ANKARA: The United States will scale down its military presence in Syria to one base from eight and US policies will shift in the country “because none of them worked” over the last century, the new US special envoy has said.

Thomas Barrack, who President Donald Trump named special envoy last month shortly after he unexpectedly lifted US sanctions on Syria, made the comments in an interview with Turkish broadcaster NTV late on Monday.

The US military has about 2,000 US troops in Syria, mostly in the northeast. They are working with local forces to prevent a resurgence of the militant Islamic State group, which in 2014 seized large swathes of Iraq and Syria but was later pushed back.

Since rebels ousted Syria’s former President Bashar al-Assad in December, the United States and other countries are re-engaging with Damascus under new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa. Barrack, also US ambassador to Turkiye, raised the American flag over the ambassador’s residence in Damascus last week for the first time since 2012.

When asked how the Trump administration will shape its Syria policy and whether the US is considering troop withdrawal from Syria, Barrack said: “What I can assure you is that our current Syria policy will not be close to the Syria policy of the last 100 years, because none of these have worked.” Reducing the number of bases to one from eight was an important part of that shift, he said, according to an interview transcript.

Two security sources in bases where US troops are deployed said in April that military equipment and vehicles had already moved out of eastern Deir el-Zor and were being consolidated in the province of Hasakah.

Published in Dawn, June 4th, 2025