Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley made a rare, unannounced visit to Syria on Saturday, which was his first trip there as America's top general. The purpose was to reaffirm the US troop presence and mission there even as the public has by and large grown weary of foreign military entanglements.
An official estimate of some 900 American troops remain in the northeast portion of the country, which is Syria's oil and gas rich region which before the war supplied the rest of the country. Also the US has troops at Tanf base on the Iraq-Syria border. Milley was asked by reporters if the Pentagon's presence in Syria was worth the risk. He responded: "If you think that that’s important, then the answer is 'Yes,'" according Reuters.
"So I think that an enduring defeat of ISIS and continuing to support our friends and allies in the region … I think those are important tasks that can be done," he added. For years US special forces have advised and assisted the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). They maintain control of the major oil fields.
While the US has long sought to portray the US presence as part of a counter-terror and counter-ISIS mission, when President Trump was in office he admitted it was about "securing the oil". Ultimately, the US is actively cutting off Damascus from its own badly needed natural resources on top of a sanctions policy aimed at strangling Assad's Syria. The Pentagon also sees the occupation as about countering Iran, by keeping up pressure on Iran's ally Damascus.
