Troops Fight On in the Mideast

While Biden leaves Afghanistan and pulls back in Iraq, the U.S. military persists in Syria

- TOM O'CONNOR

JUST OVER SIX MONTHS INTO HIS TENURE, President Joe Biden has overseen the withdrawal of U.S. Troops from Afghanistan and pulled back the Pentagon’s mission in Iraq amid domestic and regional pressure. But in Syria, the U.S. Military remains with no discernable exit plan.

“Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are three completely separate issues and should not be conflated,” a senior Biden administration official tells Newsweek. “On Syria, we do not anticipate any changes right now to the mission or the footprint.”

That’s because the administration says the strategy is working as is. “We are supporting Syrian Democratic Forces in their fight against ISIS,” the official adds. “That has been quite successful, and that’s something that we’ll continue.”

The Syrian Democratic Forces are one of several factions in Syria’s decade-long civil war. The largely Kurdish-led militia has received the Pentagon’s backing since 2015, about a year after former President Barack Obama rallied a multinational coalition to fight the Islamic State militant group, also known as ISIS or Daesh.

Around the same time, Russia also joined the fight against ISIS, intervening directly on behalf of a separate campaign led by the Syrian government, its ally Iran and militias aligned with them. The parallel offensives in Syria eventually dismantled the self-styled caliphate violently erected by ISIS, but the years since have seen little disengagement among the top two rival factions that fought the jihadis.