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Trump’s plan to create safe zones in Syria dangerous: Analyst

Friday, 27 January 2017 3:01 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 27 January 2017 3:01 PM ]

US President Donald Trump (R) speaks as Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (2nd L) and Senate Majority Whip Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) (L) look on during a luncheon at the Congress of Tomorrow Republican Member Retreat in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on January 26, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

US President Donald Trump is ordering the Pentagon to establish a series of “safe zones” in Syria, a move that could risk confrontation with the Syrian government as well as Russian forces in the Arab country.

Phyllis Bennis, a member of the Institute for Policy Studies, believes Trump’s plan to establish safe zones in Syria is a “very dangerous move,” which will probably escalate the war in the Arab country rather than providing protection for the Syrian people.

“We do not know exactly what he [Trump] has in mind yet, how would a safe zone be different than a no-fly zone for instance. We know that it is officially US policy that a no-fly zone is an act of war,” the analyst told Press TV in an interview on Friday.

The Syrians "need all kinds of protection, but they do not need more war, and an act of war in the form of a so-called no-fly zone or a so-called safe zone is unlikely to provide real protection and it is more likely to create war and therefore more casualties, more death, more refugees ironically enough,” she added.

She also noted that instead of protecting the Syrians, Trump’s goal is about “making good on the claim that preventing refugees from being welcomed in the United States will make America safe”. However, she said, this is not true and “it is not possible to bomb terrorism out of existence”.

Elsewhere in her remarks, Bennis denounced Trump’s comments about refugees as “outrageous” and “Islamophobic.”

She further criticized the US president's recent executive orders to restrict immigration to the country, arguing that this will not prevent terrorism and make Americans safer, because terrorism does not come from refugees.

The analyst also referred to the executive orders as part of Trump’s effort to “bolster an Islamophobic, xenophobia and anti-immigrant approach” that blames immigrants for the “very real economic problems” many people face in the US.

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