While it remains unclear when, or on what terms, the standoff between the Syrian government and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) will be resolved, one reality is already evident: a chapter of America’s war against the Islamic State (IS) has closed.
For more than a decade, the SDF’s value to Washington rested on a single fact: it was the only force both willing and able to fight IS on the ground and then shoulder the responsibility of detaining thousands of IS fighters and affiliates in prisons and camps. That role gave the SDF disproportionate leverage, leaving the United States with little choice but to continue backing it.
That arrangement is now unravelling. What had once been the SDF’s greatest asset is increasingly viewed in Washington as a liability, stripping the group of the leverage that underpinned its survival.
On 20 January, the SDF announced that it had been forced to abandon the sprawling al-Hol camp in Hasakeh province, long home to thousands of families of IS members, including those of foreign fighters. The withdrawal, reportedly uncoordinated with either Washington or Damascus, appears to have allowed some individuals to escape. It followed another serious breach days earlier, when roughly 120 IS militants escaped from a detention facility in al-Shaddadi.
