Analysis | New US strategy for Syria could be doomed as America’s allies fight each other, analysts say

Turkey’s assault against Kurdish militants in Syria has exposed the limitations of the Trump administration’s new Syria policy, calling into question the feasibility of Washington’s plans to maintain a military presence in the country without becoming embroiled in a wider conflict.

The Turkish offensive targeting Afrin, a Kurdish enclave just over Turkey’s border, was launched days after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson unveiled a strategy that committed the United States to an apparently open-ended troop presence in the Kurdish areas of northeastern Syria.

This strategy is supposedly aimed at preventing Islamic State militants from returning to areas recently taken from them, US officials say. But Tillerson articulated a number of other goals for the new policy, including rolling back Iranian influence, defeating al-Qaeda and securing a peaceful settlement of the Syrian conflict that excludes President Bashar al-Assad.

Washington’s focus on providing military support to Syrian Kurds battling Islamic State, however, has always been rife with contradictions, experts say.

“This highlights the fundamental difficulty of a US strategy that requires maintaining active alliances with two forces which are at war with each other,” said Noah Bonsey, a Syria analyst at the International Crisis Group. “There has never been an easy answer to that, and there isn’t going to be one.”