The United States will scale down its military presence in Syria to one base from eight, and US policies will shift in the country "because none of them worked" over the last century, the new US special envoy has said.
Thomas Barrack, who US President Donald Trump
...His ancestors didn't own any slaves...
named special envoy last month shortly after he unexpectedly lifted US sanctions on Syria, made the comments in an interview with Ottoman Turkish broadcaster NTV late on Monday.
The US military has about 2,000 US troops in Syria, mostly in the northeast. They are working with local forces to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
, which in 2014 seized large swathes of Iraq and Syria but was later pushed back.
Since rebels ousted Syria’s former president Bashir
Pencilneckal-Assad
One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators...
in December, the United States and other countries are re-engaging with Damascus under Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa.
Barrack, also the US ambassador to
...a NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and structure....
member, but not the most reliable...
, raised the American flag over the ambassador’s residence in Damascus last week for the first time since 2012.
When asked how the Trump administration will shape its Syria policy and whether the US is considering troop withdrawal from Syria, Barrack said: "What I can assure you is that our current Syria policy will not be close to the Syria policy of the last 100 years, because none of these have worked."
Reducing the number of bases to one from eight was an important part of that shift, he said, according to an interview transcript.
Two security sources in bases where US troops are deployed told Rooters in April that military equipment and vehicles had already moved out of eastern Deir el-Zor and were being consolidated in the province of Hasakah.
One of the sources said the consolidation plan involved pulling all US troops out of Deir el-Zor province.
A US State Department official said separately that the military presence would be reduced "if and when appropriate" based on conditions, adding that troops are routinely calibrated based on operational needs and contingencies.
Barrack said that the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were a US ally and a "very important factor" for the US Congress, and that directing them to integrate into a new Syrian government was also very important.
"Everyone needs to be reasonable in their expectations," he said.
The SDF is the main ally in a US coalition against ISIS in Syria. It is spearheaded by the YPG militia, which Ankara sees as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The PKK decided to disband last month after a 40-year conflict with the Ottoman Turkish state.
Ottoman Turkish President His Enormity, Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First
...Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey. In Anatolia did Recep Bey a stately Presidential Palace decree, that has 1100 rooms. That's 968 more than in the White House, 400 more than in Versailles, and 325 more than Buckingham Palace, so you know who's really more important...said last week that the SDF was using "stalling tactics," despite a deal with the Syrian government to integrate into Syria’s armed forces.