The United States will roughly halve the number of troops it has deployed in Syria to less than 1,000 in the coming months, the Pentagon said Friday.
Washington has had troops in Syria for years as part of international efforts against the Islamic State (IS) group, which rose out of the chaos of the country’s civil war to seize swaths of territory there and in neighboring Iraq over a decade ago.
The brutal jihadists have since suffered major defeats in both countries, but remain a threat.
“Today the secretary of defense directed the consolidation of US forces in Syria… to select locations,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement, without specifying the sites where this would take place.
“This deliberate and conditions-based process will bring the US footprint in Syria down to less than 1,000 US forces in the coming months,” he said.
“As this consolidation takes place… US Central Command will remain poised to continue strikes against the remnants of IS in Syria,” Parnell added, referring to the military command responsible for the region.
President Donald Trump has long been skeptical of Washington’s presence in Syria, ordering the withdrawal of troops during his first term but ultimately leaving American forces in the country.
As Islamist-led rebels pressed forward with a lightning offensive last December that ultimately overthrew Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Trump said Washington should “NOT GET INVOLVED!”
“Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT,” Trump, then the president-elect, wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The 2014 onslaught by IS prompted a US-led air campaign in support of local ground forces — the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Iraqi government units.
Washington also deployed thousands of American personnel to advise and assist local forces, with US troops in some cases directly fighting the jihadists.
