Tuesday, the Kurdish SDF launched an offensive against a number of villages in eastern Syria. The US backed the offensive with military action, and al-Mayadeen even suggests that the offensive itself came at the behest of the US military. Today we’re getting some more details, and the US is trying to re-frame the narrative of what actually happened.
It is confirmed that the US launched airstrikes as well as the previously reported artillery fire, which targeted Syrian forces in the area of the offensive. The strikes destroyed multiple trucks with rocket launcher systems on them, and also destroyed a T-64 battle tank.
These strikes were launched specifically while the SDF offensive was ongoing, and targeted forces in the area of the attacks. The Pentagon, however, has tried to present their strikes as “self-defense,” claiming that the presence of the military assets firing in an area so close to US-occupied bases posed a “clear and imminent threat.”
The Pentagon is clearly trying to downplay the fact that it carried out airstrikes in support of the SDF trying to seize territory. Indeed, the official statement from CENTCOM leans heavily into the “self-defense” narrative and doesn’t even mention that there was an ongoing SDF battle in the area.
The small US-held bases in that part of eastern Syria are centered around oil and gas fields. The US helped the SDF seize those energy assets in 2017 after a brief occupation by ISIS. The Syrian government had expected to eventually recover those important economic assets, but the indication is that the SDF intends to keep the area, and indeed is trying to expand even further with these new attacks.
All indications are that the US is growing more interested in getting involved in these territory grabs, particularly with Syria already vulnerable because of the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) gaining substantial territory further west. At the same time, the Pentagon seems to want to avoid directly admitting to what they are doing, just branding it as typical “self-defense” action despite it being plainly related to the SDF offensive.
US Major Gen. Patrick Ryder refused to discuss the SDF offensive, referring any questions about that to the SDF itself. He too was quick to frame the US military operations there as “self-defense” and not discuss involvement in the offensive.
A smaller mystery surrounding the US airstrikes is that the tank they destroyed was a T-64. A Russian-made tank, the T-64 isn’t known to be in the Syrian military’s arsenal in the first place. It is not known whose T-64 tank this actually was, though some Shi’ite militias on the side of the Syrian government are known to have used some of them. On top of that, Russia has deployed some T-64s to Syria.
The US involvement with the current resurgence of the Syrian Civil War is likely to fuel new tensions with Russia, one of Syria’s close allies. At the United Nations Security Council, the US sharply criticized Russia and Syria for airstrikes against the HTS offensive, noting civilian casualties. Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood conceded the HTS is recognized as a terrorist group, but he said there could be no excuse for what Russia and Syria are doing in the course of resisting them.
Russian Ambassador to the UN Vasili Nebenzia rejected this condemnation, saying that the US has never been honestly fighting international terrorism. Given the HTS offensive is being supported by Turkey and reportedly in contact with Israel, both close US allies, it’s difficult to argue that the US doesn’t have an interest in seeing the HTS gain territory, despite nominally recognizing them as a terrorist organization.