When the explosions began, Ambassador Invoice Roebuck remembers, it wasn’t in any respect clear who was inflicting them. It was Oct. 15, 2019, and Turkish-backed militias had been advancing on a makeshift army base in Syria, a former cement manufacturing facility about 40 miles from Kobani. President Donald Trump had successfully cleared the trail for the invasion into territory beforehand managed by the US and its Kurdish companions.
“There was taking pictures happening, and our guys weren’t fairly positive what was happening,” Roebuck recalled. “At first, we thought we had been beneath assault.”
It turned out that the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces had been setting hearth to their armory and destroying different tools to forestall Turkish-backed forces from seizing any of it if the bottom had been to be overrun. However the detonations ended up setting massive components of the compound on hearth, and that night time, Roebuck — the final diplomat remaining — was evacuated alongside the remaining U.S. particular forces and contractors nonetheless on base.
The abandonment of the Lafarge cement manufacturing facility rapidly turned a synecdoche for the abrupt and chaotic American withdrawal from enormous swaths of northeastern Syria. The subsequent day, two U.S. Air Power F-15 jets destroyed a storage bunker at Lafarge to forestall munitions and different tools from falling into the palms of armed teams. Critics say the withdrawal completely broken the US’ capacity to work with overseas companions and unnecessarily ceded affect in a strategically essential nook of the globe.
For Roebuck, who till his retirement this fall served because the deputy particular envoy to defeat ISIS, the last word legacy of the withdrawal is combined.
A light-mannered former English trainer, Roebuck has spent extra time on the bottom in Syria working in shut contact with America’s Kurdish companions than maybe some other U.S. diplomat. Mick Mulroy, a former CIA and Pentagon official, referred to as him “among the best expeditionary battle zone diplomats I’ve seen in my profession.”
In an unique exit interview with Protection One, Roebuck mentioned the injury to the connection with the SDF has been repaired — largely as a result of Trump in the end agreed to maintain a army presence in Syria. And he touts the essential features made within the battle in opposition to ISIS, nominally the rationale the US was in Syria to start with.
“However we did lose important leverage” amid the Turkish incursion into Syria, Roebuck mentioned. “Should you view our presence in northeast Syria as a supply of leverage for some form of future political resolution [in the ongoing civil war in Syria], we just about in a single day misplaced half of the territory that we had been controlling, together with the SDF.”
The USA additionally probably misplaced some status on the worldwide stage for not standing by its accomplice, the SDF, within the face of the Turkish advance, Roebuck mentioned. However he cautioned that “I am unsure how long run that’s.” Nations, he mentioned, “pursue their pursuits. Beneath the niceties, international locations are fairly chilly and calculating about how they try this.” On this case, he mentioned, the advanced relationship with Turkey, a NATO ally, couldn’t be ignored as Washington was weighing the best way to deal with the upcoming invasion.
Most of the extra intractable issues within the Syria portfolio stay stubbornly unresolved — like the ultimate disposition of 1000’s of ISIS fighters and households held in quite a lot of completely different camps run by the SDF in northeastern Syria — and Roebuck warns that if the US doesn’t reinvest in stabilization help, ISIS could reemerge. Trump in 2018 froze stabilization help to Syria, and whereas some cash that had already been appropriated was ready for use to assist restore important companies destroyed within the battle in opposition to ISIS in Raqqa and Deir Ez-zor provinces, enormous quantities of harm stays.
“The entire farming economic system is what every little thing runs on, and all the water canals, irrigation, water pumps, the grain silos — all of it was very closely broken throughout the occupation and significantly within the army effort to get ISIS out and defeat them,” Roebuck mentioned. “Plenty of it was very closely broken and stays fairly broken.” Raqqa, he mentioned, “appeared like Dresden after World Struggle II” in 2018, with total metropolis blocks flattened and the infrastructure completely gutted.
The U.S. failure to assist rebuild in a extra important means “feeds a way of resentment amongst residents in Syria that the coalition, led by the US, got here in and did all this destruction as a way to defeat ISIS. After which simply left and did not assist the individuals in a big means,” Roebuck mentioned. “We did loads, however given the dimensions of destruction, their view is that we did not assist them rebuild.”
That, in flip, could present a gap for ISIS to leverage that sense of aggrievement for its personal recruitment functions, Roebuck mentioned.
“I feel that the menace is should you do not assist them rebuild, all that resentment and sense of grievance has nowhere else to go,” Roebuck mentioned. “And a few of it’ll drift again to a few of these swimming pools that ISIS nourished itself in.”
Within the brief time period, the state of affairs in northeastern Syria is comparatively steady, in response to Roebuck. He downplayed evergreen issues that the SDF lacks what it must safeguard the ISIS fighters that it holds in a sequence of makeshift prisons. The USA has helped the SDF replace the bodily safety at these services, lots of them jerry-rigged college homes and outdated manufacturing facility compounds. They’re “not good,” Roebuck mentioned, and the SDF has needed to deal with some jail riots. However there have been no important jail breaks. The SDF has used some degree of deadly power to maintain prisoners beneath management, he mentioned, however “given the truth that they do not have non-lethal tools to make use of, they haven’t had to make use of massive ranges of deadly power to cease these jail riots.”
The humanitarian state of affairs in sprawling camps for ISIS members of the family — girls and youngsters — can also be “beneath management,” Roebuck mentioned.
“I feel COVID stays a particular problem, though thus far, it has been comparatively restricted,” he mentioned. “However I would say largely the essential wants on the humanitarian aspect are being met.”
And Roebuck leaves Syria, maybe for the final time, with the connection with the SDF intact — even “sturdy,” Roebuck mentioned.
‘We went by way of a tough interval simply after the Turkish incursion. I feel we misplaced a whole lot of credibility and we burned some relationships, however I do not suppose we ever misplaced [SDF commander] Gen. Mazloum,” he mentioned. “I feel a few of his rank and file a few of his decrease commanders had been extra offended than he was.”
As soon as the US indicated that it might stay in Syria, Roebuck mentioned, “he was keen to maneuver previous that rapidly.”
“Over time, we have rebuilt the [counterterrorism] relationship — the prepare and equip effort — and I feel that is going ahead pretty nicely,” he mentioned. “Our presence there additionally helps him to push again in opposition to Russian affect…He wants us and we want him as an area accomplice to proceed that battle in opposition to ISIS.”
And past the apparent success in destroying ISIS’ bodily stronghold in Iraq and Syria, Roebuck mentioned, there are another nascent diplomatic successes. An tried intra-Kurd dialogue has “been profitable in some important methods” and will “construct into an Arab-Kurd dialogue down the street,” he mentioned, though there’s “nonetheless a whole lot of work to be performed.”
However the actuality of the state of affairs in Syria as an entire — an ongoing civil battle that has settled right into a de facto stalemate cemented by assist from a bunch of regional and world gamers — makes long run features or losses tough to foretell. The result of any of those particular person downside units will rely upon “what is the future resolution, political resolution for Syria?” Roebuck mentioned.
“I do not know. That’s the issue,” he continued. “I do not know what is going on to occur in Syria, however ultimately, I feel there’s going to be some form of decision.”