US to reduce troops in Iraq but not Syria, official says
US national security officials say Trump's order to end wars will not halt the Pentagon's counterterror operations abroad.
A White House decision to reduce the US military’s presence in Iraq to some 2,500 troops by mid-January will not affect American-led operations in Syria, a senior defense official said today.
Newly appointed Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller formally announced plans at the Pentagon on Tuesday afternoon to further scale back troop levels in Iraq and to roughly halve the number of US military personnel in Afghanistan.
The move is widely seen as allowing President Donald Trump — who lost his reelection bid earlier this month — to claim he fulfilled a campaign promise to disentangle the United States from foreign conflicts.
But US counterterror operations with Iraqi and Afghan security forces and cooperation with coalition and NATO allies will continue in both countries, Miller affirmed Tuesday.
