Syria’s U.S.-trained opposition fighters wait to be taught of their position in a brand new Syria

AL-TANF GARRISON, Syria — When Salim Turki al-Anteri took his opposition forces into battle in opposition to regime troops in southern Syria this month, it was in opposition to his personal former tank unit.

Drawing on his previous U.S. navy coaching and his hopes for a united Syria, the commander ordered his forces to fireplace artillery warning photographs, supposed to influence regime troopers to desert their tanks and depart the battlefield.

“We didn’t want to kill any soldiers,” he says of the battle on Dec. 7, a day earlier than Damascus fell.

“We aimed to the left and to the right, and then closer to them,” he says. “We didn’t follow them because we knew that if we followed them, we would have to kill them.”

Not like many navy commanders who have been regime loyalists, most strange troopers have been conscripts who’d been given no alternative however to struggle for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, he says.

“I consider all the soldiers my sons,” he says. And he thought of the tanks they fought in tools to be safeguarded for the nation’s military — no matter form it might soak up a post-Assad Syria.

Syrian regime tanks sit deserted on the Damascus-Baghdad freeway in Syria, Dec. 13. Most regime troopers retreated reasonably than struggle opposition forces this month.

Manu Brabo for NPR

disguise caption

toggle caption

Manu Brabo for NPR

Anteri, a colonel and the commander of the Syrian Free Military, a small, U.S.-trained opposition power earlier than the autumn of the Syrian regime, spoke with NPR at his base subsequent to a distant U.S. navy outpost in southern Syria. He defected from the Syrian military to affix the opposition eight years in the past.

Now his unit is amongst dozens of former opposition teams that must be knitted collectively into new Syrian safety forces. Anteri, who instructions about 600 fighters, says he’s ready to see what position within the new safety forces his group will probably be given by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which led the coalition that drove Assad from energy.

The U.S. has had an uneasy position on this key area

Al-Tanf, initially a U.S. particular forces base, has performed a key position in coaching Syrian opposition fighters, together with Anteri’s. It lies about 200 miles from Syria’s capital Damascus, on the primary Damascus-Baghdad freeway. Deserted regime tanks lie by the facet of the highway. Close by are cast-off Syrian military uniforms, tossed apart by fleeing troopers as Assad fell.

The Syrian ruler was rapidly toppled in a shock offensive this month by opposition forces, who took again the nation with little resistance after greater than a decade of civil battle. Anteri believes the explanation the regime troopers his forces encountered did not struggle again was as a result of they knew the U.S. navy was backing the SFA. Together with a patch bearing the Syrian insignia on his fighters’ uniforms, he additionally instructed troopers to put on a patch with an American flag.

The American base at al-Tanf is testomony to the uneasy U.S. position in a key strategic area. The U.S. has not had diplomatic relations with Syria since 2012, after the beginning of the Syrian civil battle. The bases it established over the previous decade within the south and east function underneath no Syrian authorized authority. They fall underneath the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition working in Iraq and Syria, however that coalition is quickly being dismantled.

A Syrian Free Military soldier stands on the entrance of a base close to the U.S. al-Tanf garrison in southern Syria, Dec. 14.

Manu Brabo for NPR

disguise caption

toggle caption

Manu Brabo for NPR

It’s a navy presence so opaque that Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder informed reporters earlier this month that he himself solely not too long ago realized there have been greater than double the variety of U.S. forces in Syria because the 900 determine he had been quoting. Iraqi navy sources had reported elevated numbers of troops shifting from a U.S. base in Irbil, in its Kurdistan area, over the previous a number of months into Kurdish-controlled northeastern Syria.

The U.S. position in Syria will probably be clarified as new governments in each international locations take form

A senior U.S. navy official mentioned increasing the U.S. navy position in Syria would require talks with any new Syrian authorities.

“We don’t want to start just tromping around Syria,” mentioned the official, who requested anonymity as a result of he was not licensed to talk publicly. “It would be better if we understood how they felt about that and open that discussion with them before we do anything.”

He mentioned pending these discussions, the U.S. would proceed to launch airstrikes in opposition to the Islamic State — which it largely defeated 5 years in the past — and to assist Syrian forces it trains and advises. Additionally in query, in fact, is what choice the incoming Trump administration will make on sustaining U.S. forces in Syria.

That U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition is being disbanded on the insistence of the Iraqi authorities, to get replaced by country-to-country agreements. Underneath the settlement between Iraq and the USA, there will probably be a U.S. troop presence in federally managed Iraq by the top of this yr, and in Kurdish-controlled Iraq by the top of 2026.

U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria have been a lightning rod for Iran-backed militias. In January, one such militia in Iraq claimed duty for a drone assault on Tower 22 — a U.S. assist base to al-Tanf in northeastern Jordan. Three U.S. troopers have been killed within the assault.

A Syrian Free Military fighter walks with a resident of the Rukban camp for displaced Syrians close to the Jordanian border. Till the Syrian regime fell, 7,000 camp residents, together with opposition fighters, have been trapped within the distant desert for years.

Manu Brabo for NPR

disguise caption

toggle caption

Manu Brabo for NPR

Since 2003, when the U.S. and its allies toppled Iraqi chief Saddam Hussein and left a safety vacuum after disbanding the Iraqi military, proliferating Iranian proxy militias have used Syria as a conduit to funnel Iranian arms to Iraq and Lebanon. Assad, a member of the Alawite non secular minority, was backed by Iran and, in recent times, by Russia.

Syrian Kurdish forces, who created an autonomous area after breaking their territory away from the Assad regime in 2012, stay a key U.S. safety ally, and helped militarily defeat ISIS in its final holdout in Baghuz, Syria, in 2019. The persevering with U.S. troop presence on this autonomous area of northeastern Syria additionally serves to guard oil fields there.

Though ISIS has been massively diminished because it overtook massive components of Iraq and Syria in 2014, it nonetheless retains a presence in Syria, together with close to historic Palmyra, the place SFA commander Anteri is from.

In the meantime, former opposition teams anticipate steerage on their new position

Now, three weeks after many years of regime management abruptly ended, the victory by disparate teams of Syrian fighters remains to be sinking in.

In a visitor home subsequent to the U.S. base, an SFA officer, Saeed Saif, exhibits a variety of kit discovered at a Russian navy base in Syria after it was deserted within the combating in early December.

U.S. officers, together with the senior navy official, say Russia is anticipated to supply concessions to the brand new Syrian authorities to retain its strategic deep water port within the Syrian coastal metropolis Tartus.

A Syrian Free Military fighter stands just a few hundred yards from a sand berm marking the border between Jordan and Syria on the outskirts of Rukban camp in southern Syria, Dec. 14.

Manu Brabo for NPR

disguise caption

toggle caption

Manu Brabo for NPR

From the deserted Russian navy base, there are previous fuel masks and model new Kalashnikov rifles — some nonetheless stacked within the wood field they have been shipped in. There’s a communications gadget to ship encoded messages and paperwork and information taken from a vault in an underground operations room.

“We don’t know what they say,” Saif says. “We are waiting for someone to translate them.”

Extra puzzling are what look like paperweights — scorpions encased in plastic and mounted on bases.

“They used them for decoration,” Saif says.