AmeRaqqa's Secret War Against ISIS?

Syrian Democratic Forces celebrate in Raqqa

This week, the headlines of many major news media outlets (including CNN the New York Times and the BBC) are all trumpeting what's being described as "the fall of ISIS" in the Syrian city of Raqqa.

Because the battle-scarred city sits on the banks of the Euphrates River in the northern part of Syria, it's been the site of wars since the 4th and 5th century AD when the Byzantine, Roman and Persian empires all wrestled for control of the region when it was an important outpost along critical trade routes.

But the shocking scenes of rubble-strewn streets, death and widespread destruction you've seen on TV, online or in newspapers or magazines are the sad byproduct of the devastating Syrian Civil War that began back in March of 2011.

Considering the wide array of international "players" currently on the battlefields of Syria (including Americans, Russians, British, French, Germans, Dutch, Norwegians, Kurdish nationals, members of Hezbollah, ISIS, Al Qaeda as well as Mid East players like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan and others), the origins of this conflict are rather humble.

As a BBC overview of the timeline of the Syrian Civil War notes, it was a group of young teenagers who spray-painted anti-Bashar Assad slogans on the wall of a school in early 2011 that first sparked the fire that's been raging across Syria for more than six bloody years.

When notoriously repressive Assad dispatched his forces to arrest and torture those teenagers to make an example of them, it didn't discourage protests against his brutal authoritarian regime.

It sparked violent pro-Democracy demonstrations that grew exponentially until protesters began arming themselves to battle pro-Assad forces - the rest, as they say, is history.

Syrian civilians fleeing during a break in fighting

To date well over 250,000 Syrians have been killed, thousands have "disappeared" and more than 11 million displaced from their country; causing refugee crises in multiple nations and conflicts over immigration that have influenced internal domestic politics in countries as far away as Europe and the United States.

It's morphed into a complex proxy war for a host of other conflicts - Sunni versus Shia, America versus Russia, Saudi Arabia versus Iran.


But the situation in Raqqa itself really went south after ISIS took over, as journalist and Iraq War veteran Seth Harp observed recently in Rolling Stone:

"Since 2013, when ISIS fighters took control of the city, Raqqa has been the most violent place in the world, a no-go zone where medieval punishments like beheading and crucifixion are meted out in the streets and diseases like polio and black fever run rampant."

While I'm not an expert in the Mid East, I am a political science major who follows current events.

And I'm also one of the millions of Americans tired of the thousands of lives, torrents of blood, and trillions of tax payer dollars the U.S. has spent fighting wars in one of the most destabilized regions on the planet over the past two decades.

As a nation principally founded on the institution of slavery that fought a war to liberate ourselves from the yoke of British rule, then fought another war to settle the uncomfortable question of slavery, Americans as a whole have never shied away from a fight.

But there's something deeply troubling about the current state of "perpetual war" that politicians, some members of the intelligence community, the massive bureaucracy of the Pentagon and Department of Defense, and the enormous web of defense contractors who fuel and profit from armed conflict, have somehow made the new American norm.

A norm the American public somehow has little say in that we nonetheless pay for to the tune of billions of dollars a month.

On Wednesday I was burning off some calories on the exercise bike during lunch at the gym, on CNN I saw this clip of a Syrian Democratic Forces armored personnel carrier crowded with elated SDF fighters celebrating in the dusty, rubble-strewn streets of Raqqa - the tracked vehicle was doing donuts in tight circles like a NASCAR driver who just won the Daytona 500.

SDF commanders announce their plan to retake
Raqqa back from ISIS in November, 2016

Personally I'm a bit troubled by this narrative the media seems to be pushing. 

The U.S. military has been notoriously restrictive about allowing American journalists and television cameras into Syria.

But lately TV and the internet are full of all these snippets of SDF forces celebrating a victory against ISIS in Raqqa.

ISIS is notorious for planning terrorist attacks in secret.

So is it really wise to goad them publicly and preen about taking back a stronghold from them when we're not really sure where all their fighters who were in Raqqa have gone?

Clearly there is cause to celebrate the liberation of a city from ISIS control, especially considering the dehumanizing ways in which they treat civilians; but there's no evidence that ISIS is "defeated."

The push to retake Raqqa was a long, brutal campaign that began with a SDF press conference in Ein Issa just north of the city back in November of 2016 as Americans were focused on the presidential elections and the terrifying prospect of a Trump presidency.

The campaign was called Operation Euphrates Rage, which would consist of 30,000 "US-backed" SDF fighters - but there was no clear definition of what "US-backed" really meant.

U.S. Special Forces operating in Syria

What strikes me as interesting about all these headlines about "the fall of ISIS in Raqqa" is the lack of mention of the U.S. military's role in helping to push ISIS fighters out of the region.

After reading through a number of news articles about Raqqa's liberation, the term "US-backed coalition" was used quite a bit, and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are being widely credited with the victory.


The bulk of the SDF are made up of an alliance of Kurdish militias, a strongly feminist mix of fighters that includes Christians and Muslims among their ranks.

Now it's not like the news media hasn't been reporting about the deployment of American troops in Sryia to back the SDF, but if you look at an ABC News article from last April for example, while it does report about a battery of U.S. Marines who arrived to set up an artillery base to support coalition troops, it starts off with a quote from Donald Trump saying that U.S. troops are "not going into Syria."   

But that wasn't true then, and it's not true now.

As I've said, I don't assign homework or anything (it's not that kind of blog) but if you want to understand just how extensive the U.S. combat role in Syria is, you should really take some time to read journalist Seth Harp's recent Rolling Stone article "The Siege of Raqqa: On the Front Line Of America's Secret War With ISIS". 

It's a remarkable piece of journalism lifted from his having been secretly smuggled into Syria with the help of SDF guides (and probably a fat cash donation from Rolling Stone).

U.S. Marines carrying 155mm artillery shells in
Northern Syria

Not only does Harp, himself a veteran of the Iraq war who writes from a position of knowledge and experience, visit the front lines of Raqqa where SDF fighters are dodging ISIS drones that drop grenades on them from above as they huddle in blasted out buildings waiting for U.S. air and artillery support - he also talks about the massive U.S. combat presence there.

Not hundreds of U.S. soldiers but thousands of American personnel.


And not just members of SEAL teams, Green Berets, Army Rangers and Delta Force operators who make up the Special Forces (JSOC) on the ground fighting ISIS - but members of all 4 branches.

As Harp writes in the opening of his RS piece: "Today, there are some 14 U.S. military bases on Syrian soil. The troops on the ground include personnel from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, but the government won't say exactly how many, where they're located, what precisely they're doing or how long they'll stay. A Few have died and a good deal more have been injured in combat, but like almost everything else about the U.S. presence in Syria, the number of wounded is classified."

If the SDF is going to become the face of "Democracy" in Syria, what does that mean for the thousands of American troops already stationed there?

Is this the start of another 15-plus year deployment of U.S. troops? If so what's it going to cost U.S. taxpayers?

And what are the parameters of their mission there?

The current news blackout on that mission by the Pentagon prevents American citizens from getting answers to those questions, but we have a right to know if American blood and treasure are being committed to a multi-year combat role in a foreign nation - especially one as destabilized as Syria.

My sense is that many Americans (including me) would consider defeating ISIS a noble cause, but if we're going to fight a war to do that then Congress needs to fully authorize it, hold public hearings about it and most importantly be upfront and straight with American citizens about what's going on there.

We have a right to debate the wisdom of deploying Americans to fight in a country that's been wracked by war since the 4th century AD - trying do that in secret is not the way to do it.

Something the Twitter-happy president who campaigned on an "America First" philosophy while criticizing President Obama's overseas military interventions is going to have to own.