WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has no timeline to withdraw troops from Syria but does not plan to stay indefinitely, a senior State Department official said on Friday, a strong signal that forces could stay until the fight against Islamic State militants ends.

U.S.-backed forces are still retaking territory from Islamic State in Syria, Pentagon officials said on Friday, two weeks after Washington said it would withdraw its roughly 2,000 troops there. At the time, President Donald Trump said the troops had succeeded in their mission and were no longer needed there.

The administration’s abrupt announcement last month, which took officials in Washington and allies by surprise, contributed to Jim Mattis’ decision to resign as U.S. defense secretary and prompted concern that Islamic State could stage a comeback.

The State Department official, briefing reporters before a visit to the Middle East next week by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, appeared to be seeking to allay that concern.

“We have no timeline for our military forces to withdraw from Syria,” said the official, who asked not to be identified.

“It will be done in such a way that we and our allies and partners maintain pressure on ISIS throughout and we do not open up any vacuums for terrorists.”

The United States did not intend to have an indefinite military presence in Syria, the official added.

U.S. officials have told Reuters a withdrawal could take several months, potentially giving time for U.S.-backed forces to deal parting blows to the militant group that once held broad swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria.

But a senior administration official traveling with White House national security adviser John Bolton on a trip to the Middle East said Trump had received assurances from his military commanders that their mission “can be done in weeks.”

Trump said on Wednesday the United States would get out of Syria slowly “over a period of time” and would protect U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in the country as Washington draws down troops.

“Bolton will travel to Israel and Turkey to discuss the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria, and how the U.S. will work with allies and partners to prevent the resurgence of ISIS, stand fast with those who fought with us against ISIS, and counter Iranian malign behavior in the region,” Garrett Marquis, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said.

Marquis said Bolton would be joined in Turkey by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford and U.S. special Syria envoy James Jeffrey.

Separately, the State Department said Jeffrey would be taking on the additional role of the special envoy for the coalition to defeat Islamic State.

Jeffrey will be involved in negotiations on a political process and also assumes the diplomatic role of coordinating with allies and partners on the fight against Islamic State.

Brett McGurk, the previous special envoy for the global coalition to defeat Islamic State, quit last month over Trump’s decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria.

‘FINAL BLOWS’

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which include Kurdish fighters, captured the Syrian town of Kashmah on Jan. 2 after retaking the town of Hajin on Dec. 25, Pentagon spokesman Navy Commander Sean Robertson told Reuters.

The capture came the same day that Trump stated during a cabinet meeting his strong desire to gradually withdraw from Syria, calling it a place of “sand and death.”

Trump also said it was up to other countries to fight Islamic State, including Russia and Iran, adding that Islamic State was down to its last remaining bits of territory in Syria.

“We’re hitting the hell out of them, the ISIS people,” Trump said, using an acronym to refer to Islamic State, adding, “We’re down to final blows.”

Separately on Friday, the U.S.-led coalition said it carried out 469 strikes in Syria between Dec. 16 and Dec. 29 that destroyed nearly 300 fighting positions, more than 150 staging areas, and a number of supply routes, oil lubricant storage facilities and equipment.

Islamic State retains control of just a “sprinkle of villages” near the Euphrates river, said Aaron Stein, the Middle East program director at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

“(ISIS) will simply revert to a diffused rural insurgency where it could use just the tyranny of space - the desert is very big - to sort of hide out and be able to launch raiding attacks,” he added.

The Pentagon spokesman said coalition forces, which Washington coordinates, were continuing to assist the SDF with close air support and artillery strikes in the Middle Euphrates River Valley.

“We will continue to work with the coalition and regional partners toward an enduring defeat of ISIS,” Robertson said.

FILE PHOTO: U.S. troops patrol near Turkish border in Hasakah, Syria, November 4, 2018. REUTERS/Rodi Said/File Photo

He called the capture of Hajin significant.

“This was a milestone, since it was among the largest of the last remaining ISIS strongholds in the Middle Euphrates River Valley.”Islamic State declared its “caliphate” in 2014 after seizing large swathes of Syria and Iraq. The hardline Islamist group established its de facto capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa, using it as a base to plot attacks in Europe.

Much of the U.S. campaign in Syria has been waged by warplanes flying out of Qatar and other locations in the Middle East.</s>The fact tha James Jeffrey joined the administration as the special representative for Syria engagement was noteworthy in part because the president had initially blacklisted so-called Never Trumpers.

| Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images Foreign Policy Former Trump critic promoted to top anti-ISIS job Some had expected James Jeffrey, who landed an administration post last year despite signing a 'Never Trump' letter, to resign over the president's planned Syria pullout. Instead he has taken on a second job.

A veteran diplomat who some expected to resign after President Donald Trump announced plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria last month will instead take on a broader portfolio, the State Department announced Friday.

James Jeffrey, who oversees America’s engagement with other nations on Syrian issues, will now also serve as Trump’s special envoy to the coalition fighting the Islamic State. He takes on the second role amid widespread confusion about the status of Trump’s plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, where they have been fighting militants of the Islamic State, a terrorist group also known as ISIS.

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The last envoy to the anti-ISIS coalition, Brett McGurk, resigned in protest over Trump’s Syria decision last month. His departure, as well as that of Defense Secretary James Mattis, came amid bipartisan backlash to the president’s plan.

In the weeks since Trump’s mid-December announcement, the president has dialed back the idea of an immediate withdrawal. Trump aides now say the drawdown could span four months. On Friday, a senior State Department official added to the confusion by saying there is no timeline.

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“With this additional responsibility, Ambassador Jeffrey will lead and coordinate U.S. Department of State relations with the Global Coalition to defeat ISIS and department efforts to implement President Trump’s announcement of a responsible U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria that is coordinated with our global allies and partners consistent with U.S. goals for Syria and Iraq, including the enduring defeat of ISIS,” State Department deputy spokesperson Robert Palladino said in a statement announcing Jeffrey’s new role.

Jeffrey had a long diplomatic career prior to the Trump administration, serving as an ambassador in places such as Iraq and Turkey. He was among national security experts who signed “Never Trump” statements denouncing the then-candidate for the White House.

The fact that Jeffrey joined the administration as the special representative for Syria engagement was noteworthy in part because the president had initially blacklisted so-called Never Trumpers.

Just days before Trump announced his decision to remove troops, Jeffrey had made an appearance at a think tank in which he laid out a Syria strategy that indicated an indefinite U.S. commitment.

Although some foreign policy insiders thought Jeffrey would quit after Trump’s decision, he has hung on and may prove key to efforts to slow down the withdrawal of troops. He will join national security adviser John Bolton on a trip to Turkey and Israel in the coming days meant in part to explain and manage Trump’s withdrawal plan.

Critics of a troop pullout say it is premature because the Islamic State, though much weakened, has not been vanquished, and that leaving now allows Iranian forces to gain even more influence in war-torn Syria.

"ISIS is on the run, but it is not yet defeated," McGurk wrote in an email to his team announcing his resignation. McGurk had originally been planning to leave at some point in early 2019, but accelerated his departure in protest of Trump’s decision.

Jeffrey takes his second position effective immediately, the State Department said. The coalition to defeat the Islamic State has around 80 members, each contributing different military and other strengths in the effort to eliminate the terrorist group from Iraq and Syria.</s>YPG is PKK's Syrian wing but US fails to recognize as such, Syria envoy Jeffrey says

Ambassador James Jeffrey, the current special representative for Syria engagement, will take the additional role of special envoy for the U.S.-led coalition against Daesh effective Friday, the State Department said.

Brett McGurk, who served in the post for three years, resigned Dec. 22 following Trump's decision to pull troops from Syria. The move also saw a resignation from defense chief James Mattis.

"With this additional responsibility, Ambassador Jeffrey will lead and coordinate U.S. Department of State relations with the Global Coalition to defeat ISIS and Department efforts to implement President (Donald) Trump's announcement of a responsible U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria," said Robert Palladino in a statement, using another name for Daesh.

The U.S. withdrawal comes on the eve of a possible Turkish military operation in northeastern Syria against the PKK-affiliated People's Protection Units (YPG) terrorist group.

McGurk worked under the past three U.S. administrations, becoming one of a handful of those appointed by former U.S. President Barack Obama to keep his post under President Trump. He also served in the George W. Bush administration.</s>James Jeffrey, pictured in 2014, will serve as American envoy to the international coalition against the Islamic State jihadist group (AFP Photo/ALEX WONG)

Washington (AFP) - America's Syria pointman James Jeffrey will also serve as the United States envoy to the international coalition against the Islamic State jihadist group, the State Department said on Friday.

"With this additional responsibility, Ambassador Jeffrey will lead and coordinate US Department of State relations with the Global Coalition to defeat (IS) and Department efforts to implement President Trump's announcement of a responsible US troop withdrawal from Syria," spokesman Robert Palladino said in a statement.

Jeffrey, a former US ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, will replace Brett McGurk as anti-IS envoy, a post from which he resigned following US President Donald Trump's controversial decision in December to withdraw American forces from Syria.

Critics say the move puts US-allied Kurdish forces at risk of attack by Turkish troops. The US-allied Kurds have played a major role in the war against IS, the jihadist group that seized swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria but has since suffered major defeats.

The December 21 announcement of McGurk's departure followed that of Jim Mattis, who quit as defense chief over fundamental disagreements with Trump, including over Syria.</s>Ambassador James Jeffrey Assumes Role of Special Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS

Ambassador James Jeffrey (pictured), the current Special Representative for Syria Engagement, has taken on the additional role of the Special Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, effective January 4, 2019.

With this additional responsibility, Ambassador Jeffrey will lead and coordinate U.S. Department of State relations with the Global Coalition to defeat ISIS and Department efforts to implement President Trump’s announcement of a responsible U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria that is coordinated with our global Allies and partners consistent with U.S. goals for Syria and Iraq, including the enduring defeat of ISIS.

He takes over from Brett McGurk, who resigned following disagreements with President Donald Trump’s strategy on Syria.

Jeffrey has previously served as US Ambassador to Iraq.</s>The Blob Is Lying About Trump’s Sudden Syria Withdrawal

Washington narratives, once determined, are almost impossible to change. A pristine example has been President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria, which prominent foreign-policy voices condemned as impulsive, dangerous, and a betrayal of America’s Kurdish allies. Worse yet, the withdrawal order came about, these same experts say, because of the U.S. chief executive’s ties to (choose one) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russian President Vladimir Putin, or, most recently, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul.

But the narrative doesn’t fit the reality of Trump’s Syria decision. Far from being caught by surprise, senior State Department and Pentagon officials were tasked earlier in 2018 with planning for the eventual withdrawal. While it’s true that, as one foreign-policy commentator recently noted, Trump’s Syria decision took place without an “interagency review, an often-prolonged process that methodically develops options,” or even “major deliberations with allies,” the idea that Trump’s decision shocked Washington’s foreign-policy machinery needs to be rethought. “This wasn’t a surprise,” a senior State Department official who works on Middle East issues told me last week. “We’ve been talking about getting our troops out of Syria since at least last March.”

According to this official, the talk of a withdrawal that began in March 2018 was the result of a directive from the White House that was passed down by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who told his aides that the president had given him and then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis six months to provide the groundwork for the withdrawal announcement. “The clock was ticking,” this State Department official added. “So we knew that we had until September, but not much beyond that. My understanding was that Pompeo and Mattis were on a pretty short leash. They were dealing with a deadline, and they knew it.”

That the withdrawal announcement wasn’t, in fact, made until the third week of December 2018 does nothing to undermine this timeline, the official told me: “I thought this would come in September,” he said. “So, in truth we got an extra two months. Listen, they [Pompeo and Mattis] thought they could talk him [Trump] out of it.” Despite this hope, both Pompeo and Mattis began to comply with Trump’s wishes. Beginning last April, Mattis and Pompeo operated on two different tracks—with Mattis scaling back anti-Islamic State military operations in the region and Pompeo working to shape a diplomatic offensive that would give the United States a voice in Syria once the civil war ended.

“Mattis wanted all major ground combat operations in Iraq and Syria to end by the last part of April,” the official said, “and he made that official on April 30. He even admitted privately that there really wasn’t much of ISIS left to fight.” In addition to the Mattis announcement, senior Pentagon officers say, the U.S. government began to reshape the language it used in describing the fight against the terrorist group. Gone was Trump’s 2015 language of “bomb the hell out of them,” jettisoned in favor of a public campaign calling for the terrorist group’s “enduring defeat”—a phrase used repeatedly by senior military officers overseeing the anti-Islamic State fight.

Ignored by the larger public, the implication of the “enduring defeat” language wasn’t lost on Washington’s policymaking establishment: The United States could kill lots of Islamic State fighters, but the idea that it could eradicate the radical ideology that motivated them was simply not going to happen. By the end of the summer, the new language had become an accepted talking point for both U.S. diplomats and senior military officers. “By September, the remnants of ISIS fighters in Syria were in a few small pockets,” the senior State Department official with whom I spoke said, “and really, it wasn’t considered that big a deal.”

The most crucial part of the withdrawal planning, however, was left in the hands of the State Department. Beginning in April 2018, Pompeo tasked the department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs to oversee a number of closely linked initiatives. The first involved close consultations with Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) leaders, whose commanders were told that the United States would be withdrawing its troops by the end of the year. “We didn’t tell SDF commanders that the withdrawal was immanent, but the warnings were explicit,” the State Department official with whom I spoke said. “They were passed on through the military, commander to commander. To claim that the Kurds were taken by surprise is just not true. They were briefed. They knew this was going to happen.”

The second initiative was a plan to persuade Persian Gulf countries to provide fighters to reinforce the Kurds, to strengthen them militarily once the United States had left. The idea was fated to fail: “The Saudis said they were willing to provide some troops, but they really didn’t like the idea,” the State Department official said, “and there was even talk that some of those troops would be Sudanese. But, in the end, it was the Kurds who vetoed the idea; they didn’t want to be reinforced by Arabs. Frankly, I think the whole thing was dead on arrival. We tried, but it wasn’t ever going to work. You’re going to put the Saudis on the ground, rubbing shoulders with the Turks in Syria? No way.”

The final initiative was what the official called “a diplomatic surge” initiated and monitored by Pompeo himself, but implemented by a senior State Department triumvirate of diplomatic veterans: Brian Hook, the department’s senior policy advisor (and a senior envoy on Iran); David Satterfield, the acting head of the department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs; and James Jeffrey, who was appointed by Pompeo in August 2018 as the U.S. special representative for Syria engagement. The three were joined by two other officials with broad experience in the region: the former National Security Council aide and retired Col. Joel Rayburn and Brett McGurk, the special presidential envoy for the anti-Islamic State coalition.

“In April we had about 10 or so diplomats working the Syria issue,” the State Department official said, “but by August that number was at 20. Pompeo literally doubled down.” Jeffrey’s appointment by the administration, in August, was emblematic of Pompeo’s focus on finding a way to deal the United States back into the Syria game—which included talking with the Russians and Turkey about an agreement that would push back against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, protect the Kurds, and accelerate a political solution resulting from negotiations in Geneva and, later, in Astana, Kazakhstan. But this third initiative, much like the second, went nowhere. “We were latecomers, and no one was listening to us,” the senior State Department official said. “We were on the outside looking in. It was very frustrating.”

At times, however, it seemed that Jeffrey viewed his task as derailing the international process, substituting possible outcomes for wishful thinking. On Dec. 3, 2018, just weeks before Trump’s withdrawal announcement, Jeffrey made it clear that the United States had “one mission” in Syria, which was the “enduring defeat of ISIS/Daesh,” but then “for some reason, he got off script,” as it was described to me, by insisting that the United States would disengage only when all of its conditions were met—which included “the withdrawal of all Iranian-commanded forces from the entirety of Syria and an irreversible political process.” In fact, as senior State Department officials noted, Jeffrey’s other conditions involved the United States in a rhetorical slippery slope, pushing for outcomes that not only had never been mentioned by Trump, but that were also impossible to obtain. (Jeffrey did not respond to requests for comment.)

Jeffry made his policy intervention despite the fact that, as one senior Defense Department official told me, the U.S.-Kurdish alliance “had a lot fewer ups than downs.” According to a currently serving senior military officer, and published reports, U.S. officers in Syria had already reported to their Pentagon superiors that, at times, America’s erstwhile Kurdish allies seemed more interested in deploying their fighting forces against the Turks than against the Islamic State—an unexpected and unwelcome reminder of just how often the U.S. policymaking establishment could get the Middle East wrong. But then, it wasn’t the first time.

“From 2011 and for the seven years that followed, the experts have been telling us that Assad’s days were numbered, that he was finished, even when it became obvious that wasn’t going to happen; it was a fairytale,” Middle East analyst Geoffrey Aronson said. “The result is that we were reduced to playing the role of spoiler. Listen, there are lots of reasons to not like Trump, but this was the right policy move to make. Our agreement with the Kurds was always temporary, and they knew it. So now they will do what they’ve been quietly talking about for the last two years: They’ll seek an accommodation with Damascus.”

Kilic Kanat, the research director at the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research in Washington, agrees. “There’s no doubt that this is a fragile situation,” he said, “but the idea that the U.S. withdrawal will be followed by a Turkish invasion to slaughter the Kurds is laughable. The Turkish government is focused now on the U.S. withdrawal and making sure that it will clear Syrian territories bordering Turkey from ISIS and the [People’s Protection Units (YPG)]. There will be no tolerance for these groups freely navigating along its borders.”

The commanders of the Syrian Democratic Forces understand this, which is, in part, why they’ve been engaged in political negotiations with the Assad government for several months. The goal is to bring the SDF back under the control of Damascus—a prospect that Ankara would welcome. As former U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford recently noted, Trump’s announcement has actually smoothed “the way for a deal between the SDF and Damascus that would allow Syrian troops to return to eastern Syria in a manner that meets Turkish security concerns and gives no new space to the Islamic State.” More simply, the U.S. withdrawal of its forces from Syria will nudge the Kurdish-led SDF down the road to Damascus—which is where they were going anyway.

There’s no question that Trump’s withdrawal decision has roiled official Washington, spurring the resignations of Mattis and McGurk, but the end-of-the-world scenario painted by Trump’s chorus of critics—that the Mattis resignation would be followed by many others, for example—has not happened. The reason might well be that there are many more officials in the foreign-policy establishment who agree with what Trump has done—and that, perhaps, the job of “restraining some of Trump’s worst instincts” shouldn’t be left in the hands of America’s generals.</s>The United States has no timeline for the withdrawal of American troops from Syria but does not plan to stay indefinitely, a senior State Department official says.

US-backed forces are still retaking territory from Islamic State in Syria, Pentagon officials say, two weeks after President Donald Trump said he would withdraw the roughly 2,000 US troops in Syria.

The administration's abrupt announcement last month, which took officials in Washington and allies by surprise, contributed to Jim Mattis' decision to resign as defense secretary and prompted concern that Islamic State could stage a comeback.

"We have no timeline for our military forces to withdraw from Syria," said the State Department official, who asked not to be identified.

"It will be done in such a way that we and our allies and partners maintain pressure on ISIS throughout and we do not open up any vacuums for terrorists."

The United States did not intend to have an indefinite military presence in Syria, the official added.

US officials say it could take several months to carry out a withdrawal, potentially giving time for US-backed forces to deal parting blows to the militant group that once held broad swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria.

Trump said on Wednesday that the United States would get out of Syria slowly "over a period of time" and would protect U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in the country as Washington draws down troops.

Trump also said it was up to other countries to fight Islamic State, including Russia and Iran, and said that Islamic State was down to its last remaining bits of territory in Syria.

"We're hitting the hell out of them, the ISIS people," Trump said.

White House national security adviser John Bolton will also travel to Israel and Turkey in the coming days.</s>WASHINGTON (AP) — Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the global coalition fighting the Islamic State group, has resigned in protest over President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, joining Defense…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the global coalition fighting the Islamic State group, has resigned in protest over President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, joining Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in an administration exodus of experienced national security figures. McGurk described Trump’s decision as a “shock.”

Only 11 days ago, McGurk had said it would be “reckless” to consider IS defeated and therefore would be unwise to bring American forces home. McGurk decided to speed up his original plan to leave his post in mid-February.

“The recent decision by the president came as a shock and was a complete reversal of policy,” he said in an email to his staff viewed by The Associated Press. “It left our coalition partners confused and our fighting partners bewildered with no plan in place or even considered thought as to consequences.”

Trump’s announcement of the withdrawal “left our coalition partners confused and our fighting partners bewildered with no plan in place or even considered thought as to consequences,” the email went on.

Appointed to the post by President Barack Obama in 2015 and retained by Trump, McGurk said in his resignation letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the militants were on the run, but not yet defeated, and that the premature pullout of U.S. forces from Syria would create the conditions that gave rise to IS.

The resignation letter to Pompeo was submitted Friday and described to the AP on Saturday by an official familiar with its contents. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly before the letter was released and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Trump played down the development, tweeting Saturday night that “I do not know” the envoy and it’s a “nothing event.” He noted McGurk planned to leave soon anyway and added: “Grandstander?”

Shortly after news of McGurk’s resignation broke, Trump again defended his decision to pull all of the roughly 2,000 U.S. forces from Syria in the coming weeks.

“We were originally going to be there for three months, and that was seven years ago – we never left,” Trump tweeted. “When I became President, ISIS was going wild. Now ISIS is largely defeated and other local countries, including Turkey, should be able to easily take care of whatever remains. We’re coming home!”

Although the civil war in Syria has gone on since 2011, the U.S. did not begin launching airstrikes against IS until September 2014, and American troops did not go into Syria until 2015.

McGurk, whose resignation is effective Dec. 31, was planning to leave the job in mid-February after a U.S.-hosted meeting of foreign ministers from the coalition countries, but he felt he could continue no longer after Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria and Mattis’ resignation.

In his email to his staff, McGurk said: “I worked this week to help manage some of the fallout, but — as many of you heard in my many meetings and phone calls — I ultimately concluded that I could not carry out these new instructions and maintain my integrity at the same time.”

Trump’s declaration of a victory over IS has been roundly contradicted by his own experts’ assessments, and his decision to pull troops out was widely denounced by members of Congress, who called his action rash.

Mattis, perhaps the most respected foreign policy official in the administration, announced on Thursday that he will leave by the end of February. He told Trump in a letter that he was departing because “you have a right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours.”

The withdrawal decision will fulfill Trump’s goal of bringing troops home from Syria, but military leaders have pushed back for months, arguing that the IS group remains a threat and could regroup in Syria’s long-running civil war. U.S. policy has been to keep troops in place until the extremists are eradicated.

Among officials’ key concerns is that a U.S. pullout will leave U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces vulnerable to attacks by Turkey, the Syrian government and remaining IS fighters. The SDF, a Kurdish-led force, is America’s only military partner in Syria

McGurk said at a State Department briefing on Dec. 11 that “it would be reckless if we were just to say, ‘Well, the physical caliphate is defeated, so we can just leave now.'”

McGurk, 45, previously served as a deputy assistant secretary of state for Iraq and Iran. During the negotiations for the Iran nuclear deal by the Obama administration, he led secret side talks with Tehran on the release of Americans imprisoned there.

McGurk was briefly considered for the post of ambassador to Iraq after having served as a senior official covering Iraq and Afghanistan during President George W. Bush’s administration.

A former Supreme Court law clerk to the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, McGurk worked as a lawyer for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and joined Bush’s National Security Council staff, where in 2007 and 2008, he was the lead U.S. negotiator on security agreements with Iraq.

Taking over for now for McGurk will be his deputy, retired Lt. Gen. Terry Wolff, who served three tours of active duty in Iraq.

IS militants still hold a string of villages and towns along the Euphrates River in eastern Syria, where they have resisted weeks of attacks by the U.S.-supported Syrian Democratic Forces to drive them out. The pocket is home to about 15,000 people, among them 2,000 IS fighters, according to U.S. military estimates.

But that figure could be as high as 8,000 militants, if fighters hiding out in the deserts south of the Euphrates River are also counted, according to according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict through networks of local informants.

Copyright © 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.</s>This post was originally published on this site

WORLD NEWS 'No timeline for US withdrawal from Syria': State Dept. official https://linewsradio.com/no-timeline-for-us-withdrawal-from-syria-state-dept-official/ http://abcnewsradioonline.com/world-news/

omersukrugoksu/iStock(WASHINGTON) — As of now, there’s “no timeline for military forces to withdraw” from Syria, a senior State Department official said Friday, adding to the repeatedly changing administration accounts concerning President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to pull all U.S. troops out of the war-ravaged country.

At the same time, officials reiterated the Trump administration “does not intend to have an indefinite military presence in Syria,” and that the president’s decision to withdraw was still intact.

The officials were briefing reporters ahead of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s trip to the Middle East starting Tuesday, visiting eight countries in seven days as he seeks to reassure Arab allies about the U.S. withdrawal and galvanize support to continue the administration’s campaigns against ISIS and Iran.

The officials said a Syria withdrawal would be done “in a deliberate, heavily coordinated way with allies and partners” in order to “maintain pressure on ISIS throughout and … not open any vacuums for terrorists to exploit.”

Trump originally said 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria would be leaving “now” and ABC News and other news organizations initially reported that the Pentagon was making plans for withdrawal that could happen within 30 days.

After withering criticism of his decision, including from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and others in his own party, Trump told troop in Iraq that the withdrawal would be “deliberate and orderly.”

The New York Times reported Dec. 31 that the latest pullout plan would take about four months, a timeline Trump denied having said on Wednesday.

Two U.S. officials told ABC News a few days earlier that the plan at that point called for a process that could take several months.

At the Friday briefing, the State Department officials pushed back on what they called the “narrative” that the U.S. is withdrawing from the Middle East, giving up on countering ISIS.

“The U.S. is not leaving the Middle East,” said one senior official, referring to “false reports around the Syria withdrawal.” “We’re not going anywhere,” the officials added.</s>US President Donald Trump’s administration has “no timeline” for withdrawal of forces from Syria, the State Department said Friday.

“We have no timeline for our military forces to withdraw from Syria,” a senior State Department official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, told reporters Friday.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addressed Thursday the growing fears for US-allied Kurdish fighters in northern Syria as he defended President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw from the war-battered country.

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“The importance of ensuring that the Turks don’t slaughter the Kurds, the protection of religious minorities there in Syria. All of those things are still part of the American mission set,” Pompeo told Newsmax, a US news and opinion site popular with conservatives.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned over Trump’s withdrawal order, angering the president who nonetheless later indicated he would slow down the planned exit.

Pompeo in the interview said that the withdrawal would go ahead but he would not give a more precise timeline so as not to tip off US adversaries.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to rid Syria of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which he sees as linked to the Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged a bloody insurgency inside Turkey since 1984.

The Kurdish fighters formed the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces, who with Washington’s backing have battled the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group and seized about a quarter of Syria.

Syria’s government said Wednesday that the YPG fighters have left Manbij, a key city seized from IS near the Turkish border, in light of the planned US pullout.

Trump, who declared that US troops were no longer needed as IS was defeated, spoke to Erdogan before his troop decision.

But Pompeo said the United States still had “real concerns” with Erdogan, including on detentions of US citizens.

“There are lots of places where we need to work with President Erdogan and the Turkish leadership to get good outcomes for the United States,” Pompeo said.

National security adviser John Bolton and the US pointman on Syria, Jim Jeffrey, are both due to hold talks next week in Turkey.
The United States Department of State announces that U.S. Special Representative for Syria Engagement James Jeffrey also assumes the position of Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, succeeding Brett McGurk. Separately, a State Department official says that there is no timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria.