Hopeless situation: why does the Pentagon intend to leave about five hundred troops in Syria

General Mark Millie, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces, said the Pentagon intends to leave 500-600 troops in Syria.

“The number of people who remain there will probably be less than a thousand people. Probably, we are talking about five or six hundred. This is if we talk about that area. And we won’t give specific figures, because we are still at the analysis stage, ”Millie said in an interview with ABC.

According to Milli, the tasks of the American troops in Syria remain the same. Answering the host’s question, for what purpose does the United States maintain its military presence in this country, Milli said that this is supposedly necessary to fight ISIS *.

“ISIL militants are still present in the region. And if you do not make this grouping an object of constant pressure and attention, then conditions for the revival of ISIS will very likely arise, ”the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff emphasized.

According to him, despite the fact that the United States, having eliminated the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, dealt a serious blow to terrorists, in Washington they are exploring the possibility of a potential restoration of activity of an organization that supposedly has a new leader.

• General Mark Millie, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
• Reuters
• © Erin Scott

Walking in the desert

Recall, on October 7, US President Donald Trump said that the United States "it's time to get out of stupid endless wars ... and return the soldiers home." The statement was made against the backdrop of reports of the withdrawal of US troops from their positions in northern Syria before the start of the Turkish operation "Source of Peace."

The Pentagon later announced the withdrawal of 1,000 troops from the Turkish operation area. On October 19, US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said that "the current plan is to relocate these forces to western Iraq." Columns with the American military really appeared in Iraq, the United States left its base in Syria. And they even bombed at least one of them.

However, on October 21, US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper announced that part of the US troops would remain in Syria in order to prevent terrorists from exploiting the country's oil resources. He also confirmed the preservation of the American contingent at the base of At-Tanf in southeast Syria.

On October 23, Trump announced that "a small American contingent will remain in the region where oil is located." Then the US president did not specify exactly how many US military he plans to leave in Syria.

Against the background of these statements, media began to receive reports of the return of American troops to Syria and even the construction of new bases in the province of Deir ez-Zor. On October 25, Mark Esper announced that the US military was "strengthening" its position in the province. The next day, the Syrian agency SANA reported that a convoy of US troops and military equipment returned from Iraq to Syria.

On October 31, Colonel Miles Kaggins, spokesman for Operation Unshakable Decision (US-led international operation against ISIS in Syria and Iraq), said the Americans had redirected their units to Syria.

“We are redirecting the forces of Operation Unshakable Determination” to Deir ez-Zor in Syria to continue working in partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces , to defeat the remains of ISIS, protect critical infrastructure and deny ISIS access to revenue sources, ”a Pentagon spokesman said in his statement Twitter

We are repositioning @CJTFOIR forces to Deir ez Zor #Syria to continue partnering w / #SDF to defeat ISIS remnants, protect critical infrastructure, & deny ISIS access to revenue sources. Mechanized forces provide infantry, maneuver, and firepower.

Colonel Cuggins also posted photos of unloading armored vehicles from aircraft of military transport aircraft, which, he said, is intended for deployment in eastern Syria.

Later, the Turkish news agency Anadolu reported that the US relocated 300 troops to Syria and began to build two new military bases there. After these reports, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin stated that the US’s actions to consolidate its illegal military presence in Syria are “contrary to international law and unacceptable.”

On November 11, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that the United States was trying "by and large to rob the ATS and take control of the oil fields." According to him, such a policy does not contribute to a Syrian settlement.

In turn, the spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, Major General Igor Konashenkov, called the actions of the United States "international state banditry." According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the US military illegally exported and exported oil from Syria. In response to allegations by the US State Department, oil was allegedly "produced by local authorities for the benefit of local communities."

As an expert of the Center for Security Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Konstantin Blokhin noted in a conversation with RT, the contradictions in the statements and actions of the Americans in Syria can be explained, among other things, by the difference in approaches to solving the problem between President Trump and pressure supporters of power politics.

“The United States is confused in the testimony,” said RT Blokhin, “Trump is trying to sit on several chairs. On the one hand, he would like to withdraw the military contingent from Syria. But trying to do this, he came under criticism of hawks. Those began to declare that Iran, Turkey and Russia benefited from this, and only the USA lost, ”the expert noted.

Now, according to him, President Trump is trying to show the American public that he is a strong politician: on the one hand, he has reduced the contingent, on the other, he has not lost key positions to geopolitical opponents.

• US Special Representative for Syria James Jeffrey
• Reuters
• © Yuri Gripas

Hawk nest

Last year, US President Donald Trump announced the need to withdraw troops from Syria, but this did not happen. As the observer of the Foreign Policy publication Lara Seligman notes in the article “How supporters of the war policy towards Iran thwarted Trump’s plans to withdraw troops from Syria”, elements against Trump’s environment are to blame.

To them she includes Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, US Special Representative for Syria James Jeffrey and Special Envoy Joel Rayburn. Trump's former national security adviser, John Bolton, also belonged to this group.

According to the American political scientist, back in 2018, the team of James Jeffrey made plans to maintain an American presence in northern Syria for an indefinite period in order to deprive the government of Bashar al-Assad and his allies in Iran of access to oil fields. These same people allegedly persuaded the Syrian Kurds not to go to the world with the Syrian government.

“Despite the events of the past three weeks, proponents of a militant course towards Iran and other high-ranking officials still convince Trump that troops must be left in Syria, implying that this can prevent Assad and the Islamic State from taking control of oil fields. Thus, they strive to make this option more preferable for the president, ”Lara Seligman emphasized at the end of October.

Republican Senator Rand Paul, in turn, linked the refusal to withdraw troops from Syria with the position of influential Republican Senator Lindsay Graham and Senate leader Chuck Schumer. Both strongly opposed the withdrawal of troops from Syria, and Graham supported the idea of ​​American control over the country's oil fields.

If you want to stop the endless wars, you actually have to leave. The US guarding oil in Syria will only prolong the war & bring Kurds into conflict with Assad. Mr. President: don't listen to Lindsey Graham and Chuck Schumer and others who've been wrong for so long.

Nicholas Heras, a Syrian specialist at the New American Security Research Center, said in an interview with Vice News that a group of hawks led by Mike Pompeo aims to maintain control of eastern Syria. In his opinion, in Deir ez-Zora, the United States may try to create a new formation from the local Arab tribes to counter Iranian influence. At least, such a project is being discussed in expert circles.

“The United States will be able to build a strong army of Sunni Arabs that can prevent the revival of ISIS, and with the help of the same army of Sunni Arabs not only disrupt Iran’s plans, but also give it a fight in eastern Syria, and possibly in western Iraq, where equipped the so-called “land bridge” for the Hezbollah forces located in Lebanon and its forces operating in Iraq and Iran, ”the analyst describes this project.

In October, an alternative recipe for maintaining an American military presence in Syria was offered by Blackwater PMC founder Eric Prince, who is considered a person close to the Trump administration. In an interview with Fox News, Prince said that American soldiers can be replaced by mercenaries whose services would be paid for by selling Syrian oil. Thus, according to him, the oil fields of Syria would be protected not only from ISIS, but also from Iran and Turkey.

As Vladimir Vasiliev, the chief researcher at the Institute of the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences, noted in a conversation with RT, the phrases about countering terrorists conceal Americans' fears of losing Syria's energy resources to their geopolitical opponents.

“They mean completely different things when they talk about the presence of militants. In fact, they are most worried about the regular Syrian army and the armed forces of Russia, ”said Vasiliev.

• Oil production in Syria
• AFP
• © Delil SOULEIMAN

Outlook

According to Konstantin Blokhin, 500-600 troops in Syria is a “drop in the bucket”. However, these small forces will control the “key resource,” which provided a significant portion of the Syrian government’s revenues until the outbreak of the civil war in 2011, oil.

Having captured oil, the United States will be able to put pressure on the Syrian Kurds and, in exchange for access to fields and cash flows from the sale of hydrocarbons, try to provoke the Kurds to “destabilize the situation” in the region, the expert said.

“This will become a problem for Turkey, a problem for Syria and a problem for Russia, which is trying to act as a moderator in this matter and to contribute to the post-war reconstruction of the country,” said the political scientist.

Nevertheless, according to Konstantin Blokhin, sooner or later the United States will still be forced to leave Syria.

“The Americans will be there until the last, but they will have to leave,” the expert believes. “This will be due to increased control of the Syrian government over the country's territory.”

According to Vasilyev, American troops are not in a hurry to leave Syria also because statements about the withdrawal of troops coincided with the process of impeachment of Trump. The US president now can not fight against the establishment on two fronts at once and has ceded on the Syrian issue, considering resistance to the democrats to be more priority.

“If Trump’s impeachment fades into the background, I don’t exclude the possibility that Trump, with his obstinacy, may again return to this problem for domestic political reasons: he promised to withdraw troops from Syria in the event of victory over ISIS, and he must fulfill his promise,” sums up expert.

* “Islamic State” (ISIS, ISIS) - the organization was recognized as terrorist by decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of December 29, 2014.