The Century Foundation: "Desert Base Is Displaced Syrians’ Last Line of Defense"

New from me for The Century Foundation:

“Desert Base Is Displaced Syrians’ Last Line of Defense”

In the Badiyah desert, the Syrian regime’s eastward advance has jammed together America’s covert war in Syria, its overt campaign against the Islamic State, and two camps holding tens of thousands of vulnerable displaced people, all in one shrinking space.

The United States and Russia reached a “deconfliction” arrangement to protect U.S.-led Coalition forces in the Tanf base – but now the Coalition presence at Tanf is all that protects the camps from advancing regime and allied forces.

The Coalition isn’t there to protect civilians, it’s there to fight the Islamic State – and around the base, there’s no more Islamic State. The U.S.-led Coalition won’t stay in this base forever, even if it’s unlikely to leave just yet. Now U.S. planners have to figure out how to safeguard these displaced Syrians and produce a solution for these camps, which have merged with America’s more hard-edged covert and overt efforts to become a single intractable problem.