WASHINGTON — An ongoing drawdown of US military forces from Syria will continue, Washington’s Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack said Monday, as American-backed, Kurdish-led militias carried out a prisoner swap aimed at achieving national reconciliation with Damascus.
 

The ongoing drawdown of American troops will eventually culminate in their consolidation at a single base, Barrack told Turkey’s NTV News in an interview. Barrack serves as both the US ambassador to Turkey and the special envoy for Syria.
 

Why it matters: Roughly a quarter of the 2,000 US Special Operations and National Guard troops who were recently stationed in northeast Syria have withdrawn over the past month, part of a conditions-based plan by the Trump administration to disengage from the conflict in stages, two US defense officials confirmed to Al-Monitor.

 

“The number of US military bases in Syria is also decreasing. It went from eight to five, then to three, and will eventually drop to one,” Barrack said in the NTV interview on Monday. The consolidation is progressing as planned, one of the defense officials said, but they declined to provide details on how the administration’s conditions are linked to further planned steps by Syrian and Kurdish officials.

 

US troops began leaving key bases in Syria’s northeast in April, starting with facilities in Deir Ezzor and Hasakah, including Mission Support Site-Green Village and MSS-Euphrates, located at strategic oil and gas fields. 

 

In mid-April, then-Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell announced that the drawdown, which had previously been reported by Al-Monitor, “reflect[ed] the significant steps we have made toward degrading ISIS’ appeal and operational capability regionally and globally.”
 

ISIS remains a diminished but present threat, with more than 9,000 captured ISIS military-aged males imprisoned in makeshift facilities across the northeast. More than 36,000 suspected ISIS family members remain in the al-Hol detention camp, with repatriations to Iraq accelerating in the months since the fall of the Assad regime. US officials have said the Syrian Democratic Forces will maintain control of the ISIS prisons in coordination with Damascus-aligned forces.

 

US and Iraqi forces killed ISIS’ latest global operations chief, Abdullah Makki Muslih al-Rifa’i, in an airstrike in Iraq’s Anbar province in March, amid a ramp-up of counter-ISIS operations in the neighboring country.
 

Background: The Trump administration in April signed off on CENTCOM’s proposal to eventually cut the overall presence of American troops in Syria by more than half.
 

Barrack’s comments marked the clearest sign of approval so far by the envoy over the progress of piecemeal steps aimed toward eventually integrating the SDF into a Syrian national army, following a March 10 agreement between SDF commander Mazlum Abdi and the Damascus government led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, although key sticking points remain. The US envoy spoke with Abdi by phone from Damascus late last week, offering assurances of continued US support in keeping a lid on ISIS, Al-Monitor reported. 

 

Over the weekend, Damascus and the SDF reached a deal to mutually exchange some 466 prisoners on Monday, the latest trust-building measure between the two sides.

 

Al-Monitor exclusively reported on the prisoner swap, which is part of a Washington-backed effort to eventually integrate the US-trained SDF into a broader post-war Syrian security force. The aim is to maintain pressure on ISIS while avoiding a potential Turkish attack on the SDF, which Ankara considers inextricably linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party.

 

Know more: Barrack was quoted by NTV on Monday as casting doubt that the US would precipitously abandon the SDF, which he described as an ally.
 

“It's a very important factor for our Congress. It's very, very important to guide them toward integration into a new Syrian government. Everyone needs to be reasonable in their expectations,” Barrack was quoted by the Turkish outlet as saying.

 

Reuters reported on Monday that the Trump administration had quietly dropped its demand for the interim Syrian government in Damascus to exclude foreign jihadist fighters from security roles in the postwar government. 
 

A spokesperson for the US State Department did not immediately return Al-Monitor’s request for comment.