US has 900 troops in Syria, likely to remain

WASHINGTON DC, United States (Kurdistan24) – The US has nearly 1,000 troops in Syria, the new Department of Defense press secretary, John Kirby, told reporters. Although Kirby did not say so specifically, the larger context of the Biden administration’s review of US national security policy suggests they are likely to remain there for some time to come.

“There are about 900 US service members that are serving in Syria right now,” Kirby said at a press briefing on Monday, qualifying his statement by noting that the numbers “fluctuate” on a daily basis “due to operational requirements.”

The US has a token presence at al-Tanf in southeast Syria, near the Iraqi and Jordanian borders, and straddling the Baghdad-Damascus highway. The troops there operate with an Arab partner force, Maghawir al-Thawra.

The bulk of US troops are stationed in northeast Syria, where they are partnered with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF.) 

Donald Trump had planned to pull all US forces out of Syria to fulfill a promise from his 2016 presidential campaign to end America’s “forever wars” in the Middle East that have followed the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. 

However, Trump’s attempts to withdraw from Syria met with protest, including from his own political base, and he backed down.

READ MORE: Broad opposition to Trump on Syria, including Republicans and evangelical Christians

As Trump’s former National Security Council Advisor, John Bolton, told Kurdistan 24 last week, “there was security” in northeastern Syria at the time of Trump’s October 2019 withdrawal announcement, “and ISIS had been defeated.” So “why we would want to get out of it, I never understood.”

US Presence in Syria to Defeat ISIS, Not Protect Oil Fields

US forces are in Syria as part of the larger counter-ISIS mission, as Kirby made clear to reporters, and not to protect small oil fields in the country’s northeast.

“It’s important to remember that our mission” in Syria “remains to enable the enduring defeat of ISIS,” Kirby stated.

Indeed, as Bolton said in his interview with Kurdistan 24, the notion that protecting Syria’s oil fields should be the main purpose for keeping US troops in the country was cooked up by Trump’s advisors as a rationale that would appeal to the president and not the real reason for continuing the mission, which Bolton himself expressed: it was working, preserving stability in a sensitive region, at minimal cost to the US.

Pressed to clarify the Biden administration’s position: was it still committed to protecting the oil fields, Kirby replied with an unequivocal “no.”

“Except for where appropriate under certain existing authorizations to protect civilians,” Kirby said, “DOD [Department of Defense] personnel or contractors are not authorized to provide assistance to any other private company, including its employees or agents, seeking to develop oil resources in northeastern Syria.”

Global Force Posture Review

The Pentagon, at the direction of President Joe Biden, has begun “a global force posture review of US military footprint, resources, strategy and missions,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced last week. The purpose of the review is to understand “how we best allocate military forces in pursuit of national interests.”

The US mission in northeast Syria will likely survive that review, or so it seems.

“The Biden administration should be expected to continue the counter-ISIS campaign in Syria, at least for the next year,” Nicholas Heras, of the Institute for the Study of War, told Kurdistan 24, and for much the same reasons that Bolton expressed.

“The US military presence in Syria is a ‘light footprint’ approach,” Heras added, which “leverages local partners to do the bulk of the counter-ISIS operations.”  

Even more, “It is the case study that the Biden administration wants to put forward on how the US military can conduct similar counterterrorism campaigns in the future,” Heras said.

Editing by Joanne Stocker-Kelly