Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday the White House is looking to prevent another uptick in violence between the Syrian government and rebel groups once the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) is defeated, and it may need Russia's help to do so.
Tillerson made the comments while laying out the State Department's strategy in Syria, where more than six years of war have ravaged the country and attracted international powers supporting various factions. The U.S. and its Kurdish allies, in addition to the Russia-backed Syrian military, have managed to largely defeat ISIS, but tensions have risen between the two factions, as well as among other insurgents and jihadi movements that have been trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government since 2011.
With ISIS on the ropes, Tillerson expressed his desire to ultimately achieve peace by cooperating with Russia to address the tensions that led to Syria's bloody conflict in the first place.
"What we are hoping to avoid is the outbreak of a civil war, because you know what we really have is two conflicts in Syria: the war against ISIS and the civil war that created the conditions for ISIS to emerge," Tillerson told reporters. "Again we're working closely with Russia and other parties to see if we can agree on a path forward on how to stabilize Syria in the post-ISIS world."
Tillerson is an outspoken opponent of Assad, who has been accused of egregious human rights abuses by the West and considers the U.S. military presence illegal in his country. Tillerson said Tuesday that he did not believe the Syrian strongman should have a role in the nation's future and that the U.S. wished to achieve a "unified Syria" with a new constitution and free and fair elections, according to BuzzFeed News. Russia, however, has defended Assad and his government, leading to tense and sometimes violent confrontations in recent months between belligerents supported by Washington and Moscow.
The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, a majority-Kurd alliance of Arabs and ethnic minorities, and the Syrian military, supported by Russia and Iran, are actively involved in separate campaigns to dislodge ISIS from the swaths of territory it seized in 2014. The two sides have established themselves as the primary players in a potential political solution in Syria, but pockets of the country remain under control of other Syrian opposition groups.
The U.S. has cut assistance to rebel groups fighting Assad but continues to advocate the Syrian leader's political removal. The task has become increasingly difficult as pro-government forces re-establish control over most of the country, paving the way for increased Russian military presence in the west and the proliferation of Iran-backed, mostly Shiite Muslim militias in the southeast. Tillerson said Tuesday that Iran "must leave and go home," according to The Washington Post.
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