US and coalition officials have repeatedly criticized the Syrian government for not being aggressive enough against ISIS, and Maj. Gen. Felix Gedney on Wednesday accused Syria of letting ISIS traverse their territory with “impunity,” despite substantially fighting between the two sides.
Still, despite going out of their way to portray Syria’s military is either incompetent or negligent in the ISIS war, coalition officials say they won’t target ISIS at all so long as their operations are inside Syrian government territory.
This could be very significant, as the US in particular tries to keep up some sort of legal pretext for keeping their military in Syria, nominally to “fight ISIS.” At present, those US troops are operating within Kurdish YPG territory, which at present isn’t under Syrian government control.
But the YPG aren’t talking secession by any means, and envision negotiating some sort of deal where they get nominal autonomy from the government at the end of the ISIS war, and that’s going to make it government territory in the long run.
While the US prefers to dismiss the idea of Syria eventually “defeating” the rebels and reunifying the country, there isn’t a lot of outright “rebel” territory left to be contested, and the Assad government seems virtually certain to survive, albeit with some reforms.
Israel should have helped Assad at least against ISIS ,, Than Iran could go home .But Israel and the United States seemed more interested in helping the head choppers . It just becomes a strange situation when the unexpected side wins . Trump should understand this more than anybody look at all the problems he has had from the FBI
Trump is getting credit at least in the USA because nobody here every wants to give Russia credit for any good deed . It would seem to be a hard sell for the United States to start retraining ISIS for more war in Syria . If The American people found out they were doing that . Already most American people have figured out most of the weapons and many of the soldiers we trained fought on ISIS’s side .
Slowly too slow, peace returns, mostly because of Russian intervention in late ’15. Trump should just stay out of the way, and not repeat Obama’disastrous Syrian mistakes advocated by the Security Establishment like Clapper and Panetta.
As the US is in Syria illegally, why isn’t the mainstream widely reporting and discussing this issue? Congress has abdicated, and the UN has not authorized this US action. Only Russia is (was) there legally at the invitation of the government. And they did a bang up job.