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Analysis: Trump Cease-Fire Deal Cements Turkey’s Gains in Syria https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/world/middleeast/trump-pence-syria-turkey-ceasefire.html

In ‘Cave-In,’ Trump Cease-Fire Cements Turkey’s Gains in Syria

The agreement, announced by Vice President Mike Pence, may stop the killing in the Kurdish enclave in northern Syria. But the cost to American influence is expected to be high.

By David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt | Published October 17, 2019 | New York Times | Posted October 19, 2019 |

WASHINGTON — The cease-fire agreement reached with Turkey by Vice President Mike Pence amounts to a near-total victory for Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who gains territory, pays little in penalties and appears to have outmaneuvered President Trump.

The best that can be said for the agreement is that it may stop the killing in the Kurdish enclave in northern Syria. But the cost for Kurds, longtime American allies in the fight against the Islamic State, is severe: Even Pentagon officials were mystified about where tens of thousands of displaced Kurds would go, as they moved south from the Turkey-Syria border as required by the deal — if they agree to go at all.

And the cost to American influence, while hard to quantify, could be frightfully high.

In the 11 days between Mr. Trump’s fateful phone call with Mr. Erdogan and the trip to Ankara by Mr. Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday, the United States has ceded ground in Syria — including American bases — to the Russian-backed Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad. And it has shaken the faith of American allies that, in a time of stress, Washington will have their back.

“This just looks like a complete cave-in by the United States to everything the Turks demanded,” said Eric S. Edelman, a former ambassador to Turkey and a senior Defense Department official in the George W. Bush administration. “I don’t see what the Turks gave up.”

In fact, if the sanctions imposed against Turkey by the Trump administration are lifted, as Mr. Pence said they now would be, the Turkish leader would pay a far lower price than Russia did for its annexation of Crimea in 2014. The sanctions imposed on Moscow then are still in place.

But there are other winners in addition to Mr. Erdogan, who has routed the Kurdish groups he views as terrorists who were living in an American protectorate.

Chief among them is President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who gains vast influence in a strategic corner of the Middle East where, until 2015, he had almost none. Now, he is a player, and already is filling the territorial and political vacuum that Mr. Trump left after he agreed to get out of the way of the Turkish invasion of Syria, which a small contingent of American Special Operations forces were there to prevent by their very presence.

Iran was also a winner. It has long used Syria as a route to send missiles to Hezbollah and flex its muscles across the region. That, in many ways, is the most perplexing part of the president’s decision to withdraw, because it runs so counter to his “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran’s clerical leaders and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

And Mr. Assad, who was barely clinging to power after the Arab Spring in 2011, and whose military facilities Mr. Trump bombed in the opening months of his presidency in 2017, has a new lease on life. The Americans are gone from the one corner of his country they once occupied.

Mr. Trump has a different view — no surprise, given the bipartisan critique of his failure to stop Mr. Erdogan during their phone conversation, or threaten sanctions before the invasion, rather than after the facts had changed on the ground.

“I’m happy to report tremendous success with respect to Turkey,” Mr. Trump told reporters after his vice president and secretary of state announced the deal. “This is an amazing outcome. This is an outcome, regardless of how the press would like to damp it down, this was something they were trying to get for 10 years.”

Mr. Trump’s joy may reflect a very different worldview than that of his military, his diplomats or the Republican leaders who say he has damaged America’s reputation and influence. While his party, and Democrats, accused him of betraying allies and aiding Russia, Mr. Trump insisted he was simply making good on a campaign promise to bring troops home from “endless wars.”

On Wednesday, as Mr. Pence and Mr. Pompeo were flying to Ankara, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was challenging the president on whether there was any strategic logic to his withdrawal from Syria — especially if it resulted in freeing detained ISIS fighters who might now attack in the region or on the United States.

On Thursday, recounting her heated discussion with the president at the White House the previous day, she said she asked him how his strategy fit with his announcement last Friday that nearly 3,000 more troops were being deployed to Saudi Arabia. The president responded that the Saudis were paying the cost of that deployment — suggesting that Mr. Trump was happy to commit troops to the highest bidder among American allies, rather than make an independent judgment about their strategic importance.

Republicans also challenged the agreement reached in Ankara.

“The announcement today is being portrayed as a victory. It is far from a victory,” Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, said on the Senate floor Thursday. “Given the initial details of the cease-fire agreement, the administration must also explain what America’s future role will be in the region, what happens now to the Kurds and why Turkey will face no apparent consequences.”

And Mr. Romney noted, “The cease-fire does not change the fact that America has abandoned an ally.”

At the Pentagon on Thursday afternoon, senior officials scrambled to understand how they were supposed to carry out the agreement Mr. Pence and Mr. Erdogan had negotiated.

Several civilian and military officials complained that the broadly worded deal left large policy and logistical gaps to fill, with many questions about how to carry out commitments by the two sides that appeared to contradict the fast-moving situation on the ground.

With the withdrawal of about 1,000 Americans already underway, the officials asked, how would those departing forces conduct counterterrorism operations with the Turkish military, as Mr. Pence insisted they would? Would the Syrian Kurds fully comply with a pullback agreement they had little say in drafting, and in which they were the clear losers?

Their questions did not stop there. How large and how deep is the buffer area inside Syria that was supposed to give Turkey a safe zone between its border and the Kurdish fighters? The original safe zone that the United States and Turkey envisioned was 75 miles long and roughly 20 miles deep. But it was upended by Mr. Trump’s acquiescence to the invasion, and now Turkish forces have pushed beyond that.

And what about Mr. Assad’s forces and their Russian allies — to whom the abandoned Syrian Kurds reached out to after the American abandoned them?

It also remains unknown whether Turkey will be required to withdraw all or some of its forces sent across a sovereign border into Syria. (One official said a reason Turkey agreed to the deal on Thursday is because the Kurds have put up more resistance, and Turkish forces could not advance south any farther as a result.)

Several Pentagon and State Department officials and military officers who have worked on Syria policy or deployed to the country’s northwest expressed shock, outrage and disbelief at the administration’s second major capitulation to Mr. Erdogan in less than two weeks.

These officials said Mr. Erdogan was the big winner, and appeared to have gotten everything he wanted.

Military officials said they were stunned that the agreement essentially allowed Turkey to annex a portion of Syria, displace tens of thousands of Kurdish residents and wipe away years of counterterrorism gains against the Islamic State.

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Shelling Continues in Syria, Hours After Cease-Fire Deal

A day after Vice President Mike Pence announced a pause in the battle between Turkish and Kurdish forces, gunfire could also be heard in the region, raising questions about the deal’s feasibility.

By Patrick Kingsley | Published October 18, 2019 Updated 8:23 AM ET | New York Times | Posted October 18, 2019 |

ISTANBUL —The leadership of the Syrian Kurdish fighters accused the Turkish military and its proxies on Friday of violating the terms of a truce in northern Syria that was brokered a day earlier by Vice President Mike Pence, raising questions about the feasibility of the cease-fire and whether the Americans can enforce it.

A spokesman for the Kurdish forces, Mustafa Bali, said on Twitter that Turkey continued to pound civilian areas and a hospital, despite the announcement on Thursday night by Mr. Pence that there would be a five-day pause in the fighting.

Responding to the claims that Turkey had violated the truce, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan denied that any fighting was continuing.

“I do not know where you get your information from,” he told a reporter after leaving Friday Prayers at a mosque in Istanbul. “Conflict is out of the question.”

The question of exactly when the cease-fire would begin was left unaddressed in both the text of the agreement released by Turkish and American officials, and also by Mr. Pence during his comments to the news media on Thursday.

But shelling continued in the Syrian border town of Ras al-Ain, and gunfire could be heard by journalists just across the border in Turkey. The continuation of the deadly conflict provided further evidence of the United States’ diminished influence, showing that the American military, having evacuated its troops from northern Syria, had no practical ability to enforce the cease-fire.

The truce agreement had already amounted to a near victory for Mr. Erdogan, who outmaneuvered President Trump, since it gave the assent of the United States to a Turkish sphere of influence in northern Syria and further diminished the United States’ role in the region.

The Turkish authorities said on Thursday that they would adhere to the five-day pause in hostilities to allow Kurdish fighters to withdraw from Kurdish-run areas in northern Syria that have been occupied by Turkish forces in the past week. But the Kurdish militia’s spokesman said their soldiers were still under fire in Ras al-Ain.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was in Jerusalem on Friday to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, did not respond to repeated questions on Friday about whether the cease-fire had been violated. A day before, he and Mr. Pence had announced the agreement in Ankara, the Turkish capital.

Asked about the cease-fire agreement, Mr. Netanyahu said only, “We hope things will turn out for the best.”

On Thursday, Mr. Trump described the deal during a speech in Dallas as “an incredible outcome,” and wrote on Twitter that it was “great for everyone!”

Syrian Kurdish fighters promised on Thursday night to adhere to the cease-fire and to withdraw from an area of their territory that the Turkish military has occupied in the past week, including around the key Syrian border town of Ras al-Ain. Turkey also said it would begin a five-day pause in hostilities to allow Kurdish fighters to evacuate.

But shelling and gunfire could be heard in Ras al-Ain, the Turkish news media reported, and smoke could be seen rising from the town from the Turkish settlement of Ceylanpinar, which is less than a mile away across the border.

Turkish-led forces also prevented a convoy of international aid workers from gaining access to the town to treat people wounded in the fighting, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent war monitor based in Britain.

Ras al-Ain has been the site of the fiercest clashes since Turkish troops invaded Kurdish-held areas of northern Syria nine days ago. On Friday, Kurdish health officials said they were investigating whether six civilians in the town had been hit by chemical weapons during Turkish airstrikes. Photographs shared by the Kurdish Red Crescent, a medical charity working in the area, showed at least two children with burns on their faces.

The Turkish government has denied the claim, along with other accusations of war crimes. Its Defense Ministry said on Friday that the Turkish Army had continued its offensive “on the basis of humanitarian and moral values, and of international law.”

But Amnesty International, a global rights watchdog, on Friday accused the Turkish military and Arab militias fighting under its command of carrying out “serious violations and war crimes, including summary killings and unlawful attacks that have killed and injured civilians.”

In a statement, Amnesty’s secretary general, Kumi Naidoo, added: “Turkish military forces and their allies have displayed an utterly callous disregard for civilian lives, launching unlawful deadly attacks in residential areas that have killed and injured civilians.”

At least 218 civilians in northern Syria have died since the invasion began, according to the Kurdish authorities. A further 18 have been killed in Turkey by Kurdish mortar attacks, the Turkish government said.

Turkey wants to force out the Syrian Kurdish militia that has used the chaos of the conflict to establish an autonomous region across roughly a quarter of Syrian territory. The militia is an offshoot of a guerrilla group that has waged a decadeslong insurgency in Turkey. The Turks view the group as a terrorist organization.

Since 2014, the group has operated under the protection of the United States military, which partnered with the Kurdish fighters to help sweep the Islamic State from the region and, in the process, allowed the Kurdish militia to control most of the land lining the Turkish-Syrian border.

But after Mr. Trump abruptly ordered the withdrawal of United States troops from the border this month, ending their protection of the Kurdish fighters, Turkish forces invaded with the aim of establishing a Turkish-friendly zone, roughly 20 miles deep, along the border.

The deal announced on Thursday by Mr. Pence and Mr. Pompeo effectively gave American assent to Turkish territorial ambitions in part of the area, handing Turkey a huge diplomatic victory and completing the sudden reversal of a central plank of American policy in the Middle East.

It was sealed without the involvement of the Syrian or Russian governments, to whom the Kurdish authorities turned for protection after the American evacuation and the onslaught of Turkish-led forces.

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, and Lara Jakes from Jerusalem.

Fighting continued in northern Syria between Turkish and Syrian Kurdish fighters on Friday morning, casting further doubt on the feasibility of a cease-fire announced on Thursday by Vice President Mike Pence and Turkish officials.

The cease-fire deal had already amounted to a near victory for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who appears to have outmaneuvered President Trump, since it gave the assent of the United States to a Turkish sphere of influence in northern Syria and further diminished the United States’ role in the region.

The continuation of the deadly conflict in a Syrian border town on Friday raises further questions about whether the American government has the ability to enforce the cease-fire since it is not a party in the conflict and no longer has troops posted in northern Syria.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was in Jerusalem on Friday to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, did not respond to repeated questions about whether the cease-fire had been violated. A day before, he and Mr. Pence had announced the agreement in Ankara, the Turkish capital.

Asked about the cease-fire agreement, Mr. Netanyahu said only, “We hope things will turn out for the best.”

But the deal was sealed without the involvement of the Syrian or Russian governments, to whom the Kurdish authorities turned for protection after the American evacuation and the onslaught of Turkish-led forces.

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, and Lara Jakes from Jerusalem.

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The Navy Wants to Push Out Problem SEALs. But Trump May Get in the Way. ( Trump has infected every facet of the U.S. Government. 😔 SAD)

A push to strengthen discipline in the SEAL teams has been stymied by one member’s support in the White House.

By Dave Philips | Published Oct. 18, 2019 Updated 7:06 AM ET | New York Times | Posted October 18, 2019 |

Spiking drinks with cocaine, shooting Iraqi civilians, strangling a Green Beret: The Navy SEAL teams have been rocked by one high-profile scandal after another in recent months, and the leader of the elite commando force, Rear Adm. Collin P. Green, has vowed to clean house.

Admiral Green has come down hard on misconduct, fired two key leaders and made an unusually public admission that the Navy’s secretive warrior caste has an “ethics problem.” At the same time, though, he has steered wide of the SEAL at the center of one of the grimmest episodes, Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, who was charged with shooting civilians, murdering a captive Islamic State fighter with a knife, and threatening to kill witnesses.

Chief Gallagher was acquitted of murder charges this summer, but evidence that he had engaged in a range of other misconduct, including theft and drug use, had come to light during the investigation. Admiral Green and other Navy leaders were planning to demote him and force him out of the SEALs — sending a message that such conduct had no place in one of the country’s premier fighting forces.

None of that has happened, though, because one of Chief Gallagher’s most vocal supporters happens to be the commander in chief. President Trump has repeatedly intervened, and has posted so many expressions of support for the SEAL on Twitter that the Navy now sees Chief Gallagher as untouchable, according to three Navy officials familiar with the case. Any talk of punishment has been shelved, not only for the chief, but for two other SEALs who had been facing possible discipline in the case, these officials said.

Mr. Trump helped Chief Gallagher get released from confinement before his trial, and personally congratulated him on Twitter when he was acquitted.

“People want to hold these guys accountable,” said one Navy officer who was involved in the punishment deliberations. “But they are afraid that if you do anything, minutes later there will be a tweet from the White House, and the officer in charge will get axed.”

The officer, like others interviewed for this article, asked that his name not be used because he feared retaliation.

The president has previously made it clear that he believes the country should tread carefully when calling American troops to account for acts of war. Only last week, he announced on Twitter that the White House was reviewing the case of Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn, a former Army Special Forces soldier charged with murder in the death of a Taliban bomb maker in Afghanistan. “We train our boys to be killing machines, then prosecute them when they kill!” Mr. Trump wrote.

The issue in Chief Gallagher’s case became apparent to Admiral Green’s team in August, when the chief’s lawyers — including one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers, Marc Mukasey, who joined the defense team two months before the June court-martial — had tried and failed to persuade Navy commanders to suspend any punishment. Soon after that, the president brought up the Gallagher case at a meeting with the Secretary of the Navy and the Chief of Naval Operations, according to a senior Navy official.

White House officials strongly denied that the Gallagher case was discussed. But hours after the meeting, the Chief of Naval Operations announced that he would personally take over the Gallagher case from another admiral, who had indicated that she planned to punish the chief.

The Navy had also planned to discipline two other SEALs who had come under investigation in the Gallagher case: Lt. Jacob Portier, who was charged with not reporting Chief Gallagher’s actions in Iraq; and Special Operator First Class Corey Scott, a platoon medic whose testimony at the chief’s trial prompted the Navy to open a perjury investigation. But on the same day as the White House meeting, the charges against Lieutenant Portier were dropped and the investigation of Special Operator Scott was ended.

The intervention from Washington left Navy leaders with a dilemma: Not punishing Chief Gallagher and the others would undermine efforts to restore discipline in the ranks, but punishing them only to be publicly reversed might make things even worse.

“All that’s off the table now,” said a Navy Special Warfare officer who was briefed on the most recent deliberations of Admiral Green’s team about the matter. Navy commanders grew concerned that if they took away from Chief Gallagher the Trident pin that signifies membership in the SEALs, only to see the president give it back again, the officer said, “it sends a message that the commanders aren’t in control.”

While taking no action against Chief Gallagher, the Navy recently fired two senior leaders of the team on which Chief Gallagher serves, SEAL Team 7, which has had other recent incidents of misconduct. The command cited a “loss of confidence that resulted from leadership failures.”

The two leaders, Cmdr. Edward Mason and Master Chief Hugh Spangler — both decorated career SEALs with unblemished records who took command of the team after Chief Gallagher had been arrested — filed a complaint with the Navy’s inspector general over their firing. They said that they had become “expendable scapegoats” in the admiral’s fight against an anti-authoritarian “Gallagher effect” that was threatening to spread through the force.

With his new, protected status, Chief Gallagher appears to be trolling Navy leadership.

A few days after the demoted leaders filed their complaint, an Instagram account belonging to Chief Gallagher and his wife started selling T-shirts emblazoned with the phrase “The Gallagher Effect.”

Another recent Instagram post from the account referred to Admiral Green and another top Navy leader as “a bunch of morons.”

And in a photo posted on social media by a former member of his platoon, Chief Gallagher is seen gripping a hunting knife similar to the one Navy prosecutors said he used to kill a captive fighter from ISIS, which is also known by its Arabic name, Daesh. The post, which was “liked” by Chief Gallagher’s account, included the hashtags #WeDon’tHaveAnEthicsProblem and #NoOneCriesOverSpilledDaesh.

Timothy Parlatore, a lawyer for Chief Gallagher, said the Instagram account is administered by the chief’s wife and does not reflect the chief’s views.

The original criminal charges against Chief Gallagher, 40, stemmed from his fifth combat deployment with the SEALs, when he led a platoon fighting ISIS in Iraq in 2017. In a text message sent to his supervisor before deploying, he said he did not care where the Navy sent him, as long as there was “sure action,” adding, “We just want to kill as many people as possible.”

He ended up in an advisory role largely behind front lines. But several men under his command told Navy authorities that he remained fixated on killing, and said they saw him shoot civilians with a sniper rifle and stab a captive teenage ISIS fighter in the neck. Their reports eventually led to the war crimes charges filed against the chief.

After Chief Gallagher was arrested in 2018, his family appeared repeatedly on Fox News, insisting that he had been wrongly accused. Soon Mr. Trump became a supporter, praising Chief Gallagher’s “past service to our country” on Twitter. Mr. Trump directed the Navy to release the chief from pretrial confinement in the spring of 2019 and ordered paperwork to pardon him before his trial in June.

During the trial, the Navy’s case against Chief Gallagher fell into disarray as a key witness, Special Operator Scott, changed his story on the stand and prosecutors canceled the testimony of other witnesses, fearing they would do the same. A jury made up largely of seasoned combat veterans found Chief Gallagher not guilty of nearly all counts.

After the acquittal, the president congratulated him on Twitter saying, “Glad I could help!”

But Admiral Green was worried about the message that the Gallagher case was sending to the rest of force. In July, he sent a letter to the SEAL teams warning that the spate of incidents of drug use and violence in the SEAL teams showed “we have a problem,” and that leaders “must now take a proactive approach to prevent the next breach of ethical and professional behavior.”

In Chief Gallagher’s case, though he had been acquitted on the murder charge, Navy officials were considering administrative punishment for other possible misconduct uncovered during the investigation.

The Navy had found unauthorized grenades, stolen equipment and illicit drugs in his house and in his work locker, according to the Navy’s criminal investigation report. When investigators seized the chief’s phone, they found text exchanges suggesting he was illegally using the narcotic painkiller Tramadol, as well as marijuana and ecstasy.

Chief Gallagher has denied that he did anything unlawful in Iraq, and his lawyer, Mr. Parlatore, said the purported drug and equipment offenses had already been investigated and had been deemed insignificant.

The part of the case taken over by the chief Navy officer in Washington concerns the minor charge on which Chief Gallagher was convicted in the trial — posing for a photo with a corpse. The officer hearing the case had recommended that the chief be demoted by one rank, with the possibility that he could be further reduced to the lowest rank in the military, E-1. The regional commander overseeing the court-martial, Rear Adm. Bette Bolivar, had the authority to adjust or overturn the conviction and sentence.

Chief Gallagher’s legal team pressed Admiral Bolivar to suspend his punishment so the chief could retire from the Navy with full rank and a clean record. Admiral Bolivar replied in a letter Aug. 1 that she found the chief's conduct reprehensible and had no intention of suspending his sentence.

That was when the chief’s legal team informed the Navy that they would “take their case to Washington,” according to a Navy official with knowledge of the exchange. On the same day that Admiral Bolivar’s letter was sent, the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. John M. Richardson, along with the Secretary of the Navy, Richard V. Spencer, went to the White House for a meeting with Mr. Trump.

A senior Navy official said the two men had not expected to discuss the Gallagher case, and were surprised when the president brought it up, expressing his displeasure that prosecutors had received commendations for what he regarded as a botched handling of the case.

Though White House officials insist the case was not discussed, within hours of the meeting, Admiral Richardson took the Gallagher, Portier and Scott cases from Admiral Bolivar.

Charges against Lieutenant Portier were dismissed that same day, and the investigation of Special Operator Scott was halted. Neither man responded to requests for comment.

Mr. Parlatore said he had not contacted the White House and had no knowledge of any intervention by the president. He said he welcomed the president’s involvement if it happened because his client was threatened with punishment for minor misconduct that is often overlooked in the SEAL teams. “If the president has a deterrent effect and can prevent retaliation, we’re thankful for that,” he said.

A new Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Michael M. Gilday, took command in August, but has not changed course. His final decision in the Gallagher case is expected by the end of October.

Admiral Green was not available to discuss the case, according to Cmdr. Tamara Lawrence, a Navy spokeswoman, who added that “it would be inappropriate to speculate on any administrative actions, as no decisions have been made.”

On the night of the leadership demotions in Team 7, Chief Gallagher made an unauthorized appearance at a “Patriot Awards” gala in Nashville, alongside Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. Both men accepted awards from the country music star Charlie Daniels.

“What an honor,” a post on Chief Gallagher’s Instagram account said.

Maggie Haberman and John Ismay contributed reporting from Washington.