What is behind US strategy of keeping troops in post-Assad Syria?

Analysts say priorities extend beyond anti-ISIL mission and include keeping leverage as Syria’s future takes shape.

Washington, DC – The administration of United States President Joe Biden has said it is taking a wait-and-see approach to the fledgling government in Syria, with diplomats in recent weeks holding initial meetings with the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) head, and the country’s de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, as well as the newly appointed Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani.

But since rebels toppled longtime leader Bashar al-Assad in early December, the US has maintained it will keep its deployment of troops in northeast Syria, where US personnel continue to support the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) as part of a decade-long anti-ISIL (ISIS) mission.

In fact, the Pentagon in December updated the number of personnel it said were present in the country, saying the number was actually 2,000, not the 900 it had for years reported.

Joshua Landis, the director of the Center of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, described the update as a not-so-subtle message to various actors in Syria to take a cautious approach towards the SDF and the sprawling, economically significant, territory the group controls as the country’s future takes shapes.

It also underscores how the US, at least in the waning days of the Biden administration before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20, will seek to assert its leverage in forming a new Syria, in part, through having boots on the ground.