Months of pressure from U.S. lawmakers, European allies and defense officials has forced President Trump to backtrack on one of the biggest decisions made in his two years in the White House: His plan to totally withdraw U.S. forces from Syria.
Senior administration officials said Friday that Trump has agreed to leave roughly 400 troops in Syria just two months after he announced that the terrorist organization ISIS had been defeated in the country and the 2,000 U.S. troops there would withdraw.
“U.S. numbering in the couple of hundred will remain in northeast Syria as part of a multi-national force,” Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Sean Robertson told reporters on Friday.
“[The] multi-national observing and monitoring force would be made up primarily of NATO allies, who along with U.S. forces, will maintain stability and prevent an ISIS resurgence in Syria.”
The shift follows pushback from lawmakers, including within the president’s own party, as well as a lack of support among European allies over Trump’s surprise Dec. 19 declaration over Twitter that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) had been defeated in Syria and that troops there would be “coming back now.”
“I think the administration was looking high and low for allies who agreed with their approach, be it on Capitol Hill or in the military or elsewhere, they didn’t find any support for it,” said Jon Alterman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
The decision upset Republicans and some Democrats on Capitol Hill who said they were left out of the loop and worried that withdrawing troops would only benefit U.S. adversaries Iran and Russia, the main backers of Syrian leader Bashar Assad.
Defense officials, meanwhile, also have said they were not consulted on the decision, which they said they would not have made amid concerns that ISIS may gain new ground in the absence of U.S. forces. Trump’s push to withdraw troops also led to the resignation of former Defense Secretary James Mattis two days after it was announced.
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Trump backs off total Syria withdrawal https://t.co/5tPJ59oY5B pic.twitter.com/mHpCgugDBe
— The Hill (@thehill) February 24, 2019
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