MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st December, 2018) The United States' decision to withdraw troops from Syria is driven by Washington's strategic interests to have Turkey as an ally in the region because the US intervention in Syria has failed, experts told Sputnik.
US President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that the US troops would be withdrawn from Syria now that the Islamic State (terror group, banned in Russia) had been defeated and there was no other reason to keep the US forces in the country.
A senior Trump administration official said earlier in the day that the next phase of the United States counterterrorism mission in Syria was to stay alert about the threat posed by the IS.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said that there have been no signs of US troops withdrawing from Syria yet, but conceded that it was "possible." Putin pointed to the example of Afghanistan, where the United States has been present for 17 years and "almost every year, they say they are pulling out their troops. They are still there." The Russian leader went on to generally agree with Trump that the IS had been defeated in Syria, but has warned of a threat of terrorists moving to neighboring regions.
France responded to the US pullout by saying that it would keep its presence in Syria as the fight against terrorism in the middle Eastern country was not over yet. Paris urged Washington to take into consideration the need to protect civilians in the northeast of Syria when withdrawing troops from the country.
At the same time, Germany has expressed surprise over the US withdrawal, while Syria's Ambassador to China Imad Moustapha told Sputnik that the pullout would be a hard blow for the Kurdish-led militia operating in the northeast of Syria, whose only sensible option now was to return the lands that they have seized back under control of the legitimate Syrian government.
US WON'T RISK COMPLICATING RELATIONSHIP WITH TURKEY OVER NORTH OF SYRIA
Jean-Vincent Brisset, a retired brigadier general of the French Air Force and a senior research fellow at IRIS, told Sputnik that the United States had to pull out its troops to save the face and its relationship with Turkey.
"Trump prefers to leave before it becomes a catastrophe, before there are problems with the Turks, with the Iranians and Syrians. For Americans, this Syrian intervention did not work ... It is a failure at minimum, meaning that instead of having an enormous blow, they have a limited defeat ... I think it is mostly the [US] problem with Iran and Turkey, than with Russia. What Americans wanted to achieve in Syria (which is the destabilization of the north of Syria) will not work; if they stayed it could aggravate the relations with Turkey, and if their relationship worsens, that would mean that Turkey will get closer with Iran," Brisset said.
Karim Pakzad, an IRIS expert on Middle East policy, believes that Washington could not let Ankara slide toward Moscow as Turkey remains a strategically important country for NATO.
"It is important for Trump to have Turkey, not Syria. If they want to play a role in Syria it is through mediation of Turkey. We have been seeing that Turkey slides toward Russia, there was even a contract to sell Russian arms to Turkey, with Turkey being a NATO member. And Turkey is an outpost of NATO in the region. Syria does not weigh much comparing to Turkey. And Americans knew that Syria has got out of their control ... So they have sacrificed Syrian Kurds to get closer with Turkey," Pakzad said.
The expert added that the United States could not counterbalance the influence of Russia and Iran in the region.
"Syria is lost for the United States. It is not 2,000 soldiers which could counterbalance the influence of Russia and Iran in Syria. So what is important for the United States in the region is to return to an alliance, friendly relationship with Turkey, because the reaction of the Syrian Kurds today shows that Trump has exchanged Syrian Kurds for good relationship with Turkey," Pakzad added.
ANTI-TERRORISM COALITION MEMBERS IN CONSULTATIONS WITH US
Some of the fifteen members of the anti-terrorism coalition tend to disagree with the US claims on the defeat of IS as they believe the fight with the terrorists is not over.
The UK Foreign Office said Thursday that the international coalition fighting the IS terrorists has made huge progress, but the terror organization remains a threat and should be defeated.
Even though the troops of the Western countries such as France are staying in Syria, their influence is minor and cannot make a difference, Pakzad underlined.
"There are some thousands of soldiers, they do not count, it is not what makes a change comparing to Russian or Iranian presence in Syria," the researcher said.
France, whose troops just like the US ones are on the ground in Syria unofficially, is pursing its own interests of eliminating the remaining French extremists.
"French troops are not officially present on the ground. At the international level it is totally illegal ... There are those who intervene in Syria with their planes and those who are present on the ground. The airstrikes already are not in line with the UN mandate or anything, they do not align with the invitation of the legal Syrian government either. And for the troops present on the ground it's even more complicated. There are British, French, maybe some other troops too, but all of them are there unofficially ... For France there is a desire to retrieve certain number of IS leaders who are still present on the ground and to also target the French Islamists who are also there - to retrieve or eliminate them before they return to France," Brisset said.
At the same time, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Wednesday that the US troops were returning home from their mission in Syria. All US State Department personnel will be evacuated from Syria within 24 hours, and the armed forces will be withdrawn in a period of 60 to 100 days, according to media reports.
