Update: It’s official, within an hour after the first headline the president tweeted “We have defeated ISIS in Syria” and in reference to reports of a planned US troop withdrawal from Syria which unnamed officials say is to be initiated “immediately,” he added that the terror group’s defeat was “my only reason for being there”.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1075397797929775105
Minutes after the WSJ first broke the story, The Washington Post confirmed the following through a defense official:
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a decision that has not yet been announced, said the decision would include the entire force of more than 2,000 U.S. service members. It was made on Tuesday, the official said.
President Trump has long promised to conclude the campaign against the Islamic State and has questioned the value of costly and dangerous military missions overseas.
***
The WSJ just reported a monumental and historic reversal in White House policy on Syria, revealing Wednesday morning the Pentagon is preparing to withdraw all forces from northeastern Syria “immediately”:
In an abrupt reversal, the U.S. military is preparing to withdraw its forces from northeastern Syria, people familiar with the matter said Wednesday, a move that throws the American strategy in the Middle East into turmoil.
U.S. officials began informing partners in northeastern Syria of their plans to begin immediately pulling American forces out of the region where they have been trying to wrap up the campaign against Islamic State, the people said.
The WSJ notes the complete 180 reversal in policy, which just days ago was reiterated by officials as an “indefinite” American presence in Syria in order to “counter Iran” while bolstering Kurdish and Arab SDF forces in the East (the YPG-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces), comes following a phone call last week between President Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
For the past week Erdogan has threatened to launch a full-scale cross border assault on US-backed Kurdish forces in Syria, which Turkey has long considered an terrorist extension of the outlawed PKK. This would potentially bring American troops and advisers under fire, who’ve found themselves in the awkward position since entering Syria of training Syrian Kurdish militias on the one hand, and coordinating broadly with a NATO ally on the other.
Perhaps Trump finally took full stock of the fact that the prior planned “indefinite” presence of some 4000 American troops was recipe for a quagmire sure to be Washington’s next Afghan or Iraq style “endless war”?
As one recent intelligence study put it: “The prospect of US being militarily involved in Syria, caught in middle of one of most complex conflicts in recent memory, with shifting objectives & ambiguous endgame, has been met with congressional indifference and public apathy.”
Will America finally exit Syria? Is Trump belatedly making good on his campaign promises?
*****
Additional: coverage of this breaking story via Moon of Alabama
The Wall Street Journal just reported that U.S. troops prepare to leave northeast Syria:
WASHINGTON—In an abrupt reversal, the U.S. military is preparing to withdraw its forces from northeastern Syria, people familiar with the matter said Wednesday, a move that throws the American strategy in the Middle East into turmoil.
U.S. officials began informing partners in northeastern Syria of their plans to begin immediately pulling American forces out of the region where they have been trying to wrap up the campaign against Islamic State, the people said.
The move follows a call last week between President Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has threatened to launch an assault on America’s Kurdish partners in Syria.
Turkey had threatened over several week to invade and occupy an at least 10 miles deep strip of northeast Syria. The Turkish army brought heavy weapons to its adjacent borders areas. Some 15,000 foreign and Syrian ‘rebels’, paid by Turkey, are supposed to be on the forefront of the invasion. These were over the last month transferred from Idleb and other Turkish controlled areas of northwest Syria to the Turkish side of the eastern border.
The U.S. military and the neoconservatives elements in Trump’s administration wanted to hold onto the northeast of Syria for an unlimited time. They planned to establish a Kurdish entity and finance it with the Syrian oil fields they occupied. They had plans to arm and train some 40,000 Kurdish troops.
For over a year the U.S. claimed to fight the Islamic State remands which still holds some grounds on the northern side of the Euphrates near the Iraqi border. But the front lines moved little. Only during the last week did the U.S. supported troops finally take the town of Hajin.
For Turkey the perspective of 40,000 armed and U.S. protected YPK Kurds on its border, while the YPG’s sister organization PKK is fighting a separatist guerilla war against the Turkish army north of it, was a real and existential threat.
It seems that Erdogan made a deal with Trump, which is now turned into practical moves. Yesterday Turkey was suddenly offered to buy advanced Patriot missile defense systems. It had earlier decided to buy the Russian S-400 system. Now we learn the U.S. troops move out. What other surprises are in this deal? What does Trump get out of it? How does this change Turkey’s relation with Russia?
And what about the U.S. occupied border station al-Tanf between Iraq and Syria. Will those troops leave too?
With the U.S. moving out there will be a race to take those parts of Syria that the U.S. leaves. Turkey is likely to stick to its invasion plan. The Syrian government must now race to take back the Raqqa dam, the rich agricultural land north of the Euphrates and, most important, the oil and gas field near the Iraqi border which are needed to finance the country.
It must also move parts of its army to the northeast Euphrates area to isolate and finally defeat the rest of ISIS that the U.S. seemingly leaves behind.
Update 14:45 utc
The New York Times(and Trump) confirm the move:
President Trump is considering pulling 2,000 United States ground troops out of Syria in a move that would seek to describe the four-year American-led war against the Islamic State as largely won, officials said Wednesday.“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” the president said in a Twitter post on Wednesday morning. He offered no details on his plans for the military mission in Syria.
A formal withdrawal announcement could come as early as Wednesday, administration officials said. But Pentagon officials were still trying to talk the president out of it, arguing 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.
…
Mattis and the neocons want Trump to stay in Syria but it seems that for once Trump is not falling for their stupid plans.
That the U.S. betrays the Kurds is almost a tradition. The Kurds had been warned about this over and over again. But they did not listen. Like in Afrin canton, which Turkey occupied after the Kurds rejected to come back under Syrian government control, they will now likely have to pay a huge price.
Reactions on social media
#Syria & US racing developments:
• Trump ready to withdraw ~ 2000 US troops: WSJ , CNN , Reuters
• Move coordinated with Erdogan: US military disagrees, State sidelined
• Pence to the Pentagon
• Trump called Erdogan Friday
• Allies informed— Joyce Karam (@Joyce_Karam) December 19, 2018
I find myself oddly in agreement with Trump here. There is no vital national interest justifying continued US troop presence in Syria. https://t.co/D1uHVXu7T6
— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) December 19, 2018
https://twitter.com/EHSANI22/status/1075408847471304710
.Lindsey Graham: 'Obama-like mistake' for Trump to withdraw troops from Syria https://t.co/EtqtL8xDOC
— @Randyluv (@Randyluv3) December 19, 2018
https://twitter.com/cj_disabledVet/status/1075421355804368897
Govt source damning on Trump pulling out of Syria:
'It's another example of Donald Trump retreating and putting America first.
'It's effectively saying well done Russia, it's yours.
'Isil is alive and well in both Syria and Iraq. This is a big mistake.'
— Steven Swinford (@Steven_Swinford) December 19, 2018
Withdrawing a few thousand troops stationed in the desert of northeast Syria without any discernible mission is not a gift to other countries. It is, however, a rebuke of those in DC who want U.S. military escalation in Syria.
— Ryan Costello (@RyeCostello) December 19, 2018
