U.S. military forces withdrew from their final base in Syria late on Wednesday, April 15 – departing the Qasrak Airbase in the far northeast of the country. Due to a heightened threat of attack by Iranian proxy militias in Iraq, the final convoys of U.S. troops and equipment drove the entire length of Syria and exited via the Nassib crossing with Jordan. In doing so, a 10-year U.S. military mission came to a quiet and abrupt end.
The purpose of that U.S. military mission -- to impose a permanent defeat to ISIS -- is not yet accomplished, but the terror group is a shadow of its former self. Without a doubt, the U.S. military deployment and long-term partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) was instrumental in defeating ISIS’s territorial ‘state’ and degrading its insurgent and terrorist presence on Syrian soil.