The United States is pulling all roughly 1,000 troops out of Syria, ending a military presence that stretches back more than a decade. According to three American officials familiar with the matter, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, the full withdrawal is expected within the next two months.
The decision marks the clearest signal yet that the Trump administration views the ground mission in Syria as finished. Officials say a continued military footprint is no longer necessary following shifts in control on the ground, most notably the integration of Kurdish-led forces into the Syrian army after the 2024 ouster of Bashar al-Assad.
A mission that outlived its mandate
American boots first hit Syrian soil in 2014 under Operation Inherent Resolve, the coalition campaign to dismantle ISIS, Fox News reported. By 2019, ISIS had lost every square mile of territory it once controlled. Mission accomplished, on paper.
But the troops stayed. The rationale shifted from destroying a caliphate to supporting partner forces, preventing ISIS from regrouping, and countering Iran-backed militias. What began as a targeted campaign became an open-ended commitment with no clear exit criteria, the kind of mission creep that Washington excels at and voters despise.
That chapter is now closing. The administration has already vacated several key positions earlier this year, including the al-Tanf Garrison near the borders of Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. U.S. Central Command said at the time that American forces would remain prepared to strike ISIS targets and safeguard long-term stability. The full withdrawal extends that logic to its conclusion.
Setting the conditions before leaving
This is not a hasty exit. The groundwork is visible in the sequencing.
Just weeks ago, U.S. forces transferred 150 ISIS fighters from a detention facility in Hasakah, Syria, to a secure location in Iraq. Officials indicated in late January that thousands more detainees could also be moved. The administration is not abandoning the detention problem; it is relocating it to facilities under firmer control.
Tom Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria, has indicated that Damascus, under interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, is prepared to assume security responsibilities, including control of ISIS detention facilities and camps. Syria also became the 90th member of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS in November, a diplomatic step that formalizes counterterrorism obligations.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently met with Syria's foreign minister to discuss counterterrorism coordination and maintaining a cease-fire. The diplomatic architecture is being built as the military one comes down.
The right question isn't "why leave" but "why were we still there."
The foreign policy establishment will spend the next two months warning that withdrawal invites chaos. They said the same thing when Trump signaled withdrawal intentions during his first term. The deeper question they never answer is what, precisely, a thousand American troops were accomplishing in northeastern Syria that justified an indefinite presence in another country's civil war.
ISIS lost its territory seven years ago. Al-Assad, the dictator whose brutality fueled the conflict, was ousted in 2024. The Kurdish forces who fought alongside Americans have been integrated into Syria's military under new leadership. The conditions that originally justified the mission have fundamentally changed. The conditions that justified staying afterward were always more ambiguous than Washington admitted.
There is a pattern in American foreign policy: temporary deployments become permanent fixtures, and anyone who questions them is accused of abandoning allies or inviting disaster. The result is a military stretched across dozens of countries with missions that drift further from any definable national interest with each passing year.
What to watch
The withdrawal does raise legitimate questions that deserve serious attention, not hand-wringing, but clear-eyed scrutiny:
- How effectively will Syria's new government manage the ISIS detainee population?
- Will the integration of Kurdish forces into the Syrian army hold, or will old fractures resurface?
- Can the counterterrorism coordination discussed by Rubio produce real intelligence-sharing and operational results?
Officials were careful to note that the withdrawal is not tied to the separate Iran-related military buildup in the region. These are distinct strategic tracks, and conflating them would be a mistake.
On Capitol Hill, there are signs of measured caution. References to 134 House Republicans demanding assurances before the U.S. eases Syria sanctions, and a top GOP senator calling the cease-fire welcome while insisting actions must match words, suggest the party is engaged without being obstructionist. That's the right posture: support the strategic direction while holding the new Syrian government accountable.
Ending forever deployments
For a generation, American troops have been stationed in places where the original mission ended years ago, sustained by inertia and the institutional fear of being blamed if something goes wrong after departure. Syria was becoming another one of those places.
The Trump administration is making a different calculation: that the risks of staying indefinitely without a defined mission outweigh the risks of a deliberate, conditions-based departure. Detainees are being moved. Diplomatic channels are open. A coalition framework is in place. The Syrian government has been told, in no uncertain terms, what is expected of it.
A decade after the first American soldiers arrived in Syria to fight a caliphate, the caliphate is gone, the dictator is gone, and the troops are coming home.
