Contrary to assurances from Trump's National Security Advisor, neocon John Bolton, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who suggested earlier this week that US troops would remain in Syria for at least a little while longer,
the Associated Press reported on Friday that the US has begun the process of removing the 2,000 soldiers based in northeastern Syria.
Citing information provided by activists with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the withdrawal officially began Thursday night local time.
A convoy of about 10 armored vehicles and some trucks left the town of Rmeilan into drove into Iraq. Col. Sean Ryan, spokesman for the coalition fighting the Islamic State group, later confirmed that the US has started "the process of our deliberate withdrawal from Syria."
Trump's abrupt decision last month to order US troops out of Syria angered former Defense Secretary James Mattis, who resigned over the decision, and stoked fears that Trump was abandoning the Kurds to a massacre by Turkish forces, who have vowed to pick up the slack in Syria when it comes to fighting ISIS.
"These have been folks that have fought with us and it's important that we do everything we can to ensure that those folks that fought with us are protected," Pompeo said of the Kurds while visiting Irbil, the capital of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, after talks in Baghdad.
After launching a campaign of airstrikes against ISIS in 2014, President Obama deployed troops on the ground the following year to combat ISIS, which at the time controlled large swaths of northeastern Syria. Since then, the group has been beaten back, and now control only 1% of their former territory.
Comment: Another US official
clarified to AFP that the withdrawal is currently of non-essential military equipment, but not troops as of yet.
French FM Le Drian has also
pledged to remove troops from Syria, but only once a "political solution" is reached:
"There is our [military] presence in Iraq, [and] we have a scanty presence in Syria", he told France's C-News television.
Le Drian argued that it is Russia which is responsible for the political resolution of the Syrian conflict.
According to him, Russia "bears political responsibility so that Syria has a political, not a military solution [of the conflict] to avoid the use of chemical weapons", he said.
Le Drian's remarks came after France's European Affairs Minister Nathalie Loiseau said in an interview with C-News on 20 December that France will "for now" maintain its participation in the coalition fighting Daesh forces in Syria.
In separate development, advisers to French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly met with Kurdish militants representing the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and assured them of future support from Paris.
Comment: Looks like we have another Russlandversteher! At least, that's what the Integrity Initiative would probably like you to believe: Inside Integrity Initiative's desperate attempt to sabotage Russian-German relations. But Maas is right. Which is why II's propagandists are so desperate to paint anyone even slightly sympathetic to Russia (or just plain pragmatism, for that matter) as a Russian agent. Can't let common sense get in the way of ideologically motivated global hegemony!