These Contradictions are Real. Someone is Going to Have to Lose.

Eventually the United States is not going to be able to manage the contradictions created by its policy of perpetual war. Case in point is Syria. As Carlotta Gall reported over the weekend in "Some Syrian Refugees Are Going Back to War Alongside Turkey," the CIA-spawned Free Syrian Army has joined the Turkish Army's invasion of Syria and is battling the Pentagon-sponsored Syrian Democratic Forces, a.k.a., the People's Protection Units of Rojava:

KILIS, Turkey — Turkey is relying on a newly reconfigured, 20,000-member American-trained force with three army corps as it tries to carve out a buffer zone within Syria. The force has already taken 16 casualties in two weeks of fighting on the front lines.

But the soldiers are not Turks. Rather they are the mostly Arab fighters of the Free Syrian Army, once trained and assembled by the C.I.A. and Western allies to oust President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

Since the routing of the Islamic State, alliances in Syria have been scrambled. The latest round of the conflict, in fact, features two American-trained forces fighting each other.

The Free Syrian Army, out of favor with the United States and badly depleted after seven years of fighting on multiple fronts, has long had common cause with Turkey, whose incursion has angered the Americans.

On the other side are Kurdish groups, under the umbrella of the Syrian Democratic Forces, who are the United States’ favored fighting tool on the ground but who are disliked by local Syrians for driving them from their homes and seen by Turkey as a security threat.

But it is not going well. "Operation Olive Branch" is in its third week and Afrin is still under Kurdish control. The Turkish Army suffered its worst day of fighting on Saturday, the same day a Russian fighter was shot down by Al Qaeda. According to Rod Nordland in "Turkey’s Worst Day Yet in Syria Offensive: At Least 7 Soldiers Killed":

KOBANI, Syria — Turkey’s military suffered its worst day yet in the two-week offensive in Afrin, Syria, when at least seven soldiers were killed and a tank was destroyed in the fighting, official Turkish news outlets reported on Sunday.

But the losses may be higher, according to other reports.

Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led militia defending the city in northern Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces, said its fighters had killed eight Turkish Army soldiers in two episodes northeast of the city on Saturday. Two tanks were destroyed, he said.

An independent monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that two tanks had been destroyed and that 19 Turkish soldiers and allied Syrian militiamen had been killed in total on Saturday.

It was the single biggest one-day loss for the Turkish forces since they pushed into Syria on Jan. 20, vowing to take the enclave from the Syrian Democratic Forces, which Turkey describes as terrorists. The losses bring to at least 14 the number of Turkish soldiers killed in the offensive so far.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said in a statement on his Twitter accountthat Turkey would retaliate for the losses. “They will pay for this twice as much,” he wrote.

The deaths occurred on the same day that a Russian warplane was shot down over Idlib, about 50 miles south of Afrin, and the pilot, who had apparently parachuted out, was killed on the ground.

An affiliate of Al Qaeda in Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or H.T.S., claimed responsibility, broadcasting footage of the plane’s downing. Elements of that same group are among the Free Syrian Army militias, many of them Islamist extremists, who are allied with the Turks and fighting in Afrin, according to the group and to analysts in the area. 

Russia, which controls Afrin’s airspace, has allowed Turkey to operate its air force there for the offensive.

Al Qaeda coordinates with Turkey in Idlib. Turkey coordinates with Russia to conduct the air campaign of "Operation Olive Branch." Russia controls the air space over Afrin. Turkey minus air power has no hope of defeating the Kurds of Rojava.

The New York Times is prominently featuring a story by Eric Schmitt, "Thousands of ISIS Fighters Flee in Syria, Many to Fight Another Day," the long and short of which is that ISIS has not been defeated after all:

WASHINGTON — Thousands of Islamic State foreign fighters and family members have escaped the American-led military campaign in eastern Syria, according to new classified American and other Western military and intelligence assessments, a flow that threatens to tarnish American declarations that the militant group has been largely defeated.

As many of the fighters flee unfettered to the south and west through Syrian Army lines, some have gone into hiding near Damascus, the Syrian capital, and in the country’s northwest, awaiting orders sent by insurgent leaders on encrypted communications channels. 

Other battle-hardened militants, some with training in chemical weapons, are defecting to Al Qaeda’s branch in Syria. Others are paying smugglers tens of thousands of dollars to spirit them across the border to Turkey, with an eventual goal of returning home to European countries.

So ISIS fighters are joining back up with Al Qaeda, and Al Qaeda is working with Turkey and the Free Syrian Army against the Syrian Arab Army, Russia and Syrian Democratic Forces, who are backed by the U.S. military. But the Free Syrian Army is a creation of the CIA, and Turkey is a NATO ally, and SecDef Mattis recently announced that GWOT is on the back burner and great power conflict with China and Russia is what's really cooking.

These contradictions are real and cannot be massaged out of existence. Someone is going to have to lose.