We are only being told 1/4 truths, and mostly lies, about why we still have military forces (and a ton of CIA etc) in eastern Syria. The three maps below will go a long way toward understanding the real situation, which is preventing Iran from establishing a land corridor to the Mediterranean.
Russia has long-established navy bases in Syria. Blocked in by geography in the Black Sea, these forward bases on the Med are extremely critical and strategic. This is why Russia has never backed down from its support of the Assad regime.
And this is why America intentionally destabilized Syria, leading to the bloody ongoing civil war, tens of thousands dead, millions of refugees fleeing to Europe, and millions of Syrian civilians currently starving under Western-imposed economic sanctions, etc. Even hospitals cannot get electricity more than a few hours a day, because even generator parts are blockaded. All this mayhem and misery was triggered and sponsored by America in another "color revolution" under Obama/Biden/Hillary.
(Notably, the oil fields in eastern Syria are still pumping away, under American military protection, but the output is directed away from western Syria, where people are starving in the dark, and into Iraq, under our control.)
This "color revolution" leading to the ongoing civil war was done in spite of the fact that the Syrian govt was and is a secular coalition of Alawites, Christians, Shias and Sunnis, quite moderate by Middle East standards.
And our current "allies" in eastern Syria, now rebranded yet again from the old Free Syrian Army to the SDF or Syrian Democratic Forces, are just the same old Al Queda and ISIS terrorists, (plus Kurdish PKK and other various "freedom fighters" considered terrorists by Turkey), but now with big fat CIA paychecks.
War and politics make strange bedfellows. Into this strange cocktail, overlay and blend the Kurdish ethnic groups and their own sub-groups consisting of many ideological and religious mixtures.
But above all, from the American point of view, preventing a Shia "land bridge" from the Med to Iran is the primary mission. Our neocons could give a shit less about the people who live in Syria, east or west, any more than they care about the bloody ongoing civil wars and humanitarian catastrophes in Yemen or Ethiopia. It's all about blocking Iran's "Shia Crescent" land bridge.
What makes all of this skullduggery bubble to the top is the volatile "triple mix" covering the nearly lawless region:
1. National borders and identities.
2. Kurdish identity against all the existing nation states the Kurds must exist within.
3. The vicious Sunni-Shia ongoing struggle.
Eastern Syria and Northern Iraq are largely "ungoverned territory," up for grabs by whoever can fight for it, and hold it. Some of our "allies" are Kurdish terrorists, like the ones who detonated a bomb on a busy shopping street in Istanbul 2 weeks ago. Turkey takes a very dim view of this, even if American troops get in the way of their air strikes.
We are in Eastern Syria to control and direct its oil output, and to prevent the Iranians from connecting to the Med, even if our presence is seriously pissing off the Turks, who want a free hand to go after their enemies. That is the bottom line. That is what is REALLY going on.
