WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s unscripted remark this week about pulling out of Syria “very soon,” while at odds with his own policy, was not a one-off: For weeks, top advisers have been fretting about an overly hasty withdrawal as the president has increasingly told them privately he wants out, US officials said.
Only two months ago, Trump’s aides thought they’d persuaded him that the US needed to keep its presence in Syria open-ended — not only because the Daesh group has yet to be entirely defeated, but also because the resulting power vacuum could be filled by other extremist groups or by Iran. Trump signed off on major speech in January in which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson laid out the new strategy and declared “it is vital for the United States to remain engaged in Syria.”
But by mid-February, Trump was telling his top aides in meetings that as soon as victory can be declared against IS, he wanted American troops out of Syria, said the officials. Alarm bells went off at the State Department and the Pentagon, where officials have been planning for a gradual, methodical shift from a military-led operation to a diplomatic mission to start rebuilding basic infrastructure like roads and sewers in the war-wracked country.
In one sign that Trump is serious about reversing course and withdrawing from Syria, the White House this week put on hold some $200 million in US funding for stabilization projects in Syria, officials said. The money, to have been spent by the State Department for infrastructure projects like power, water and roads, had been announced by outgoing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at an aid conference last month in Kuwait.
The officials said the hold, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is not necessarily permanent and will be discussed at senior-level inter-agency meetings next week.
The officials weren’t authorized to comment publicly and demanded anonymity.
The State Department said it continually reviews appropriate assistance levels and how best they might be utilized. And the agency said it continues to work with the international community, members of the Coalition, and our partners on the ground to provide much needed stabilization support to vulnerable areas in Syria.
“The United States is working everyday on the ground and with the international community to help stabilize those areas liberated from ISIS (Daesh) and identify ways to move forward with reconstruction once there has been a peaceful political transition away from (Syrian President Bashar) Assad,” according to a statement from the State Department.
Trump’s first public suggestion he was itching to pull out came in a news conference with visiting Australian Prime Minister Alastair Campbell on Feb. 23, when Trump said the US was in Syria to “get rid of ISIS and go home.” On Thursday, in a domestic policy speech in Ohio, Trump went further.
“We’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon — very soon, we’re coming out,” Trump said.
The public declaration caught US national security agencies off-guard and unsure whether Trump was formally announcing a new, unexpected change in policy. Inundated by inquiries from journalists and foreign officials, the Pentagon and State Department reached out to the White House’s National Security Council for clarification.
The White House’s ambiguous response, officials said: Trump’s words speak for themselves.
“The mission of the Department of Defense to defeat ISIS has not changed,” said Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Pentagon spokesman.
Still, without a clear directive from the president, planning has not started for a withdrawal from Syria, officials said, and Trump has not advocated a specific timetable.
For Trump, who campaigned on an “America First” mantra, Syria is just the latest foreign arena where his impulse has been to limit the US role. Like with NATO and the United Nations, Trump has called for other governments to step up and share more of the burden so that Washington doesn’t foot the bill. His administration has been crisscrossing the globe seeking financial commitments from other countries to fund reconstruction in both Syria and Iraq, but with only limited success.
Yet it’s unclear how Trump’s impulse to pull out could be affected by recent staff shake-ups on his national security team. Tillerson and former national security adviser H.R. McMaster, both advocates for keeping a US presence in Syria, were recently fired, creating questions about the longevity of the plan Tillerson announced in his Stanford University speech in January. But Trump also replaced McMaster with John Bolton, a vocal advocate for US intervention and aggressive use of the military overseas.
The abrupt change in the president’s thinking has drawn concern both inside and outside the United States.
Other nations that make up the US-led coalition fighting IS fear that Trump’s impulse to pull out hastily would allow the notoriously resourceful Daesh militants to regroup, several European diplomats said. That concern has been heightened by the fact that US-backed ground operations against remaining Daesh militants in Syria were put on hold earlier this month.
The ground operations had to be paused because Kurdish fighters who had been spearheading the campaign against Daesh shifted to a separate fight with Turkish forces, who began combat operations in the town of Afrin against Kurds who are considered by Ankara to be terrorists that threaten Turkey’s security.
“This is a serious and growing concern,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said this month.
Beyond just defeating Daesh, there are other strategic US objectives that could be jeopardized by a hasty withdrawal, officials said, chiefly those related to Russia and Iran.
Israel, America’s closest Mideast ally, and other regional nations like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are deeply concerned about the influence of Iran and its allies, including the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, inside Syria. The US military presence in Syria has been seen as a buffer against unchecked Iranian activity, and especially against Tehran’s desire to establish a contiguous land route from Iran to the Mediterranean coast in Lebanon.
An American withdrawal would also likely cede Syria to Russia, which along with Iran has been propping up Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces and would surely fill the void left behind by the US That prospect has alarmed countries like France, which has historic ties to the Levant.
In calling for a withdrawal “very soon,” Trump may be overly optimistic in his assessment of how quickly the anti-Daesh campaign can be wrapped up, the officials said. Although the group has been driven from basically all of the territory it once controlled in Iraq and 95 percent of its former territory in Syria, the remaining five percent is becoming increasingly difficult to clear and could take many months, the officials said.
Trump’s talk of a Syria pullout nothing new
Trump’s talk of a Syria pullout nothing new
Why Lebanese are enduring another wave of war and displacement
- More than 1 million displaced as Israeli strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs, southern Lebanon and the Bekaa
- Government opens schools, universities and sports centers to house growing numbers of displaced
BEIRUT: Haitham Al-Mousawi has spent two decades documenting Lebanon’s wars through his camera lens, capturing scenes of destruction, grief and displacement. Yet, he says nothing prepared him for what he witnessed in the past week.
“What I photographed over the past few days is worse than everything I’ve documented in years combined,” the photojournalist told Arab News.
Families fled their homes in panic, often with no time to gather belongings. “People came straight out of their beds onto the streets, still in their pajamas,” he said. “One man was screaming that he had left his father behind because the old man was on an oxygen machine and could not be moved.
“Women ran carrying children in one arm and blankets in the other. Children were crying, chasing after parents who themselves didn’t know where they were fleeing to.”
The pre-dawn hours of Monday turned into a nightmare for many Lebanese as the fragile calm along the border collapsed. Hezbollah fired six Katyusha rockets into Israeli territory — the first such attack since the November 2024 ceasefire. Israel responded with devastating airstrikes that tore into Beirut’s southern suburbs and swept across large parts of southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley.
Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, defended the attack as retaliation for what he described as “15 months of Israeli ceasefire violations” since the November 2024 agreement.
However, for many residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs, the renewed escalation meant another sudden flight from home.
Nora Hamza, 35, did not hesitate when the evacuation warnings spread. She, her husband, their three daughters, both sets of parents, her sister and her sister’s family hurried into two cars with only a few blankets, a loaf of bread and their identity documents before leaving their home.
They drove to the same two small rooms where they had sheltered during the 2024 war. “We crammed ourselves into those two rooms believing the nightmare was behind us,” she told Arab News.
“We had convinced ourselves we were safe, that it would not happen again. It seems we miscalculated — that there are those who want to impose war on us by force.
“Displacement is hard. It is a feeling only those who live it can understand.”
Tens of thousands of the displaced sought refuge with relatives in Beirut or returned to homes in Chouf, the mountain villages, and northern regions that had sheltered them during the previous conflict. But tens of thousands more found themselves with nowhere to go.
Hotels filled within hours. Furnished apartments were snapped up by those who could afford them — particularly families from the southern city of Tyre. Those without options spread blankets on pavements and public squares in central Beirut, along the seafront corniche, braving the bitter cold. Cars, vans, and trucks turned into makeshift shelters, where families waited through the night.
On the first day alone, more than 95,000 Lebanese left their homes. As Israeli evacuation warnings continued to cascade, targeting villages south and north of the Litani River and Beirut’s southern suburbs, the total number of displaced crossed the 1 million mark.
Scenes of people sleeping out in the open along the coastal road and in public spaces in Beirut, relying on makeshift means as displacement rises, prompted Prime Minister Nawaf Salam last Friday to warn of an “imminent humanitarian catastrophe.”
Israel’s evacuation warnings extended to the densely populated Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut’s southern suburbs and on the capital’s outskirts, reviving memories of the uprooting that has marked their lives for decades.
Within hours, the narrow alleys of Burj Al-Barajneh and Shatila camps filled with confusion and fear as Palestinian families rushed to gather what they could and flee, with no clear destination in sight.
Steve Cutts, CEO of UK-based Medical Aid for Palestinians, said that Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon “is the unmistakable extension of the Israeli military playbook used in Gaza” in forms of “collective punishment, forced displacement and the deliberate terrorising of civilian populations, including already traumatised Palestinian communities.”
He urged the international community to pressure Israel to lift the displacement orders and enforce a ceasefire in Lebanon, warning that inaction would have severe humanitarian consequences and allow violations of international law to continue unchecked.
At first glance, it appeared that people had been left to fend for themselves. For its part, the government said that “overcrowding was complicating relief efforts.”
Haneen Sayed, Lebanon’s social affairs minister, said that the government had made all public schools and universities across various regions available as shelters.
“After Beirut and Mount Lebanon became overwhelmed by displaced people, we urged families seeking shelter to head to the North, Akkar and parts of the Bekaa, where there is still greater capacity,” she told Arab News.
Sayed added that additional centers were being prepared in Beirut’s administrative area, including the Camille Chamoun Sports City Stadium, the Charles Helou bus terminal and the Olympic swimming pool in Dbayeh.
She estimated that the state may have to handle about 500,000 displaced people. So far, she said, Lebanese authorities have been able to meet the needs of about 70 percent of the displaced.
“Work is ongoing to secure shelter and basic services and, if possible, reach everyone. State institutions are on high alert, and we need national solidarity. We are facing daunting challenges,” she said.
Human Rights Watch described the forced displacement as a “war crime” and warned that the risks are increasing. It urged governments worldwide to condemn the actions publicly and press Israel to halt its military’s implementation of the forced-displacement order in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said Israel’s large-scale evacuation orders in southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs “raise serious concerns under international law, and in particular when it comes to issues around forced transfer.
“These blanket, massive displacement orders, we are talking here about hundreds and thousands of people,” he said.
Imran Riza, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, said, the situation in Lebanon was “unprecedented,” both in terms of the scale of warnings and evacuation orders and the panic they triggered across the country.
Israeli warnings also extended to hospitals in Beirut’s southern suburbs. The Lebanese Red Cross said its teams evacuated patients from Bahman Hospital, Al-Rasoul Al-Aazam Hospital and Al-Sahel Teaching Hospital.
Melhem Khalaf, an independent MP, said the danger of the ongoing displacement is that “it is systematic.”
He told Arab News: “It started from the frontline border villages before turning into a mass displacement from deep within the south, reaching the southern suburbs of Beirut and the Bekaa region.”
While the number of displaced people is large, he criticized the state’s response as “weak.”
Khalaf said that “disasters are unfolding with no single authority to address them,” adding: “Reaching all displaced persons is not possible, and leaving matters to governors who lack the necessary capabilities only worsens the situation, while all international institutions remain entirely absent.”
Marie Daou, a lawyer who represents Farah Al-Ataa association, spoke of the state’s lack of organizational capabilities.
“No one knows who is in charge of the shelters, and there is no hotline directing people to gathering points before spreading out in shelters,” she said.
Reports say Farah Al-Ataa has taken in 943 displaced persons at its center in Karantina, Beirut.
“Is it enough to open shelters without providing hot water services for example?” asked Marc Tarabay, Farah Al-Ataa’s president.
He described the situation as a national humanitarian disaster, with no plan in place to address it.
“In Lebanon, there is tremendous volunteer engagement, yet the state fails to benefit from it,” he said.
Al-Mousawi, the photojournalist, was struck by the anger among many displaced residents toward those they hold responsible for forcing them from their homes.
“Some refuse to have their photographs taken, vowing revenge on those who pushed them into the streets,” he said.
“They are angry at the state, and at the same time they cannot justify what Hezbollah has done. People have had enough.”
Unlike previous rounds of conflict, the overall mood among the displaced does not reflect support for Hezbollah. Many say they are shocked by the state’s inability to assist them, with frustration and exhaustion increasingly shaping the public mood.
Local communities are receiving the displaced people with caution. Any displaced person must now fill out a form at the municipality with personal details and details about their families in order to have their request to rent an apartment approved or rejected.
Claudine, 55, says people fear that the displaced may be affiliated with Hezbollah and are being pursued by Israel.
“What good would it do me if my apartment were destroyed because of them?” she told Arab News, speaking at the Furn Al-Shubbak neighborhood.
Beirut has witnessed several incidents in which verbal disputes between displaced residents and host communities escalated into larger confrontations.
One such incident occurred in the Hamra district, where an argument between two displaced young men and local youths quickly escalated, with the displaced men opening fire.
A patrol from the Lebanese Army’s intelligence directorate arrived at the scene and arrested the two men as part of efforts to curb the spread of weapons among some displaced people.
Two days earlier, Salam warned in a statement against attacking or exploiting displaced persons “as they are victims of policies they did not create.”
Salam described the latest events as “a difficult moment our country is going through.”
