US Syria Policy: One Step Closer to a New Large-Scale War
There are snags ahead for the US administration as it tries to bring to life its plans to build a wall on the Mexican border. President Trump will have to fight an uphill battle to keep his pre-election promise, but launching a program aimed at ensuring the border security of another state situated thousands of miles away – plans that were never announced – has proved much easier. The news came as a big surprise to those following events in the Middle East.
A 30-thousand-strong US-backed “Border Security Force” (BSF) is to operate along the borders with Turkey and Iraq, as well as within Syria along the Euphrates River. Its activities will be coordinated with the aligned Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) already in place to control nearly 25 percent of Syrian territory in the northern and eastern parts of the country.
Two hundred and thirty new cadets have already been recruited to the force. A US-led coalition source said: “The base of the new force is essentially a realignment of approximately 15,000 members of the SDF to a new mission in the Border Security Force as their actions against ISIS draw to a close.” According to The Defense Post, “the ethnic composition of the force will be relative to the areas in which it serves, with efforts taken to ensure that people serve close to their homes. This all but guarantees that Kurds, who make up a majority of the population in northeastern Syria, will be establishing checkpoints along the roughly 820-kilometer (510-mile) Syria-Turkey border”. The move will have far-reaching repercussions.
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