The United States will have to sever its military assistance to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces battling Islamic State if the fighters partner with Syrian President Bashar Assad or Russia, a senior U.S. general said on Sunday.
The remarks by Army Lt. Gen. Paul LaCamera, who is the commander of the U.S.-led coalition battling the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, underscore the tough decisions facing the SDF as the United States prepares to withdraw its troops from Syria.
Syrian Kurdish leaders have sought talks with Assad's state, hoping to safeguard their autonomous region after the withdrawal of U.S. troops currently backing them.
They fear an attack by neighboring Turkey, which has threatened to crush the Kurdish YPG militia. Ankara sees the Syrian Kurdish fighters as indistinguishable from the Kurdish PKK movement that has waged an insurgency inside Turkey.
But LaCamera warned that U.S. law prohibits cooperation with Russia as well as Assad's military.
"We will continue to train and arm them as long as they remain our partners," LaCamera said, praising their hard-won victories against Islamic State terrorists.
When asked if that support would continue if they aligned themselves with Assad, LaCamera said: "No."
"Once that relationship is severed because they go back to the regime, which we don't have a relationship with, [or] the Russians … when that happens, then we will no longer be partners with them," LaCamera told a small group of reporters.
President Donald Trump's surprise December decision to withdraw all of the more than 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria has triggered deep concern among U.S. allies about the risk of a resurgence of Islamic State.
With U.S.-backing, the SDF has routed Islamic State and is on the verge of recapturing the final bits of its once sprawling territory. But Islamic State still has thousands of fighters, who, now dispersed, are expected to turn to guerrilla-style hit-and-run attacks.
On Friday, the four-star U.S. general overseeing U.S. troops throughout the Middle East, Gen. Joseph Votel, said he backed supporting the SDF as needed as long as it kept the pressure on Islamic State terrorists.
But LaCamera's comments make clear that the SDF may have to choose between backing from Assad, Russia or the United States.
Kurdish forces and Damascus have mostly avoided combat during the war. Assad, who has vowed to recover the entire country, has long opposed Kurdish ambitions for a federal Syria.
Earlier on Sunday, Assad warned that the United States would not protect those depending on it and that Washington had sold out its Kurdish partners. He said the Syrian army would return to the area after the American troop pullout and that only the Syrian state could protect groups in northern Syria.
"To those groups who are betting on the Americans, we say the Americans will not protect you. … The Americans will put you in their pockets to be used as bargaining tools," he said.
"Every inch of Syria will be liberated, and any intruder is an enemy," Assad added.
Speaking confidently about the Syrian army's military advances on the ground, Assad called on refugees around the world to return to Syria.
The Syrian civil war, now almost eight years old, has left around 450,000 people dead and displaced half the country's population, including around 6 million outside the country.
Western countries and human rights organizations have said the security situation is not yet stable enough for their return, and the U.N. has said it cannot guarantee safety for those who do.
Without naming them specifically, Assad accused foreign countries of blocking the return of refugees.
"Syria is in need of all its sons, and we call on refugees to return to take part in the process of reconstruction," Assad said.
Trump's decision was in part driven by an offer by Turkey to keep the pressure on Islamic State once the United States withdrew.
But current and former U.S. officials warn Ankara would be unable to replicate the SDF's success across the areas of Syria that the militias captured with U.S. support including arms, airstrikes and advisers.
Brett McGurk, who resigned in December as Trump's special envoy to the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, warned last month that the SDF could not be replaced as the provider of stability in areas of Syria formerly held by the terrorist group. He also cautioned that Turkey, a NATO ally, was not a reliable partner in the fight in Syria.
"The Syrian opposition forces [Turkey]f backs are marbled with extremists and number too few to constitute an effective challenge to Assad or a plausible alternative to the SDF," McGurk wrote.
