When will Trump leave Syria?

Syria is a complex crisis.

In the campaign, Trump stated he would 'bomb the s*** out of ISIS,' that he was a fan of the Kurds, that he would 'let Russia fight ISIS' in Syria, and largely Trump has lived up to his campaign rhetoric - with added bombings of the Syrian Government.

Trump has accelerated Obama's bombing campaign against ISIS and has largely used the Kurds to achieve his objectives in Syria. He has welcomed Russia's 'de-confliction zones' initiative, which has freed the Syrian Arab Army to overwhelmingly fight ISIS rather than the rebels in Idlib. While the Syrian Arab Army is stronger than ever as a result of this, ISIS' presence in Syria is weaker than ever.

Why, then, has Trump bombed the Syrian government in the past? Well, one reason would be that the Washington Swamp has been mercilessly targeting Trump no matter what he does, and bombing the Syrian air base near Khan Sheikhoun and changing rhetoric to 'Assad must go' has meant that the Swamp has backed off, albeit only a little.

The other reason Trump has bombed the Syrian government has been to direct the Syrian Arab Army and allies towards ISIS rather than towards US-backed rebels. Obama did the reverse of this during his Presidency: bombed ISIS to target the Syrian Arab Army rather than the Iraqi Army or the Kurdish militias. So far, Trump's strategy has been working - the Syrian Arab Army has been overwhelmingly fighting ISIS and not the Kurds or the Free Syrian Army - but it has risked further confrontation between the US and Russia.

The question that many US citizens are wondering is this: when will Trump leave Syria? The answer is that Trump is likely to leave Syria after a political settlement has been reached through the Astana and Geneva talks. This will mean that Trump will likely leave Syria after either Assad has left office, new Syrian elections are run or the Kurds break away from Syria.

Now, should Assad be forced to leave office, Syrians would overwhelmingly protest for him to return to power, leaving the US and its partners humiliated. Should new Syrian elections take place, most Syrians would write Bashar Al-Assad on their ballots, which would equally humiliate the US and its partners. The third possibility, therefore, is more likely: Assad will remain in control of the majority of Syria, but the Kurds vote for independence from Syria.

This raises concerns of further conflict in Syria, a complete deterioration of Turkish-US relations, or outright defeat of the Kurds by the Syrian Arab Army. Any one of these scenarios would further humiliate the US and their partners.

Ideally, Trump should withdraw his forces from Syria after Raqqa has been seized by the Kurds. With ISIS destroyed from Syria, there is no benefit for the US in remaining there.

Syrian Arab Army reaches At-Tanf border crossing

The Syrian Arab Army has reached the At-Tanf border crossing with Iraq.

This has effectively cut the US-backed Free Syrian Army off from its objective of securing the Syrian-Iraqi border from its bases in northern Jordan. This means that the US will be unable to partition eastern Syria from west, and the Syrian Arab Army will be able to achieve its objective of securing Deir Ez-Zor city.

The Russian planned de-escalation zones have stopped most of the fighting in the west of Syria. Together with securing Aleppo from Opposition forces and letting the last of the rebels in Homs city leave for Idlib, an enormous number of Syrian Arab Army soldiers have been freed for Operation Great Dawn, a campaign to join up besieged Deir Ez-Zor city to the rest of Syria. The results of this campaign have been staggering.

Over the course of the past month, hundreds of square kilometres have been liberated by the Syrian Arab Army. Palmyra is completely secured from ISIS; the Palmyra-Damascus highway has been cleared; border crossings with Iraq have begun to be secured; and, best of all, thousands more troops are arriving at Palmyra as this article is being written.

Though US forces have been allowing ISIS to move its forces from Raqqa and Iraq into Deir Ez-Zor and Homs provinces, the Syrian Arab Army has proven more than a match for ISIS. With thousands more Syrian troops and allies now stationed at Palmyra, we are likely to see the big push for Deir Ez-Zor come to a head. In the next couple of months, it is safe to say Deir Ez-Zor city will be secured by the Syrian Arab Army pushing to reach it.

As Syria stabilizes, the Gulf is destabilizing

As Syria stabilizes, the Gulf is destabilizing.

Much of the investment from the Gulf countries was bent on the overthrow of Bashar Al-Assad, to benefit Qatar in forming a pipeline through the region, bankrupt Russia and usher in a golden age of fossil fuel production for the Arabian Gulf. The overthrow of Bashar Al-Assad would have enabled the Gulf to become more wealthy than ever before after isolating Russia economically through the Qatari gas pipeline.

It is no surprise, therefore, that Russia would willingly risk its economy to stabilize Syria. The US certainly was not prepared to overthrow Assad and, without US support, neither were her allies.

Russia has launched an historic campaign which is reversing the tide of extremism in much of the Middle-East. Their Syrian campaign has caused the most enormous and permanent defeats for Al-Qaeda and ISIS since the beginning of the war on terror in 2001. Once again, as in world war 2, Russia has saved the world from a deadly enemy.

As a result, the Gulf is starting to show signs of destabilization. First was the Gulf's ambitious campaign against the Houthis in Yemen. Next has been the crackdown on Shi'ite protesters in the Gulf, such as the Saudi government's siege on the hometown of Sheikh Nimr An-Nimr and the arrests made against Shi'ite Arabs in Bahrain.

But things reached a new level of destabilization when days ago Qatar was politically isolated by its closest allies in the GCC. This has been as a result of Qatar funding of terrorism and spreading terrorist ideologies in its Al-Jazeera media coverage of the Arab Spring. Wherever there is a terror organisation, you can be sure that Qatar's money is behind them, such as with the Taliban, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and even Shi'ite groups like Hezbollah.

Qatar has greatly annoyed the rest of the Arabian Gulf.

It is commendable that Saudi Arabia has led the isolation efforts towards Qatar. However, most of the benefits to be found in isolating Qatar are wasted by Saudi Arabia engaging in the Yemeni conflict: Saudi has created an Al-Qaeda safe haven right on their doorstep, and that will continue even if Qatar stops funding terrorism.


The main reason that instability is coming to the Gulf is their unstable neighbour Iraq. Iraq is the volcano from which gushes out instability. This is the most significant reason for the barbarism seen in the Syrian Civil War: the chaos from Iraq arrived in Syria, and this is provable by just how rapid Syrian rebel groups fell to ISIS, which is the terrorist organisation that came out of Iraq.

With Syria stabilized and its people unwilling to continue the fighting; with Jordanian king Abdullah too clever to be tricked by instability into doing anything rash; with Iran too strong for instability to reach its borders, the only place left for the Iraqi volcano to gush instability towards is south: to the Arabian Gulf.

What comes next with the Qatar-Gulf crisis is difficult to guess, but it could easily escalate. Most experts believe that sanctions will not go on Qatar, nor will there be an invasion. While it is difficult to see an implementation of sanctions, it is possible that Qatar will experience a regime change, or an annexation by Saudi Arabia. If the Saudis made one foolish error in Yemen, they may do another in Qatar.

Such a move - which, as it is, might be the only way to shut down Qatar's trouble making and meddling in the region - has the potential to flare up tensions in the Gulf, start protests and even trigger an ISIS uprising. Should Qataris protest Saudi occupation or regime change, ordinary Sunni Gulf Arabs may come to their aid, plunging the whole region into a war unlike anything we have seen until now.

This would mean that, as ISIS is being driven out of the Syrian provinces of Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Deir Ez-Zor, it would find a new place to spread its instability and chaos in the Arabian Gulf.

Perhaps Syria has a year left before its war is over. After that, expect things to change radically in the Arabian Gulf.