Syria: US to withdraw troops after IS ‘defeat’

Bloomberg

Donald Trump declared victory over IS, as officials said he’s ordered a full withdrawal of US forces from Syria in a sharp reversal of American policy that appeared to take the Pentagon by surprise.
The US military is working to quickly carry out Trump’s order, according to the officials, but it wasn’t clear how soon the approximately 2,000 troops would be coming home and what the president’s decision would mean for Kurdish allies.
“We have defeated IS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” Trump said on Wednesday morning on Twitter.
As recently as last week, administration officials disputed the idea that IS is defeated and suggested US involvement would continue. “If we’ve learned one thing over the years, enduring defeat of a group like this means you can’t just defeat their physical space and then leave,” Brett McGurk, the administration’s special envoy to for the global coalition to defeat IS, said on December 11. “You have to make sure the internal security forces are in place to ensure that those gains, security gains, are enduring. So that will take some time.”
But Trump has long pressed military to withdraw from Syria, saying in April that he would make a decision “very quickly.”
“I want to get out, I want to bring the troops back home, I want to start rebuilding our nation,” Trump said at a news conference at the time. He added that “our primary mission” of fighting the IS terrorist group is “almost completed.”
One of the president’s close allies in Congress, who has at times criticised his foreign policy, sharply attacked the withdrawal decision. Pulling out US for-ces now would be a “huge Obama-like mistake,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said on Twitter.