WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 — The White House is weighing a full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria as Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa moves to assert control over the country’s northeast, a region previously held by a U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led militia, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Thursday.
About 1,000 troops are currently deployed in Syria, most stationed at facilities in the northeast alongside the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Pentagon’s longtime partner against the Islamic State (IS) in the region, said the report, citing U.S. officials.
A rapid government offensive over the weekend led to the collapse of SDF control in parts of the northeast, with Damascus pressing the group to disband, said the report.
The SDF has been responsible for guarding roughly 9,000 IS detainees held in detention facilities across the region. U.S. Central Command said on Wednesday that the Pentagon has begun transferring up to 7,000 IS detainees from northeastern Syria to “secure detention facilities” in Iraq.
U.S. forces were first deployed to Syria in 2014 under then-President Barack Obama to combat IS amid the country’s civil war, later operating closely with the SDF.
During President Donald Trump’s first term, U.S. troop levels in Syria were gradually reduced from about 2,000. Although IS has lost most of its territorial control in Syria and Iraq, an estimated 1,500 to 3,000 IS fighters remained active in the two countries by mid-2025, said Adrian Shtuni, an associate fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, warning that the extremist group continues to pose regional and global threats. (Namibia Daily News / Xinhua)
