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A US State Secretary for Defense told Fox News Sunday that he had been enjoining outgoing Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis to withdraw all US troops from Syria in the coming weeks.
Pentagon officials refused to discuss certain details, including the chronology of events. the approximately 2,000 US troops in Syria.
Plans were put in motion a few hours after President Trump declared the terrorist network of Islamic states "defeated" in Syria in a tweet on Wednesday and ordered all American diplomats and soldiers to leave the country.
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Trump is committed to participating in campaign rallies last spring. US troops would leave Syria "very soon".
While the US military plans to leave Syria, it does not intend to withdraw 5000 US troops in neighboring Iraq. Some of these special operations forces could be used for raids against "high value targets" in Syria from bases in Iraq, if necessary, officials said.
The last fortress of the Islamic State in eastern Syria is the city of Hajin, located not far from the Iraqi border. US and Allied artillery continues to shoot at positions of the Islamic State in Iraq. Air strikes by the US-led coalition are also continuing against the terrorist army in Syria
but questions remain as to what will happen once all US forces leave Syria. "The challenges are coming," said a US official. At present, no Kurdish or Arab fighter in the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has the ability to use US airstrikes.
It is not clear that the Israel Defense Forces will continue to receive arms and funds from the United States to support the movement. fight against ISIS.
Trump said Sunday in a tweet that the US withdrawal from Syria would be "slow and highly coordinated", after having spoken with his Turkish counterpart, his second call with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan since December 14 . Erdoğan would have convinced Trump to withdraw from Syria.
The Turkish president has described the Kurdish-dominated SDF as a terrorist organization for its links with a Kurdish separatist group in Turkey, which has killed thousands in recent decades.
In a separate tweet on Sunday, President Trump announced that Mattis would leave here on Jan. 1, forcing him out two months earlier than planned.
US military leaders said the SDF was the best allied force in Syria to crush ISIS. Today, the Islamic State controls only one percent of the area that it once occupied in Syria and Iraq – an area at its peak, the size of the country. Ohio – due, in part, to the US military alliance with the SDS in Syria.
Criticism of the President's decision. to withdraw from Syria, the Islamic State has not yet been defeated – and lawmakers have asked Trump not to repeat the mistakes attributed to former President Obama when all US troops were removed from Iraq in 2011, thus contributing to the creation of the Islamic State.
Media focus on endless wartime stoppages in Syria, Afghanistan
Some officials said the hundreds of US special operations forces in Syria were running out of time Objectives and could be relocated if necessary. Others have claimed that it would be treason for Kurdish and Arab fighters loyal to the US military to leave Syria now. Hundreds of SDF Kurdish fighters have been killed in fighting against the Islamic State in Syria.
US. The air strikes started in Syria against the Islamic State in 2014, a year before US troops were on the ground.
The Trump envoy to the ISIS coalition, Brett McGurk, resigned Friday on the eve of the announcement of his retirement.
French and British specials The forces of operations will remain in Syria, according to the defense ministries of both countries. The air strikes in these countries are expected to continue.
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