DAMASCUS: Syria’s defense ministry said on Thursday that the army had taken control of the Al-Tanf base after the withdrawal of US forces deployed there as part of the coalition against the Daesh group.
“Through coordination between the Syrian and American sides,” army units have taken control of the base “and have begun deploying along the Syrian-Iraqi-Jordanian” border nearby, a defense ministry statement said.
Two Syrian military sources told AFP on Wednesday that US forces had withdrawn from the base to Jordan.
One of them said the US forced had been moving equipment out for the past 15 days.
During the Syrian civil war and the fight against the Islamic State (IS), US forces were deployed in the country’s Kurdish-controlled northeast and at Al-Tanf, near the borders with Jordan and Iraq.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had been a major partner of the anti-IS coalition, and were instrumental in the group’s territorial defeat in Syria in 2019.
However, following the fall of longtime ruler Bashar Assad over a year ago, the United States has drawn closer to the new government in Damascus, recently declaring that the need for its alliance with the Kurds had largely passed.
Syria agreed to join the anti-IS coalition when President Ahmed Al-Sharaa visited the White House in November.
As Sharaa’s authorities have sought to extend their control over all of Syria, the Kurds have come under pressure to integrate their forces and de facto autonomous administration into the state, striking an agreement to do so last month after losing territory to advancing government troops.
Since then, the US has been conducting an operation to transfer around 7,000 suspected jihadists from Syria — where many were being held in detention facilities by Kurdish fighters — to neighboring Iraq.
Following the withdrawal from Al-Tanf and the government’s advances in the northeast, US troops are now mainly based at the Qasrak base in Hasakah, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Despite IS’s territorial defeat, the group remains active.
It was blamed for an attack in December in Palmyra in which a lone gunman opened fire on American personnel, killing two US soldiers and a US civilian.
Washington later conducted retaliatory strikes on IS targets in Syria.