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The Iowa National Guard identified the two guardsmen who were killed, along with a 54-year-old Iraqi-American contractor, in an ambush in central Syria.
The December 13th attack occurred in the ancient ruins of Palmyra. Reports rapidly emerged, and were later confirmed, that the gunmen was a member of the national security forces.
The Syrian Interior Ministry claimed that, before the attack, Syrian authorities had “decided to fire him” for having “extremist Islamist ideology,” but “didn’t make it in time because it was a holiday”.
According to Wael Essam, a Palestinian journalist who has covered the conflict in Syria for many years, the perpetrator has been identified as Tariq Satouf al-Hamd from the Aleppo countryside. A former ISIS member, al-Hamd is supposed to have traveled to Damascus after the fall of Assad to sign up with the newly-formed national security forces, made up of al-Qaeda in Syria, which renamed itself in 2017 Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
The Americans were in Palmyra while officials were meeting with the Interior Ministry, and were standing guard at a base run by the national security forces. The gunmen opened fire from a building window, and, according to Essam, detonated a suicide vest before he could be killed. 3 other national guardsmen were wounded in the attack; 2 sufficiently so to require immediate evacuation.
According to Essam and Antiwar, 6 other members of the security forces were arrested in the lead-up to the attack on suspicion of collaboration on a potential attack, but that “there are hundreds like him, due to the large numbers who joined and which the security apparatus needed after the fall of the [Assad] regime”.
The ISIS remnant in Syria didn’t take credit for the attack. President Trump blamed them and described the new HTS Syrian regime as “extremely angry,” about the event.
Meanwhile, the Iowa National Guard yesterday identified the deceased as Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard and Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar. Their deaths brought statements from their comrades and family about their good character, their ultimate sacrifice, and a decision from the Iowa governor to fly all state flags at half-mast.
“Our son Nate was one of the soldiers that paid the ultimate sacrifice for all of us, to keep us all safer,” Howard’s stepfather—Chief Jeffrey Bunn of the Meskwaki Nation Police Department in Tama, Iowa—wrote on Facebook. “He loved what he was doing and would be the first in and last out, no one left behind”.
Loved what he was doing
Amid all the tributes and statements filled with references to honor, distinction, and sacrifice, none spared room in the word count for an explanation of why Sgt. Howard and Sgt. Torres were there, what their presence was supposed to be achieving, or whether their mission was going well. The New York Times, which reported on the two men on the 13th, 14th and the 15th, did not address reports from Reuters or AFP that the gunmen was part of the nation’s security forces.
The Times remained, just as the Pentagon and Trump have, solid in its position that US forces are in the country to defeat ISIS, something that Trump declared had happened in 2018. None of the three presented any explanation as to what the status of that mission is or how far away major stated goals might be, but that’s also supposing there are stated goals.
And that’s what makes the killing of the Iowa sergeants particularly uncomfortable. They were members not of the Army, but of the National Guard—the state militias, according to the Constitution. They were deployed in Syria to defeat ISIS, but whilst guarding the native security forces’ facility, were fired upon by what reports say was a member of that security force, who might have been aided by other such members.
The gunmen was identified by the security forces as a former ISIS member, and so defeating ISIS—the mission Sgts. Howard and Torres died attempting to accomplish, meant a confrontation with the native national military to some extent.
According to Antiwar’s immediate report following the killing, the joint delegation fled to the US base in al-Tanf, along the southern Syrian border, and took the wounded with them for treatment there. Once on base, it may have attracted the attention of the officer, Salem Turki al-Antari, the former ISIS “Emir of Badia,” under whose command, WaL and The Cradle reported, parts of the ancient city of Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site were bulldozed. Al-Antari was appointed the commander of the Free Syrian Army, a hodgepodge of militias that included Islamic extremist elements formed in resistance to Assad’s rule.
WaL reported that as recently as last February, photographs of al-Antari, whose military fatigues lack a surname patch, show him meeting Maj. General Kevin Leahy who heads Operation Inherent Resolve, the official title of the mission to defeat ISIS and following him around al-Tanf, where the two slain guardsmen must have spent time.
As far as former Emir’s of ISIS go, they’re more commonly found side by side with American generals than those suggesting Sgt. Howard’s death made America safer and freer might imagine. The current Syrian President, whom President Trump hosted so amicably in the Oval Office, was the ISIS Emir of Idlib, where he ordered women to be sexually enslaved, criminals stoned to death, and Christians to be converted to Islam at gunpoint.
Americans have become desensitized to the rare killing of military members. What follows is always a promise of revenge, and familiar refrains of giving their lives to protect freedoms at home, when what should follow is a review of what the mission was they died pursuing, whether that mission is achievable at all, and what the next step towards achieving that victory should be. In the case of Sgts. Howard and Torres, there had been none of these important questions. WaL
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PICTURED ABOVE: Sgt. William Howard and Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar. PC: Iowa National Guard, released.
