US redeploys troops in Syria, as Washington builds ties with new government
Reports indicate hundreds of soldiers may be withdrawn, and US forces may move from bases near the Euphrates River to consolidate at one base in eastern Syria.
The United States is redeploying troops in Syria as changes in Damascus mean that the United States will be able to alter its footprint in the country. These changes have happened quickly as the new government in Syria has taken shape in the last six months since the fall of the Assad regime.
The United States has also decided to conduct outreach to the new government in Syria and to appoint a new envoy, Ambassador Tom Barrack, who is currently the ambassador in Turkey.
Reports that the United States is shifting its troop locations—reportedly withdrawing up to 500 troops, according to Jennifer Griffin at Fox News, and moving some from bases near the Euphrates to bases further east near Shaddadi—are significant because they could shift the balance of power in parts of Syria.
Understanding the United States' role in Syria is important, and it is essential to understand how the United States got to this point.
The United States' role in Syria is complex and dates back to 2015, when the United States intervened to fight ISIS. Initially, the United States supported the formation of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an outgrowth of the People's Protection Units (YPG), a Kurdish armed group.
The SDF served as an umbrella group that the United States could work with more directly in the war on ISIS. The YPG is viewed as a terrorist group by the United States and NATO ally Turkey, so it was important to keep them institutionally separate despite their significant role in eastern Syria fighting ISIS.
The United States also backed a group of Syrian rebels in southern Syria who became known as the Syrian Free Army (SFA). This group should not be confused with the Free Syrian Army, an umbrella group of Syrian rebel factions.
The SFA at Tanf consisted of only several hundred fighters trained by the United States. After the fall of the Assad regime, this group integrated with the Syrian Army's 70th Division. It currently patrols parts of southern Syria, helping to contain ISIS threats and protect an airbase.
The SDF is much larger, with tens of thousands of fighters. It controls territory east of the Euphrates River. In early March, SDF leader Mazlum Abdi met with the new Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, to discuss integrating his forces and eastern Syria into the new government.
This was an important development supported by the United States-led Coalition, which included US forces under United States Central Command. The United States helped pave the way for engagement with Damascus, and both the Pentagon and the White House backed this policy in May when United States President Donald Trump met Syria's president in Riyadh.
From there, the United States State Department pushed forward for sanctions relief, and Tom Barrack was appointed the new envoy. This ended years of discord between the Pentagon, which supported the SDF, and the State Department, which had generally been less supportive of the SDF.
One reason the United States can reduce its troop presence is that other foreign powers are leaving Syria. During the decade-long civil war, Russia and Iran played key roles in Syria—Russia since 2015 and Iran since 2012. Turkey also invaded northern Syria in 2015 and 2016, making Syria a battleground for world powers. Many countries bombed Syria, including Israel.
After the fall of the Assad regime, Iran withdrew, and Russia was confined to a base near the coast. The United States was left as the sole major power involved. However, Israel increased its attacks and took control of areas along the border.
The number of United States troops in Syria has always been a point of discussion in Washington. For years, it was thought to be only a few hundred, but the actual number is around 2,000. These numbers were supposed to be reduced over the past months. Recent reports indicate that the United States is revising where it is deployed in Syria, shifting troops from the Euphrates further east.
This comes as the SDF and Damascus continue talks focused on unity and integration. It is also made possible by efforts to keep ISIS in check, as the Syrian government continues to rebuild its army and graduate new forces.
North Press in eastern Syria reported that, according to American officials, three United States bases have either been shut down or transferred to the SDF. Among them, the al-Omar base has been fully closed, the Conoco base handed over to the SDF, and a smaller outpost vacated.
A recent interview with Envoy Barrack on NTV also highlights how the United States continues to support the SDF. His comments differed from those of other officials, such as former ambassador James Jeffrey, who had described the United States' role in eastern Syria in less committed terms. Six years ago, key figures in Washington viewed the SDF as a temporary, tactical, and transactional partner.
Now, Barrack has called the SDF an ally and emphasized that members of Congress see support for them as important. He backs their integration into the new Syrian government's forces. This marks a shift in tone, as significant as having the Pentagon, the United States State Department, and the White House aligned on Syria policy, unlike the fragmented approach seen between 2015 and 2019.
The United States' policy in Syria can now move forward because of this coordination, aiming to prevent a vacuum from forming along the Euphrates and to encourage stability. With each redeployment of United States forces, a 'trust, but verify' approach remains essential to ensure progress.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
29 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Held at gunpoint: BBC team detained by Israeli forces in southern Syria
On the morning of 9 May, I was part of a BBC Arabic team which left the Syrian capital, Damascus, for the southern province of Deraa. From there we planned to go to the frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. We wanted to get close to the Syrian territory that has been seized by the Israeli military since December, when Israel's prime minister said it was taking control indefinitely of a demilitarised buffer zone and neighbouring areas following the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime. We were a team of seven - myself (a British citizen), two Iraqi BBC staff, and four Syrians - three freelancers and one BBC cameraman. Israel says it struck near Syria palace over violence in Druze areas First Druze crossing in 50 years as Israel courts allies in Syria Israeli strikes in Syria a challenge to Turkey We were filming near one of the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) observation posts, close to the town of al-Rafeed, when an official from the UN told us that the Israeli side had inquired about our identity and had been informed that we were a BBC crew. We next drove north towards Quneitra city, which has been located inside the buffer zone since a 1974 disengagement agreement between Syria and Israel, which captured the Golan during the 1967 Middle East war. About 200m (660ft) away from the city, an unguarded checkpoint blocked the road. To the side of the checkpoint we spotted Merkava tanks, one of which was flying an Israeli flag. From a nearby tower, two Israeli soldiers were watching us - one of them through binoculars - and my colleague held his BBC ID up for them to see. The BBC has complained to the Israeli military about what happened next to my team, but it has not yet received a response. A minute after we started filming in the area, a white car approached from the other side of the checkpoint. Four Israeli soldiers got out of the car and surrounded us. They pointed their rifles at our heads and ordered us to place the camera on the side of the road. I tried to explain that we were a BBC crew, but things escalated unexpectedly quickly. I was able to send a message to my BBC colleagues in London saying that we had been stopped by the Israeli military before our phones and all equipment were confiscated, more Israeli soldiers arrived in a Humvee military vehicle, and our car was thoroughly searched. The soldiers escorted us through a barrier into the city of Quneitra and stopped at the crossing point that separates Quneitra from the occupied Golan. There, the soldiers began reviewing the footage as we sat in our car, while one pointed his rifle at my head from metres away. After more than two hours, one of the soldiers asked me to step out of the car and speak on a mobile phone. I didn't know who the person on the line was. He spoke broken Arabic. He asked why we were filming Israeli military positions. I told him I was a British BBC journalist and explained to him the nature of our work. I returned to my car, and the rifle was again aimed at my head. After another hour of waiting, one more vehicle arrived. A group of security personnel got out of the car carrying blindfolds and plastic zip ties and asked me to step out first. The lead officer, who spoke fluent Palestinian Arabic dialect, took me by the hand towards one of the rooms at the crossing point which were previously used by the Syrian army. The floor was strewn with broken glass and rubbish. He told me that they would treat me differently - no handcuffs, nor blindfold - unlike the rest of my team. I was in shock. I asked why they were doing this when they knew we were a BBC crew. He said he wanted to help get us out quickly and that we had to comply with their instructions. Moments later, another officer entered and told me to take off all my clothes except my underwear. I initially refused, but they insisted, and threatened me, so I complied. He inspected even inside my underwear, both front and back, searched my clothes, then told me to put them back on and started interrogating me - including personal questions about my children and their ages. When they eventually let me out of the room, I witnessed the horrific scene of my team members, tied up and blindfolded. I pleaded to the officer to release them, and he promised to do so after the interrogations. They were taken one by one to the same room for strip search and questioning. They returned with their hands still bound but not blindfolded. The team's interrogation lasted more than two hours, during which all our phones and laptops were examined, and many photos - including personal ones - were deleted. The officer threatened us with worse consequences if we approached the frontier from the Syrian side again, and said that they know everything about us and would track us down if any hidden or un-deleted photo was ever published. About seven hours after our detention - it was past 21:00 - we were taken by two vehicles, one in front of our car and the other behind us, to a rural area about 2km (1.2 miles) outside Quneitra. There, the vehicles stopped and a bag containing our phones was thrown towards us before the vehicles left. Lost in the dark with no signal, no internet and no idea where we were, we kept driving until we reached a small village. A group of children pointed us to the highway, warning that a wrong turn could draw Israeli fire. Ten tense minutes later, we found the road. Forty-five minutes after that, we were in Damascus. Israel demands complete demilitarisation of southern Syria 'We just need peace': BBC speaks to Syrians watching Israel's incursion Israel seizes Golan buffer zone after Syrian troops leave positions
Forbes
35 minutes ago
- Forbes
FDA's New AI Tool Cuts Review Time From 3 Days To 6 Minutes
AI at the FDA getty The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced this week that it deployed a generative AI tool called ELSA (Evidence-based Learning System Assistant), across its organization. After a low-profile pilot that delivered measurable gains, the system is now in use by staff across the agency, several weeks ahead of its original schedule. Dr. Marty Makary, the FDA's commissioner, shared a major outcome. A review task that once took two or three days now takes six minutes. 'Today, we met our goal ahead of schedule and under budget,' said Makary. 'What took one scientific reviewer two to three days [before] The FDA has thousands of reviewers, analysts, and inspectors who deal with massive volumes of unstructured data such as clinical trial documents, safety reports, inspection records. Automating any meaningful portion of that stack creates outsized returns. ELSA helps FDA teams speed up several essential tasks. Staff are already using it to summarize adverse event data for safety assessments, compare drug labels, generate basic code for nonclinical database setup, and identify priority sites for inspections, among other tasks. This last item, using data to rank where inspectors should go, could have a real-world impact on how the FDA oversees the drug and food supply chain and impacts on how the FDA delivers its services. Importantly, however, the tool isn't making autonomous decisions without a human in the loop. The system prepares information so that experts can decide faster. It cuts through the routine, not the judgment. One of the biggest questions about AI systems in the public sector revolves around the use of data and third party AI systems. Makary addressed this directly by saying that 'All information stays within the agency. The AI models are not being trained on data submitted by the industry.' That's a sharp contrast to the AI approaches being taken in the private sector, where many large language models have faced criticism over training on proprietary or user-submitted content. In the enterprise world, this has created mounting demand for "air-gapped" AI solutions that keep data locked inside the company. That makes the FDA's model different from many corporate tools, which often rely on open or external data sources. The agency isn't building a public-facing product. It's building a controlled internal system, one that helps it do its job better. Federal departments have been slow to move past AI experimentation. The Department of Veterans Affairs has started testing predictive tools to manage appointments. The SEC has explored market surveillance AI for years. But few have pushed into full and widespread production. The federal government has thousands of employees processing huge volumes of information, most of it unstructured sitting in documents, files, and even paper. That means AI is being focused most on operational and process-oriented activities. It's shaping up to be a key piece of how agencies process data, make recommendations, and act. Makary put it simply that ELSA is just the beginning for AI adoption within the FDA. 'Today's rollout of ELSA will be the first of many initiatives to come,' he said. 'This is how we'll better serve the American people.'
Yahoo
44 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Chicago program to light up dark streets is gateway to energy efficiency
The 79th Street corridor is one of the busiest thoroughfares on Chicago's Southeast Side. But many of its adjacent side streets are poorly lit at night, posing hazards ranging from inconvenient to dangerous. For instance, obscured house numbers can confuse both delivery drivers and emergency responders. And higher levels of crime have been correlated with poorly lit streets, making it feel unsafe for children to play outdoors after sunset or for pedestrians to walk alone in the dark. 'For those people who are going to work in the winter at five o'clock in the morning and it's pitch black out there, yeah, they're scared. They're walking down the middle of the street,' said Sharon 'Sy' Lewis, founder and executive director of Meadows Eastside Community Resource Organization, commonly referred to by its acronym of MECRO. But block by block, things are changing, in no small part due to Light Up the Night, administered by MECRO in collaboration with the energy-efficiency program of Chicago utility ComEd. The initiative aims to solve the problem of dark streets by outfitting the front and back of homes with energy-efficient lights that automatically turn on at night and off during the day. Light Up the Night was launched in 2019 as a pilot program in the South Shore community of the city's South Side with an initial goal of providing Energy Star-certified LED light bulbs for up to 300 residences. The program had to pause during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, but eventually, Light Up the Night was able to achieve that goal and then some. Lewis said it has served more than 500 homes so far, and she is pursuing funding to expand. MECRO staff or volunteers install the bulbs into existing outlets at no charge to residents. Lewis said this proactive approach yields better results than just distributing packages of light bulbs and other energy-saving devices that may or may not get used. For Lewis, the installation process provides an opening to talk to residents about other energy-efficient measures, like weatherization or purchasing new appliances. The upgrades, often eligible for rebates to offset the cost, can dramatically reduce utility bills. This is particularly impactful in communities like those surrounding the 79th Street corridor, in which many residents spend a big portion of their income on energy bills, largely due to predominantly older and often poorly insulated housing stock. 'Light Up the Night is not just a gateway to safety, it's a gateway to energy savings. And it starts with the little things. And because we installed it, instead of sending them an 'energy box,' then we know that it's working. When you drive down that street, you know that it's working, you see that impact,' Lewis said. A minimum of 75% participation is required per block, and each homeowner or renter must provide consent before installation can begin, Lewis said. 'If the average block has 36 homes on it, if we get 15 on each side, at minimum, we have really created an impact for the block,' Lewis said. 'So now you have the whole community lighting up at once [at dusk], and then they all go off in the morning.' A legacy of segregation and disinvestment has left residents of predominantly Black communities like the Southeast Side with a strong distrust of outsiders. As a lifelong resident and visible activist, Lewis has an advantage when it comes to engaging with residents, but obtaining initial buy-in around South Shore was still a challenge. 'Getting people to sign up, that was a problem because we can't not have data on where we are leaving the lights. … [But] people didn't want to provide their information,' Lewis said. To get the program up and running, Lewis worked with neighborhood block clubs to overcome apprehension and to identify particular streets in the South Shore community that would benefit the most from the new lights. She also worked with other community organizations, especially those focused on violence prevention. It was easier to start up the program in Austin, a neighborhood on the city's West Side, where, also in 2019, Lewis collaborated with Steve Robinson, executive director of the Northwest Austin Council, with whom she had worked previously on a number of initiatives. Chicago police officers assigned to that community were also enthusiastic about the program, and helped Lewis identify blocks where adding lights would be especially impactful, she said. '[Robinson] invited me over there. It was a whole change. It was a sea change. It was amazing. [The police] were excited about it. They were looking forward to the change we were doing,' Lewis said. Wherever it has been implemented, this small-scale program has had an outsized positive impact, Lewis said. Additional lighting on front porches and entryways also enhances safety for visitors to the community, including service providers like mail carriers, delivery people, and rideshare drivers. Likewise, floodlights installed at the rear of a home or apartment building add to the ambient lighting in often dark alleyways, which results in fewer garage break-ins and instances of illegal dumping of garbage, Lewis said. MECRO does much more than install lights. The organization also helps guide new and existing small business owners, conducting educational seminars and offering technical assistance. And it provides residents with referrals for energy-efficiency improvements and other sustainability-related resources they might not otherwise know about. But Light Up the Night remains part of the organization's core mission. While illuminating areas that used to be dark is the program's first objective, once the new bulbs have replaced older, less-efficient lights, the lower utility bills can be eye-opening for residents. When people see those savings, 'they start thinking, 'Well, what if I get all energy-efficiency light bulbs? Hmm. Okay, now my bill has gone really down. What if I do the weatherization program? Now my bill is really down,'' Lewis said.
