However pleased Vladimir Putin may be with President Trump's decision to withdraw all American troops from Syria, nobody could be happier than ISIS leader Abū Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Al-Baghdadi had been having a very bad few days and no doubt needed some cheering up.
The the U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had driven ISIS from Haijin, a town on the Euphrates River that a senior American official termed “one of the final strongholds of ISIS.”
Also, ISIS’s second-in-command, Osama Awaid al-Ibrahim, a.k.a Abu Zeid, had been captured in late November hiding with 20 cell phones and 80 gold ingots in a tunnel beneath his home in al-Tayyana.
And al-Baghdadi had reason to fear he might well be next.
His best hope was that the U.S. would declare ISIS defeated and withdraw its forces before he got nabbed.
After all, the U.S. had done something similar—though far less precipitously—in Iraq. Three months after the 2003 invasion, President Bush famously stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln where a banner proclaimed “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.”
The folly of those words was subsequently demonstrated by an insurgency whose minor participants included a balding, morose-looking man arrested in Fallujah on Feb. 2, 2004. His detainee personnel file recorded his name as Awad al Bandry and his prisoner number as US91Z-157911CL. His occupation was listed as “administrative work (secretary.)” He got a big boost in a new career in 2009, when newly elected President Obama announced that the U.S. had militarily done what it could in Iraq at too great a cost to continue.
“Let me say this as plainly as I can: By Aug. 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end,” Obama declared.
By then, prisoner US91Z-157911CL had been freed. He began going by the name Abū Bakr al-Baghdadi and his occupation was now listed by U.S. intelligence and the media as “leader of ISIS.” The terrorist group established a “caliphate” straddling Iraq and Syria that came to encompass 100,000 square miles that were home to more than 8 million people, with oil and other revenues topping $1 billion a year.
Obama launched an energetic campaign against the caliphate, but that did not stop Trump from calling him “the founder of ISIS.” Trump pledged to destroy the group and he actually seemed on the way to make good on his promise.
As reported by Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS, in a Dec. 10 briefing, the caliphate's land mass has been reduced by 99 percent and its sources of wealth have been largely cut off. The final stronghold, Haijin, was being cleared of ISIS fighters even as he spoke.
McGurk seemed to dispel any possibility that the U.S. might just call it a huge win and head home, leaving al-Baghdadi still the leader of ISIS and affording the group a chance to revive.
“Even as the end of the physical caliphate is clearly now coming into sight, the end of ISIS will be a much more long term initiative,” McGurk said. “Nobody is declaring ‘Mission Accomplished.’”
But that is exactly what Trump declared.
“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” Trump tweeted on Wednesday.
Never mind that the U.S. would be betraying the Kurdish-led forces whose more recent accomplishments at great sacrifice had included capturing the ISIS second-in-command, followed by the clearing of the last ISIS stronghold.
Trump’s decision reportedly goes back to Dec. 14, four days after McGurk said nobody was talking about “Mission Accomplished.” Trump had a phone conversation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who had been threatening to cross the border into Syria to crush the same Kurdish fighters the U.S. had enlisted to fight ISIS. Erdogan said the U.S no longer needed the Kurds because ISIS had been defeated.
Trump was expected to tell Erdogan to hold off, in part because an incursion would put Americans in harm's way. But our president has a weak spot for strongmen. Trump instead said the U.S. should withdraw, reportedly stunning even Erdogan.
Trump showed his weakness in general on Friday, when he was scheduled to meet with Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the outgoing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The previously scheduled meeting was supposed to have been a casual chat, but, with the new developments, Syria was sure to have been a topic. Corker arrived at the White House and waited for a time only to be informed that the meeting had been canceled.
Afterwards, Corker said to the press things that Trump apparently did not want to hear.
“Honestly, this makes what Obama did in Iraq, it’s replicating that, but in many ways it’s even worse,” Corker said. “Because there we’re in a situation where we’re very close in the Euphrates River Valley to finishing clearing out [ISIS].”
He went on, “This a terrible thing for our nation. It’s a terrible thing for the allies we’ve be working with.”
He added, “My understanding is like we're beginning to move out right now.”
“Entirely?” a reporter asked.
“Yes, entirely,” Corker said.
By one report, the Kurdish-led SDF is feeling so betrayed it was talking about freeing 3,200 prisoners it had taken while fighting ISIS at the constant urging of the U.S.
If Baghdadi is not laughing, he should be.
