US military moves forces and equipment out of northeast Syria base

U.S. forces are with­draw­ing from a key base in north­east­ern Syr­ia, of­fi­cials said Mon­day, in what ap­pears to be part of a larg­er draw­down of U.S. forces in Syr­ia.

Iraqi and Syr­i­an se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials said that the U.S. mil­i­tary had be­gun mov­ing its forces and equip­ment from the Qas­rak base in Syr­ia to Iraq’s se­mi-au­tonomous Kur­dish re­gion.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ists in the city of Qamish­li in north­east Syr­ia saw a con­voy of dozens of trucks car­ry­ing mil­i­tary ve­hi­cles and equip­ment Mon­day, with mil­i­tary he­li­copters cir­cling over­head, mov­ing to­ward the Iraqi bor­der.

The U.S. mil­i­tary’s Cen­tral Com­mand did not re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment, nor did the Kur­dish-led Syr­i­an De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Forces, which con­trols the area around the Qas­rak base.

A se­nior Iraqi se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cial said evac­u­a­tion of the base had be­gun Sun­day and that on Mon­day, U.S. forces and mil­i­tary equip­ment com­ing from the base crossed in­to Iraq’s se­mi-au­tonomous north­ern Kur­dish re­gion.

A Syr­i­an se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cial said about 200 sol­diers re­mained at the base Mon­day and that work was un­der­way to dis­man­tle mil­i­tary jam­ming and air de­fense sys­tems and the en­gi­neer­ing sec­tion at the base.

Both of­fi­cials spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause they were not au­tho­rized to com­ment pub­licly.

Ear­li­er this month, CENT­COM and Syr­ia’s de­fense min­istry an­nounced that U.S. troops had left an­oth­er base, the al-Tanf base in east­ern Syr­ia near the bor­der with Jor­dan.

The de­par­ture of U.S. forces from the bases comes af­ter the U.S. mil­i­tary com­plet­ed the trans­fer of some 5,700 ac­cused Is­lam­ic State mil­i­tants from de­ten­tion cen­tres in north­east Syr­ia to pris­ons in Iraq, where they will be put on tri­al.

The main mis­sion of the U.S. troops in Syr­ia is to pre­vent a resur­gence of IS. The ex­trem­ist group lost con­trol of the last ter­ri­to­ry it held in Syr­ia in 2019, but its sleep­er cells have con­tin­ued to stage pe­ri­od­ic at­tacks in Syr­ia, Iraq and abroad.

The de­ci­sion to trans­fer the pris­on­ers to Iraq came af­ter fight­ing be­tween Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment forces and the SDF last month, dur­ing which dozens of pris­on­ers es­caped from one of the de­ten­tion cen­tres hold­ing IS sus­pects, while an un­known num­ber of fam­i­lies are be­lieved to have fled from al Hol camp, which housed the wives and chil­dren of IS mem­bers.

The re­main­ing res­i­dents of the camp have now been trans­ferred to an­oth­er fa­cil­i­ty or repa­tri­at­ed. —QAMISH­LI, Syr­ia (AP)

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Sto­ry by HOGIR AL AB­DO, GHAITH AL­SAYED and QAS­SIM AB­DUL-ZAHRA | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Ghaith Al­Sayed re­port­ed from Dam­as­cus, and Qas­sim Ab­dul-Zahra re­port­ed from Bagh­dad.