The future of the American presence in Syria and Iraq

Written by Nasser Kandil,

It is difficult to separate between the multiple escalating rounds which we witness in the region since the US words about reconsidering the nuclear agreement with Iran, the high escalating organized campaign against Hezbollah, and the project of the Kurdish secession towards ending the government of the Lebanese settlement by detaining its head and issuing a statement for his resignation, from the arrangements of Washington for the post- ISIS phase, it is the organization which Washington betted on managing the war with it to exhaust its international and regional opponents as Jeffry Feltman said. The US President Donald Trump said that the former administrations have made and managed ISIS entirely. In both cases the post-ISIS phase came quickly because Washington did not consider well, it did not expect the rapid uprise of Iraq that made it able to confront outside the US calendar, it did not expect the size of the Syrian hidden force for the decisive confrontation, it did not put in its consideration the existential Russian positioning in Syria, or the Iranian determination to resolve the matter of ISIS and the takfiri terrorist organizations no matter what the cost is. The immanent post- ISIS phase in the American timing means the immanent moment for searching for the future of the US presence in Syria and Iraq which is now present under the slogan of the war on ISIS.

With the approach of the end of ISIS, the Americans tried to find titles for alternative battles that fell successively as drawing a red line in front of the convergence of the Syrians and the Iraqis across the borders, and a line that stretches from Tehran to Baghdad, Damascus, and Beirut. They tried to invest on the Kurdish secession project as a title of exhausting the forces of the resistance from Iran to Iraq to Syria, but the force of the two bets has fallen quickly, so they tried to cooperate with Saudi Arabia to make the Kurdish project in Syria a wall of safety. The joint visit of the personal envoys of the US President and the Saudi Crown Prince to Raqqa was a public sign for that, but the response came from the axis of the resistance that Raqqa will be resolved after Boukamal. Now Boukamal is being liberated and the time of Raqqa is approaching. Whenever the Kurdish title for the coverage of the US presence in Syria seemed exposed to be dispersed, the hour of US departure seemed close as the former US Ambassador in Syria Robert Ford said, while in Iraq the attempt of swapping the campaign against the popular crowd with legitimizing the American presence after ISIS is still collided with the obstacles that prevent achieving the goal.

The Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing himself to meet the US President Donald Trump in Vietnam on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit. The US agenda calls for the cooperation in the North Korea’s nuclear weapons, while the agenda of the Russian President Putin has one question for the Americans “when will your troops leave Syria, the war on ISIS has ended”, but it does not seem that the Americans can allege an alternative or they allege to protect the Kurdish secession, after they have seen the most important experience in Iraq fell before their eyes.

The hour of the US departure from Syria is not far, as from Iraq, since Iraq has changed a lot from what the Americans knew when they brought ISIS to it.

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,