Former senior US diplomat urges Congress to keep US troops in Syria

A former top US diplomat on the Syrian, Turkish, and Iraqi files urged lawmakers on Tuesday to keep US troops in Syria until there is a resolution to the continuing mission against the Islamic State (IS) militant group.

His remarks come as the Trump administration is weighing leaving Syria altogether, now that it is under a new president who has made inroads with the US president himself. 

“I believe the single biggest contribution you could make, because it’s where I think the administration may be wavering, is to keep a few US troops on,” former ambassador James Jeffrey told the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. 

Jeffrey also suggested maintaining diplomats and staff that could be moved “in and out of Syria until the situation stabilises” and that the US knows what’s going to happen to IS prisoners and their families. 

Jeffrey was the special representative for Syria engagement and the special presidential envoy for the global coalition to counter IS under the first Trump administration, and has a decades-long foreign service record in the region. 

Last month, US Central Command (Centcom) began transferring 150 IS-affiliated prisoners who have been held in camps in Syria – guarded by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – to a camp in Iraq. The plan is to ultimately move all detainees out of Syria, Centcom said. 

“The United States welcomes the Government of Iraq’s initiative to detain ISIS terrorists in secure facilities in Iraq, following recent instability in northeast Syria,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement at the time, using another acronym for IS. 

Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported that Washington is considering leaving Syria now that its new government has an offensive underway to disband the US-backed, Kurdish-led SDF in the north of the country.

The push is part of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s bid to disarm militias that formed during the 14-year civil war, and fold fighters into the national army. 

Should the Kurdish-led SDF indeed collapse, US soldiers would have no need to stay in Syria, unnamed officials cited by the WSJ said. 

There are between 800 and 1,000 US soldiers stationed in Syria today. 

The officials who spoke to the WSJ reportedly said that working with the Syrian army would not be viable, as it has too many “jihadist sympathisers” and people who have carried out mass killings of the Kurdish and Druze minorities. 

There have been no official announcements from the Trump administration on changes to troop levels in Syria thus far, but the likely SDF collapse has renewed attention on what many have called Washington’s betrayals of its partners around the world. 

On 20 January, Tom Barrack, Trump’s ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria, stated: “The original purpose of the SDF as the primary anti-ISIS force on the ground has largely expired.”

‘Moment of transformation’

Jeffrey also stressed to lawmakers the need to finalise a security agreement between Syria and Israel.

Following a phone call between Sharaa and President Donald Trump last month, Middle East Eye reported that the US is pressing Israel and Syria to finalise a security agreement by March, with several sources briefed on the matter expecting that the deal could be announced “soon”.

The major obstacle that remains is the presence of Israeli troops on Mount Hermon, sources told MEE, because the Israelis have informed the US that giving up Mount Hermon is a “red line”.

A western official added that they do not expect Israel to shift its position on the issue in mere weeks. 

“Only the United States has the credibility to facilitate dialogue on security arrangements between Syria and Israel, and Lebanon and Israel,” Mara Karlin, a former assistant secretary of defence for strategy, plans, and capabilities, told lawmakers on the same panel on Tuesday. 

“Syria is undergoing a moment of transformation, a rare one for a country that has seen so much destruction for so long. The United States can help the new Syria seize this opening,” she said. 

‘We worked closely with him’

Trump, who has now met Sharaa three times –  including at the White House, a first for a Syrian president – has referred to Sharaa as “highly respected”, “a tough cookie”, and “attractive”. 

Just two weeks after Sharaa’s al-Qaeda offshoot, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), arrived to cheering crowds in Damascus in December 2024, and former president Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow, a delegation of American diplomats held their first in-person meeting with HTS representatives. 

The delegation included several senior officials from the Biden administration: Barbara Leaf, the State Department’s top Middle East diplomat; Roger Carstens, the presidential envoy for hostage affairs; and senior advisor Daniel Rubinstein, who was leading the department’s Syria engagement efforts.

After meeting Sharaa, who had been known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, Leaf said Washington will no longer pursue the $10m bounty placed on Sharaa’s head more than a decade ago.

On Tuesday, Jeffrey was asked whether he retained “concerns” about Syria’s new president.

“I have concerns about every leader I’ve dealt with in the Middle East,” he laughed.

“I will say yes.”

Jeffrey pointed to reporting by The New York Times in November detailing how, in 2016, US agencies were working with Sharaa against IS fighters, “and to some degree, Assad”.

“That is generally consistent with what I was involved in,” he confirmed.

“From 2018 on, we worked closely with him. President Trump issued a demand to the Russians in September of 2018 not to help Assad attack Idlib” because HTS was “so effective” in its pushback against Assad’s army, as well as IS, Jeffrey explained.

Sharaa and HTS also helped keep three million displaced people sustained by US aid along the Turkish border, “rather than flood into Turkey”, Jeffrey said. 

“He was, in essence, although on the terrorist list, working for some of the same goals we had,” Jeffrey told lawmakers.