WASHINGTON: The US has no timeline to withdraw troops from Syria but does not plan to stay indefinitely, a senior State Department official said on Friday, a strong signal that forces could stay until the fight against Daesh militants ends.
US-backed forces are still retaking territory from Daesh in Syria, Pentagon officials said on Friday, two weeks after Washington said it would withdraw its roughly 2,000 troops there. At the time, President Donald Trump said the troops had succeeded in their mission and were no longer needed there.
The administration’s abrupt announcement last month, which took officials in Washington and allies by surprise, contributed to Jim Mattis’ decision to resign as US defense secretary and prompted concern that Daesh could stage a comeback.
The State Department official, briefing reporters before a visit to the Middle East next week by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, appeared to be seeking to allay that concern.
“We have no timeline for our military forces to withdraw from Syria,” said the official, who asked not to be identified.
“It will be done in such a way that we and our allies and partners maintain pressure on Daesh throughout and we do not open up any vacuums for terrorists.”
The US did not intend to have an indefinite military presence in Syria, the official added.
US officials have told Reuters a withdrawal could take several months, potentially giving time for US-backed forces to deal parting blows to the militant group that once held broad swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria.
But a senior administration official traveling with White House national security adviser John Bolton on a trip to the Middle East said Trump had received assurances from his military commanders that their mission “can be done in weeks.”
Trump said on Wednesday the US would get out of Syria slowly “over a period of time” and would protect US-backed Kurdish fighters in the country as Washington draws down troops.
“Bolton will travel to Israel and Turkey to discuss the withdrawal of US forces from Syria, and how the US will work with allies and partners to prevent the resurgence of Daesh, stand fast with those who fought with us against Daesh, and counter Iranian malign behavior in the region,” Garrett Marquis, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said.
Marquis said Bolton would be joined in Turkey by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford and US special Syria envoy James Jeffrey.
Separately, the State Department said Jeffrey would be taking on the additional role of the special envoy for the coalition to defeat Daesh.
Jeffrey will be involved in negotiations on a political process and also assumes the diplomatic role of coordinating with allies and partners on the fight against Daesh.
Brett McGurk, the previous special envoy for the global coalition to defeat Daesh, quit last month over Trump’s decision to pull US troops out of Syria.
The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which include Kurdish fighters, captured the Syrian town of Kashmah on January 2 after retaking the town of Hajjin on December 25, Pentagon spokesman Navy Commander Sean Robertson told Reuters.
The capture came the same day that Trump stated during a cabinet meeting his strong desire to gradually withdraw from Syria, calling it a place of “sand and death.”
Trump also said it was up to other countries to fight Daesh, including Russia and Iran, adding that Daesh was down to its last remaining bits of territory in Syria.
“We’re hitting the hell out of them, the Daesh people,” Trump said, using an acronym to refer to Daesh, adding, “We’re down to final blows.”
Separately on Friday, the US-led coalition said it carried out 469 strikes in Syria between December 16 and December 29 that destroyed nearly 300 fighting positions, more than 150 staging areas, and a number of supply routes, oil lubricant storage facilities and equipment.
Daesh retains control of just a “sprinkle of villages” near the Euphrates river, said Aaron Stein, the Middle East program director at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
“(Daesh) will simply revert to a diffused rural insurgency where it could use just the tyranny of space — the desert is very big — to sort of hide out and be able to launch raiding attacks,” he added.
The Pentagon spokesman said coalition forces, which Washington coordinates, were continuing to assist the SDF with close air support and artillery strikes in the Middle Euphrates River Valley.
“We will continue to work with the coalition and regional partners toward an enduring defeat of Daesh,” Robertson said.
He called the capture of Hajjin significant.
“This was a milestone, since it was among the largest of the last remaining Daesh strongholds in the Middle Euphrates River Valley.”
Daesh declared its “caliphate” in 2014 after seizing large swathes of Syria and Iraq. The hard-line militant group established its de facto capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa, using it as a base to plot attacks in Europe.
Much of the US campaign in Syria has been waged by warplanes flying out of Qatar and other locations in the Middle East.
US gives no timeline for Syria withdrawal as fighting continues
US gives no timeline for Syria withdrawal as fighting continues
- US-backed forces are still retaking territory from Daesh in Syria, Pentagon officials said on Friday
- Coalition forces, which Washington coordinates, were continuing to assist with close air support and artillery strikes
Inaction over UAE’s role is prolonging ‘worst proxy war in the world,’ Sudan justice minister says
- Had international community characterized it as ‘military rebellion’ and countered Emirati sponsorship of ‘terrorist militia’ it would not have endured, he tells UN Human Rights Council
- He accuses paramilitary Rapid Support forces of ‘targeting basic infrastructure, strategic facilities and public services,’ and ‘atrocities beyond our capacity to describe’
NEW YORK CITY: Sudan’s justice minister on Wednesday blamed the prolongation of the near-three-year conflict in his country on what he described as the failure of the international community to properly label the war as a rebellion.
He also accused the UAE of sponsoring and arming a militia, the Rapid Support Forces, he said was responsible for widespread abuses.
“The war has outstayed its welcome and it should not have gone on for this long had the international community, and particularly the UN and its bodies, fulfilled their responsibility in rightly characterizing this military rebellion,” said Abdullah Mohammed Dirif, “and had they called a spade a spade and countered the Abu Dhabi government, which sponsored this terrorist militia and provided it with high-tech arms and provided it with mercenaries.”
Speaking during the high-level segment of the 61st session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, he warned that “the misleading characterization of this war has given a green light for the militia to keep its flagrant violations.”
The minister, who said he was speaking “on behalf of the government of Sudan and its people,” described the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF, which began in April 2023, as “one of the worst proxy wars in the world,” which had “targeted the very existence of Sudan and its people.”
The RSF has “continued its methodic targeting of basic infrastructure and strategic facilities and all public services,” Dirif said, adding that “the aim is to displace civilians against whom it has committed atrocities beyond our capacity to describe them.
“The violations and crimes of the militia are going unabated. Yesterday it invaded Moustahiliya region in northern Darfur. It targeted civilians, killed them. It looted. It scorched villages and cities.”
Sudan’s military was “conducting its constitutional responsibility by standing up to the militia, protecting the civilians, preserving the unity of the country and the rule of law,” he said, and it remains “committed to international humanitarian law and the rules governing military engagement, and taking into account proportionality principles in order to protect civilians.”
Khartoum remains “open to genuine efforts which aim to end the war and the rebellion” based on a road map presented by the president of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, and a peace initiative submitted by the prime minister to the UN Security Council on Dec. 22, he added.
Dirif stressed his government’s commitment to continued “cooperation and coordination with human rights mechanisms in Sudan,” including the presence of the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the country and the UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Sudan.
“We recall, nationally, that achieving justice and redress to victims and ensuring impunity is a top priority for us,” he said, adding that authorities had made progress by investigating violations of national laws and international humanitarian laws.
He also underscored Sudan’s “commitment to continue facilitating and expediting delivery of humanitarian assistance to those affected by the war, including those under the control of the rebellious militia.”
Later, Sudan’s representative to the UN in Geneva exercised his right of reply and responded to prior remarks by the representative from the UAE.
“This is not a mere accusation, it is a well-known fact that is predicated on a number of evidence and documented proofs,” he said, referring to the UAE’s sponsorship of the RSF.
He cited in particular a report by a UN panel of experts on Sudan published on Jan. 15, 2024, which he described as “an official document of the Security Council” that referred to “lines of transferring weapons from Abu Dhabi International Airport” based on “clear-cut evidence.”
Other major international organizations and Sudan’s national commission of inquiry have provided further proof, he added, and Khartoum had submitted “a number of complaints, with proof, to the Security Council of the proven sabotage by the Abu Dhabi authority.”
The Sudanese representative continued: “It is paradoxical that the same authority that is sponsoring criminal militia, that the whole world is seeing and is attesting to its crimes, is now talking about peace in the Sudan. Peace is a noble value, that you have to be full of peace before you talk about it.
“The people of Sudan are only requesting this country stop sponsoring this criminal militia that is killing the innocent people in my country on a daily basis.”
The UAE has denied accusations that it provides military support to armed groups in Sudan, and says it supports efforts to achieve a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
