{"id":184079,"date":"2019-02-22T18:32:23","date_gmt":"2019-02-22T18:32:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=184079"},"modified":"2019-02-26T08:28:25","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T08:28:25","slug":"200-u-s-troops-to-stay-in-syria-white-house-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=184079","title":{"rendered":"200 U.S. Troops to Stay in Syria, White House Says"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Annie Karni<\/a> and Thomas Gibbons-Neff<\/a> \u2013 New York Times Feb 22, 2019<\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The White House said on Thursday that it planned to leave about 200 American troops in Syria, signaling a partial retreat from President Trump\u2019s announcement in December<\/a><\/strong> that he would withdraw all 2,000 forces after what he described as a victory over the Islamic State.<\/span><\/p>\n

The move was a concession to allies and Pentagon officials who have argued that a complete American withdrawal risks returning key areas in Syria to the Islamic State. It came Thursday after a phone call between Mr. Trump and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, during which the two leaders agreed to continue working together to try to create a \u201csafe zone,\u201d the White House said.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was the second time in two months that a major military decision about Syria followed a phone call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Erdogan. As with Mr. Trump\u2019s abrupt announcement in December, a terse statement on Thursday from Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, took Pentagon officials by surprise.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms. Sanders said that \u201ca small peacekeeping group of about 200 will remain in Syria for a period of time.\u201d She did not elaborate, and it was not clear if the American forces would be under the authority of the United Nations, which generally oversees declared peacekeeping missions in combat zones. Defense Department officials declined to comment and referred questions to the White House.<\/span><\/p>\n

But a senior administration official said the move was aimed at encouraging France and Britain to keep troops in Syria, as well as to help secure a safe zone near the Turkish border.<\/span><\/p>\n

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a vocal critic of Mr. Trump\u2019s earlier withdrawal decision, praised the announcement on Thursday. Leaving a residual force in Syria would \u201censure ISIS does not return and that Iran does not fill the vacuum that would have been left if we completely withdrew,\u201d he wrote in a statement posted on Twitter<\/a><\/strong>, in a reference to the Islamic State.<\/span><\/p>\n

country\u2019s southeast, near its border with Iraq and Jordan. The official said the American forces would provide logistics, intelligence and surveillance to allies and would relay necessary information for directing airstrikes to targets, roles that have little to do with peacekeeping.<\/span><\/p>\n

United States military officials have long pushed for keeping a residual force in al-Tanf, where American troops have trained Syrian fighters and monitored Iranian-backed militias in the area, a key way station for Iranian forces headed toward territory controlled by the Syrian government.<\/span><\/p>\n

Continues \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The token force could be quickly reinforced from 200 to 2,000 and more. Meaning the \u201cresidual\u201d force would act as an advance guard for further US military intervention <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-syria"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=184079"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184082,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184079\/revisions\/184082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=184079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=184079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=184079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}