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US to cancel $200m in funding for Syria stabilization projects Syria: US preparing for final stage of anti-Isis push despite $200m funding cut
(about 4 hours later)
The Trump administration is ending funding for Syria stabilization projects as it moves to extricate the US from the conflict, citing increased contributions from anti-Islamic State coalition partners. The US is preparing for the “final phase” in its war against the Islamic State in Syria, aimed at concentrations of Isis fighters in the Euphrates valley, senior administration officials have insisted, even though it is cutting $230m from its budget to stabilise areas of Syria captured from Isis.
US officials said the administration notified Congress on Friday that it would not spend $200m that had been planned for Syria programs and would instead shift that money to other areas. They said on Friday that the cut from US funding had been more than compensated by $300m in extra contributions from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other US allies, and that the US remained committed to the “enduring defeat of Isis”.
Nearly all of that money, initially pledged by former secretary of state Rex Tillerson in February, had been on hold and under review since he was fired in March. A small fraction of that amount was released in June. The state department also unveiled a new push to make progress in political talks over Syria’s future, with the appointment of James Jeffrey, a former ambassador to Iraq, in the new position of special representative for Syrian engagement.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized discuss the changes publicly before a formal announcement, expected later Friday. The announcements appeared to be aimed at reassuring allies of US staying power in Syria, while seeking to appease Donald Trump, who is anxious to end US involvement there. In March, the president ordered the stabilisation funds frozen after reading a news report about the planned spending, and declared in March that the 2,000 US troops in Syria would be leaving “very soon”.
They said the cut will be more than offset by an additional $300m pledged by coalition partners, including $100m that Saudi Arabia announced it had contributed late Thursday. The state department immediately welcomed the Saudi contribution, which is intended to help revitalize communities liberated from Isis like Raqqa. After that declaration, Syrian forces, supported by Russia and Iran, swept away US-backed rebels in the south-west, while US allies in the north, the mainly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), launched official talks with the Damascus regime, further undermining US diplomatic leverage.
Spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the contribution followed the request from Donald Trump for partners “to share the burden of promoting stability in Syria to safeguard the military gains” achieved against IS and to secure its defeat. State department officials at a briefing on Friday insisted that the US would stay the course in the continuing battle against Isis.
“Many coalition partners have made pledges and contributions in recent months and the United States appreciates all partners who have stepped up to support this critical effort,” she said. “We are remaining in Syria. The focus is the enduring defeat of Isis,” Brett McGurk, the special presidential envoy for the global coalition against Isis, said. “We have still not launched the final phase to defeat the physical Caliphate. That is actually being prepared now and that will come at a time of our choosing but it is coming.
Still, the US move is a sign the administration is heeding Trump’s demand to end US involvement in Syria and reduce its commitment there. “That will be a very significant military operation, because we have a significant number of Isis fighters holed up in a final area of the middle Euphrates valley,” McGurk said.
In a bid to reassure its partners in the coalition against IS as well as opponents of Bashar al-Assad, officials said the administration is appointing veteran diplomatic troubleshooter, James Jeffrey, to be a special envoy for Syria. A report this month by the defence department inspector general said that at the end of June “Isis was estimated to still control about five percent of Syria and to have roughly 14,000 fighters in the country”.
Jeffrey, a former US ambassador to Turkey, Iraq and Albania who also served as a deputy national security adviser to George W Bush, will hold the title of “special representative for Syrian engagement” and will report to Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state. Jeffrey, who retired in 2012, also holds the highest rank in the US Foreign Service: career ambassador. The same report gave a top estimate of the number of Isis fighters in neighbouring Iraq as up to 17,100, while cautioning that all such estimates are subject to wide margins of error.
Yet Friday’s funding cut is the latest Trump administration retreat from Syria. In May, the state department announced that it had ended all funding for stabilization programs in Syria’s north-west. Isis militants have been almost entirely eliminated from that region, which is controlled by a hodgepodge of other extremist groups and government forces. “Politically there has been a lot of messaging going on for a few weeks now, aimed towards the president specifically, to push this idea: the battle is far from over, that stabilisation is crucially important because these are the threats that remain,” Charles Lister, a Syria expert at the Middle East Institute, said.
In June, the administration freed up a small portion – $6.6m – of the $200m that Tillerson had pledged in order to continue funding for the White Helmets, a Syrian civil defense organization, and the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism, a UN agency that is investigating war crimes committed during the conflict. “Clearly the message coming from the defence department is that the struggle is significant, and far beyond this final battle that Brett’s talking about, and that obviously puts more of an onus of responsibility on the stabilisation mission,” Lister added.
That left $193.4m in limbo that would have had to have been returned to the treasury department on 30 September at the end of this budget year if it had remained unspent. After reading a report in March that the US was planning to spend over $200m more on stabilisation projects in Syria, in areas captured from Isis, an angry Trump is reported to have ordered the spending frozen. At a rally in Ohio, he told the crowd: “We’re knocking the hell out of Isis. We’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now.”
Last month, the US helped to organize the evacuation through Israel of White Helmet workers from Syria’s south, where Assad’s Russian-backed forces launched a new offensive despite a de-escalation agreement between Washington and Moscow. In an effort to maintain the stabilisation effort, focused on making liberated areas safe and habitable for residents to return, the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, held a meeting of 54 partners and allies on the margins of the Nato summit in July, to canvass contributions. Saudi Arabia responded with a $100m contribution, the UAE with $50m, and other allies offered another $50m.
McGurk said that despite the switch in funding, the US would remain largely in control of stabilisation efforts in Syria.
“In Syria we very much have the overall lead in stabilisation, because we have a team on the ground,” McGurk said. “A significant proportion of these contributions are coming directly into the US account which oversees the overall stabilisation in Syria.
“We think the way we’ve organised it is pretty good. It maintains US leadership of the coalition, which has been a success, but the emphasis is on burden-sharing from other partners, and the partners have really stepped up.”
David Satterfield, the acting assistant secretary for near eastern affairs, added: “What we have done … is we have mobilised the critical international support that the president very much wanted to see and which the international community has responded to quite positively.”
With the declarations of renewed commitment to the counter-Isis campaign and the appointment of Ambassador Jeffrey to concentrate on political talks, the Trump administration is hoping to boost its leverage with Russia in negotiations over Syria’s political future. The Assad regime has largely ignored those talks while making a series of military advances, with Russian and Iranian support.
“We have been very clear – as clear as it is possible to be – with the government of Russia that there will be no international reconstruction assistance for Syria without the irreversible political process validated by the UN,” Satterfield said. “There should be no ambiguity about that.”
SyriaSyria
US foreign policyUS foreign policy
Trump administrationTrump administration
Middle East and North AfricaMiddle East and North Africa
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