Even after the State Department appeared to patch up the US row with Turkey in Syria this week, Congress is getting increasingly fed up with the Donald Trump administration’s failure to provide legislators with a strategy for the war-torn country.

In a report accompanying the Senate’s must-pass annual defense authorization bill, lawmakers this week called out the Pentagon for “inconsistency” in its plan for Syria. US defense officials say that 2,000 US troops will stay there indefinitely, until the Islamic State (IS) is rooted out, despite President Donald Trump’s insistence that American forces leave the country “very soon.”

The Senate bill freezes $300 million requested for Syrian opposition fighters until the administration gives Congress an overdue and legally mandated outline of its plan for destroying the remnants of IS and stabilizing Syria. The bill also pegs $400 million for the anti-IS fight in next-door Iraq to a report on the “roles, missions and responsibilities of any future US military presence” in that country.

“The committee is deeply concerned by the lack of clarity and conflicting messages from administration officials related to the Middle East and, specifically, Syria,” according to the Senate Armed Services report. The report adds that the committee “believes that the activities of the US military in Syria are not adequately integrated into a broader strategy designed to stabilize Syria and address the factors that gave rise” to IS.