TerrorismU.S. Warns That Turkey's Syria Offensive Giving IS “Time and Space”

By Jeff Seldin

U.S. defense intelligence officials are offering a sobering assessment of the impact Turkey’s incursion into northeastern Syria — and corresponding moves by the U.S. and other powers — will have on efforts to destroy the Islamic State terror group.

The consequences of the Turkish offensive “will provide the group with time and space to expand its ability to conduct transnational attacks targeting the West,” the Defense Intelligence Agency told the Defense Department’s inspector general.

Turkey launched its air and ground offensive into Syria last month, after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered about 50 U.S. special operation troops to pull back from several outposts, saying it intended to clear the border region of terrorists.

But rather than target Islamic State, the Turkish operation targeted Kurdish militias, which Ankara views as terror groups, but which also had been fighting as part of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF] to defeat IS cells and networks in the area.

As a result, officials fear IS, also known as ISIS or Daesh, is now getting a badly needed reprieve.

“As of the completion of this report in mid-November, it was unclear how many of the roughly 100,000 SDF forces were still conducting counter-ISIS operations in northeastern Syria,” according to the inspector general’s quarterly report, released Tuesday.

“ISIS was likely to exploit the reduction in counterterrorism pressure to reconstitute,” Principal Deputy Inspector General Glenn Fine added, citing the DIA.

Specifically, officials at the DIA and with the U.S.-led anti-IS coalition voiced concerns that Turkey’s incursion, combined with the subsequent withdrawal of U.S. forces from bases across northeastern Syria, has created the type of instability in which IS has traditionally flourished.

Already, officials are seeing signs IS has started to operate more freely, activating sleeper cells to increasingly attack the SDF, while also increasing outreach to its 19 branches and affiliates around the globe.

The longer-term consequences could be equally grim.

“The DIA assessed that absent counterterrorism pressure in Syria, ISIS would probably have an opportunity to regain control of some Syrian population centers and to be better postured to launch external attacks and expand its global footprint,” the report said.

The warnings, while worrisome, are just the latest from current and former U.S. officials about the growing threat posed by IS, despite the defeat of its self-declared territorial caliphate in Syria earlier this year.