The US is being sucked back into the Middle East
The dispatch of 3,750 US paratroopers to Iraq, following this week’s attack on the Baghdad embassy, seems proof that US policy in the Middle East is being driven by a squall of events.
In re-election year Trump had hoped to honour his pledge to bring US forces out of trouble spots in Africa and the Middle East, especially where no end to the trouble seems in sight.
The flare-up in Iraq, which saw five major US airstrikes on five bases of the Iran-sponsored Kataeb Hezbollah militia, is just one of four or five points of tension, and outright confrontation, across a tight region of the East and South of the Mediterranean littoral.
In these trouble spots, regional powers, Iran and Turkey in particular, seem to be driving the agenda.
In Iraq itself the caretaker government of Adel Abd al-Mahdi is caught between two opposing allies, his principal sponsor Iran and the US, still needed for military training and support against resurgent ISIS forces.
Following the US air strikes against Kataeb Hezbollah, the State Department special envoy on Iran, Brian Hook, briefed journalists that the US policy of crushing sanctions on the Tehran regime was working. “They are just lashing out all over the place now,” he explained and even hinted that regime change was nigh.
Subsequent events suggest otherwise. The Baghdad embassy demonstration, the ramping up of Syrian regime operations on the Idlib enclave, the worsening crisis in Libya, and the increasingly rocky political outlook for Algeria, indicate that the western allies of the US and the Europeans are on the back foot.
Under the strategic direction of Iran’s Quds force commander, Qasseim Suleimani, Iran has now a string of militias and proxies from Lebanon on the Mediterranean to the Gulf. Lebanese as well as Syrian and Iraqi Hezbollah formations are vital to any scheme by the Assad regime to subdue Idlib with its three million fugitive population.
The militias provide the necessary ground power for Bashar al-Assad, who cannot rely on his exhausted Syrian army forces. Russia provides the airpower for the continuous and relentless bombing of the enclave. Turkey carefully monitors from its observation posts around the enclave.
Meanwhile Turkish forces, heavily reliant on their own local proxies, get on with operation ‘Olive Spring’ to drive the Kurdish YPG from the central northern Syrian border. It still seems to be a rather nasty work in progress, given how little the Turks are telling the world about it.
In Syria Russia and Turkey have forged a bond of mutual interest – reinforced by Turkey’s purchase of the S 400 air defence system for its forces; these are now about to go operational. In Libya, they are dangerously opposed, with Russia backing the lord of Benghazi, General Haftar Khalifa, as he pushes to topple the UN-recognised Government of National Accord in Tripoli. Khalifa has the backing of the UAE and Egypt, as well as Russia and even the tacit good will of Emmanuel Macron.
The GNA of prime minister Fayez al-Sarajj has the support of Qatar and Turkey. Tripoli itself is battleground of mafias and militias, regularly reinforced by levies arriving from the Saharan south. Khalifa’s forces are bolstered by mercenaries from the Russian Wagner Company, who now manage his oilfield security.
At the end of the year, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey visited Tunisia and announced that Turkey was prepared to put in a ground force to shore up the Tripoli government. At the same time two Turkish warships paid what could only be described as an emergency goodwill visit to Algeria, where things have gone from shaky to shakier still after a year of public demonstrations and a damp squib of a presidential election.
On December 12th Algerians elected, on the lowest turnout in national history, a new president, Abdelmajid Tebboue, to replace the ailing Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who had been forced out of office by the regime’s strong man General Ga’ad Salah, head of the armed forces. On December 23rd General Salah, 79, died of a heart attack. This seems to herald a colossal power vacuum, with the old bosses of the ruling elite, Le Pouvoir, physically, and visibly, crumbling.
On the way to Algiers, the two Turkish warships indulged in a saluting ceremony with an Italian frigate off the Algerian coast. Italy, with its vital interest in Algerian gas exports, is taking the lead of Nato powers to stabilize Algeria and Libya, particularly in preventing Russia from extending a new wave of disruption tactics to Algeria.
Turkey and Russia are staking particular national claims to chunks of the Mediterranean area. The eastern Mediterranean is now the setting of a free for all grab of maritime gas assets. This has produced some interesting odd-couple alliances; Greece, a Nato ally, is working with Egypt, and Cyprus with Israel.
The potential rewards are substantial, and so are the potential hazards. Turkey doesn’t like the offshore drilling off Cyprus and Greece, and has made feints and manoeuvres with naval ships. Lebanese Hezbollah has said any Israeli offshore gas assets would be targets.
This would bring even further military commitment by the US and immediate allies.
It is looking like a chaotic new year across the Mediterranean and off Europe’s southern shores. Not that you would hear much about this in the corridors of Brussels. Nor does there to be much grasp of this fractious item of human geography in Washington.
Despite all claims to the contrary, not to mention the debacle of special forces withdrawal from northern Syria in October, the US has sent a further 14,000 troops into the Middle East since the beginning of the summer. Now a further 3,750 are on the way. Who is to say more won’t be sent in by this summer?