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.
“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.
“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.
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!”
- Years of war against IS -
Washington also deployed thousands of American personnel to advise and assist local forces, with US troops in some cases directly fighting the jihadists.
But the jihadists still have some fighters in the countryside of both countries, and US forces have long carried out periodic strikes and raids to help prevent the group’s resurgence.
US forces in Iraq and Syria were repeatedly targeted by pro-Iran militants following the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, but responded with heavy strikes on Tehran-linked targets, and the attacks largely subsided.
While the United States is reducing its forces in Syria, Iraq has also sought an end to the US-led coalition’s presence there, where Washington has said it has some 2,500 troops.
The United States and Iraq have announced that the coalition would end its decade-long military mission in federal Iraq by the end of 2025, and by September 2026 in the autonomous Kurdistan region.
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