US: Manbij Ceasefire Extended

“What we want to see is the establishment of a Syrian national government that encompasses all of the various ethnic groups” and “at the end of that, you don’t have any subnational militias.”

USA State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller. (Photo: Kurdistan 24)
USA State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller. (Photo: Kurdistan 24)

Dec 18, 2024

WASHINGTON DC, United States (Kurdistan 24) State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller told journalists on Tuesday that the U.S. had succeeded in extending for another week the ceasefire that it had brokered earlier in the Syrian city of Manbij between Turkish-backed forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF.) 

According to the agreement, first reached last Wednesday, the SDF is to withdraw some 25 kilometers to the east, so its forces will be situated east of the Euphrates River.

The population of Manbij is about 100,000. The majority of its residents are Arab.

Assuming that the ceasefire holds, it will mark two weeks of quiet, and it holds the potential for being further extended.

Turkish Proxies Topple Assad

A conflict arose between the SDF and Turkish-backed groups, above all Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Syrian National Army (SNA), after they brought about the fall of the ruling dynasty in Damascus, and Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow on December 8.

As former President and now President-elect, Donald Trump, said on Monday, those groups were backed by Turkey. Trump used language from the world of business to describe the attack, calling it an “unfriendly takeover.”

“I think Turkey is very smart,” Trump said, referring to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “Turkey did an unfriendly takeover without a lot of lives being lost.”

“I can say that Assad was a butcher, what he did to children,” Trump added approvingly.

In pointing to Turkish backing for those groups, Trump was actually reverting to an earlier U.S. understanding of major acts of terrorism: they were basically state-sponsored. 

They were a way for a weaker power to attack a stronger power and hope to get away with it, because it was not clear just which party was responsible. And, as Trump pointed out, it was also a way to fight, without putting your own forces at risk.

Indeed, that is how the U.S. defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, eventually precipitating the collapse of the Soviet Union and communism itself.

However, under Bill Clinton that approach to understanding terrorism was abandoned. Instead, Clinton shifted the U.S. focus from state sponsors of terrorism to individuals and the groups that carried out the violence. 

Terrorism was, thus, treated by the U.S. as a law enforcement matter, rather than a national security issue.

Indeed, there were even some experts who proclaimed that a new kind of terrorism had emerged that did not involve states!

Yet it is widely recognized that Iran is a sponsor of terrorism and that it has its proxies in the region —which  regularly engage in attacking U.S. forces. And Turkey has its proxies, as well—and they just defeated the Assad regime.

Manbij Ceasefire Holding

The U.S. recognizes that, through Assad’s fall, Turkey has established itself as a major player in Syria. At the same time, the SDF remains an important U.S. partner in the fight against ISIS and Washington does not want Turkey to attack it. So the U.S. has been mediating between Turkey and the SDF.

“We continue to engage Turkey about the situation in northern Syria,” Miller said on Tuesday. “We worked out a ceasefire for the area around Manbij,” and “that ceasefire has been holding.”

“It had expired,” Miller continued, but “it has been extended into the end of this week, and we continue to engage with the SDF, with Turkey, about a path forward.”

“We do not believe it is in the interest of any party to see increased conflict in Syria,” Miller added. “We don’t want to see any party take advantage of the current, unstable situation to advance their own narrow interests at the expense of the broader Syrian national interest.”

Miller also stressed that this was not just a U.S. position, as he referred to a meeting on Saturday in Aqaba, Jordan. That meeting involved a broad host of parties: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken; the foreign ministers of four Arab countries—Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia; as well as Lebanon’s Prime Minister; Turkey’s Foreign Minister; and representatives from the European Union, the United Nations, and the Arab League.

Thus, Miller seemed to suggest a possible path forward that enjoyed a broad consensus and which might address Turkish concerns, which he described as “very legitimate.” That path is the restoration of a recognized, effective government that represents the Syrian population. Such a government would obviate the need for militias.

“What we want to see is the establishment of a Syrian national government that encompasses all of the various ethnic groups inside Syria,” Miller stated. “At the end of that, you don’t have any subnational militias, any subnational groups who are carrying arms under their own banner.”

Although such a stable, peaceful Syria remains a long way off, it seems that is what the Biden administration has in mind. Achieving it would include reaching some understanding between Damascus and the SDF, and that might well diminish the independence that the SDF now enjoys.

However, the Biden administration only has a month left in office. It will fall to the Trump administration to help bring about a stable, peaceful, and effective government in Damascus, even as such an outcome is far from guaranteed.