For months, U.S. commanders have been warning that even when the last bit of Syrian territory was liberated from the control of the Islamic State, the brutal ISIS movement would be far from defeated.
“Unrepentant, unbroken, and radicalized” is how Gen. Joseph Votel described what’s left of ISIS on March 7 in his final appearance before Congress, just three weeks prior to stepping down from commander of U.S. Central Command.
On March 22, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters that the territorial ISIS caliphate had been “100% eliminated,” but even as she spoke, ISIS was already reconstituting and presenting a new threat in Iraq.
Just days after President Trump declared all ISIS-controlled territory freed, U.S. and coalition planes were bombing ISIS positions in northern and western Iraq while Iraqi security forces moved in on the ground.
The “fight is not over,” a press release from the U.S.-led Operation Inherent Resolve was headlined.
[Related: Departing general warns ISIS remains ‘unrepentant, unbroken’ as it goes underground]
“In Iraq, they’ve had more time to reconstitute,” said James Jeffrey, Trump’s special envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, in a briefing at the State Department last month. This is in contrast to Syria, he said, where the defeat is fresh and ISIS is still in shock.
But even in Iraq where conditions are more favorable, Jeffrey said, ISIS is “reconstituting as small groups, operating in the shadows as a low-level insurgency. They’re not holding terrain, they’re not controlling populations.”
Trump’s strategy, according to the White House, is to withdraw most of the 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria in a “safe, deliberate, and coordinated manner,” while the remaining troops and their allies “continue to inflict maximum damage on the remnants of ISIS.”
According to both the Pentagon and the State Department, the withdrawal of U.S. troops has already begun, but no one can confirm that a single soldier has yet returned home.
The U.S. military is still trying to resolve several pressing issues that have only become more urgent with the president’s insistence that only a small residual force of about 400 troops can stay behind in Syria.
One problem is Turkey, which considers one faction of Kurds in the U.S.-backed coalition to be terrorists.
Turkish forces have already clashed in northwestern Syria with the Kurdish militia known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, and Turkey has been itching for the U.S. troops to leave so it can launch an offensive to clear the area of Syria along the Turkish border.
The U.S. is having trouble getting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who views the YPG the way the Pentagon views al Qaeda, to agree to lay off the fighters who defeated ISIS on behalf of the U.S. and the world.
The next problem is convincing other countries to take over the mission that the U.S. planned to lead — training and advising local security forces to ensure ISIS does not retake any territory or continue to mount suicide attacks, such as the one in January that killed four Americans at a popular restaurant in Manbij, an area that had been freed from ISIS control.
It will be a challenge to keep the loose coalition of Syrian Arab, Kurd, and Turkmen fighters focused on ISIS when, without U.S. protectors, they face threats not just from Turkey but also from regime forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad.
One answer is U.S. and coalition air power, which can be employed with a small number of U.S. spotters on the ground.
“When the president made the decision to conduct the step-by-step withdrawal from Syria, he made clear that he did want to maintain the air control and presence,” said Jeffrey. “So air power will continue to play an important role.”
Still unknown are the whereabouts of Abū Bakr al-Baghdadi, the elusive leader of ISIS who managed to slip through the dragnet as it tightened around the ever shrinking caliphate.
“We don’t know where he is and finding the top leadership of ISIS or other terrorist groups is always a priority,” said Jeffrey, while at the same time echoing President Trump in arguing that it’s time for other countries to step up.
“The United States put together, when the rest of the world was running for its lives, a 79-country and organization coalition, took the lead and smashed this organization in Syria and Iraq, where it had controlled much of those two countries,” Jeffrey said. “That’s the kind of thing only we can do, and we did it, and we did it brilliantly.”
To critics who say the U.S. is leaving Syria precipitously with the job only half done, Jeffrey has a ready rejoinder.
“Hey, there are things that we really do, like contain China and put together 79-country coalitions. A lot of this other stuff we think the international community should do.”
Jeffrey sees no ready solution for the bigger problem of ending Syria’s bloody civil war, which has claimed more than 400,000 lives since 2011.
“Do you want me to start counting frozen conflicts that the U.N. has been working on since the 1940s?” he shrugged. “That is the way things are in the world of diplomacy.”
Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner’s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter, “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com.
