US weighs plans to slash troop presence in Syria by more than half
Fewer than 1,000 US troops could remain in the country in order to retain limited oversight of ISIS prisons controlled by Kurdish-led forces across the country’s northeast, according to officials briefed on the latest plans.
WASHINGTON — The Trump White House is weighing plans to withdraw the majority of its troops from Syria over next few months, Al-Monitor has learned.
Under the Pentagon’s plan — which has not yet received final approval by the White House's National Security Council — Syria’s Kurdish-led militias would retain control over more than two dozen makeshift prisons holding thousands of Islamic State detainees and their families across the country’s northeast, in coordination with Damascus.
Fewer than half of the estimated 2,000 American troops currently in Syria would remain in the country in order to sustain at least some level of oversight of the prisons in coordination with Kurdish forces, Al-Monitor’s sources said.
The Pentagon has not publicly confirmed the plans. “The Department of Defense routinely reallocates forces based on operational needs and contingencies,” a defense official told Al-Monitor in a written statement.
