America's Syria Free Zone Will Come at a Price

Seth J. Frantzman

Security, Middle East

Eastern Syria now presents a recurring challenge and crises. Rarely in history has Washington had to keep two ostensible allies at bay, while trying to achieve a third goal.

Turkey and the United States appeared to climb down from another crisis in eastern Syria in early August. The agreement to coordinate the establishment of a “safe zone” along the Syria-Turkish border leads to another stage in a process that began in December when the White House announced that the United States would leave Syria. It is a process that neither pleases Turkey nor U.S. partners on the ground among the Syrian Democratic Forces—and it likely ensures more crises in the future.

The decision by President Donald Trump to withdraw from Syria in December 2018 was presaged by threats from Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to “turn the east of the Euphrates into a peaceful and livable place for its true owners just like the other areas we have made secure in Syria.” Tukey had asserted last year that ISIS was defeated and that it could deal with eastern Syria if the United States left, including tamping down ISIS remnants. This threatened a collapse of eastern Syria as the political echelons linked to the SDF opened discussions with Damascus and scrambled to send a delegation to Washington in January to encourage the United States to stay.

In the end the United States did stay in Syria, seeking a slow drawdown and asking European countries to contribute more troops. The “safe zone” concept has been increasingly floated since January 2019 with claims that it could reach thirty kilometers into Syria and run along some four hundred kilometers of border to the Euphrates river. That’s around the size of Connecticut and takes in most of the Kurdish population centers of eastern Syria. U.S. officials and lawmakers, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, have said that while the United States understands Turkey’s concerns, the United States should not ditch its SDF partners who defeated ISIS in eastern Syria, liberated Raqqa, and lost thousands of fighters between 2014 and 2019.