US President Donald Trump’s showboating on the dramatic assassination of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi cannot mask the more enduring result of his capricious decisions during October’s turmoil in North-eastern Syria, strengthening the Syrian regime and its allies, notably Russia. Turkey’s military incursion into northern Syria, controlled by the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Defense Forces, or SDF, has reset the standing of the players in the Syrian civil war, in its ninth year. The winners are the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey and its allied militia of Syrian rebels, Russia and Iran. The losers are the United States, once protector of SDF fighters, and the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. The chance of regrouping by escapees from among 6,000 ISIS jihadists held in SDF-run detention camps have diminished in the aftermath of al-Baghdadi’s death. Trump’s handling of this crisis – created by his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip […]