QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Left-wing urban guerrillas and the world’s largest standing army make for an odd pairing. America’s role in Syria has always been riddled with oxymoron. Yet none is as blaring as the US support for the People’s and Women’s Protection Units (YPG/YPJ), and, more widely, for the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).
The AANES and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) say they want to turn north and east Syria into a de-centralized grassroots democracy. Its leadership adopts the ideology of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan who has been in detention in Turkey since 1999. Yet, the PKK is listed as a terror group by both Turkey and the US itself.
However, that has not prevented Washington from supporting their Kurdish brethren in Syria. The reason why is far from evident. Not only are the two unlikely allies, but this nearly decade-old relationship has alienated Ankara, a crucial NATO partner, which is unable to distinguish the YPG/YPJ from the PKK.
It is true that in 2014, when the Islamic State (ISIS) was at its zenith, Turkey was slow to act. The regional government in Erbil – Washington’s main Kurdish ally at the time – was itself on the back foot and lacked popular support in Syrian Kurdistan (or Rojava). While Arab opposition militias, trained and equipped by US agencies for years, had no will to mount a competent assault.
The Obama administration in 2014 deemed arming Kurdish forces to defend Kobani from ISIS the best option. Together, the two sides defeated the caliphate and liberated a third of the territory of Syria.
The partnership can only be partially explained through the lens of the US’ “War on Terror”. To Turkey, the US was partnering with one terrorist group to defeat another. Instead, the Kurdish-American alliance, and Washington’s actions in Syria since 2014, can be better explained by regional geopolitical interests.
Bridging the Divide
Washington pundits going back several decades have argued for denying Iran a “land bridge” from Tehran to Beirut. This corridor, so the thinking goes, stretches from the Islamic Republic, through Shia-dominated Iraq, Assad’s Syria (a long-time ally), to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, an influential Shia militia-turned-political party.
The “land bridge” gives Tehran undue access in Mesopotamia, opens Syria’s and Lebanon’s Mediterranean ports to Iran, and allows the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to deliver weapons to Hezbollah, which threatens Israel, a US ally. The corridor has also doubled as a lucrative drug-smuggling route.
When Israel and Hezbollah were embroiled in a war in 2006, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the “land bridge” “a real problem”. This geopolitical calculation also partly explains Washington’s continued interest and presence in Iraq even after it gave way to an Islamist takeover of Afghanistan.
Geopolitics
On the Syrian border with Iraq, the “land bridge” narrows to a width of about 600 km. To the south and north, US allies Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey impede circumvention. Three main crossings connect Syria with Iraq: al-Tanf, near the tri-national border with Jordan; Abu Kamal, on the banks of the Euphrates; and al-Ya’rubiyah (Tel Kocher), further north.
By helping the YPG/YPJ, later rebranded as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), take the Jazira region (Hasakah Governorate) and eastern countryside of Deir ez-Zor, the US has effectively denied Iran access throughout the entirety of Syria’s northeastern border, including the Tel Kocher crossing.
Today, the US presence in northeast Syria mirrors these interests, stretching from Derik (al-Malikiyah) in the north to Baghuz in the south. While a de-confliction line between Russia and the US was drawn at the Euphrates river – putting Kobani, Raqqa and a majority of SDF-controlled territory under the American sphere of influence – US forces happily pulled back from these positions to Syria’s eastern border in 2019.
Despite the important role Raqqa continues to play as an ISIS finance and transport hub, the US did not deem it important enough to maintain a presence there. It only returned in 2023, likely only to deny it to Russia, with whom the US is involved in a proxy war over Ukraine with.
Shortly after the beginning of the Syrian war, US armed forces took up positions at al-Tanf, in Syria’s desert. After Jordan closed its border there, the US recruited stranded Syrians in order to form the Syrian Free Army (SFA), a US-controlled opposition group.
According to an eye-opening, behind-the-curtains account of the US involvement in Syria by analyst Aaron Stein, the ability to threaten Iran and Iranian-backed groups from al-Tanf was the only reason why US President Donald Trump could be convinced by his generals to keep troops in Syria.
Since May 2017, the US and Iran have exchanged a limited number of missile strikes in the region. According to multiple military analysts, the US presence in al-Tanf serves no other purpose.
Together, the two US spheres of influence have denied Iran access to around 420 of the 600 km-long border. Most of the remaining territory is unpaved open desert.
Currently, only the Abu Kamal crossing is controlled by Iranian-backed militias, closely monitored by American troops on the opposite side of the river. Though a staunchly Sunni Arab region, the IRGC has attempted to turn western Deir ez-Zor into an Iranian fiefdom by opening Shia cultural centers and offering generous salaries for locals joining Iranian-backed militias. The region today is run by the IRGC and a kaleidoscope of Iranian proxies from Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. The Syrian government only has a limited presence there.
The US and Iranian proxies have exchanged a number of ground-to-ground missiles as well as drone strikes throughout the past years. US armed forces retain a number of garrisons near Deir ez-Zor’s oil fields. Not, as has often been alleged, to loot it themselves, but to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Syrian government and Iran. The oil and gas fields in Jazira, which offer similar spoils but are not within reach of the IRGC, have no comparable American presence.
Kurdish-American Relationship Reconsidered
Observing Washington’s involvement in Syria through this lens can better illuminate US decisions in Syria since 2014. It explains why US troops were briskly pulled away not only from the northern frontline, but from the western edge of SDF-controlled northeast Syria as well, when Turkey announced its 2019 invasion of Tel Abyad and Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain), yet remain firmly committed to staying in the Jazira and Deir ez-Zor regions.
Regional geopolitics also explains why Washington is risking its long-standing relationship with NATO partner Turkey to support the AANES. A recent analysis piece in 19fortyfive argues that the US has grown tired of Ankara’s “duplicity”. For example, in 2007, Hezbollah-bound weapons from Iran were found on Turkish freight trains. In recent years, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has moved closer to the Russian-Iranian axis. Turkey’s reliability as a Western partner in the Middle East is waning, at least under Erdogan’s helm.
This outlook even goes a long way in explaining the US’ “War on Terror” in Syria. The second most-efficient anti-ISIS force – after the SDF – has been Iranian-backed militias, both in Iraq and in southeastern Syria. This has increased Iranian influence in the region, not only in Deir ez-Zor, but in Iraq, too. Today, banners commemorating killed IRGC leader Qasem Soleimani drape Mosul, a Sunni city in northern Iraq and once an ISIS hub. The defeat of ISIS has left a vacuum which the US is eager to deny to Iran.
A Bridge Too Far?
Not all analysts agree on the importance of Iran’s “land bridge”. A 2017 piece for the Washington Institute by Omar al-Nirawi, an Iraqi analyst, highlighted that Iran was able to send fighters and supplies to Syria and Lebanon even before the corridor was established and that the “land bridge” existed for a decade between 2003 and 2013 without it being “a game-changer”. Additionally, Iran possesses its own ports and does not need those of Syria and Lebanon; the drug trade in the Middle East rakes in billions with or without Iranian facilitation.
It is also questionable whether establishing a “land corridor” is Iran’s main interest in Iraq and Syria. For all the talk about Iranian influence in Iraq, Tehran and Washington keep about the same number of troops in the country (around 2.500 each). For Iran’s government, preventing its western neighbour from becoming hostile once more (as it did between 1980-1988, with the West’s help) and hunting down Kurdish guerrillas, which shelter in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, likely rank as higher priorities.
This analysis is not out of step with those who argue that the US is in Syria primarily to contain Iran – a “land bridge” may be a secondary interest for Iran, but containing it is a regional priority for the US. While it is undeniable that Iran seeks to gain a foothold in different countries of the Middle East, Washington overestimates the importance of this land corridor, in part also due to Israel’s hysterics. “Allowing this suspicion to drive strategy could drag America into an unpredictable conflict that may continue long after the Islamic State is gone,” argues al-Nirawi’s piece for the Washington Institute.
Thus, the American support for the AANES project should not be understood as an exercise in counter-terrorism, and much less a liberal interest in state-building, but as a geopolitical chess piece to counter Iranian influence. Well-versed in power-politics and with their own axe to grind with Iran, which oppresses its Kurdish minority, Syria’s Kurds are likely fully-aware of this reality but lacking any better alternatives, the unlikely allies will continue stand side-by-side.