The New York Times - 08.10.2019

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONALTUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2019 N A

But Republicans were not sure.
Even after Mr. Trump recalibrat-
ed his message, Senator Mitch
McConnell, Republican of Ken-
tucky and the majority leader,
warned against “a precipitous
withdrawal” that would benefit
Russia, Iran, President Bashar al-
Assad of Syria and the Islamic
State. Mr. McConnell sharply
urged the president to “exercise
American leadership.”
The president’s pronounce-
ments kept supporters, foreign
leaders, military officers and his
own aides off balance as they tried
to interpret Mr. Trump’s meaning
and anticipate its consequences.
The president has long agitated to
get the United States out of over-
seas wars, only to be pulled back
by the national security establish-
ment and congressional allies.
In this case, Mr. Trump seemed
to be responding instinctively to
an unexpected comment by Presi-
dent Recep Tayyip Erdogan of
Turkey near the end of a tele-
phone call on Sunday that other-
wise focused on trade and defense
assistance. Mr. Erdogan, who has
long threatened to send troops
over the border against Kurdish
fighters allied with the United
States, told Mr. Trump that he was
finally moving forward.
Mr. Trump told Mr. Erdogan
that he did not support an incur-
sion, according to aides. But
rather than hold back Mr. Erdo-
gan anymore, Mr. Trump got off
the call and promptly issued a
late-night statement that he
would pull out about 50 American
special operations troops near the
border who have served as a trip
wire deterring Turkey from send-
ing forces into Syria.
By Monday morning, he was
bombarded with complaints from
both Republicans and Democrats,
who charged that such a move
would abandon the Kurds, some of
the United States’ most loyal and
effective allies in the region, while
emboldening some of America’s
most threatening enemies.
“This is a big win for Iran and
Assad, a big win for ISIS,” Senator

Lindsey Graham, Republican of

South Carolina and usually one of

the president’s most vocal back-

ers, said on Fox News. “I will do

everything I can to sanction Tur-

key if they step one foot in north-

eastern Syria. That will sever my

relationship with Turkey. I think

most of the Congress feels that

way.”

Mr. Graham said he would also

introduce a nonbinding resolution

asking Mr. Trump to reconsider

his move, which he called “short-

sighted and irresponsible.” The

president’s assertion that the Is-

lamic State has been defeated is

“the biggest lie being told by the

administration,” Mr. Graham add-

ed.

Representative Liz Cheney of

Wyoming, a member of the House

Republican leadership, called

withdrawing forces “a cata-

strophic mistake.” Senator Marco

Rubio, Republican of Florida, said

it would be “a grave mistake that

will have implications far beyond

Syria.” Senator Mitt Romney, Re-

publican of Utah, said, “The Presi-

dent’s decision to abandon our

Kurd allies in the face of an assault

by Turkey is a betrayal.”

Nikki R. Haley, Mr. Trump’s for-

mer ambassador to the United

Nations, joined the chorus. “We

must always have the backs of our

allies, if we expect them to have

our back,” she tweeted. “The

Kurds were instrumental in our

successful fight against ISIS in

Syria. Leaving them to die is a big

mistake. #TurkeyIsNo-

tOurFriend.”

Left virtually on his own, Mr.

Trump found support on Capitol

Hill from Senator Rand Paul, Re-

publican of Kentucky and one of

the president’s staunchest de-

fenders. The president “once

again fulfills his promises to stop

our endless wars and have a true

America First foreign policy,” Mr.

Paul tweeted.

Mr. Trump came to office prom-

ising to get the country out of

overseas wars, contending that

the military’s involvement in Af-

ghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere

since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks

had largely been a waste of lives

and money, with little to show for

it.

A similarly sudden decision last

winter to pull American troops out

of Syria prompted Defense Secre-

tary Jim Mattis to resign, and

Brett McGurk, the special presi-

dential envoy to the coalition

fighting the Islamic State, acceler-

ated his own planned departure in

protest.

The Senate, led by Mr. McCon-

nell, relayed its displeasure in

January by voting overwhelm-

ingly to rebuke Mr. Trump over his

planned withdrawal of military

forces from Syria and Afghani-

stan.

Mr. Trump later walked back

his decision in Syria to some ex-

tent, but has been frustrated to not

be doing more to extricate the

United States from entangle-

ments in the region. His support-

ers said that the latest move

should therefore not be a surprise

and that the Kurds had fair warn-

ing.

The Kurdish forces in the area,

part of the Syrian Democratic

Forces, or S.D.F., have been the

most reliable American allies in

the region for years, a critical ele-

ment in recapturing territory

once controlled by the Islamic

State. But Turkey has long consid-

ered the Kurdish fighters to be ter-

rorists and has lobbied the United

States to abandon support for

them.

Mr. Trump’s initial messages on

Monday morning focused not on

holding back Turkey but on

pulling back from the region.

“I held off this fight for almost 3

years, but it is time for us to get

out of these ridiculous Endless

Wars, many of them tribal, and

bring our soldiers home,” Mr.

Trump wrote. “WE WILL FIGHT

WHERE IT IS TO OUR BENEFIT,

AND ONLY FIGHT TO WIN. Tur-

key, Europe, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Rus-

sia and the Kurds will now have to

figure the situation out.”

He offered little sympathy for

the fate of America’s Kurdish al-

lies: “The Kurds fought with us,”

he wrote, “but were paid massive

amounts of money and equipment

to do so.”

Meeting with reporters later in

the day, he recalled his promises

to get out of Middle East wars. “I

campaigned on the fact that I was

going to bring our soldiers home

and bring them home as quickly

as possible,” Mr. Trump said.

But even as Mr. Trump talked in

global terms, administration offi-

cials stressed the limited nature of

the current action. Special opera-

tions troops near the border will

be relocated in coming days, but

the total 1,000 troops in Syria

would not immediately come

home.

Mr. Trump has been particu-

larly irritated that the United

States continues to pay to detain

thousands of Islamic State fight-

ers captured in recent years. For

months, he has tried to pressure

European states and others to

take those fighters who originated

from there, only to run into strong

resistance.

“We said, ‘Take them back’ and

unfortunately, like NATO, they

take advantage,” Mr. Trump told

reporters.

But if Turkey moves against the

Kurds, the S.D.F. could abandon

camps to fight the Turks, poten-

tially allowing some 10,000 cap-

tured Islamic State fighters, in-

cluding 2,000 foreigners, to es-

cape. A senior administration offi-

cial who briefed reporters on the

condition of anonymity under ad-

ministration ground rules said Mr.

Trump told Mr. Erdogan that if he

did send in troops, they would be

responsible for securing the pris-

oners.

The United States has sus-

pended longstanding efforts to

create a safe zone in Syria near

the Turkish border that would

have kept Turkish forces and Syr-

ian fighters at a distance from

each other. But another adminis-

tration official said that the United

States was now controlling the air

space over northeast Syria in part

to prevent Turkish aggression.

The prospect that an American

withdrawal would lead to a Turk-

ish incursion alarmed European

allies. The French and Germans

issued statements expressing

deep concern. A State Depart-

ment official said the interna-

tional reaction to a possible Turk-

ish operation had been “devastat-

ing” and acknowledged it would

destabilize the region.

For now at least, the Syrian De-

fense Forces leadership has told

American officials that it will con-

tinue to detain the Islamic State

fighters and their families in

makeshift camps in northern Syr-

ia. But a State Department official

acknowledged that the best-

trained guards could be pulled

away in the event of conflict with

Turkey.

Most of the camps are farther

south than where the Turkish

forces have indicated they might

go in Syria, outside the boundary

of even the broadest safe zone that

has been discussed. If the Kurdish

guards flee advancing Turkish

forces, the official said, then the

administration expects the Turks

to take over the detention centers.

American counterterrorism

specialists said on Monday that

transferring counterterrorism re-

sponsibilities to a Turkish military

force that has proved ill trained

and ill equipped to conduct such

operations in their own country

would be disastrous and poten-

tially reverse important victories

by American troops and their

Kurdish partners on the ground.

“It’s hard to imagine Turkey has

the capacity to handle securely

and appropriately the detainees

long held by the Syrian Kurds —

and that’s if Turkey even genuine-

ly intends to try,” said Joshua A.

Geltzer, a former senior director

for counterterrorism at the Na-

tional Security Council under Mr.

Obama.

“The release or escape of such

detainees,” he added, “would in-

stantly energize ISIS’s efforts, al-

ready underway, to regroup and

surge again.”

Reporting was contributed by
Catie Edmondson, Eric Schmitt,
Helene Cooper and Eileen Sulli-
van.

Backtracking on Syria,

President Mixes Signals,

Inciting a G.O.P. Furor

DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMES

From Page A

President Trump with senior

military leaders Monday at the

White House. Below, Senator

Lindsey Graham disagreed

sharply on a Syria pullout.

The 45th PresidentForeign Policy

WASHINGTON — For nine
months, the Pentagon played
down the presence of its 1,
troops in Syria, hoping that Pres-
ident Trump would not focus on
the extent to which the American
military was continuing to fight
the Islamic State despite his
order in December to pull out.
On Sunday, the president ap-
peared to say he had had
enough.
Now, for the second time in
less than a year, the Defense
Department, the State Depart-
ment, Congress and staff across
the national security establish-
ment are scrambling to respond
to the words of a president who
views Syria and the fight against
ISIS as a battle largely won and
done for American troops. On
Monday, after a White House
announcement the night before
that Mr. Trump was moving
American troops out of the way
of a threatened Turkish incursion
into Syria, Defense Department
officials were struggling to put
their already piecemeal Syria
military strategy back together.
It will not be easy. Caught
between furious Kurdish allies
who see Mr. Trump’s announce-
ment as abandonment, an au-
thoritarian Turkish leader who
may take Mr. Trump’s words as
tacit permission to move against
Kurds in northern Syria, and an
American president who has
made clear he wants out of the
region, the Pentagon is ap-
proaching a junction that the
military feared was coming for
some time.
The Defense Department
“made lemonade out of lemons”
the first time Mr. Trump an-
nounced a Syria withdrawal, said
Derek Chollet, an assistant secre-
tary of defense in the Obama
administration. The Pentagon
withdrew 1,000 of its 2,
troops, moved some command
elements to Iraq, and continued
to aid Kurdish fighters still fight-
ing the Islamic State and holding
some 11,000 Islamic State pris-
oners of war.
But officials did not trumpet
their mission or their efforts.

It will be a lot harder to pull

this feint again, military experts

said, particularly if President

Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey

goes ahead with his threatened

incursion into northern Syria, as

it has been the presence of

American troops alongside the

Kurds that many believe has

kept him at bay.

Pentagon officials were insist-

ing on Monday that the United

States remained firmly opposed

to a Turkish incursion. “The

Department of Defense made

clear to Turkey — as did the

president — that we do not en-

dorse a Turkish operation in

northern Syria,” Jonathan Hoff-

man, a Pentagon spokesman,

said in a statement. He warned

that “unilateral action creates

risk for Turkey,” which would be

responsible for thousands of

Islamic State fighters being held

by the Kurds.

But the departure of American

troops from northern Syria

makes it far more difficult to hold

together the coalition fighting

the Islamic State.

For a while, the generals at the

Pentagon thought they were

succeeding within the narrow

confines of maneuver room that

Mr. Trump gave them, obeying

the president’s order while not

deserting Kurdish partners and

undercutting gains against the

Islamic State in northeastern

Syria. Defense Department

officials devised a plan for the

Pentagon to cut its combat force

there roughly in half by early

this past May, or to about 1,

troops — and then pause with

what commanders called a “re-

sidual force.”

The military would then as-

sesses conditions on the ground

and reduce the number of forces

periodically, if conditions al-

lowed, until the force levels

reached the 400 troops that Mr.

Trump approved in February.

And, above all else, military

officials decided they would keep

quiet about Syria. The strategy

extended all the way to combat

outposts in the country, where

Special Forces officers were

reminded that their mission

could end quickly if the com-

mander in chief was publicly

reminded that there were still

1,000 troops there, according to

one officer who recently returned

from Syria.

The longer withdrawal time-

table gave the Trump adminis-

tration more time to negotiate

with European allies who had

said they would not leave troops

in Syria if the United States

withdrew all of its forces. It was

also supposed to allow more time

for Washington to work out

details of a safe zone south of the

Turkish border, where Mr. Erdo-

gan wants to repatriate hundreds

of thousands of Syrian refugees

now in Turkey. Turkey also wants

to make sure Kurdish fighters

cannot launch terrorist attacks

across its border.

By late March, the American

withdrawal settled around 1,

troops — what the military calls

an “economy of force” mission.

The troops effectively operated

between two allies: Turkey and

the Kurds. Turkey is a decades-

long NATO partner. The Syrian

Kurds are much more recent

allies, but they have played a

pivotal role as the major ground

force against the Islamic State.

The problem for Washington

has been that the two hate each

other.

After Mr. Erdogan threatened

in early August to carry out a

cross-border operation to attack

the Syrian Kurds, American

diplomats and commanders

rushed to establish a series of

confidence-building measures —

joint reconnaissance flights and

ground patrols by American and

Turkish forces — along a 75-mile

stretch of the 300-mile border

east of the Euphrates River.

The American troops in north-

eastern Syria, largely teams of

Special Forces, also provide

important logistics, intelligence

and other support for Syrian

Kurdish fighters who continue to

carry out raids and disrupt oper-

ations against Islamic State

targets.

Since the American-backed

forces ousted the Islamic State

from its last shard of territory in

Syria seven months ago, the

terrorist group has been gather-

ing new strength, officials say,

conducting guerrilla attacks

across Iraq and Syria, retooling

its financial networks and target-

ing new recruits at a giant allied-

run tent camp in northeastern

Syria called Al Hol.

“After enlisting support from

the Kurds to help destroy ISIS

and assuring Kurdish protection

from Turkey, the U.S. has now

opened the door to their destruc-

tion,” Senator Mitt Romney,

Republican of Utah, and Senator

Christopher S. Murphy, Demo-

crat of Connecticut, said in a

statement on Monday. “This

severely undercuts America’s

credibility as a reliable partner

and creates a power vacuum in

the region that benefits ISIS.”

Pentagon officials say the

American presence, and several

million dollars in assistance to

maintain and improve the Syrian

Kurds’ makeshift jails in north-

eastern Syria, has ensured the

Kurds continue to detain about

11,000 ISIS fighters, including

more than 2,000 foreigners.

“It’s hard to imagine Turkey

has the capacity to handle se-

curely and appropriately the

detainees long held by the Syrian

Kurds — and that’s if Turkey

even genuinely intends to try,”

said Joshua A. Geltzer, a former

senior director for counterterror-

ism on the National Security

Council in the Obama adminis-

tration. “The release or escape of

such detainees would instantly

energize ISIS’s efforts, already

underway, to regroup and surge

again.”

NEWS ANALYSIS

Can the Pentagon Keep Working Around the White House?

By HELENE COOPER

and ERIC SCHMITT

Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed
reporting from Kabul, Afghani-
stan.

American soldiers last month during a United States-Turkey patrol in Syria. The Pentagon has played down the presence of troops.

RODI SAID/REUTERS