Photo credit: Wikipedia
Donald Trump's return to the White House will have, shall we say, interesting implications for the Middle East. Consider Trump's track record.
In October 2019, after a phone call with Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then-President Trump pulled out US troops from northwestern and north central Syria so quickly that they didn't have time to destroy their assets. So the Russians moved into the US fort at Manbij free of rent.
The US was in the area to fight ISIS, largely through the Kurds, who are among the most effective military allies that the US has had in the Middle East. When Trump withdrew troops from this part of Syria, the Kurds were left without protection against Daesh (Arabic for ISIS) and Turkey. Istanbul was the enemy of Kurds because they had long agitated for independence in southern Turkey, notably through the terrorist Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK). The Kurds in northern Syria deny links to the PKK, but the Turks are skeptical. For protection, the Kurds in northeast and north central Syria turned to Syrian President Bashar Assad, who had been fighting a civil war in the area since 2011. The US thus lost brave allies to one of its most implacable enemies.
Also because of the thoughtless American withdrawal, nearly 800 ISIS fighters and supporters escaped from detention at Ein Eissa.
The US still has roughly 300 troops in northeastern Syria, because an aide pointed out to Trump that they could secure Syrian oilfields in the area. Partly due to the reduced American presence in northern Syria, those troops were attacked nearly 100 times by Iranian-linked militias from October 2023 to the following February.
And ISIS has doubled its murderous attacks in Syria and Iraq, probably to show that it's still a terrorist outfit worthy of funding.
The Trump withdrawal had wider repercussions. Trump also cut back on resistance to Boko Harum, which enslaves children, in west Africa, and to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in the Sahel region. And the Europeans will certainly distance themselves from the not-so-new American President, whom they regard as impulsive, if not repulsive
There are indeed serious questions about Central Command in the Middle East. To what extent does the US wish to continue to fight terrorist groups there, most of them much reduced since 2022, rather than prepare for long-run confrontation with Russia and China?
But in light of what happened after one phone call in October 2019 with a manipulative deal-maker, one must ask whether Trump is capable of the subtle and complex analysis that the Middle East demands. -- Leon Taylor, Seymour, Indiana USA, tayloralmaty@gmail.com
Notes
For useful comments, I thank but do not implicate Mark Kennet and Barry Lenk.
References
No comments:
Post a Comment