Military convoys traveling the dusty roads of eastern Syria often fly one of two flags: American or Russian. Rarely are their guns pointed at each other — until Tuesday.
That was when Russia allegedly violated a deconfliction arrangement in Syria, ramming an American MRAP vehicle, concussing four American service members.
“Russian forces breached our deconfliction arrangement in Syria and injured U.S. service members with their deliberately provocative and aggressive behavior,” chief Pentagon spokesperson Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement Thursday.
The Department of Defense commended American personnel on the ground for de-escalating the situation and leaving the scene.
Alleged videos of the incident taken by Russian military appeared to show American vehicles blocking the road and inhibiting the path of a Russian convoy prior to the ramming. A low-flying Russian helicopter hovers over the scene.
At one point, Russian and American gun turrets face each other, flags blowing stiffly in the desert wind.
The stated goal of the American presence in Syria is the enduring defeat of the Islamic State, something President Trump boasted of in his nomination acceptance speech Thursday.
Trump’s call to withdraw from Syria in December 2018 led to the resignation of then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.
Trump later took an about-face, leaving a residual force of 400 troops in Syria to continue rooting out remnants of ISIS.
The White House has long shied away from directly criticizing Russia or Vladimir Putin, who is accused of sponsoring bounties for U.S. service members in Afghanistan.
A longer video of the confrontation. US forces appear to be blocking a road and then attempt to block the path of the Russian patrol when they drive through the field. An American MaxxPro MRAP appears to collide with a Russian Typhoon-K MRAP. 319/https://t.co/iCliZSYVY9 pic.twitter.com/xZTtN6l0Ib
— Rob Lee (@RALee85) August 26, 2020
The current tension threatens to bubble up as a campaign issue that pits the safety of American service members against Trump’s stated fondness toward his Russian counterpart.
Russia claims its presence in Syria, at the behest of Syrian President Bashar Assad, is to defeat the terrorist group that once held a broad swath of territory across Syria and Iraq. Despite similar goals to defeat ISIS, the United States and Russian militaries do not collaborate to that end.
Russia also aims to bolster Assad’s regime, securing a foothold in the Middle East with a warm-water port and positioning itself to exploit Syria’s oil wealth.
Deconfliction with Russia
America’s and Russian’s presence in the same land and skies on a daily basis has been coordinated for two years by a careful deconfliction process led by U.S. Central Command Army Lt. Gen. Pat White.
CENTCOM’s Marine Corps Gen. Frank McKenzie described the effort in an Aug. 12 U.S. Institute of Peace online event.
“We deconflict with the Russians,” he said. “We’re carefully bounded on what we can do.”
McKenzie described how U.S. efforts take place east of the Euphrates River, with Russia supporting the Syrian government and operating primarily in the west of the country. However, coalition aircraft frequently fly in the same skies, and military convoys use the same roads.
“We talk to them through a deconfliction channel,” McKenzie said. “[White] could talk through his counterpart when necessary, when we need to deconflict specific operations — and then we have a more technical channel that goes between our air operations center and their air operations center.”
He added: “Our primary goal in those deconflictions is to prevent miscalculation.”
McKenzie described the operating environment in Syria as complex and challenging — and coordination with the Syrian government virtually nonexistent.
Despite both countries’ stated goals of eliminating ISIS, McKenzie said that west of the Euphrates, the conditions exist for the radical Islamic group to rise again.
“West of the Euphrates River, in areas that we do not control, where the regime controls ground with their Russian patrons, the conditions are as bad or worse than in those that spawned the original rise of ISIS,” he said. “I think that is very concerning. We should all be very concerned about that.”
‘Daily’ U.S. interactions with Russia
In a July press briefing, Air Force Maj. Gen. Kenneth Ekman, deputy commander of Operation Inherent Resolve, described daily interactions between two adversarial military powers pursuing different objectives in the same space.
“The Russians and coalition forces are out in some of the same spaces every day,” he said, following a July incident in which an American soldier on patrol was killed. “Contact is actually very frequent. That’s true both on the ground, in the air. And so frankly, our forces are quite used to operating in close proximity to each other.”
At the time, Ekman said the incident that led to the death of an American soldier on patrol was under investigation and that there was no evidence Russia was operating in the area at the time.
“Our troops are going to see each other out on the roads day in and day out as they pursue their respective objectives,” he added. “Our goal is to make sure we abide by the deconfliction protocols and that we make sure that none of those contacts become escalatory. And by and large, we’ve been very successful.”
He added: “To the Russian counterparts who are in Syria, and we talk to them multiple times a day, I think both sides agree that neither nation wants any sort of a miscalculation.”
In the tense moments when an American MRAP was stopped aside the Russian vehicle on Tuesday, Russian voices could be heard yelling as the loud blades of a Russian helicopter whipped overhead.
American service members did not exit the vehicle.
“We have advised the Russians that their behavior was dangerous and unacceptable,” Hoffman continued in his statement. “We expect a return to routine and professional deconfliction in Syria and reserve the right to defend our forces vigorously whenever their safety is put at risk.”
