USA - The agent provocateur of Syria

To promote geopolitical influence in the proxy, USA puts their alies of NATO and middle east with common interests in Syrian territory and leave their troops, only using local small conflicts, without the direct clash of USA in Syria.

Even in NATO, Turkey isn't exactly at USA's side, but its interested on Syrian territory, and also, Israel is promoting actions to disrupt Syrian politics and uses it's territory to promote international baking and investments, with the international philantropy and investments, expecting financial return.

Russia and Iran, with Turkey are promoting actions in country each one with it's interest and Assad's became a hoax for international interests.

John Bolton still promotes military intervention in Syria, but without a direct clash, but with military presence, promoting USA geopolitics and influence of other actors at the direct conflict, guaranteeing the interests of the USA close borders to Russia and Eurasia.

John Bolton and the muddled Syria withdrawal mess

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/01/11/john-bolton-syria-withdrawal-pr-mess/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a04813cdad41

It may wind up being the most significant decision of Donald Trump’s presidency, and it’s a muddled mess.

The administration has been bobbing and weaving on its Syria policy for two years. It bobbed again Thursday, commencing some sort of withdrawal just days after a top official signaled things might be on hold.

Late last month, President Trump announced a total and immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, leading to two high-profile resignations, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. But then the administration seemed to backpedal a bit. The timeline was slowly drawn out and conditions were attached. It all culminated this weekend in national security adviser John Bolton declaring that the withdrawal would be conditioned on certain “objectives” being met: the complete defeat of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and an agreement by Turkey not to target the U.S.'s Syrian Kurdish allies once the United States was gone.

“We’re going to be discussing the president’s decision to withdraw, but to do so from Northeast Syria in a way that makes sure that ISIS is defeated and to make sure that the defense of Israel and our other friends in the region is absolutely assured, and to take care of those who have fought with us against ISIS and other terrorist groups,” Bolton said Sunday in Jerusalem.

Bolton added: “There are objectives that we want to accomplish that condition the withdrawal. The timetable flows from the policy decisions that we need to implement.”

Those conditions have not been met — or really anything close to it. Turkey, which helped persuade Trump to withdraw in the first place, has roundly rejected the U.S. condition that it leave the Kurds, whom it regards as terrorists, alone.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declined to even meet with Bolton during his visit to the region and called Bolton’s comments “a serious mistake."

“The message that Bolton gave in Israel is unacceptable,” Erdogan said in a televised address to his political party Tuesday. “It is not possible for us to swallow.”

It’s also not clear the Islamic State is close to handled. As my colleague Liz Sly reported last month,” Signs that the Islamic State is starting to regroup and rumblings of discontent within the Arab community point to the threat of an insurgency."

Reporting indicates that, despite Bolton’s comments, the Pentagon has not received any updates on its withdrawal plans from last month and is moving forward with Trump’s plan. One anonymous defense official told the Wall Street Journal: “Nothing has changed. We don’t take orders from Bolton.”

It’s not impossible to square what Bolton said with a partial withdrawal. His comments never actually said there would be no withdrawal of troops without the conditions being met. Perhaps he was simply saying the United States wouldn’t completely withdraw until those conditions were met. Perhaps the speed of the withdrawal is what is contingent here.

National Security Council spokesman Garrett Marquis said that Bolton joined with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. and Syria envoy Ambassador James Jeffrey in Turkey to convey “the Administration’s five coordinated principles for implementing the President’s guidance on withdrawal.” Among them, according to a senior administration official, were that the withdrawal would happen “in a deliberate, orderly and strong manner” and that “the U.S. will defeat the remaining ISIS caliphate on the way out.” That suggests Bolton’s conditions could still be in-play, even with a withdrawal in progress.

But if you’re Turkey, and you see the United States is already pulling out — at least to some extent — you have to wonder how ironclad Bolton’s demands were. We’ll see if the full withdrawal was truly conditional on Turkey acquiescing, because that doesn’t appear likely to happen.

And either way, there is just so much confusion here, completely of the administration’s own making. As The Washington Post’s John Hudson noted Thursday night, there’s no real clarity on whether Bolton’s conditions are operative. Even the five principles laid out in Turkey were more aspirations than demands. Instead of making sure the safety of the Kurds was “absolutely assured,” as Bolton required, they say, “The U.S. wants a negotiated solution to Turkish security concerns,” and “The United States opposes any mistreatment of opposition forces who fought with the U.S. against ISIS.”

so we're seeing two different Boltons. One is the man enshrining Trump's withdrawal order in a disciplined bureaucratic way, and the other is a Bolton explaining the withdrawal in an open-ended way the Pentagon is apparently not adhering to & doesn't seem to match Trump's words

— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) January 11, 2019

Trump has made a point to say that he doesn’t like telegraphing military moves, which is understandable from a strategic standpoint. But in this case, he telegraphed the whole thing upfront. And if you’re going to attach conditions to something, you need to be abundantly clear about them. That has simply not been the case here, and we seem to get a different indication about this withdrawal every week or so.

The most likely conclusion, from there, is that there is no firm plan at this point, and that the likes of Bolton et al. are still trying to shape a withdrawal that is now already in motion.

All signs indicate that the withdrawal matter is not settled in the minds of some of Trump's advisers and last minute jockeying continues

— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) January 11, 2019

Bolton downplayed that idea Friday morning, telling conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, a Post contributing columnist, that “the media loves to find splits in the administration; it’s sort of a hobby of theirs.” He described all the above as “just part of an unfolding plan.”

But from the outside looking in, it seems a hell of a way to prosecute a hugely significant withdrawal from a fight against terrorists.

U.S. starts withdrawing from Syria amid policy confusion

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/01/11/u-s-syria-troop-withdrawal/2545735002/

The U.S. military began the process of withdrawing its troops from Syria following a drawdown ordered by President Donald Trump, a military official said Friday.

Col. Sean Ryan, a spokesman for the U.S.-coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, declined to discuss specific operational details of the pullout such as timings and troop movements, but said in an email the withdrawal was underway. 

About 2,000 U.S. troops are in Syria. 

The military has moved some cargo from Syria already, according to a U.S. Defense official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. Trump's order is for a complete withdrawal of troops and their equipment. 

The troops in Syria have weapons, communication equipment and vehicles that will need to be moved. Planning is underway to identify facilities that can handle the equipment, the official said. No troops have left yet.

It could take months to complete the withdrawal.

The development comes as White House national security adviser John Bolton appeared to contradict Trump's order when he said the withdrawal would not be immediate, it would not happen before ISIS is fully defeated and it would be contingent on a pledge by Turkey not to attack the U.S.'s Kurdish military allies in Syria.

None of Bolton's conditions have been met. 

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan refused to meet with Bolton during his visit to Turkey this week and described his conditions for the U.S. troop drawdown as a "grave mistake." Turkey considers some members of a Syrian-Kurdish Arab coalition fighting ISIS alongside U.S. troops to be terrorists and has applauded Trump's decision.

Turkey has amassed thousands of troops along its border with Syria and has long threatened to unilaterally attack Kurdish militias who it claims has ties to separatist groups who have carried out assassinations and bombings against the Turkish government for decades. The U.S. withdrawal from the area could embolden Ankara. 

"I have some concerns, my greatest concern…probably is the Kurds and… just how defenseless we are going to leave them," newly elected Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D, told Stars and Stripes, an American military newspaper.  

On Monday, Bolton said Trump would "not allow Turkey to kill the Kurds."

Trump announced the withdrawal about three weeks ago on Dec. 19. A day later, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis released a resignation letter in which he indicated that he no longer agreed with the president's thinking on military operations. 

According to a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, ISIS is far from obliterated. The Washington-based think tank estimates 20,000 to 30,000 Islamic State militants may still be in Syria and Iraq.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that monitors the Syria conflict via a network of activists on the ground, said the U.S. withdrawal began Thursday night. It said a convoy of about 10 armored vehicles, in addition to some trucks, pulled out from a military base in Syria’s northeastern town of Rmelan into Iraq.

The U.S.-led coalition has been fighting ISIS in the Middle East since 2014 and Mattis said before leaving his job that declaring victory and leaving Syria would be a mistake.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been defending Trump's order this week while on a tour of the Middle East where he has been rebuking former President Barack Obama's policies for the region. In a speech in Cairo, he said Trump "made the right decision to bring our troops home from Syria" and the U.S. is "committed to the complete dismantling of the ISIS threat and the ongoing fight against radical Islamism."

But Pompeo also caused confusion about Washington's Syria policy. He said in his speech in Cairo that Obama was wrong to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.

"When America retreats, chaos follows. When we neglect our friends, resentment builds. And when we partner with enemies, they advance," Pompeo said.

Less than 24 hours later, U.S. troops started pulling out of Syria.