SHEIKHAN, Iraq—Civilians in Kurdish areas hurled rotten fruit and insults at a convoy of U.S. military vehicles that crossed from northern Syria into Iraq early Monday, marking a dramatic drawdown to an American presence there to combat Islamic State.
A Wall Street Journal reporter saw around a dozen armored vehicles on the road near Sheikhan in northern Iraq flying American flags. Stony-faced U.S. soldiers flashed victory signs for the camera.
They appeared to be part of a larger convoy that passed through the town of Duhok about 37 miles from the Syrian border earlier Monday. A witness there heard onlookers in the predominantly Kurdish city curse the soldiers. One man called them “sons of bitches” and shouted at them to get out, he said.
The convoy faced the greatest hostility inside Syria, as it left. A video posted by the dominant political party in northeast Syria, the Democratic Union Party, showed demonstrators temporarily blocking the convoy with hand-drawn signs, including one that read: “To the US Army who are leaving northeast Syria now tell your children that the children of the Kurds were killed by the Turks and we did nothing to protect them.”
Footage posted by television network ABC’s Adam Harvey showed young men throwing stones and rotten fruit at the convoy.
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The withdrawal is seen as a historic betrayal by the Kurds, who partnered with U.S. troops in Syria to fight Islamic State. The U.S. presence had served as a buffer against Turkey, which regards the Kurdish fighters as terrorists.
More than 200 civilians have been killed since Turkey launched a cross-border offensive nearly two weeks ago to seize territory and create a safe zone spanning its border with Syria, a campaign that also has displacing hundreds of thousands of people.
Some U.S. troops left Syria before Monday, but the convoy appeared to be the largest movement since President Trump’s decision to pull troops from northeast Syria.
Iraqi officials didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on the relocation of American troops. The U.S. already has around 5,000 troops in Iraq, many of whom are based in the western province of Anbar.
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U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said late Saturday that all of the roughly 1,000 U.S. troops ordered to leave northeastern Syria would be redeployed to western Iraq and conduct operations against the Islamic State extremist group from there.
American troops are leaving Syria via helicopters, planes and ground convoys, a process that will be completed within weeks, Mr. Esper said. He didn’t say where precisely those troops would go.
However, U.S. officials said Sunday that President Trump is considering keeping a few hundred troops in northeast Syria after the bulk of the force leaves, which would be another twist after years of policy gyrations over the country.
The residual force would help prevent President Bashar al-Assad’s troops or Russian forces from taking control of Syria’s oil fields, which are mainly in Kurdish-held territory in the northeast. It would also enable the military to retain a foothold in the fight against Islamic State.
Turkey agreed with the U.S. on Thursday to a five-day truce, during which the Syrian Kurds are expected to depart from an area Ankara has defined as a safe zone along the nations’ border. Both sides have accused each other of violating the cease-fire, but the fighting subsided over the weekend.
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The withdrawing U.S. forces benefited from the lull in fighting. A U.S. convoy entered Syria from northern Iraq on Sunday to help evacuate personnel and equipment. After coordinating with other players in the region to make sure U.S. forces wouldn’t be attacked, they left Kobane and began moving east toward Iraq.
The withdrawal has left a vacuum for the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian backers to fill, as the Assad regime seeks to reassert control over most of the country after eight years of civil war.
As U.S. forces vacated positions in several areas, including Manbij, Raqqa, Tabqa and Kobane, Syrian regime forces moved in alongside Kurdish fighters, local activists said.
Syrian government forces were on the outskirts of Kobane on Sunday afternoon, accompanied by Kurdish fighters dressed in regime uniforms, said Suhaib Jaber, who heads Euphrates Post, an independent war monitor.
—Dion Nissenbaum in Beirut and Nancy Youssef contributed to this article.
Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com and Isabel Coles at isabel.coles@wsj.com
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-troops-cross-into-iraq-as-they-withdraw-from-syria-11571649101
2019-10-21 11:34:00Z
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