General: U.S. troop levels will drop in Iraq and Syria

ThetopAmerican military commander in the Middle East said Wednesday that U.S. troop levels in Iraq and Syria would most likely shrink in the coming months but that he had not yet received orders to begin withdrawing forces.

Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., head of the Pentagon’s Central Command, said the 5,200 troops in Iraq to help fight remnants of the Islamic State and train Iraqi forces “will be adjusted” after consultations with the government in Baghdad.

McKenzie said he expected American and other NATO forces to maintain “a longterm presence” in Iraq — both to help fight Islamic extremists and to check Iranian influence in the country. He declined to say how large that presence might be, but other American officials said discussions with Iraqi officials that resume this month could result in a reduction to around 3,500 U.S. troops.

Despite President Donald Trump’s demand last fall for a complete withdrawal of all 1,000 American forces from Syria, the president still has some 500 troops, mostly in the country’s northeast, assisting local Syrian Kurdish allies in combating pockets of Islamic State fighters.

“I don’t think we’re going to be in Syria forever,” McKenzie told a security conference organized virtually by the United States Institute of Peace. “At some point, we do want to get smaller there. I just don’t know when that’s going to be. As long as we remain, we’re going to work very hard to finish off ISIS,” he said, using an alternative name for the Islamic State group.

McKenzie’s comments on U.S. troop levels in Iraq and Syria were consistent with what he has said in the past, but they come against the backdrop of Trump recently announcing that forces in Afghanistan would shrink to about 5,000, from 8,600, by the general election in November. The president also directed the withdrawal of about 12,000 troops from Germany, about 6,400 of which would come home and about 5,600 of which would go to other European countries.

While Trump’s motivations for withdrawing troops vary somewhat from country to country, together they underscore his overarching campaign pledge in 2016 to extract the United States from military commitments overseas.

McKenzie and other American officials say the United States can afford to consider withdrawing troops from Iraq and Syria because local forces are increasingly able to counter the Islamic State on their own.