When everyone is playing both ends against the middle, what do you get? The Middle East, from where, apparently, the US will continue its lengthening losing streak before it finally decides, if it ever does so, to extricate itself. From Ivan Eland at antiwar.org:
The United States and Turkey have reached an agreement, long sought by the Turks, to establish a safe zone in Syria to insulate Turkey from the multi-sided civil war in Syria and to provide a sanctuary to which many of the two million Syrian refugees now in Turkey can be repatriated. In return, the Turks are now conducting air strikes against ISIS and also will provide a much closer air base than the United States heretofore has had to attack ISIS in Syria, making U.S. and coalition air strikes more effective against the group. Yet, on balance, this may be a bad deal for the United States.
Part of behaving imperially – that is, like a globe-meddling superpower – means worrying about threats in all regions of the world, no matter how remote, more than the countries in them do. Turkey, right on the border with Syria and Iraq, should have long been more worried about ISIS than was the faraway Unite States. Yet Turkey has been more worried about ousting the Syrian ruler, Bashar al-Assad, from power and about Kurds in Syria and Iraq stirring up separatism in the minority Turkish Kurd population than it has about ISIS, even though some ISIS violence has crossed its border with those two countries. In fact, Turkey was so obsessed with taking out Assad, it let Islamist militant recruits pass through its border, some of whom joined ISIS.
Now, with a new ISIS-free safe zone on the Syria-Turkish border, created using “moderate” non-Kurdish Syrian rebels on the ground aided by now intensive Turkish and U.S.-led coalition air strikes, Turkey will feel insulated from the Syrian civil war and not take the action it really needs to take: sending its large and proficient ground forces on an incursion into Syria to battle ISIS. To date, U.S.-led bombing of ISIS has inflicted some damage on the group, but bombing also kills civilians, causing much anger which can often generate more militant fighters. Thus, it is dubious that only bombing a group such as ISIS from the air will be effective in eradicating it in the long run. In the end, capable ground forces will be needed to fight ISIS toe-to-toe and occupy the territory it now holds.
The main problem that the United States has had in battling ISIS in both Syria and Iraq is a shortage of friendly and capable local or regional ground forces with which to partner. In Iraq, the U.S.-trained Iraqi army cut and ran on two major occasions, and the best fighting forces are unfriendly Iran-trained Shi’ite militias, which only generate more support for ISIS in the long term when they are sent into Sunni territory, the areas that support the Sunni fundamentalist ISIS group. In Iraq and Syria, the Kurds also have been skilled fighters on the ground against ISIS, but they are best when fighting in Kurdish areas. That’s why Turkish ground forces – which are the second largest in NATO, next to those of the United States, and very capable – are so needed in the fight against ISIS.
But if Turkey feels more insulated from ISIS and the Syrian civil war – as the safe zone created by Turkish and coalition bombing will ensure – it is even more unlikely to use its army to battle ISIS. What’s more, the Turks are already using the safe zone agreement to bomb their own Kurdish separatists in Iraq, in addition to conducting air strikes on ISIS. These Kurdish separatists are allied with the Syrian Kurds who have been effective fighters against ISIS. To the extent that Turkish bombing impedes Kurdish resistance to ISIS, it actually may be counterproductive to US interests.
To continue reading: Helping Turkey Create a Safe Zone In Syria Is Not a Good Idea
