WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday that the United States should avoid engaging militarily in Syria amid an opposition offensive that has reached the capital’s suburbs, declaring in a social media post, “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT.”
Trump’s first extensive comments on the dramatic rebel push came while he was in Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame cathedral. He argued that Syrian President Bashar Assad did not deserve U.S. support to stay in power.
Assad’s government has been propped up by the Russian and Iranian military, along with Hezbollah and other Iranian-allied militias, in a now 13-year-old war against opposition groups seeking his overthrow. The war, which began as a mostly peaceful uprising in 2011 against the Assad family’s rule, has killed a half-million people, fractured Syria and drawn in a more than a half-dozen foreign militaries and militias.
The insurgents are led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which the United States has designated as a terrorist group and says has links to al-Qaida, although the group has since broken ties with al-Qaida.” The insurgents have met little resistance so far from the Syrian army.
The Biden administration has suggested that their fast-moving advances toward Damascus demonstrate just how distracted those countries are by the war in Ukraine and other conflicts, but said that the U.S. is not backing the offensive and has not suggested the U.S. military will intervene.
The U.S. has about 900 troops in Syria, including U.S. forces working with Kurdish allies in the opposition-held northeast to prevent any resurgence of the Islamic State group.
Gen. Bryan Fenton, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, said he would not want to speculate on how the upheaval in Syria would affect the U.S. military’s footprint in the country. “It’s still too early to tell,” he said.
What would not change is the focus on disrupting IS operations in Syria and protecting U.S. troops, Fenton said Saturday during a panel at an annual gathering of national security officials, defense companies and lawmakers at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California.
Syrian opposition activists and regional officials have nonetheless been watching closely for any indication from both the Biden administration and the incoming Trump administration on how the U.S. would handle the sudden rebel advances against Assad.
Robert Wilkie, Trump’s defense transition chief and a former secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, said during the same panel that the collapse of the “murderous Assad regime” would be a major blow to Iran’s power.
The United Nations’ special envoy for Syria called Saturday for urgent talks in Geneva to ensure an “orderly political transition” in Syria.
In his post, Trump said Russia “is so tied up in Ukraine” that it “seems incapable of stopping this literal march through Syria, a country they have protected for years.” He said rebels could possibly force Assad from power.
The president-elect condemned the overall U.S. handling of the war but said the routing of Assad and Russian forces might be for the best.
“Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!” he wrote in Saturday’s post.
An influential Syrian opposition activist in Washington, Mouaz Moustafa, interrupted a briefing to reporters to read Trump’s post and appeared to choke up. He said Trump’s declaration that the U.S. should stay out of the fight was the best outcome that the the Syrians aligned against Assad could hope for.
Rebels have been freeing political detainees of the Assad government from prisons as they advance across Syria, taking cities. Moustafa pledged to reporters Saturday that opposition forces would be alert for any U.S. detainees among them and do their utmost to protect them.
Moustafa said that includes Austin Tice, an American journalist missing for more than a decade and suspected to be held by Assad.
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Hayat Tahrir al-Sham renounced al-Qaida in 2016 and has worked to rebrand itself, including cracking down on some Islamic extremist groups and fighters in its territory and portraying itself as a protector of Christians and other religious minorities.
While the U.S. and United Nations still designate it as a terrorist organization, Trump’s first administration told lawmakers that the U.S. was no longer targeting the group’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani.
Associated Press writer Tara Copp in Simi Valley, California, contributed to this report.
