need to be considered:
– First: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s repeated warnings over the past ten days to attack the SDF and wipe it out completely in north-eastern Syria, on the grounds that it is an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) — which Turkey designates as a terrorist organisation — and threatens the country’s national security.
