US forces are in the outskirts of the Syrian town of Manbij
U.S. Special Representative for Syria Engagement James Jeffrey said on March 15 that there was no timetable for a full U.S. withdrawal from Syria and stressed that the struggle to defeat ISIS’ ideology would go on.
Speaking to reporters on a video call after attending a Syria humanitarian conference, Jeffery added that ISIS is down to its last few hundred fighters and less than a square kilometer of land. However, he noted that the terrorist group may have thousands of followers in Syria and Iraq.
“We are just about finished with the campaign along the Euphrates to defeat the last territorial holdings of the ‘caliphate’. They’re down to a few hundred fighters and less than a square kilometer of land … We believe that there’s between 15,000 and 20,000 Daesh [ISIS] armed adherents active, although many are in sleeper cells, in Syria and in Iraq,” Reuters quoted Jeffery as saying.
Last December, President Donald Trump announced that all U.S. forces will be withdrawing from Syrian once ISIS is defeated. However, a backlash from the mainstream media, politicians and senior officials in his administration forced him to make a u-turn.
In his most recent statement on the matter, Trump said that the U.S. will be keeping 400 service members in Syria. Half of these troops will establish a safe-zone in northeastern Syria, while the rest will be stationed in the al-Tanaf base to block Baghdad-Damascus highway.
Jeffery’s new statement indicated that Washington may be planning to completely abandon the withdrawal decision and keep all of its forces in Syria. Moscow and Damascus had expected that the decision was not serious.
uninvited a**sholes – how to get rid of them – one at a time probably a good method.
What a surprise, huh? I never believed the US timeline in the first place. Now that they are changing their story and indicating that they may just stay, I’m now wondering if they are getting desperate to leave. They’ve moved their terrorist forces further east to re-consolidate them and entrench them there (as ‘prisoners’). The Russians are not fooled and see this for what it is. All clues point to money issues for the US military, possibly due to the loss of Arab money. Erdo seems to be having problems with his end of the plan, with Russia seemingly playing along, but only so far. Something is up, but it’s not quite clear as yet what. As with Venezuela, their plans have not worked out the way they had hoped. They appear to be flailing about, their strategy going forward unsure. This can be a positive development, but can also be dangerous.
probably moving the isis-guys to places in afghanistan where they can be useful sowing discord with the uzbekistan, turkmenistan und zú weiter and thus causing problems in the russian sphere of interest and in china’s xinjiang province. on the whole I would think the actions by the morons are desperate and they just don’t know how to keep it together much longer – think about it, a national debt in excess 22000 billion frigging bucks and an unwieldy world questioning the wisdom of washington dc. the thing is crumbling and they can’t do much to stop the crumbling.
You were hoping also this time……………………….LOL. You were hoping.