Before the coronavirus pandemic, I had traveled to north-east Syria twice in twelve months. On my most recent trip to Manbij, I found myself walking wide-eyed into a hardware store like any other I'd go to back home in the States. Various electrical conduits and components for outlet boxes sat on the raw shelves of the nearest deconstructed engine blocks. In the center of the room, a brass teapot was idling over a butane burner, the flame dying out. Outside, men were sweeping debris from the road. I assumed it was junk, but they said it was actually the pieces of a car wreck intended for their neighbor, a doctor.
The bomb had achieved its goal, in part. The metal gate meant the doctor's business was closed. The building abutted the hardware store on one side. It was hollow now, its walls composed of exposed gray brick and shafts of blasted timber, its guts released by the explosion.
Warshin Sheko, then 27, and Bakri Hussain, then 28, finished sweeping and invited me to a cup of tea and a conversation I had had countless times during my travels between the northern cities of Manbij, Kobani, Qamishlo, Deir Al Zour and the border with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of northern Iraq. The men wanted to talk about the so-called “Kurdish question,” and President Donald J. Trump, a man innately bound, they believed, to their salvation.
“I would like Trump to decide to stay or else create a safe zone for Rojava and bring stability and security and create an internationally recognized autonomous region and then he would be a good man,” Seko said.
“It's not enough to just support us,” Hussain added, reaching over to fill his cup. “We need stability here. It is true that they brought stability for four years, but now they are leaving again while our enemies…” he continued.
The truth was that Trump had little to offer. Ambivalent about the region and its people, he promises to end the nation's “Forever Wars” and bring all troops home, what America had done for northern Iraq in the early 1990s—helping create of a Kurdish enclave that would remain semi-autonomous from the central government in Baghdad—was unlikely to happen again in Syria.
It is possible to confuse the development of an autonomous region of northern Iraq with one in northeastern Syria. As a colleague recently noted on this forum, the Kurds in northeastern Syria have suffered and continue to suffer greatly. But while they are allies who “by, with, and through” helped reduce ISIS to a regional crumb on an ever-growing platter of splinter groups, what the United States owes or can offer Syria's Kurds is far different from that. established in the early 1990s in Iraq amid Saddam's massacres of the Kurds.
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Manbij is about a four-hour drive from the border crossing over the Tigris River in the northwestern corner of Iraq and the semi-autonomous region of the north. While the Kurdish populations of the Levant are neighbors—and historically part of a larger “Kurdistan” that included parts of southern Turkey, northeastern Syria, northern Iraq, and western Iran—only the Iraqi Kurds have their own space to grow and to prosper.
The semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq was born during the March 1991 Iraqi no-fly zone imposed by the US, British and French governments during the Gulf War. As far as I can tell, the US government's broader policy goals motivating the no-fly zone at the time differed significantly from today's, as did the level of international support for the United States' wars in the Middle East.
Moreover, the institution of the KRG was created as the Kurds of northern Iraq experimented with self-rule, not because it was the intention of those countries, guided by UN Security Council Resolution 688, to give birth to a new nation. These changes show that what happened in the KRG cannot be replicated elsewhere, under any US administration.
Today, there is no global mechanism that would provide the basis for the United States' outright support for another semi-autonomous Kurdish nation-state. For now, such a move would require the cooperation of every player involved: Russia, Turkey, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, and the state or non-state actors operating along or supporting the Shiite Corridor. Placing the onus for such a diplomatic achievement on the United States is misplaced. Moreover, multinational interests have shown at best mixed feelings, goals, and hopes for Syria.
Nor should the upcoming election be seen as a possible change in the broader arc of US policy in Syria. The American role in both Iraq and Syria has shifted—what is possible in terms of intervention, even for ostensible allies, is limited by political will as well as domestic support. It is true that Democratic candidate Joe Biden is less likely to view Syria as a land of “sand and death” as his opponent. But while the former vice president's top advisers have indicated that Biden will maintain or increase the number of troops in Syria to put further pressure and leverage on Damascus, the rare step of establishing a no-fly zone in airspace controlled by Russia will not be a priority for either a continuing or a new administration.
Strategically, UNSCR 2254 could not be implemented through a no-fly zone because the means by which the Assad regime continues to be supported are ground corridors and external funding, not air power. This international funding is part of the focus of Caesar's new sanctions. What was possible for northern Iraq has long been taken off the negotiating table in Syria by US and regional officials.
Nor is any future administration likely to continue sending US troops to Syria, while maintaining our continued presence and oversight from northern Iraq appears both logistically and politically stable. On January 16, shortly before I arrived in Manbij, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device outside the Palace of Princes restaurant in northern Syria. The attack killed one US soldier, one US sailor, one US contractor and one Department of Defense civilian, while wounding three other US soldiers and killing 15 civilians.
Five days later, another attack wounded members of a joint US-Kurdish convoy an hour east of the earlier explosion. Those attacks helped prompt and stabilize Trump's slow troop withdrawal over the past two years, despite a recent influx of MRAP combat vehicles to support troops against Russian competition.
Given the risks, no US administration is likely to reverse the declining troop presence in Syria, although perhaps, as my colleague wrote, an office of Kurdish affairs at the State Department could help “more clearly define the diplomatic role of Kurdish forces in Syria. and to clarify the US commitment to its Kurdish allies.” But even that may be too little, too late.
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The reality is that the chances of forming a region in northeastern Syria that mimics what the Iraqi Kurds have fought (and lost) to preserve are thin to non-existent. Making gains with the leadership in Ankara is a non-starter, given that the region's government base depends on a shadowy connection to the PKK, a state-designated terrorist organization. And seeking friendly terms with Damascus would prevent any further support from the United States.
The other possible alternatives offer very little. In this small margin there is a continued American presence that protects its allies, despite the impracticality of boots on the ground: through tough stances against adversary aggression, pushing back Turkish origins, and more concerted support of what the United States is doing.” from, with and in'. Autonomy or prosperity need not be the immediate goal of US policy to be a byproduct of US business serving the administration's interests. These interests may include forcing the Syrian government into United Nations talks and rejecting the further incursion of Russian and Iranian assets.
As I reported for a magazine from Manbij on that last trip, the mere presence of American troops, even during the withdrawal, boosted local prosperity and sowed hope. At the site of the suicide attack that killed US personnel, a man sold cell phone chargers and iPhone cases nearby. Abu-Omar, then 30 and a former electrical engineer, told me that the American withdrawal, then expected though not yet realized, led him to weigh the pros and cons of the new administration.
“Other parties may take the area, the Free Syrian Army may come in, the regime army may come in and ISIS may come back. Those would cause instability,” he told me. “Or maybe if the occupying party was strong, it could benefit the country and revive it, but that will only happen if the occupying party was strong and took control of the area and established safety and security. In that case, whether the Americans leave or stay, it would be the same.”
