By Jonathan Spyer, Foreign Policy
The idea that Syria’s civil war is winding down has been repeated so often in recent months as to become a cliche. It has never been entirely true.
U.S. officials recently confirmed Washington’s intention to indefinitely retain effective ownership of around 28 percent of Syrian territory, in partnership with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. But those plans are increasingly in conflict with the other major international players in the war-torn country. That includes America’s erstwhile ally, Turkey, which recently launched “Operation Olive Branch,” an incursion into the Kurdish-held Afrin canton in Syria’s northwest. Meanwhile, President Bashar al-Assad’s regime is assaulting mainly Sunni Arab rebels to the south, and completing its conquest of the Abu Duhur airbase in the northern Idlib Province.
All this bloodshed doesn’t just spoil Washington’s plans — it also calls into question whether the participants in the Syrian war are anywhere close, to quote another cliche, to “bleeding themselves out.” Even if the dynamics driving the overlapping conflicts of Syria’s war are drawing to a close, they aren’t generating a peaceful and orderly future for long-suffering Syrians. Rather, new conflicts are emerging fully formed from the wombs of the old.
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