U.S. defense secretary confirms troop pullout
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Sunday that President Trump ordered a withdrawal of U.S. forces from northern Syria, a decision that will effectively cede control of the area to the Syrian government and Russia and could allow a resurgence of the Islamic State group.
Esper, appearing on both Fox News and CBS News, said U.S. troops, mostly Special Operations forces, would move south but not leave the country in the face of Turkey’s incursion into the section of Syria controlled by Kurdish forces, a group of fighters trained and backed by the U.S. government.
The Pentagon has slowwalked previous orders by Trump to evacuate from Syria, to protect its Kurdish partners and hold the ground it took back from the Islamic State group. But Esper’s comments Sunday indicated that this time Trump’s drawdown order was being acted on with haste.
The bulk of the roughly 1,000 troops in Syria are positioned in the northeastern part of the country, and the new orders will push those troops farther south. Military officials said plans remained fluid, and it was not clear how far the troops would withdraw to. The implications were clear: U.S. forces will not be coming to the aid of their Kurdish allies in the face of the Turkishbacked offensive.
Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Esper defended the withdrawal of what he said was “less than 1,000 troops” as prioritizing the safety of U.S. soldiers in the crisis.
Esper said the Pentagon expected Turkish forces to annex even more territory than originally estimated. He also confirmed that the commander of the Kurdishled Syrian Democratic Forces was “cutting a deal” with Russian and Syrian government forces who are now heading north to fight back against the Turkish offensive.