The United States should end its “outdated and unnecessarily provocative” military presence in Syria and Iraq, says an American think tank.
“President Joe Biden should redeploy these forces to a safer position offshore and leave it to self-interested Syrians and Iraqis to prevent ISIS [Daesh] from reemerging,” reads an article published in Responsible Statecraft, an online magazine of Washington-based Quincy Institute, on Monday.
The importance of the withdrawal of American troops from Syria and Iraq surfaced after Washington’s support for the Israeli aggression on the besieged Gaza Strip triggered retaliatory attacks on US military bases in Syria and Iraq, and sparked concerns that the war could spill over into the region.
“Pivoting out of Syria and Iraq will not make Americans any less safe, but it will deny local militias… the chance to use unneeded outposts for leverage over our national strategy,” the article said, noting that “over sixty Americans” were injured in the retaliatory missile and drone attacks in the past five weeks.
There are roughly 2,500 American troops in Iraq and some 900 in Syria as part of, what Washington claims to be, a fighting force against Daesh. The US has maintained its presence, although, the Arab countries and their allies defeated the Takfiri terrorist group in late 2017.
“ISIS has long since been defeated and Operation Inherent Resolve should be shuttered at the first opportunity,” the article said.
It stressed that winding down US military interventions best serves America’s “counterterrorism and strategic goals.”
Noting that political violence in Afghanistan plummeted by 80 percent in the first year after the withdrawal of American forces in 2021, the article said “Crucially, the Taliban’s security forces curbed the threat of mass-casualty attacks” by the local offshoot of Daesh, “accomplishing in a matter of months what the Pentagon and CIA had been trying to achieve since 2015.”
“There is every reason to expect the armed forces of Syria and Iraq can be equally effective,” the article said, noting that the Syrian army “has the wherewithal and materiel to deal with the dead-enders of ISIS’s defunct caliphate.”
It also noted that Baghdad has adopted the largest budget in its history, including $23 billion for the security sector.
Anti-American sentiments have soared across the region in the weeks following all-out support of Washington for Israeli crimes in the Gaza Strip where relentless Israeli strikes have killed nearly 15,000 Palestinians since October 7.
