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By Tom Porter
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With fighters from the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) ousted from Tabqa, the Syrian town is emerging as a testing ground for President Donald Trump's ISIS strategy.
In May the strategically vital town, located some 30 miles west of Raqqa—the militant group's de facto capital—was seized by Arab and Kurdish fighters backed by the U.S.-led coalition.
The White House's envoy to the coalition fighting the group, Brett McGurk, visited the town Thursday, AFP reported, where infrastructure has been devastated by months of bitter conflict and several years of brutal occupation by ISIS militants.
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In Syria, Trump has empowered military commanders to make battlefield decisions while entrusting a small team of State Department figures and civil unit officials to stabilize and rebuild areas recaptured from ISIS.
In the town, McGurk met with members of the Tabqa Civil Council, the civil authority responsible for administering the town's day-to-day affairs, with the U.S. keen for locals to take the lead in rebuilding their communities, reported the New York Times.
On the campaign trail, Trump criticized America's entanglements in Middle Eastern nation building, and said that in Syria the United States' chief objective should be fighting ISIS, rather than removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
However, the realities on the ground make achieving these goals a major challenge, with the U.S. negotiating a myriad of shifting regional alliances, a lack of central regional authority and war-fatigue following the mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Among the problems facing Taqba is a refusal by Turkey—enraged by the U.S. decision to back Kurdish militants it regards as terrorists—to allow international aid to cross its border to the Tabqa region.
The population has subsequently relied on food supplies from the U.S. Aid Program, as well as the U.S. military for food, heavy equipment and medicine.
Rehabilitating children, both ideologically and physically, is another major issue: the radicalization of young people, who have been indoctrinated for years by ISIS militants, is rampant as is the spread of infectious disease.
"What you've got here is hundreds, if not thousands, of bodies in the rubble, which is causing a lot of flies, the flies are biting kids, the kids are getting infected," Al Dwyer, a senior official with the United States Agency for International Development told the New York Times.
Critics argue that Trump's minimalist approach to Syria is not sufficient to overcome the significant hurdles ahead.
"The vital question is whether law and order will be re-established because if it isn't, ISIS will be back in some form," Daniel Serwer, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told the Times.
"It is terribly small," Mr. Serwer said of the State Department deployment of specialists. "You need more than that just to talk with people, never mind do things. It is at least a recognition that there are civilian tasks that have to be fulfilled after you liberate the place. To be vital for success, it will have to grow."
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