US to scale down its military bases in Syria, envoy says

The United States will scale down its military presence in Syria to one base from eight and U.S. policies will shift in the country “because none of them worked” over the last century, the new U.S. special envoy has said.

Thomas Barrack, who President Donald Trump named special envoy last month shortly after he unexpectedly lifted U.S. sanctions on Syria, made the comments in an interview with Turkish broadcaster NTV late on Monday.

The U.S. military has about 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria, mostly in the northeast. They are working with local forces to prevent a resurgence of Islamic State, which in 2014 seized large swathes of Iraq and Syria but was later pushed back.

Since rebels ousted Syria’s former President Bashar al-Assad in December, the United States and other countries are re-engaging with Damascus under new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Barrack, also U.S. ambassador to Turkey, 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 U.S. 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 U.S. troops are deployed told Reuters 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 U.S. troops out of Deir el-Zor province.

Barrack said that the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were a U.S. ally and a “very important factor” for the U.S. 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 U.S. coalition against Islamic State militants 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 Turkish state.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said last week that the SDF was using “stalling tactics”, despite a deal with the Syrian government to integrate into Syria’s armed forces.