US President Donald Trump may very well be able to pull troops out of Syria entirely, just as he intended during his first term.
On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that Washington is considering leaving Syria now that its new government has an offensive underway to disband the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the north of the country.
The push is part of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s bid to disarm militias that formed during the 14-year civil war, and fold fighters into the national army.
Should the Kurdish-led SDF indeed collapse, US soldiers would have no need to stay in Syria, unnamed officials cited by the WSJ said.
There are between 800 and 1,000 US soldiers stationed in Syria today.
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The officials added that working with the Syrian army would not be viable, as it has too many “jihadist sympathisers” and people who have carried out mass killings of the Kurdish and Druze minorities.
The SDF had at one point been the most potent force against Islamic State (IS) group militants.
Turkey, which was the driving force behind Sharaa’s rise to power, sees the SDF as an offshoot of the PKK – a designated terrorist group by both Ankara and Washington.
Fighting between the SDF and the Syrian army has also put US soldiers in the crosshairs.
In December, a member of the Syrian army, believed to have been affiliated with IS, killed three US personnel.
Prisoners in Syria
As the SDF loses ground, it also loses control over the camps it guards, which house some 7,000 detainees linked to IS. Many are women and children whose governments will not repatriate them to their countries of origin. The detainees have not been charged or moved through a judicial process.
Prisoners detained in Syria are diverse, coming from as many as 50 countries, including France; Egypt; the United Kingdom; Belgium; Tunisia; Germany; Iraq; Sweden; Canada; Australia; and the Netherlands.
US military starts moving Islamic State prisoners from Syria to Iraq
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On Wednesday, US Central Command (Centcom) began transferring 150 of them to a camp in Iraq. The plan is to ultimately move all detainees out of Syria, Centcom said.
“The United States welcomes the Government of Iraq’s initiative to detain ISIS terrorists in secure facilities in Iraq, following recent instability in northeast Syria,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement released on Thursday, using another acronym for IS.
“The United States appreciates the Iraqi government’s leadership and supports this bold initiative to ensure that ISIS terrorists cannot roam freely throughout the region,” he said.
“Non-Iraqi terrorists will be in Iraq temporarily,” he assured. “The United States urges countries to take responsibility and repatriate their citizens in these facilities to face justice.”
Brett McGurk, who was the Obama and first Trump administrations’ point person on the counter-IS strategy, criticised the recent Pentagon pivot.
“Northeast Syria is deeply concerning. The ceasefire must hold,” he wrote.
“Any security breakdown – especially at ISIS detention sites – risks international consequences. Kurds across Iraq and Syria are steadfast partners and should be treated as such. The world is much safer because of them.”
The likely SDF collapse has renewed attention on what many have called Washington’s betrayals of its partners around the world.
On 20 January, Tom Barrack, Trump’s ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria, stated: “The original purpose of the SDF as the primary anti-ISIS force on the ground has largely expired.”
