Qamishli (Syria) (AFP) – The US forces that led the coalition against the Islamic State group will complete their withdrawal from Syria within a month, three sources told AFP on Monday, as troops began leaving a major base. The withdrawal comes as Syria’s government expanded its control to the country’s northeast, previously controlled by US-allied Kurdish forces, and formally joined the coalition against IS. It also comes as Syrian state media reported that four Syrian security personnel were killed in an IS attack in the northern city of Raqa, which was recently taken back into central government control from Kurdish forces.
American forces have already withdrawn from two more bases in the past two weeks, Al-Tanf in the southeast and Shadadi in the northeast. “Within a month, they will have withdrawn from Syria and there will no longer be any military presence in the bases,” a Syrian government official said, with a Kurdish source confirming the timeline. The officials who spoke to AFP for this story all requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to media.
On Monday, the United States began withdrawing from a major base in a northeastern region still under the control of Kurdish forces, which agreed last month to integrate their institutions with Damascus. An AFP team saw a convoy of dozens of trucks loaded with armored vehicles and prefabricated structures on a road linking the Qasrak base in Hasakeh province to the border with Iraq. With Kurdish forces at the forefront, IS was territorially defeated in 2019 but retains sleeper cells, and on Saturday the group urged its jihadists to fight Syrian authorities.
On Monday, Syria’s official SANA news agency quoted a security source as saying that “four members of the internal security forces” were killed in an attack attributed to IS. Syria’s interior ministry said the “terrorist attack” had targeted a checkpoint and that an assailant was killed.
– ‘End their presence’ –
The United States has about 1,000 troops still deployed in Syria. It had intervened in the country in 2014 to fight IS, which had taken over swathes of Syria and Iraq in a lightning offensive. A diplomat from a country allied with both the United States and Syria said the withdrawal should be completed within 20 days. The US may still carry out airstrikes in Syria from other bases in the region, he said.
The Kurdish source said “the international coalition forces will end their presence, which has lasted for about 12 years, in northern and eastern Syria within a period of three to five weeks.” “Over the coming days, successive military convoys will transport logistical supplies, military equipment, radar systems, and missiles from the two remaining bases,” he added, referring to Qasrak and Kharab al-Jir, also in Hasakeh province.
The withdrawal comes as the US, which long backed the Kurds, considered their mission against IS to be “largely” over, as Syria joined the international coalition against IS. After the Syrian authorities’ deployment in the northeast last month, the US military said it transferred thousands of IS suspects, including many Syrians but also Westerners, to Iraq, after they were held in Kurdish-run prisons for years.
Syrian authorities had transferred remaining families in Al-Hol, the largest camp housing relatives of suspected IS fighters, to another site in the north. Thousands of family members of foreign jihadists had previously fled the camp and they remain unaccounted for. Human Rights Watch expressed concern on Monday over the wellbeing of 8,500 people after the camps of al-Hol, which Damascus shut down on Sunday, and Roj, still under Kurdish control, close.
© 2024 AFP
