The U.S. military lost two Iowa National Guard soldiers and a civilian interpreter in Syria and three other troops were wounded in a gun battle there last week by an Islamic State sympathizer. The violence has drawn attention to the U.S. military's mission in a country emerging from civil war.
Syrian officials have reportedly warned their American counterparts that ISIS could attack US forces. (These officials said the warning went unheeded.) Although recently flagged for possible ISIS sympathies, the shooter was a member of the Syrian security forces and now a U.S. ally.
American soldiers have been in Syria for more than a decade, and there are about 1,000 American troops there today, according to the Pentagon.
Why did we write this
After the recent Islamic State attack on its soldiers, the United States must weigh whether a retaliatory strike will create more problems for itself and the war-torn country than it solves.
Last month, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who has ties to al-Qaeda and received a $10 million bounty on his head 10 years ago, became the first Syrian head of state to visit the White House. The rebel forces he once led, although Islamist but regularly clashing with ISIS, overthrew Bashar al-Assad last December.
After their November meeting, President Donald Trump called Mr. al-Sharaa a “cool guy—I like him” and hailed a “new era” of cooperation. Since then and since the shooting, there has been talk of expanding the US mission in the country.
What are American troops doing in Syria?
US troops first launched operations in Syria with airstrikes in September 2014, as the Islamic State group was rapidly expanding. The following year, US special operations forces conducted raids there against ISIS leaders.
With some hesitation, U.S. forces in the country generally increased until March 2019, when President Trump declared that the U.S. had liberated all ISIS-controlled territory, including “100% of the caliphate.”
But some U.S. forces remained, officials explained at the time, to prevent a resurgence of ISIS. The 1,000 remaining U.S. troops are there “solely to complete the job of defeating ISIS once and for all, preventing its resurgence, and protecting the American homeland from terrorist attacks,” Tom Barrack, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy to Syria, wrote on social media this month.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration also reduced the number of US bases in the country from eight to three. The ultimate goal, according to the Pentagon, is to reduce this figure to one.
That would leave what U.S. officials call a small but strategic U.S. outpost in Tanf, in the southeast of the country, near the border with Jordan and Iraq. It is intended to give the United States control over Iran and provide a starting point for surveillance and rapid reaction forces, officials said.
Will the US military's position change as a result of the fatal attack on American soldiers, and should it?
There has been no recent talk by the Trump administration about reducing US forces in Syria beyond the current strength of 1,000. There were, however, reports Last month, around the time of Mr. al-Sharaa's visit to the United States, there was an expanded U.S. presence at the Damascus air base to support a security agreement the United States hopes to reach between Syria and Israel. Such cooperation could also help prevent the resurgence of ISIS.
But some military analysts question why the US continues to put American forces at risk even though the original US foreign policy goal of defeating ISIS was declared achieved six years ago. “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, and that is my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” Mr. Trump tweeted in December 2018, three months before victory was officially declared.
This is similar to the question that arose in January 2024, when three US military reservists were killed drone launched by Iran-backed militias near the Syrian border in the so-called Tower 22 attack.
“If we didn't have troops in Syria, there wouldn't be any U.S. targets,” says Rosemary Kelanic, director of the Middle East program at the think tank Defense Priorities.
As it stands, she adds, the current mission in Syria has no clearly defined end goal. “Talking about preventing the resurgence of ISIS is a way of saying that ISIS does not exist. How do you know that you are finished preventing the resurgence of ISIS? We have no criteria by which to judge the completion of this mission.”
There is some movement, if not widespread movement, among lawmakers toward the withdrawal of American troops. “I am heartbroken that we lost soldiers,” Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, wrote on social media after the attack. “Now is the time to ask: why are we in Syria?”
What more can the US do to help prevent terrorism, and does this involve retaliation for the recent troop attack?
As the new, relatively weak Syrian government tries to strengthen itself, ISIS may be looking for ways to regain its footing, officials say.
For this reason, some analysts say it makes sense for the Trump administration to keep troops on the ground, especially after the fall of the Assad regime last year.
But others question whether it is too dangerous for troops to regularly leave their relatively safe bases, especially in areas prone to violence.
“The United States must do everything it can to give Syria a chance for stability,” says Adam Weinstein, deputy director of the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Governmentality, a think tank. “But I don't think they should be doing these kinds of routine joint patrols and meetings that put U.S. troops” in danger.
Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, which oversees Pentagon operations in the Middle East, warned that one of the country's biggest risks is the large number of detainees – about 9,000 former ISIS fighters – still held in Syrian camps.
The US military is providing intelligence support to prevent prison escapes, but Admiral Cooper has stressed the need to repatriate ISIS fighters to their home countries. Humanitarian groups agree, citing alleged abuses including torture and poor conditions in the detention system, which is run mainly by Kurdish authorities under US influence.
And there is near universal concern about the risk of radicalization in the camps, especially those housing 38,000 families of ISIS fighters. approximately 60% of them are children. Almost a third of them are children under 5 years of age.
“There is no doubt that ISIS continues to maintain significant influence in these facilities,” Admiral Cooper. said. “Let us redouble our work to protect the vulnerable and deny ISIS the opportunity to re-emerge.”
To that end, the Pentagon announced in September it was creating a “special joint cell” tasked with coordinating the repatriation of ISIS fighters and their families.
As for Trump's promised retaliation for the deaths of American soldiers, senior administration officials said a major U.S. bombing campaign was unlikely. Such a move could undermine Mr al-Sharaa's fragile political position.
Syrian government officials were quick to show they were taking a supposedly tough response to the recent violence, with about a dozen security officials arrested and questioned over links to the attacker.
A more likely US response would be raids against high-value targets, as the US is doing. completed against a senior ISIS leader in July, Mr. Weinstein says.
Another possibility is drone strikes on “some targets somewhere in the desert that may be loosely associated” with the attacker, Dr. Kelanic said. “They'll call it retaliation and move on.”
But this also comes with risks.
“Every time you carry out an operation like this, you risk killing innocent civilians.” And, she adds, it perpetuates the cycle that leads people to terrorism in the first place.
