US-Backed Syria Fighters Hope Trump Won’t Repeat ‘Painful Experience’

A political representative of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has told Newsweek that the Kurdish-led group in control of parts of northeastern Syria is eager to see President-elect Donald Trump come through on his promises of peace for the Middle East but said that some of his past policies undermined their cause.

Upon first coming to office in early 2017, Trump inherited an intensive phase of the U.S.-led coalition’s fight against the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), in which the Pentagon partnered with the SDF in Syria. After the jihadis were declared defeated by Trump in 2019, Trump pulled out U.S. troops from large parts of northern Syria in a deal with Turkey, leading to a new Turkish incursion into the region.

Turkey has continued to conduct strikes against SDF positions across the self-proclaimed Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) and has repeatedly criticized U.S. support for the SDF, which Ankara considers linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Now, with Trump set to return to the White House in two months, Sinam Mohamad, the Syrian Democratic Council’s (MSD) envoy in Washington, D.C., told Newsweek, “we had a painful experience with President Trump at that time, and I do not deny that we felt frustrated when Washington decided to withdraw from Syria and left its allies at the mercy of Turkish threats, which occupied areas in northern Syria and had an appetite to occupy more territory.”

“But now we look positively at President Trump’s return, and we hope that this experience will not be repeated again,” she added, “and we believe that President Trump’s view now is different from what it was before.”

Newsweek has reached out to the Syrian Mission to the United Nations, the Trump transition team and the Turkish Foreign Ministry for comment.

Today, nearly 1,000 U.S. military personnel remain in Syria under the ongoing mission of ensuring the defeat of ISIS. The U.S. personnel are present in the AANES as well as a southern desert garrison known as Al-Tanf that is also occupied by U.S.-backed rebel groups.

While U.S. Central Command still considers ISIS the primary target of U.S. forces in Syria, the regionwide fallout of the war between Israel and the Iran-aligned Axis of Resistance has been felt in Syria over the past year. Militias aligned with the Syrian government and its ally, Iran, have conducted rocket and drone attacks against U.S. troops in Syria and have been targeted by occasional U.S. airstrikes.

Israel has also regularly conducted airstrikes against suspected Iran-linked targets across Syria as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) faces rocket fire from Axis of Resistance factions on multiple fronts, including Syria. And as the IDF wages ground offensives in Gaza and Lebanon, Israeli personnel have been more active along disputed border regions with Syria, fueling concerns the conflict could expand even further.

The U.S. largely switched its strategy in Syria from backing rebels seeking to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the SDF in October 2015, shortly after Russia announced a military intervention to support Assad in the midst of the country’s ongoing civil war.

Russia has also remained active in the country, both on the ground and in the diplomatic sphere. Moscow has been seeking to restore relations between Ankara and Damascus and played a pivotal role in the U.S.-Turkey agreement that redrew the lines of control of northern Syria in October 2019.

Speaking to the state-run TASS Russian News Agency on Thursday, Russian presidential envoy for Syria Alexander Lavrentyev spoke to possible changes in U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East under Trump.

“Naturally, we think that we will see such changes. We know Mr. Trump, but, of course, we will see whether there will be any chances in the position on the Middle East,” Lavrentyev said. “But, anyway, we hope that some agreements, including on Syria, will be reached.”

Noting how “Trump has pledged to make every effort to prevent armed conflicts on the planet,” he agreed that there were “possibilities for progress” on this front.

With the prospect of U.S.-Russia relations that have all but collapsed due to the war in Ukraine improving under a second Trump administration, Mohamad addressed the possibility of new talks to bring a diplomatic solution to the volatile situation in Syria.

“There is an American-Russian presence within the geography of the Autonomous Administration, and the Syrian Democratic Forces and the Autonomous Administration continue to communicate with these forces,” Mohamad said, “and MSD has strong relations with Washington.”

“There is no doubt that the American-Russian rapprochement will have a central role in this solution,” she continued, “and despite some painful experiences with them, the upcoming rapprochement will have an impact not only on the Middle East but on the whole world.”

With the SDF and Syrian government also repeatedly failing to come to a lasting agreement, Damascus has criticized the AANES as a separatist entity backed by an illegal U.S. occupation, a description rejected by Mohamad.

“We are open to everyone and do not have any separatist intentions or any plans that would divide Syria,” Mohamad said. “We defend Syrian unity and it is a basic goal for us.”

Under the first Trump administration, the U.S. and Russia occasionally communicated in line with their shared goal of defeating ISIS. The SDF broadly backed this effort and called for greater collaboration on diplomatic affairs in Syria at the time.

However, notable clashes also occurred, including a particularly deadly incident in which U.S. forces responding to an attack on the SDF conducted large-scale strikes against pro-government forces, including militias and Russian private military companies, in February 2018.

Russia and Iran continue to demand the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, whose government remains unrecognized by the U.S. and subject to Western sanctions. While Moscow and Tehran are aligned in their support for Damascus, they have expressed some differing views on the future of the country in a post-conflict scenario and Russia has so far not intervened to prevent Israeli strikes in Syria.

The SDF and the Syrian government also have a complex relationship, having at times fought against one another while also sometimes cooperating against rebels supported by Turkey. Mohamad noted that Trump’s approach to Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan will also have a significant effect on the situation in northeastern Syria.

“U.S.-Turkish relations have gone through many fluctuations, but they remain relations governed by strategic interests,” Mohamad said. “We hope that Washington will work to find a compromise ground for self-administration with Turkey, and despite Ankara’s recent threats against our regions, we emphasize the diplomatic solution to any dispute, especially since the next stage will be a diplomatic stage for resolving conflicts.”

In a congratulatory call with Trump earlier this month, Erdogan “expressed his wish to enhance the cooperation between Türkiye and the U.S. in the upcoming term,” according to a readout from his office.

That same day, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan was quoted by Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak as saying Trump’s win could lead to further U.S. military withdrawals from the Middle East at a time when President Joe Biden’s administration had already announced a two-phased withdrawal plan from Iraq.

“The U.S. may discuss withdrawing from Iraq and Syria after the elections. They do not want to have a military presence in Iran’s sphere of influence. As long as U.S. troops are there, they are vulnerable,” Fidan said. “In Iraq, the Americans are discussing leaving the Central Iraqi Administration region in 2025 and the Kurdish region in 2026. We are in a period when the existence of the International Coalition to Fight Daesh [the Arabic-language acronym for ISIS] is also being discussed.”

Speaking to Newsweek in July, Erdogan reiterated that Turkey’s war was not with Syrian Kurds but with PKK-tied “terrorists, supported by the U.S., who threaten the Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmens in the region and drive them from their lands.” He vowed to continue the fight against both the PKK, its allies and ISIS to achieve peace in Syria.

But with Turkish airstrikes having intensified in the wake of a PKK-claimed attack against a Turkish defense company last month, the most serious worry expressed by U.S.-backed forces has been the sizeable presence of suspected ISIS fighters and their families imprisoned in camps such as Al-Hol in northeastern Syria.

“We see that President Trump will be the world’s firefighter, but our greatest fear is that time bomb in the self-administration areas,” Mohamad said, “where the Al-Hol camp includes tens of thousands of ISIS families in addition to the prisons that detain ISIS fighters and their princes.”

“We clearly see that any destabilization of the region is accompanied by tension within ISIS detention centers,” she added, “and this matter clarifies our fears of any political imbalance that may have disastrous consequences.”

She emphasized that the SDF operated primarily as “a defense force for the people of the region and its components, and they do not pose a real threat to anyone, but they are a factor of stability in the region.” As such, the SDF “do not take any hostile position towards any international forces present on Syrian soil, their missions are only defensive,” she said.

“Whoever tries to attack the region, the Syrian Democratic Forces respond to protect the people of the region,” Mohamad said. “These forces have defeated ISIS, cleansed the region, and fought extremist radical organizations, and have major security contributions with the coalition forces regarding the operations to pursue ISIS leaders and weaken the organization.”

In his election victory speech earlier this month, Trump took credit for having “no wars” under his administration, except for the war on ISIS, who he said his administration defeated “in record time.” For his next administration, Trump promised to put an end to conflicts he has long blamed his Democratic rivals for letting erupt under their watch.

“They said, ‘He will start a war,’ ” Trump said. “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”

While many of Trump’s cabinet picks thus far have expressed more hawkish views on the Middle East, particularly positions supportive of Israel and tougher against Iran, the choice of former Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard, once a Democrat who has switched to a Republican, as national intelligence chief signaled a potential shift on the upcoming administration’s view on the Syria conflict.

Gabbard has been a fierce critic of the U.S. military presence in Syria and held a meeting with Assad in 2017. She has called for direct U.S. diplomacy with the Syrian leader in order to achieve a lasting peace in the conflict.

Gabbard welcomed Trump’s decision in 2018 to begin withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria but later criticized him for doing so in a manner that put the SDF in harm’s way. While seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, she also brought MSD copresident Ilham Ahmed to Trump’s State of the Union address in February 2019.

Despite concerns over how past approaches could inform his new policies in Syria, Mohamad expressed hope that Trump would pursue a successful strategy rooted in resolving the crises that have consumed Syria, the broader region and beyond.

“I hope that President Trump’s term will be the beginning of establishing peace in the Middle East,” Mohamad said, “and reducing the hotbeds of tension in the whole world and adopting diplomacy in resolving differences.”