MESOPOTAMIA NEWS TODAYS BRIEF ON SYRIA & KURDS / RELEVANT SOURCES

Thursday, December 20, 2018 – Trump Orders U.S. Troops Out of Syria

President Trump ordered a rapid withdrawal of all U.S. military forces from Syria, officials said Wednesday, marking an abrupt shift of the U.S.’s posture in the Middle East. The U.S. immediately began moving a handful of personnel from Syria and will quickly extract about 2,000 forces over the next few weeks, officials said, ending a four-year military campaign against Islamic State on the brink of its defeat. The decision recasts U.S. policy in the Middle East, where the Trump administration has been working to defeat Islamic State, contain Iran’s expansionist ambitions and counter Russia’s influence in Syria, where Moscow has a vital Navy base. The planned exit also worried the U.S.’s Kurdish partners, who risk losing vital backing just when Turkey is threatening to attack them.

The withdrawal plan drew criticism from within the White House, among both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill, the State Department and in the U.S. military. Some lawmakers urged Mr. Trump to reconsider, comparing it to former President Obama’s decisions to scale back U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. has long said it would remain in Syria until Islamic State was defeated and local forces could prevent a new rise of extremist forces, and to press Iran to withdraw its forces from the country. While those objectives haven’t been met, President Trump declared an end to the fight against Islamic State in a tweet on Wednesday. “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” he wrote on Twitter. Sarah Sanders said the U.S. would now “transition to the next phase of the campaign.” Neither the White House nor the Pentagon offered details on the timeline of the withdrawal.

Also on Wednesday, a bipartisan group of senators sent a letter to President Trump asking him to reconsider his decision to begin withdrawing troops from Syria. In the letter, both democratic and republican senators  expressed concern that withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria would “renew and embolden” Islamic State’s efforts in the region. The senators also said they believed removing American presence from Syria would give a boost to “two other adversaries,” Iran and Russia. Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Reuters, Associated Press, The Hill, Axios

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