Trump freezes $200m to rebuild Syria as he hints at troops withdrawal
President Donald Trump froze more than $200 million in reconstruction funds for the country and called Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss developments, less than 24 hours after indicating that US troops in Syria could be leaving “very soon”.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr Trump stopped “more than $200m [Dh734.5m] for recovery efforts in Syria” while he reassessed America’s role in the conflict.
Mr Trump “called for the freeze after reading a news report that the US had committed an additional $200m to support recovery efforts in Syria”. The amount was pledged by departing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson last month.
The call came hours after Mr Trump announced his intention to pull 2,000 troops out of Syria.
“We’ll be coming out of Syria very soon. Let the other people take care of it now,” he said at a rally in Ohio on Thursday. “We’re going to have 100 per cent of the [ISIL] caliphate, as they call it, sometimes referred to as land. We’re taking it all back.”
The news followed the killing of a US soldier by a roadside bomb in northern Syria.
“If this is a suicide bombing against a US/Syria Democratic Forces position in Shaddadi it’s almost certainly an ISIL action, although it is surprising they have not claimed it yet,” Faysal Itani, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Centre told The National.
But if it is ISIL, he said it would not be a significant event, “merely an indicator of the insurgent warfare the group will probably be waging in the eastern Syria area for the foreseeable future”.
Mr Itani said the second scenario was an Iran led-action.
On Friday Mr Trump discussed Syria with Mr Erdogan.
The White House said the two presidents spoke about “regional developments and the strategic partnership” and that they “expressed support for continued efforts to increase co-operation between their two countries, to advance shared interests as Nato allies, and to work through issues that affect the bilateral relationship”.
The Trump government appears to be looking for other sources to fund stabilisation and recovery in Syria.
The Washington Post reported last month that Mr Trump had asked Saudi Arabia’s King Salman for $4 billion in stabilisation aid to hasten the US exit from Syria but it is unclear if such a deal materialised.
US officials said that they “convinced Mr Trump that the US military cannot remove its troops from northern Syria, in part because of Iran”.
In an interview with Time magazine, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is visiting the US, urged the White House to keep its troops in Syria.
“We believe American troops should stay for at least the mid-term, if not the long term” Prince Mohammed said.
“If you take those troops out from east Syria, you will lose that checkpoint” that blocks an Iranian corridor. “And this corridor could create a lot of things in the region.”