US planning to withdraw from Syria: report

The American journal Foreign Policy has claimed in a piece that the Biden administration is reconsidering its military priorities in the region since Hamas’s attack against Israel on Oct. 7 and the resulting Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip, tensions and hostilities across the Middle East have reached fever pitch. 

It should be cause for significant concern, however, that this could involve a full withdrawal of US troops from Syria. While no definitive decision has been made to leave, four sources within the Defense and State departments said the White House is no longer invested in sustaining a mission that it perceives as unnecessary. Active internal discussions are now underway to determine how and when a withdrawal may take place.

Notwithstanding the catastrophic effect that a withdrawal would have on US and allied influence over the unresolved and acutely volatile crisis in Syria, the FP further said.

The piece goes on to talks about the US military presence in Iraq and wrote that "With Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani now publicly pushing for a US withdrawal in his own country, some hope remains that the US military’s presence in Iraqi Kurdistan could sustain counter-ISIL operations, including next door in Syria. "

The Foreign Policy continued to say that, "However, shifting counter-ISIL coordination from Baghdad to Erbil would present its own complications, sharpening intra-Kurdish tensions between the regional government of Masoud Barzani and the PKK-linked SDF administration in northeast Syria, likely triggering unfavorable Turkish interference. Emboldened by a sense of victory in Iraq-proper, Iran and its proxies in this scenario would then undoubtedly sharpen their attacks on U.S. troops in Syria, seeking their withdrawal too."

Ultimately, events since October have placed the U.S. deployment in northeast Syria on a fraying thread—hence recent internal consideration of a Syria withdrawal, the FP piece went on to conlcude.

Some within the US government are currently proposing a collaborative arrangement between the SDF and Syria’s government to counter the ISIL as an apparent path towards a US withdrawal. That would not only be a phenomenal boon to the ISIL, but simply impossible on its own terms. The Syrian government would never allow the SDF to sustain itself, and Turkey would do everything possible to kill what remained.

MNA/PR