U.S. Still Hunting for Allied Cooperation in Syria

Decision date passes without commitments; prisoner population swells

By Nancy A. Youssef, WSJ 

WASHINGTON—Trump administration officials didn’t secure commitments from key European allies to send military forces to Syria, passing a target date set for Friday, but said they would continue building their case for allied involvement to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State extremist group.

U.S. officials are planning calls with top military and diplomatic leaders from other countries next week, and said they are confident that allies will be a part of a stabilization campaign.

Officials from three key allied countries—the U.K., France and Germany—didn’t respond to requests for comment Friday. European officials have said that they haven’t seen specific U.S. plans for how to secure eastern Syria following the final elimination of Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate.

The passage of Friday’s target date set by the U.S. reflected the administration’s difficulty in devising a new plan for the area controlled by the U.S. and its local and international partners in northeastern Syria following President Trump’s call in December for a withdrawal of U.S. forces.

The administration has backtracked on the withdrawal in the face of criticism, agreeing to keep hundreds of U.S. forces in place. But officials are trying to assemble a plan that depends on agreement among the European allies, the Kurdish-led local units known as the Syrian Democratic Forces and Turkey, which considers many of the SDF members terrorists.

Officials faced added urgency for a new plan after new disclosures Friday about captured Islamic State fighters. Senior U.S. defense officials said U.S-backed forces in the area now hold more than 5,000 suspected Islamic State members—a fivefold increase over estimates last fall.

Of those, roughly 1,000 are foreign fighters, the officials said; the rest are Syrian and Iraqi nationals.

The officials said the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces can’t hold the prisoners indefinitely and will need coalition help. Moreover, the numbers are expected to keep growing as the last of the fighting takes place, the officials said, a period which could last as long as two weeks.

Since Feb. 20, the SDF forces have cleared more than 20,000 people from the last Islamic State-controlled pocket of eastern Syria, known as Baghouz, officials said. Women, children and some men have been moved to displacement camps, the officials said.

In 2015, European allies agreed to work alongside U.S. forces in Syria with the understanding that they would all leave at the same time, European officials said. Both sides originally planned to stay through the stabilization period and train local forces.