Top official: US forces to remain in Syria after Assad’s fall
A high-ranking White House official says US military forces will be staying in Syria after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's government, as part of what he claimed to be a counter-terrorism mission.
“Those troops are there for a very specific and important reason, not as some sort of bargaining chip,” US Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer said in New York on Tuesday.
US troops “have been there now for the better part of a decade or more to fight ISIS (Daesh)… we are still committed to that mission,” he added.
In response to the question whether US troops will be staying in Syria, Finer said, “Yes.”
The US military has for long stationed its forces and equipment in northeastern Syria, with the Pentagon claiming that the deployment is aimed at preventing the oilfields in the area from falling into the hands of Daesh terrorists.
The United States regularly conducts airstrikes in Syria under the pretext of fighting terrorism.
The former Damascus government maintained that the deployment was meant to plunder the country’s natural resources. Former US president and current president-elect Donald Trump admitted on several occasions that American forces were in the Arab country for its oil wealth.
US considering removing HTS from list of terror groups
Meanwhile, the outgoing administration of US President Joe Biden is considering the removal of the foreign terror designation for Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
The move is being considered with the aim of creating a “pathway for the world to interact with the new government” in Syria, one former US official told NBC News.
Two officials who spoke to the network said Washington is looking to remove the designation “soon,” while another said the talks were still in the early stages.
The report came hours after White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said there were “no discussions right now about changing the policy with respect to HTS, but we are watching what they do.”
The State Department said earlier that the group “is using the right words,” but the US will judge it not by those words, but by their actions in the coming days, regarding a potential lifting of the designation.
Militants launched a surprise two-pronged attack on Syria’s Aleppo and the countryside around Idlib on November 27. They marched southward to seize control of several major cities, including Hama, Homs, Dara’a, and Suwayda, before entering and capturing the capital Damascus early on December 8.
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