US Forces Pull Out Of Syria’s Tanf Base, Hand Over To Jolani Regime

After many years of being there, American forces have withdrawn from the Al-Tanf Garrison, a base in southern Syria near the borders of Iraq and Jordan, according to fresh reporting in AFP.

US troops had long operated out of Tanf to pressure the Assad government as part of the long-running US-backed regime change project. The US primarily trained the Syrian Free Army (FSA) in that remote desert area – which was an umbrella group of various factions, likely among them jihadists, armed and funded by Washington.

A Syrian military source told AFP and other international outlets Wednesday that the “American forces withdrew entirely from Al-Tanf base today” and relocated to a Jordan base.

The report said that Syrian military personnel replaced the US forces – but that the Pentagon will “continue to coordinate with the base in Al-Tanf from Jordan.”

So after over a decade-long proxy war, the bearded ‘ISIS-lite’ jihadists of Jolani/Sharaa’s army were just handed an American base overnight. Perhaps that was the plan all along. Al Jazeera provides further confirmation:

Syrian ⁠forces ⁠have taken control of the strategic al-Tanf military base near the border with Iraq and Jordan, the Syrian defense ministry has said, amid the withdrawal of a longstanding United States troop presence at the base.

The ministry said in a statement on Thursday that Syrian Arab Army units had taken control of al-Tanf, securing the base and its surroundings, “through coordination between the Syrian and American sides”.

Army units had “begun deploying along the Syrian-Iraqi-Jordanian” border nearby, the ministry said, while border guards would be deployed in the coming days.

It was only in December that an insider attack took place in the central town of Palmyra, resulting two US soldiers and a civilian killed. Washington tried to pass it off as a “lone ISIS gunman” but the Syrian government itself admitted the attacker belonged to their security forces.

US officials have admitted to The Wall Street Journal that post-Assad Syrian Army is “riddled with jihadist sympathizers, including soldiers with ties to al-Qaeda and ISIS and others who have been involved in alleged war crimes against the Kurds and Druze.”

In northeastern Syria, a place where most US troops are based, there have been signs of large-scale withdrawal into Iraq over the last several weeks.

This has been extremely controversial as the US-backed Kurds and SDF forces have been attacked as Damascus forces move in. The Kurds are once again being thrown under the bus, with no support, after having been armed and trained by Washington for much of the last decade. Abandonment of the stateless Kurds has been a clear pattern over time.