U.S. Withdrawal Will Help Resolve 'Idlib Knot', Says Former British Ambassador to Syria

Dec. 30, 2018 (EIRNS )—-Peter Ford, the former British ambassador to Syria, told Sputnik in an interview that he thinks, once the U.S. withdrawal is complete, the situation in Idlib will resolve itself within a year. “I think with this latest American move the situation in 80% of Syria will soon be resolved. The final knot, Idlib, will be difficult but with cooperation of the main parties, Turkey, Russia and Iran, I believe it’ll be resolved within a year,” Ford said.

Ford said that, with the arrival of government troops, the situation in Manbij is also well on its way to resolution, where “we will see effectively a return to the status quo, the situation as it obtained in that part of Syria before 2011 when things were quiet, Turkey was happy, relations between Turkey and Syria were excellent. For several years the Syrian government had kept tight control over the Kurds.... We are heading for a return I think to that situation and it looks as though [President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan is adjusting to that probability,” Ford said.

Ford also said that the Kurdish YPG militia should have realized much earlier the gravity of the situation, which they had been ignoring because of

the U.S. military presence in the region, and now their best option was to try and negotiate with Damascus.

“They have been dreaming the U.S. would stay in northern and eastern Syria indefinitely. They should have been much more realistic from the beginning. Now the most they can do is try to salvage some small bit of negotiating maneuver with Damascus, but they are in extremely weak negotiating position,”

he said.

He continued that the next big issues for Syria are rebuilding the country, devastated by war, and preventing the re-emergence of terrorism. “Those are immense challenges, and I greatly fear that the Western countries will not help. Worse than that: They will try to block Syria’s recovery.”

Retired Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis Explains Why Trump Is Right on Syria

Dec. 28, 2018 (EIRNS )—In an opinion piece in The Hill Dec. 28, retired Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, now with the Defense Priorities organization argued that President Trump is absolutely right to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.

Davis, who completed four combat deployments in the Southwest Asia, wrote that the hysterical responses from the “Washington swamp” to the President’s decision and to his Christmas Day visit to Iraq, “are unsurprisingly, laced with fear”; but, “what they should be concerned about ... is a fear that without changes in American strategy, we’ll remain mired in Middle Eastern chaos indefinitely.”

Colonel Davis offered details on the evolution of events in the Southwest Asia theater, and the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS), which, he argued, had nothing to do with the failure of U.S. troops to remain, but rather with the actions of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s destruction of his Sunni opposition. Withdrawal of U.S. troops now “won’t allow ISIS to rise again there either,” he admonished, given the continued presence of Russia in the area, and NATO ally Turkey’s strategic role, among other factors.

The U.S. can “maintain our interests in the region far more effectively and efficiently by employing diplomatic and economic measures and not trying to rely on military power,” Davis argued. Historically, he continued, basing efforts on deploying active combat forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Africa “have failed strategically, because we refuse to recognize that we can’t solve political problems with military power.” The best Christmas gift Trump could give the American people “and our selfless service members, then, is a promise to withdraw our combat troops from the Middle East so we can better defend our country.”