The Post's View
The U.S. continues to half-step on Syria
A U.S. Navy P-3 Orion Maritime patrol aircraft takes off from Incirlik airbase in the southern city of Adana, Turkey, on July 26. (Murad Sezer/Reuters)
By Editorial Board
July 27 at 8:16 PM
AFTER YEARS of working at cross-purposes, the United States and Turkey have finally begun to cooperate on Syria. Last week the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that it would allow U.S. planes and drones to operate out of two Turkish air bases against Islamic State targets in Syria, a step that should lead to a stepped-up offensive against jihadist-held territory along the Syrian border. At the same time, U.S. officials quietly acknowledged Turkish statements that the two countries were agreed on the creation of a de facto Syrian safe zone along the border, where moderate opposition fighters and refugees could congregate.
The welcome new cooperation could deal a powerful blow to the Islamic State if it succeeds in curtailing the group’s access to the border and its smuggling routes for fighters and supplies. It could also allow for the emergence of a more coherent Syrian opposition leadership and perhaps even an alternative government based in the country itself — something that opponents of the regime of Bashar al-Assad have been advocating for years.
Nevertheless, the Obama administration’s commitment to the plan looks like another half-step in its approach to Syria. Officials insist there will be no formal no-fly zone over the prospective safe area, which The Post reported would extend 68 miles from the Euphrates River to the eastern outskirts of Aleppo, and perhaps 40 miles south. Nor has the administration changed its policy of refusing to commit itself to defending rebel forces against the Assad regime, as opposed to the Islamic State. That begs the question of what will happen if, as The Post reported, the zone extends to towns such as al-Bab, near Aleppo, which has been attacked by Syrian government aircraft with barrel bombs in recent weeks.
Though it has long sought more concerted international action against the Assad government, the Erdogan government also appears more interested, for now, in short-term tactical considerations. It is responding to recent Islamic State attacks inside Turkey, including one last week that killed dozens; and it is seeking to create a space where refugees now in Turkey could be sent. More troublingly, it wants to prevent the targeted border area from falling under the control of Syrian Kurds allied with a Turkish Kurdish insurgent group — even though the Syrian Kurds are de facto U.S. allies who already have made important advances in the region with American air support.
What’s still missing is a coherent U.S. strategy for ending the civil war in Syria — something that will be necessary for the ultimate destruction of the Islamic State. President Obama and Secretary of State John F. Kerry have been speaking, vaguely, of new diplomatic prospects in the wake of the nuclear deal with Iran and the recent weakening of the Assad regime. But neither has offered a vision of how Iranian and Russian support for the Assads — and Iran’s deep commitment to the Hezbollah militia — could be reconciled with the imperative for a new, representative government that could unite Syrians against the Islamic State.
In fact, such an accommodation may be impossible. That’s why it’s essential that the administration commit to forging a strong Syrian alternative, both political and military, through its new collaboration with Turkey.
Read more on this issue:
* David Ignatius: A new cooperation on Syria
* Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on the U.S., Syria and the Islamic State
* David Ignatius: Assad nears the tipping point
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