In Syria free-for-all, US aims to break ISIS and protect allies

With the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the United States is scrambling to maintain influence in the vortex of world powers operating in Syria. And the American military hopes to protect its vulnerable Kurdish allies while hitting the Islamic State (ISIS) hard enough that it never regroups. 

The quick toppling of the Syrian regime surprised U.S. military officials. Now the Department of Defense is closely watching whether pockets of ISIS fighters – who controlled 34,000 square miles and 2 million people at their height a decade ago – will try to “take advantage of this opportunity and regain capability,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Monday.

The U.S. has 900 troops in Syria. These forces face particular risk now that the country’s government has collapsed, analysts say. As if to highlight these concerns – and to allay them – U.S. Central Command announced that it had conducted “dozens” of airstrikes involving B-52 bombers, F-15 fighter jets, and A-10 attack planes against ISIS operatives and training camps Monday.

A leading U.S. focus is to ensure that chemical weapons produced by the Assad regime “don’t fall into the hands of anyone that would want to use them against civilians, or against our partners in the region,” said Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh.

The quick toppling of the Syrian regime – punctuated by the flight of leader Bashar al-Assad to Moscow – came as a surprise to U.S. military officials.

“I think everybody expected to see a much more stiff resistance from Assad’s forces,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Monday as the regime was agreeing to hand over power to the Sunni Islamist Syrian rebel group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

Now the Department of Defense is closely watching whether pockets of Islamic State (ISIS) fighters – who controlled 34,000 square miles and 2 million people at the height of their self-described caliphate a decade ago – will try to “take advantage of this opportunity and regain capability,” Secretary Austin said. 

The United States, too, is sussing out opportunities amid a strategic free-for-all. As it scrambles to keep a strong presence in the vortex of world powers operating in Syria, the U.S. military is hoping to protect vulnerable allies and hit ISIS hard enough so that it never regroups. 

For this, the U.S. has roughly 900 troops in Syria. But times of transition are precarious, and these forces face particular risk now that the country’s government has collapsed, analysts say.

As if to highlight these concerns – and to allay them – U.S. Central Command, which runs Pentagon operations in Syria, announced that it conducted “dozens” of airstrikes against ISIS operatives and training camps Monday.

Today, Israel  Defense Minister Israel Katz said  Mr. Assad’s Navy  was destroyed to keep it from falling “into the hands of extremists,”  It’s one of hundreds of hits by Israeli warplanes since the rebel takeover.