To the surprise of his allies and the frustration of senior officials Donald Trump has decided to pull out all US troops from Syria, claiming Islamic State had been “defeated” and their job is done.
There are currently around 2,000 US troops on the ground in the war-torn country where they are primarily training local forces to combat Islamic State (IS). They have helped rid much of north-eastern Syria of the terrorist group, but pockets of fighters remain.
Nevertheless, “a complete, rapid withdrawal, if confirmed, would upend assumptions about a longer-term US military presence in Syria” reports Al Jazeera.
US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis and other senior US officials have advocated maintaining a US presence in the country.
Just a few days ago, Brett McGurk, Trump’s special presidential envoy for the global coalition to defeat IS, said: “Nobody is saying that [IS fighters] are going to disappear. Nobody is that naive. So we want to stay on the ground and make sure that stability can be maintained in these areas.”
French President Emmanuel Macron had made it a national priority to persuade the US president to keep troops in Syria as a bulwark against an IS resurgence, and thought he had won the argument.
But it appears the temperamental US president has gone over the heads of his generals and made the decision to begin a “full” and “rapid” withdrawal from Syria, “taking allies and his own advisers by surprise”, says The Guardian.
It fulfils a long-standing desire to get out of Syria, but it could have significant ramifications for Washington’s Kurdish allies and for the region as a whole.
The New York Times says “Pentagon officials who had sought to talk the president out of the decision as late as Wednesday morning argued that such a move would betray Kurdish allies who have fought alongside American troops in Syria and who could find themselves under attack in a military offensive now threatened by Turkey”.
Turkey has said it was preparing to launch an operation against a US-backed Kurdish militia in northern Syria, something that risks confrontation with the US.
“Even though the US will continue to maintain troops in Iraq with the capability of launching strikes into Syria, a US withdrawal of ground forces would fulfill a major goal of Syria, Iran and Russia and risks diminishing US influence in the region,” say CNN’s Barbara Starr and Ryan Browne.
Trump’s own national security adviser, John Bolton, is adamantly opposed to withdrawing troops. At the UN general assembly in September he declared: “We’re not going to leave as long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian borders and that includes Iranian proxies and militias.”
“IS is well on the way to being defeated. Syria’s President Assad remains in place. If the goal now is to contain Iran or Russia’s rising influence in the region then 2,000 troops strung out across a vast swathe of territory may be too small a force to do this,” says BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus.
“Their presence though does give the US ‘skin in the game’. And many will see this decision as yet another indication of the chaos and uncertainty surrounding US policy towards this crucial region,” he writes.