U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw American troops from Syria was made hastily, without consulting his national security team or allies, and over strong objections from virtually everyone involved in the fight against the Islamic State group, according to U.S. and Turkish officials.
Trump rejected the advice of his top aides and agreed to a withdrawal in a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week, two U.S. officials and a Turkish official briefed on the matter said.
The Dec. 14 call, described by officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, provides insight into a consequential Trump decision that prompted the resignation of widely respected Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.
It also set off a frantic, four-day scramble to convince the president either to reverse or delay the decision.
The White House rejected the officials' reports of the call but was not specific.
"In no uncertain terms, reporting throughout this story is not true," National Security Council spokesman Garrett Marquis said. "It is clear from the context that this false version of events is from sources who lack authority on the subject, possibly from unnamed sources in Turkey."
The State Department and Pentagon declined to comment on the account of the decision to withdraw the troops, which have been in Syria to fight the Islamic State group since 2015.
Despite losing the physical caliphate, thousands of Islamic State fighters remain in Iraq and Syria, and the group continues to carry out insurgent attacks and could easily move back into territory it once held if American forces withdraw.
The Dec. 14 call came a day after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu agreed to have the two presidents discuss Erdogan's threats to launch a military operation against U.S.-backed Kurdish rebels in northeast Syria, where American forces are based. The NSC then set up the call.
Pompeo, Mattis and other members of the national security team prepared a list of talking points for Trump to tell Erdogan to back off, the officials said.
But the officials said Trump, who had previously accepted such advice and convinced the Turkish leader not to attack the Kurds and put U.S. troops at risk, ignored the script. Instead, the president sided with Erdogan.
In the following days, Trump remained unmoved by those scrambling to convince him to reverse or at least delay the decision to give the military and Kurdish forces time to prepare for an orderly withdrawal.
"The talking points were very firm," said one of the officials, explaining that Trump was advised to clearly oppose a Turkish incursion into northern Syria and suggest the U.S. and Turkey work together to address security concerns. "Everybody said push back and try to offer [Turkey] something that's a small win, possibly holding territory on the border, something like that."
However, Erdogan quickly put Trump on the defensive, reminding him that he had repeatedly said the only reason for U.S. troops to be in Syria was to defeat the Islamic State and that the group had been 99% defeated. "Why are you still there?" the second official said Erdogan asked Trump, telling him that the Turks could deal with the remaining Islamic State terrorists.
With Erdogan on the line, Trump asked National Security Adviser John Bolton, who was listening in, why American troops remained in Syria if what the Turkish president was saying was true, according to the officials. Erdogan's point, Bolton was forced to admit, had been backed up by Mattis, Pompeo, U.S. special envoy for Syria Jim Jeffrey and the special envoy for the anti-IS coalition Brett McGurk (who has since stepped down), who have said that Islamic State retains only 1% of its territory, the officials said.
Bolton stressed, however, that the entire national security team agreed that victory over Islamic State had to be enduring, which means more than taking away its territory.
Trump was not dissuaded, according to the officials, who said the president quickly capitulated by pledging to withdraw, shocking both Bolton and Erdogan.
Caught off guard, Erdogan cautioned Trump against a hasty withdrawal, according to one official. While Turkey has made incursions into Syria in the past, it does not have the necessary forces mobilized on the border to move in and hold the large swaths of northeastern Syria where U.S. troops are positioned, the official said.
The call ended with Trump repeating to Erdogan that the U.S. would pull out, but offering no specifics on how it would be done, the officials said.
Over the weekend, the national security team raced to come up with a plan that would reverse, delay or somehow limit effects of the withdrawal, the officials said.
On Monday, Bolton, Mattis and Pompeo met at the White House to try to plot a middle course. But they were told by outgoing chief of staff John Kelly and his soon-to-be successor Mick Mulvaney that Trump was determined to pull out and was not to be delayed or denied, according to the officials. The trio met again on Tuesday morning to try to salvage things, but were once again rebuffed, the officials said.
The White House had wanted to announce the decision on Tuesday – and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders scheduled a rare briefing specifically to announce it. But the Pentagon convinced Trump to hold off because the withdrawal plans weren't complete and allies and Congress had not yet been notified, according to the officials. The first country aside from Turkey to be told of the impending pullout was Israel, the officials said.
Word of the imminent withdrawal began to seep out early Wednesday after U.S. Central Command chief Gen. Joseph Votel started to inform his commanders on the ground and the Kurds of the decision.
Following the official announcement, the White House emphasized that the U.S. would continue to support the fight against IS and remains ready to "re-engage" when needed. But in a tweet, Trump said U.S. troops would no longer be fighting IS on behalf of others.
"Time to focus on our country and bring our youth back home where they belong!"
On Friday, Erdogan said Turkey would be taking over the fight against Islamic State in Syria as the U.S. withdraws its troops.
For Turkey, the step removes a source of friction with the U.S. Erdogan has long castigated his NATO ally over its support for Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters against Islamic State. Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist group and an offshoot of the armed Kurdistan Workers' Party, fighting for Kurdish autonomy across the border on Turkish soil.
In a speech in Istanbul, Erdogan said Turkey would mobilize to fight remaining Islamic State forces in Syria and temporarily delay plans to attack Kurdish fighters in the northeast of Syria – shifts both precipitated by the American decision to withdraw.
The news was less welcome for other U.S. allies. Both France and Germany warned that the U.S. change of course risked damaging the campaign against Islamic State, the jihadists who seized big swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014-2015 but have now been beaten back to a sliver of Syrian territory.
Islamic State launched an attack on Friday in Syria's southeast against the U.S.-backed SDF militia, employing car bombs and dozens of terrorists.
"We will be working on our operational plans to eliminate ISIS elements, which are said to remain intact in Syria, in line with our conversation with President Trump," Erdogan said.
The Turkish president had announced plans last week to start an operation east of the Euphrates River in northern Syria to oust the YPG from the area that it largely controls. He later said the campaign could come at any moment. But on Friday, he cited the talk with Trump as a reason to wait.
"Our phone call with President Trump, along with contacts between our diplomats and security officials and statements by the United States, have led us to wait a little longer," he said.
"We have postponed our military operation against the east of the Euphrates River until we see on the ground the result of America's decision to withdraw from Syria."
Erdogan said, however, that this was not an "open-ended waiting period" and that, due to past "negative experiences," Ankara welcomed the United States' statements with an equal amount of pleasure and caution.
Turkey has repeatedly voiced frustration over what it says is the slow implementation of a deal with Washington to pull YPG fighters out of Manbij, a town in mainly Arab territory west of the Euphrates in northern Syria.
Likewise, the U.S.-backed militia spearheaded by the YPG said a Turkish attack would force it to divert fighters from the battle against Islamic State to protect its territory.
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said American troops may continue to operate against Islamic State in Syria. The Pentagon is considering using Special Operation teams based in Iraq to target terrorists in Syria, the official said.
The official emphasized that using special operators on the ground was one of many options being
The U.S. will probably end its air campaign against Islamic State in Syria when it pulls out troops, U.S. officials have said. Erdogan's foreign minister said the withdrawal plan would be discussed by the two countries in Washington in January.
