Here We Go Again

Pentagon officials have been pretty clear about their intention of keeping troops in Iraq more or less forever. The plans for Syria, however, have been far less public, mostly owing to the fact that US troops are there without the approval of the Syrian government.

The Kurdish YPG, however, appears to be privy to US intentions on the matter,and spokesman Talal Silo claims that he US has a “strategy policy” committing them to keep military forces in northern Syria “for decades to come.”

The expectation here is that US forces are to be deployed inside the Kurdish autonomous region of Rojava, though this is obviously predicated on the Kurds keeping the autonomous region beyond the war itself, something they haven’t negotiated with anyone else, and which even the US is officially “opposed” to, preferring Syria to have a strong centralized government.

Yet the reality is that a strong, centralized government in Syria is almost certain to reject the idea of an open-ended US military presence. The Kurdish YPG may be comfortable with such a hosting deal both to keep US arms flowing in and to keep the Turkish military out, but the Assad government has made clear they don’t consider the US welcome, and there’s little sign that the post-war government is going to be so dramatically changed as to reverse that view.