The U.S. military lost two Iowa National Guard soldiers and a civilian interpreter in Syria, and saw three other soldiers injured in a shooting last week by an Islamic State supporter there. This violence highlighted the mission of the American army in a country which has just emerged from a civil war.
Syrian officials reportedly warned their American counterparts that an ISIS attack on American forces could be imminent. (These officials said the warning was not heeded.) Although recently reported for possible sympathies for ISIS, the shooter was a member of the Syrian security forces, now allied with the United States.
The United States has had troops on the ground in Syria for more than a decade now, with about 1,000 U.S. troops there today, according to the Pentagon.
Why we wrote this
In the wake of a recent Islamic State attack on its soldiers, the United States must ask whether a response would create more problems for itself and a war-torn country than it would solve.
Last month, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who had ties to al-Qaeda and had a $10 million bounty on his head a decade ago, became the first Syrian head of state to visit the White House. The rebel forces he once led – and which, although Islamist, regularly clashed with ISIS – overthrew Bashar al-Assad last December.
After their November meeting, President Donald Trump called Mr. al-Sharaa “tough guy — I like him” and hailed a “new era” of cooperation. Since then, and following the shooting, there has been talk of expanding the US mission in the country.
What are American troops doing in Syria?
U.S. forces launched their first operations in Syria with airstrikes in September 2014, as the Islamic State terrorist group was rapidly expanding. The following year, U.S. special operations forces conducted field raids against ISIS leaders there.
With some fluctuations, U.S. forces in the country generally increased until March 2019, when President Trump declared that the United States had liberated all territory controlled by ISIS, including “100 percent of the Caliphate.”
But some U.S. forces remained behind, officials explained at the time, to prevent the resurgence of ISIS. The remaining 1,000 U.S. troops are there “solely to finish the job of defeating ISIS once and for all, preventing its resurgence, and protecting the American homeland from terrorist attacks,” Tom Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria, wrote on social media this month.
The Trump administration also reduced the number of U.S. bases in the country from eight to three earlier this year. The long-term goal, according to the Pentagon, is to reduce this figure to one.
That will leave what U.S. officials describe as a small but strategic U.S. outpost at Al-Tanf in the southeast of the country, near the border with Jordan and Iraq. This aims to give U.S. security a reach that extends beyond the anti-ISIS campaign, officials say, including the ability to monitor Iran and a starting point for surveillance and rapid response forces.
Will the posture of U.S. military forces change in the wake of the deadly attack on U.S. soldiers, and should it?
The Trump administration has not recently discussed reducing US forces in Syria beyond the current figure of 1,000 troops. However, reports emerged last month, around the time of Mr. al-Sharaa’s visit to the United States, of an expanded American presence at an air base in Damascus to support a security deal the United States hopes to negotiate between Syria and Israel. Such cooperation could also help prevent a resurgence of ISIS.
But some defense analysts question why the United States continues to put its forces at risk when its original foreign policy goal — defeating ISIS — was declared achieved six years ago. “We defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump presidency,” Mr. Trump tweeted in December 2018, three months before officially declaring victory.
This question is similar to the question that arose in January 2024, when three U.S. military reservists were killed by a drone launched by an Iranian-backed militia near the Syrian border in what became known as the Tower 22 attack.
“If we didn’t have troops in Syria, there would be no American targets,” says Rosemary Kelanic, director of the Middle East program at the think tank Defense Priorities.
As things stand, she adds, the current mission in Syria does not have a clearly defined objective. “Talking about preventing the resurgence of ISIS is a way of saying that ISIS doesn’t exist. How do you know you’re done preventing the resurgence of ISIS? There are no criteria by which we can judge when this mission will be complete.”
There has been some movement, even a groundswell, among lawmakers in favor of withdrawing U.S. forces. “I am heartbroken that we lost soldiers,” Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, wrote on social media after the attack. “Now is the time to ask: why are we in Syria?
What more can the United States do to help prevent terrorism, and does that involve retaliation for the recent military attack?
As Syria’s new, relatively weak government struggles to gain a foothold, ISIS may be looking for ways to reassert itself, officials say.
For this reason, some analysts see benefit in the Trump administration keeping troops on the ground, particularly since the fall of the Assad regime last year.
But others question whether it is too dangerous for troops to systematically leave their relatively secure bases, especially in violence-prone areas.
“The United States should do everything in its power to give Syria a chance to achieve stability,” says Adam Weinstein, deputy director of the Middle East program at the think tank Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “But I don’t think they should have these kinds of routine joint patrols and meetings that expose American troops” to danger.
Admiral Brad Cooper, head of US Central Command, which directs the Pentagon’s operations in the Middle East, has warned that one of the major risks in the country is the large population of detainees – some 9,000 former ISIS fighters – who remain in Syrian camps.
The US military is providing intelligence support to thwart prison escapes, but Admiral Cooper stressed the need to repatriate ISIS fighters to their home countries. Humanitarian groups agree, citing allegations of abuses, including torture and poor detention conditions, handled primarily by U.S.-influenced Kurdish authorities.
And there is near-universal concern about the risk of radicalization in the camps, particularly those housing the 38,000 families of ISIS fighters, about 60 percent of whom are children. Among them, almost a third are under 5 years old.
“There is no doubt that ISIS still retains significant influence over these sites,” Admiral Cooper said. “Let us redouble all our efforts to protect vulnerable people and deny ISIS the opportunity to re-emerge. »
To this end, the Pentagon announced in September the creation of a “special joint cell” responsible for coordinating the repatriation of ISIS fighters and their families.
As for Mr. Trump’s promised retaliation for the deaths of U.S. troops, senior administration officials said a major U.S. bombing campaign was unlikely. Such a move could upend Mr al-Sharaa’s precarious political position.
Syrian government officials were quick to show they were preparing an ostensibly muscular response to the recent violence, with nearly a dozen security officers arrested and questioned over their links to the attacker.
A more likely response from the United States could be raids against high-value targets, much like the United States did against a senior ISIS leader in July, Mr. Weinstein says.
Another possibility is drone strikes on “some targets somewhere in the desert that are perhaps vaguely linked” to the attacker, Dr. Kelanic says. “They will call it retaliation and move on.”
But this too carries risks.
“Every time you carry out an operation like this, you risk killing innocent civilians. And, she adds, this perpetuates the cycle that leads people to terrorism.
