Last year, U.S. Ambassador Tom Barrack, on Dec. 13, underlined that U.S. forces remain deployed in Syria solely to finish the job of defeating ISIS once and for all. After Dec. 13, a member of Syria’s security forces killed two U.S. Army soldiers and an American slated for dismissal over his extremist views. This came amidst criticism of supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump on what U.S. soldiers were doing in Syria.
However, the narrative of the Trump administration started to change after the U.S. military announced its plan to transfer 7,000 ISIS detainees from Syria to Iraqi-controlled facilities, after the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) lost significant territory to Damascus. Earlier, ISIS prisoners broke out from the Shadadi prison, and also families escaped from the al-Hol camp when the Syrian government attacked SDF and Asayish forces.
The SDF still controls the Cherkin prison in Qamishli near the border, which holds 1,500 ISIS fighters. Moreover, it controls the ISIS prison in Gweiran in Hasakah city, which holds 4,000 to 5,000 ISIS fighters. The SDF-linked Asayish also still controls the Roj camp, which holds about 2,500 ISIS women and children (including foreigners).
“The US has no interest in long-term military presence; it prioritizes defeating ISIS remnants, supporting reconciliation, and advancing national unity without endorsing separatism or federalism,” U.S. Ambassador Tom Barrack posted on Jan. 20. Moreover, he wrote that historically, the US military presence in northeastern Syria was justified primarily as a counter-ISIS partnership with the SDF. “There was no functioning central Syrian state to partner with—the Assad regime was weakened, contested, and not a viable partner against ISIS due to its alliances with Iran and Russia.”
“This shifts the rationale for the US-SDF partnership: the original purpose of the SDF as the primary anti-ISIS force on the ground has largely expired, as Damascus is now both willing and positioned to take over security responsibilities, including control of ISIS detention facilities and camps,” claimed U.S. Ambassador Tom Barrack.
The Wall Street Journal also reported that the U.S. is now considering a withdrawal as Damascus takes more and more territory from the SDF.
“The United States has long supported efforts to defeat ISIS and promote stability in Syria, including through Operation Inherent Resolve and our partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, whose sacrifices have been instrumental in achieving enduring gains against terrorism,” U.S. Ambassador Tammy Bruce, Deputy Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations, said on Jan. 22.
“Now, the situation has fundamentally changed. The new Syrian government joined the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS in late 2025, pivoting to cooperation with the United States on counterterrorism. Damascus is now both willing and positioned to take over security responsibilities, including control of ISIS detention facilities and camps,” Ambassador Bruce said.
Some experts now say that the SDF made a miscalculation and that the U.S. always told them that they support the SDF only against ISIS, or argue that they lost because they were mistreating the Arab population in areas like Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa. Furthermore, in 2022, Zehra Bell, Director for Iraq and Syria at the National Security Council at the time, in a press conference, made clear that they do not “support, or endorse autonomy in any part of Syria. The United States of America is deeply committed to the territorial integrity of Syria.” After all, my co-authored book on the SDF is also called Accidental Allies.
However, in my understanding, this was a successful lobbying effort by Gulf countries and Turkey, all of which supported the new regime led by Ahmed al-Sharaa. Turkey had strong relations with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which controlled Idlib on its border, though it initially was more supportive of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) and stopped HTS in 2023 from entering SNA-controlled territories in northern Syria, such as Afrin. The Gulf countries simply saw no alternative to al-Sharaa and wanted to retain influence in Syria.
A few would have expected this huge change. A few years before the fall of the Assad regime, Gulf countries were reassessing their relations with Assad. In fact, they even had some relations with the SDF in the past, and in 2019, the Saudi Minister for Gulf Affairs, Thamer Al-Sabhan, visited eastern Syria. Al-Sabhan already visited Ain al Issa in 2017, when I was on the ground during the SDF campaign to liberate Raqqa from ISIS.
However, this approach began to change quickly after the fall of the Assad regime. Kurdish authors have also noticed that Saudi-affiliated media have started to become more hostile towards the SDF after the fall of the Assad regime, while in the past they were even more supportive of the SDF.
As I earlier wrote for the Germany-based The Kurdish Center for Studies, when the Assad regime fell, it was actually not clear if a new Trump administration would support Ahmed al-Sharaa. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for counter-terrorism chief, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, told Al Arabiya on 18 December that there was never a “modern Jihadi leader who suddenly became a moderate after decapitating Christians and Jews.”
Things started to change after Trump’s meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in May 2025. Following this encounter, in June, Trump signed an executive order to lift sanctions on Syria. The fact that in October 2025 the White House withdrew the nomination of Joel Rayburn, a critic of al-Sharaa, to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, was also a sign of a swift. “Jolani and HTS, a listed terrorist organization, are also delusional if they think the world and Syria’s neighbors will support his HTS-dominated ‘salvation government’ as it imposes a transitional government on all of Syria that circumvents the UN-led 2254 political process,” Rayburn posted on X on 9 Dec 2024.
“Türkiye appears to be successful in its goal to break the U.S. support of the Syrian Democratic Forces, after years of lobbying the White House during the presidential administrations of Obama, Trump, Biden, and again Trump,” Colonel Myles Caggins, former communication director and senior spokesman for Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria, told me during an online interview. “There is a coordinated diplomatic, economic, misinformation, and military effort to brand the Kurdish-led SDF as an anti-Arab group that has stolen money and oil from the Syrian people.”
“The U.S. is likely to shift more counter-ISIS funding to Iraq for their quick acceptance of 7,000 ISIS detainees, and also funds will flow through Damascus for anti-ISIS operations. The people of northeastern Syria have strong bipartisan support from the U.S. Congress; however, since 9/11, the White House has gained more power to enact foreign policy decisions, and Congress will have limited influence on the current situation in Syria. More broadly, a cross-section of European parliamentary officials from the political left and right have vociferously expressed immediate action to stop violence and ethnic cleansing against the Kurds; however, the heads of state are unwilling to confront their allies in Ankara and Washington.”
French President Emmanuel Macron has also seemed to have supported Trump’s plan on Syria, despite France’s strong support for the SDF in the past, including inviting a female Kurdish commander to Paris in 2015.
Therefore, the SDF is now in a difficult situation. Either they fight until the end for Kurdish-majority areas in Hasakah and Kobani, or find a way to make a deal with Damascus, which is unlikely to give more than limited Kurdish language rights and selected positions with the government and military.
