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The United States says it is in Syria to defeat ISIS. But over the weekend, the US took an action that once again saw it getting into a fight with Bashar al-Assad’s military — and it was the Trump administration’s most direct intervention yet into the Syrian civil war.
That’s the takeaway from the US military’s downing of a Syrian warplane Sunday, the first time an American plane has shot down a Syrian one since the conflict there erupted more than six years ago. The Pentagon said Assad’s forces had been attacking US-backed anti-ISIS fighters near the city of Tabqah, in northern Syria. When the Syrian plane ignored calls to disengage, a US F/A-18E Super Hornet shot it down, killing the lone pilot.
The incident adds a whole new dynamic to America’s involvement in Syria. This is now the fourth time within a month that the US has struck pro-Assad forces, and the first time the US brought down a Syrian military plane since the war’s start. And in this instance, the goal was to protect US-backed fighters — not to defend actual US troops.
It also increases the risk of something that would have once been unthinkable: US and Russian planes shooting at each other. In the aftermath of the incident, Moscow says it will now “target” US-led coalition aircraft flying above Syria. It’s even cutting off contact with the US, which is bad news since Washington and Moscow were in close contact to ensure they wouldn’t get into a military confrontation in Syria.
Sunday’s downing, then, is yet another sign of the US getting directly involved in Syria’s war between the Assad government and those who want him gone — not just the campaign to defeat ISIS in the country. It’s a major step for the US to take, and it’s now even more unclear exactly what the Trump White House is trying to accomplish in Syria.
America’s strategy in Syria appears to be shifting
"Our strategy right now is to accelerate the campaign against ISIS," Defense Secretary James Mattis told CBS’s John Dickerson in May. But despite his statement, the strategy appears to be shifting toward a great focus on Assad.
The US has gotten into military skirmishes with pro-Assad fighters three times over the past month before shooting down the bomber yesterday. Those three instances were in self-defense as American in-theater commanders worried about possible attacks by pro-Assad and pro-Iranian fighters on US troops.
But Sunday’s event was different. Downing the Syrian bomber wasn’t to protect the hundreds of US military personnel now in the country. It was done to protect fighters from the militia known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, who — with US support — are lodged in a campaign to remove ISIS from Raqqa, the terrorist group’s de facto capital.
So taking on Assad’s forces — and downing its military aircraft — to protect US-allied forces is an escalation of America’s involvement in the war. All of this makes it appear like the US is fighting two different wars in the same country: taking on Assad-plus-Russia and ISIS at the same time. And that’s a problem.
“US forces on the ground need to have the authority necessary to defend themselves,” wrote Middle East experts Ilan Goldberg and Nicholas Heras at the Atlantic. “But at this point the lack of a clear policy is a major problem.”
That, paired with the Russian threats, is making an already dangerous situation even riskier.
So the bomber downing just made things much more dangerous. Even if the US does not want to take on Assad and Russia directly, the enemy gets a vote. And in this case, the vote is to escalate tensions. That means the US must now account for a more antagonistic stance by Syrian and Russia forces.
Like it or not, then, America’s actions Sunday made a very dangerous conflict much more worrisome.
