AP reported that on January 8, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that the US military needs to continue to stay in Syria to prevent the Islamic State (IS) group from rebuilding, which is considered the biggest threat to Syria after the collapse of the Assad regime.
Mr Austin said the presence of US forces in Syria was essential to ensure the security of detention camps holding thousands of IS prisoners. There are an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 prisoners in the camps, of which about 2,000 are considered extremely dangerous.
Speaking at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, Austin said IS could return if Syria is not protected. “We still have some work to do to keep the pressure on ISIS,” Austin said, using another acronym for the Islamic State.
Also at Ramstein Air Base, Mr. Austin participated in discussions on military aid to 50 partner countries, including Ukraine.
Since 2015, the US military has been deployed to Syria to fight IS. There are currently about 2,000 US troops in the region.
However, when he was in office as US President in 2018, Donald Trump tried to withdraw all forces from Syria. This caused a lot of controversy within the US government and forced the then Secretary of Defense, Mr. Jim Mattis, to resign.
Until December 2024, Mr. Trump continued to call for the US military not to get involved in the conflict in Syria after the opposition Hayat Tahrir al-Sham overthrew the government of Mr. Bashar al-Assad.
