Syrian forces retake territory long held by U.S. allies, as Turkey expands offensive

Smoke rises Monday from the Syrian town of Ras al-Ain on the sixth day of Turkey's offensive against Kurdish forces. (Ozan Kose/AFP/Getty Images)

Syrian government troops moved back into towns for the first time in years after U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters, in a stunning reversal, reached a deal with the government. Turkish-backed rebels have begun a push to retake the northern city of Manbij, which has long been a flash point.

• By Erin Cunningham, Sarah Dadouch and Kareem Fahim
• 1 hour ago

In the Middle East, there’s one country every side talks to: Russia

Analysts say that American confusion and missteps — especially in the past few days — have opened the door to the Middle East for Russia.

• By Will Englund
• 1 hour ago

U.S. allies in Mideast weigh options as Putin visits region

Analysis: Trump hands Putin another win

Today’s WorldView

Analysis

Trump’s retreat in Syria turns into a mess

In the space of just a few days, the White House is already reaping what it sowed.

• By Ishaan Tharoor

Analysis: The four biggest foes of America that gain from U.S. pullout from Syria

WASHINGTON POST

Abandoned by the Russian President, Kurds Find New Ally With Syria's Putin Backed Government. 

NY TIMES

Trump withdraws U.S. forces from northern Syria, and administration scrambles to respond

Mourners attend a funeral Sunday for Kurdish political leader Hevrin Khalaf and other people killed during the Turkish offensive in Syria. (AFP via Getty Images)

“This is total chaos,” a senior administration official said on a day when Cabinet secretaries denied that the United States had “abandoned” its Syrian Kurdish allies to invading Turkish forces.

• By Karen DeYoung, Dan Lamothe, Missy Ryan and Kareem Fahim

U.S.-allied Kurds strike deal to bring Syrian troops loyal to Assad back into Kurdish areas

The announcement by the Syrian Democratic Forces further undermines the prospect of any continued U.S. presence along the Turkish border.

• By Liz Sly, Louisa Loveluck, Asser Khattab and Sarah Dadouch

Turkish-led forces film themselves executing a Kurdish captive

Unswayed by top advisers, Trump doubles down on decision

Officials say the president has tried to convince advisers and lawmakers that the United States is not to blame for Turkey’s military offensive

• By Seung Min Kim and Josh Dawsey

Trump faces bipartisan criticism over troop withdrawal

Turkey Attacks Kurds, U.S. Allies in Syria with Airstrikes and Artillery 

NY TIMES

Trump Distraction Backfires. U.S.Withdrawal From Syria Leaves Trump Isolated as Republican Allies Rebel.

NY TIMES

U.S., allies strike Syria after suspected chemical attack.
Trump joins Britain and France in ordering missile strikes against Syrian government

In an address to the nation Trump called the alleged chemical weapons use “the crimes of a monster.” Trump said the mandate for an allied attack was open-ended, but Pentagon chiefs later said the strikes would be repeated only if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad took further action that warranted a response.The proportional response was evidently calculated to keep Syria’s patrons, Russia and Iran, from retaliating.

When Syria’s civil war began in 2011, the U.N. and others tallied the numbers killed in the conflict. Seven years on, an increasingly complex war means the count has stopped.

OBAMA'S QUAGMIRE: limited war is rarely successful. And Arming Rebels Rarely Works.

Turkish Kurds stand on a hilltop on the outskirts of Suruc, at the Turkey-Syria border, as they watch smoke from a fire caused by the US-led coalition aircrafts in Kobani, Syria. (Lefteris Pitarakis/AP)

DAVID IGNATIOUS, WASHINGTON POST

What happens when an American plan for limited war against the Islamic State meets the savage reality of combat, as happened this week when the extremists pounded Kurdish fighters just inside Syria’s border with Turkey ? The cry rose in Washington and abroad for more American military involvement. This is how conflicts that start off contained begin to escalate.

Here’s President Obama’s dilemma in a nutshell: He has proposed a strategy for dealing with the Islamic State that is, in the words of Harvard professor Graham Allison, “limited, patient, local and flexible.” This calibrated approach makes sense to Allison, one of America’s most experienced strategists, because it limits U.S. exposure in fighting an adversary that doesn’t immediately threaten the United States.

The problem is that military history, since the days of the Romans, tells us that limited war is rarely successful. Policymakers, when faced with a choice between going “all in” or doing nothing, usually choose a middle option of partial intervention. But that leads to stalemates and eventual retreats that drive our generals crazy. The warrior ethos says, “If you’re in it, win it.” The politician rounds the edges.

Allison argued recently in the National Interest that other nations should bear the brunt of this war: “If our friends and allies . . . to whom ISIS [the Islamic State] poses an imminent or even existential threat are unwilling to fight themselves, to kill and to die for their own interests and values, Americans should ask: Why should we?” 

The United States’ problem since World War II is that it has chosen to fight limited wars that had ambiguous outcomes, at best. This was the case in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Only in 1991’s Operation Desert Storm did the United States win a decisive victory, but it had limited objectives and faced a weak adversary. As Henry Kissinger recently observed, the fight against the Islamic State comes when the American public is already demoralized by this chain of non-success.
Frustration with no-win conflicts led Gen. Colin Powell to declare what came to be known as the “Powell Doctrine” — that America should go to war only when vital national security is threatened, the public is supportive, allies are on board and there’s a clear exit strategy. Obama, too, hoped to avoid frustrating, unpopular wars in Syria and Iraq.

Rebel fighters in Nicaragua in 1987. Credit John Hopper/Associated Press

N.Y. TIMES

 C.I.A. Study of Covert Aid Fueled Skepticism About Helping Syrian Rebels.

WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency has run guns to insurgencies across the world during its 67-year history — from Angola to Nicaragua to Cuba. The continuing C.I.A. effort to train Syrian rebels is just the latest example of an American president becoming enticed by the prospect of using the spy agency to covertly arm and train rebel groups.

An internal C.I.A. study has found that it rarely works.

The still-classified review, one of several C.I.A. studies commissioned in 2012 and 2013 in the midst of the Obama administration’s protracted debate about whether to wade into the Syrian civil war, concluded that many past attempts by the agency to arm foreign forces covertly had a minimal impact on the long-term outcome of a conflict. They were even less effective, the report found, when the militias fought without any direct American support on the ground.

 The findings of the study, described in recent weeks by current and former American government officials, were presented in the White House Situation Room and led to deep skepticism among some senior Obama administration officials about the wisdom of arming and training members of a fractured Syrian opposition.

Although Mr. Obama originally intended the C.I.A. to arm and train the rebels to fight the Syrian military, the focus of the American programs has shifted to training the rebel forces to fight the Islamic State, an enemy of Mr. Assad.

The C.I.A. review, according to several former American officials familiar with its conclusions, found that the agency’s aid to insurgencies had generally failed in instances when no Americans worked on the ground with the foreign forces in the conflict zones, as is the administration’s plan for training Syrian rebels.

One exception, the report found, was when the C.I.A. helped arm and train mujahedeen rebels fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan during the 1980s, an operation that slowly bled the Soviet war effort and led to a full military withdrawal in 1989. That covert war was successful without C.I.A. officers in Afghanistan, the report found, largely because there were Pakistani intelligence officers working with the rebels in Afghanistan.

But the Afghan-Soviet war was also seen as a cautionary tale. Some of the battle-hardened mujahedeen fighters later formed the core of Al Qaeda and used Afghanistan as a base to plan the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. This only fed concerns that no matter how much care was taken to give arms only to so-called moderate rebels in Syria, the weapons could ultimately end up with groups linked to Al Qaeda, like the Nusra Front.

“What came afterwards was impossible to eliminate from anyone’s imagination,” said the former senior official, recalling the administration debate about whether to arm the Syrian rebels.

Last month, Mr. Obama said he would redouble American efforts by having the Pentagon participate in arming and training rebel forces. That program has yet to begin.

Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said last week that it would be months of “spade work” before the military had determined how to structure the program and how to recruit and vet the rebels.

“This is going to be a long-term effort,” he said.

Airstrikes Effect Limited As U.S. Focus on ISIS Frees Syria to Battle Rebels

THE GUARDIAN

Turkish soldiers on the border with Syria, with Kobani visible beyond as smoke from a shell rises. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

US-led air strikes in northern Syria have failed to interrupt the advance of Islamic State (Isis) fighters closing in on a key city on the Turkish border, raising questions about the western strategy for defeating the jihadi movement.
Almost two weeks after the Pentagon extended its aerial campaign from Iraq to neighbouring Syria in an attempt to take on Isis militants in their desert strongholds, Kurdish fighters said the bombing campaign was having little impact in driving them back.
Isis units have edged to within two kilometres of the centre of Kobani, according to Kurds fighting a rearguard action inside the city. The jihadis, who this weekend generated further outrage with the murder of the British hostage Alan Henning, are simply too numerous to be cowed by the air assault by US fighter jets, the Kurds say.
“Air strikes alone are really not enough to defeat Isis in Kobani,” said Idris Nassan, a senior spokesman for the Kurdish fighters desperately trying to defend the important strategic redoubt from the advancing militants. “They are besieging the city on three sides, and fighter jets simply cannot hit each and every Isis fighter on the ground.”
He said Isis had adapted its tactics to military strikes from the air. “Each time a jet approaches, they leave their open positions, they scatter and hide. What we really need is ground support. We need heavy weapons and ammunition in order to fend them off and defeat them.”

An American-led airstrike on Wednesday in Kobani, Syria, on the Turkish border. A Turkish official said the bombs did not stop the militants’ advance into town. Credit Sedat Suna/European Pressphoto Agency        

 N.Y. TIMES

The United States’ focus on the Islamic State has given cover to Syrian forces, they say. That has freed Mr. Assad’s military from worrying about checking the militant group’s advances and allowed them to continue to focus attacks on the greater political threat — less extreme Syrian-based insurgent groups bent on ousting Mr. Assad and the communities where they hold sway.

The Syrian government had long focused its attacks on insurgents other than the Islamic State, a group that had seemed more interested in establishing Islamic rule in its territories than in ousting Mr. Assad. But after the group overran parts of Iraq and carried out a series of lightning routs of Syrian Army bases, terrifying many government supporters, Syrian warplanes began attacking it with more intensity in its eastern strongholds.

 

That dynamic is at the heart of Washington’s impasse with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who is demanding that President Obama increase efforts to oust Mr. Assad before Turkey takes tougher action against the Islamic State.

The attacks by the Syrian government are creating other political problems for the United States. With both air forces in the sky, attacks by the Syrian government can be mistaken for American ones, including raids that kill civilians.

 

Mistrust of the United States is deepening among Syrian opponents of the government, including insurgents whom Mr. Obama hopes to train as a ground force against Islamic State militants.

 Some Syrians go further, saying that the simultaneous bombings are evidence that the United States is covertly coordinating with the Syrian government. Mr. Obama has publicly ruled out such coordination, saying Mr. Assad lost his legitimacy after using force against peaceful protesters and carrying out indiscriminate bombings.

 

Syrians feel abandoned by the world, and see Washington’s decision to prioritize the battle against the Islamic State as a victory for Mr. Assad’s strategy of eliminating moderate opposition and presenting his international opponents with a choice between him and extremists.

Since the American-led campaign began about two weeks ago, however, the need for Syrian forces to check the Islamic State has ebbed, and some insurgents who oppose the militant group say the government attacks on them have intensified.

 

A United States official said there were indications that since the American campaign started, Syrian fighter jets and helicopters had increased strikes somewhat in the core territories of non-Islamic State insurgents, such as Idlib, Aleppo and the Damascus suburbs.

“It would be silly for them not to take advantage of the U.S. doing airstrikes,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential intelligence reports. “They’ve focused in the west and left off the east, where we are operating. Essentially, we’ve allowed them to perform an economy of force. They don’t have to be focused all over the country, just on those who threaten their population centers.” 

Obama, at U.N., Urges Allies to Join Fight Against ISIS. Bombings Continue As ISIS Beheads French Tourist..

                                          Image CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times

N.Y. TIMES

President Obama laid out a forceful new blueprint on Wednesday for deeper American engagement in the Middle East, telling the United Nations General Assembly that the Islamic State understood only “the language of force” and that the United States would “work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death...Those who have joined ISIL should leave the battlefield while they can,” Mr. Obama said in a blunt declaration of his intentions.

In a much-anticipated address two days after he expanded the American-led military campaign against the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, into Syria, Mr. Obama said, “Today, I ask the world to join in this effort,” declaring, “We will not succumb to threats, and we will demonstrate that the future belongs to those who build, not those who destroy.”

 

 

Toward that end the Security Council unanimously approved a resolution Wednesday calling on all countries to adopt laws making it a serious crime for their citizens to join a militant group like the Islamic State or the Nusra Front.

Mr. Obama’s efforts to forge a strong coaltion to fight the Islamic State received another lift Wednesday from Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, who recalled Parliament to meet on Friday and vote on whether to join U.S.-led airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq after Baghdad requested help, the British government said. France has already taken part.

 

The military campaign against the Islamic State, Mr. Obama said, is only the most urgent of a raft of global challenges in which the United States has had no choice but to play a leadership role. These include resisting Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, coordinating a response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, from brokering a new unity government in Afghanistan, and marshaling a new push to confront climate change.

Mr. Obama delivered a searing critique of Russia’s incursions into Ukraine and promised to impose a rising cost on the government of President Vladimir V. Putin for what he called its aggression. He was particularly critical in describing the downing of a Malaysian commercial airliner over eastern Ukraine in July by what the United States and its allies have said was a Russian-made missile system, and he denounced the subsequent efforts to block recovery teams to investigate. All 298 people aboard were killed.

“This is a vision of the world in which might makes right,” he said, “a world in which one nation’s borders can be redrawn by another, and civilized people are not allowed to recover the remains of their loved ones because of the truth that might be revealed.”

 On the Syrian civil war and Iran — issues that Mr. Obama identified last year as two of his top priorities — he struck a markedly different tone. He mentioned Iran only in a cursory fashion, asking its leaders not to let the opportunity for a nuclear agreement slip by. American officials have privately expressed deep skepticism about the likelihood of reaching a deal with Tehran, and Mr. Obama’s remarks suggested that he shared that pessimism.

The president also did not single out the Syrian president for criticism, as he did last year, over the use of chemical weapons, though he spoke of the brutality of the civil war. Mr. Assad has voiced support for the American-led strikes in Syria, and his air force has not interfered with American war planes entering Syrian air space.

 

In Mr. Obama’s substance and tone, he conveyed a starkly different president than the one who addressed skeptical world leaders at the General Assembly last year...[instead] He spoke with the urgency of a wartime president, seeking to rally allies. Still, it remained unclear whether Mr. Obama’s speech represented a fundamental reconsideration of his policy or a reluctant response to the threat posed by the Islamic State, which took on emotional resonance for the American public after the militants posted videos of American hostages who were beheaded.

 

Mr. Obama made clear that the United States would act only if surrounded by a broad coalition. He dwelled on his success in signing up five Arab nations to take part in the airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria, casting it as a historic moment in which the Sunni Arab world was united to fight the scourge of Sunni extremism.

 

To some extent, Mr. Obama’s remarks seemed designed to get past months in which the president appeared openly conflicted about the proper use of American military force in the Middle East — an ambivalence that opened him to criticisms of being irresolute.

 

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Hervé Gourdel is seen with his captors moments before his execution in the video distributed by SITE Intelligence Group

 

In a sign of the growing influence of the extremist group known as the Islamic State, fighters aligned with the organization beheaded a French tourist in Algeria and released a video on Wednesday documenting the brutal killing, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.

The Frenchman — Hervé Gourdel, a 55-year-old mountaineering guide from Nice — was kidnapped over the weekend, soon after the Islamic State called on its supporters around the world to harm Europeans in retaliation for the recent airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.

The Algerian fighters swiftly responded to the Islamic State’s call by posting a video of Mr. Gourdel in captivity, appearing disoriented and still carrying his camera slung around his neck.

In addition, a militant group in the Philippines also announced that it was holding European captives: two Germans whom it threatened to kill unless Germany pays ransom or stops supporting the American-led campaign against the Islamic State.

 

Policy makers have debated for months whether the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is able to strike directly at the West. Its capacity for large-scale terrorist attacks beyond its home in the Middle East remains in dispute. But the beheading of Mr. Gourdel and the threat to kill the two Germans demonstrate that smaller groups around the world aligned with the Islamic State are capable of kidnapping Westerners and using them for grisly propaganda purposes in sympathy with the organization.

 

Small jihadist groups elsewhere in North Africa — like Libya and Tunisia — as well as in the Caucasus and in Southeast Asia have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, and many of them operate in areas where Westerners frequently travel, including tourists, journalists and aid workers.

The public oaths of allegiance indicate that the smaller groups have placed themselves under the command of the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Analysts have questioned how close these relationships are, but the sequence of events over the weekend suggested that at least the Algerian cell was directly following the larger group’s orders.

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The vast majority of airstrikes launched against Sunni militant targets in Syria have been carried out by American war planes and ship-based Tomahawk cruise missiles, military officials said Tuesday, in what they described as the successful beginning of a long campaign to degrade and destroy the Islamic State.

In disclosing the identities of the five Sunni Arab nations that joined or supported the attacks in Syria — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan and Qatar — the Obama administration sought to paint a picture of an international coalition resolute in its determination to take on the Sunni militant group.

 

Turkey had been reluctant to play a prominent role in the American-led coalition while the militants held 49 Turkish hostages. But now that they have been released, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signaled Tuesday that Turkey would assist the effort in some way.

But Mr. Erdogan, who is in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, did not provide details.