• President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to "economically" devastate Turkey, a NATO ally, but Trump's own State Department said it had no knowledge of any such plans.
• Trump said Turkey would pay if it attacked the Kurds, an ethnic group that's proved one of the most effective fighting forces against ISIS but is treated by Turkey as a terrorist group.
• Trump's Syria policy has been described as incoherent by national-security experts.

President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to "economically" devastate Turkey, a NATO ally, but Trump's own State Department said it had no knowledge of any such plans.

"Starting the long overdue pullout from Syria while hitting the little remaining ISIS territorial caliphate hard, and from many directions. Will attack again from existing nearby base if it reforms,"Trump tweeted. "Will devastate Turkey economically if they hit Kurds."

The Kurds, an ethnic group present in five countries across the Middle East, including Turkey, have proved one of the most effective fighting forces against ISIS, holding their ground and destroying the terrorist group's grip on its territory in Iraq and Syria.

Read more: Trump threatened to 'devastate' Turkey's economy if they strike the US-backed allies who've led the ISIS fight

But Turkey considers the Kurdish People's Protection Units to be a terrorist group and has pledged to drive it out. International human-rights groups have criticized Turkey's treatment of the Kurds, and under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the government has cracked down on all voices of dissent or disagreement on the issue.

Many have expressed worry that without a US presence in the region, the Kurds, who trained and fought alongside the US, would be sitting ducks for Turkey's airstrikes and ground forces.

The US has sought multiple times to protect the Kurds and gain assurances from Turkey that they would be safe, but it has seemingly failed on that front.

Read more: Trump's plan to get out of Syria is collapsing already

Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, traveled to Turkey to try to gain assurances from Erdogan, but Erdogan said that Turkey could not make any compromises and that Bolton had made "a serious mistake."

Does the State Department know about this? No.

Trump on Sunday offered up economic devastation as a possible lever in the dispute with Turkey, but the State Department, which develops and implements sanctions, the usual tool of economic punishment, knew nothing about Trump's plans.

Asked what Trump meant by economic devastation for Turkey, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told a reporter they'd have to ask Trump himself.

"We've applied sanctions in many places around the world,"Pompeo said. "I assume he's speaking about those kinds of things, but you’d have to ask him."

Trump's plan to pull US troops out of Syria has been met with criticism from both major US political parties as the narrative about it has shifted wildly.

National-security experts on both sides of the aisle have accused Trump of having an incoherent policy on Syria.

Read more: Dozens of US nuclear weapons in Turkey could be in question as the NATO allies fight a proxy war in Syria

The Turkish currency, the lira, slid after Trump's tweets. In August, the lira dove in value under the threat of US sanctions and because of financial mismanagement.

Turkey remains vulnerable to US sanctions but is a pivotal NATO ally that has accepted millions of Syrian refugees and kept them from traveling farther across Europe.

The US uses a NATO base in Turkey to fight ISIS and holds a stockpile of nuclear weapons there.

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• President Trump has announced that the US has defeated ISIS in Syria and that he plans to pull back all 2,000 US troops from the country. 
• Since then, there have been contradictory statements from administration officials at the highest level.
• According to Mia Bloom, a professor at Georgia State University who's written several books on terrorism, ISIS has lost about 98% of its previously held territory.
• But, about 6,000 ISIS fighters have relocated, and the US reclaiming areas previously held by ISIS gives it incentives to flex its muscles in other areas.

At the end of 2018, President Donald Trump boldly announced that the US had defeated ISIS in Syria and that he planned to pull back all 2,000 American troops stationed in the country.

“Our boys, our young women, our men, they’re all coming back and they’re coming back now. We won,” he said in a video message on Twitter.

The decision shocked policymakers and US allies alike and resulted in Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigning.

Since then, there have been contradictory statements from administration officials at the highest level. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the fight against ISIS actually continues and that America won't stop until ISIS is defeated and Iran is driven out of Syria.

“This isn’t a change of mission. We remain committed to the complete dismantling of the ISIS threat and the ongoing fight against radical Islamism in all of its forms,” Pompeo said during his speech at The American University last week in Cairo. 

So, has ISIS really been defeated?

According to Mia Bloom, a professor at Georgia State University who’s written several books on terrorism and violent extremism, ISIS has lost about 98 percent of the territory it held in 2014 and 2015.

Most recently, the US was able to capture Hajin, the largest urban area controlled by ISIS, on the Euphrates. ISIS responded by claiming the December 2018 Strasbourg Christmas market shooting.

“So, while ISIS might be defeated in the region, this has inadvertently created incentives for ISIS to flex its muscles in other parts of the world,” Bloom said. “And at the same time, about 6,000 or 7,000 of those ISIS fighters that were in Syria have moved to other places in the region. So it just shifted the focus of potential problems.”

The Trump administration has been sure to say that although they’d be pulling out troops, the fight against ISIS continues. However, on Sunday, President Trump threatened to "devastate Turkey economically" if it attacked US-allied Kurdish militia in Syria. And that could jeopardize stability in the region.

Bloom said that the presence of US troops in Syria have staved off attacks from Turkey against the Kurds. And the Kurds have been the US’s most reliable allies against ISIS in the region.

Beyond the political skirmish, Colin Clark from the security consulting firm The Soufan Group questions whether or not Turkey, without the participation of the US, can handle fighting against the Kurds or fighting against ISIS. 

“It's also a matter of capability," Clark said: Even the highly-regarded Turkish military may not be able to fight a two-front war. 

'The richest terrorist group in the world'

At one point, ISIS was considered the richest terrorist group in the world. The exact wealth of the terrorist group is difficult to pinpoint, but analysts say they could have had anywhere from $400 million to $1 billion.

But Clark from The Soufan Group said we’re looking at the wrong number.

“We don't focus enough on the groups’ debits," Clark explained. "So, even while the group [ISIS] is under siege … [and] has lost approximately 99 percent of its territory, what that means to me is that it's got less money that it needs to spend on infrastructure and on governance."

Clark said that means ISIS has more capital than any insurgent group would need and more than enough capital to wage a low-level insurgency in parts of Syria and Iraq for the better part of the next decade. In fact, al-Qaeda was able to stage 9/11 for less than half a million dollars.  

Bloom points out that many of the attacks abroad are not particularly expensive to accomplish.

“It really doesn't take a lot of money to ram a truck into a group of people,” she said.

Both Bloom and Clark believe that the greatest danger ISIS presents  — regardless of what their finances are in the future — is that people are going to be inspired to do something horrible in the name of ISIS.

“Scraping together a few thousand dollars, especially if you're not worried about ruining your credit, is not very difficult to do,” said Clark.

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• Russia has some of its best air defenses in Syria, and has boasted they can shoot down US stealth fighters, but Israel routinely defeats these systems with non-stealthy F-16s.
• Syria managed to shoot down one Israeli F-16, but also shot down a surveillance plane that belonged to its ally, Russia, on accident.
• There's good evidence to suggest that Israel's air force is really good at defeating Syria's air defenses and that Syria hasn't figured out how to defend itself yet.
• Russia has taken to making excuses for their Syrian allies as their systems, which they hope to export, are routinely defeated by Israeli jets. 

Russia deployed some of its best air defenses to Syria to keep US missiles and jets at bay as the US military's immense air and naval power fought ISIS in close proximity — but the supposedly airtight defenses are routinely defeated by Israel.

In February 2017, a Syrian-manned Russian-made S-200 missile defense system shot down an Israel F-16 returning from a massive raid targeting Iranian forces in Syria. 

In response, Israel launched another raid that it claimed took out half of Syria’s air defenses, of which older Russian systems comprised the majority. 

Read more:Israel's F-35s reportedly saw combat in a raging Syrian air war that smashed Russian defenses

In April, Syria got rocked by a missile attack that appeared to ignite a munitions depot hard enough to register as a 2.6 magnitude earthquake and is believed to have killed dozens of Iranians. 

In May, Israel released video of one of its bombs destroying a Russian air defense system, Russian media offered excuses as to why it failed to stop the incoming missile.

Israel rarely confirms individual airstrikes, and either confirmed or didn't deny these attacks. 

In September, another Israeli raid on Iranian weapons stockpiles in Syria saw a Russian Il-20 surveillance and control plane downed by Russian-made air defenses fired off in error by Syrian air defense units, killing 15. 

Read more:Russia's new missile defenses in Syria look likely to set off a shooting war against Israel

Russia accused Israel of purposefully flying under the Il-20 to confuse the Syrian air defenses into shooting down a friendly plane and quickly shipped the more advanced S-300 missile defenses to Syrian hands.

Russia thinks highly of its S-300 and other missile defenses, and has publicly mocked the US over its stealth jets, implying it could shoot them down. At the time, Russia said it would shut down satellite navigation in the region and that it expected its new defenses would preclude further Israeli attacks. So far, they were wrong. 

Somehow Israel has continued to hit targets in Syria at will with F-16s, non-stealthy fourth-generation fighter-bombers.

On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged that his country’s air force had carried out hundreds of raids in Syria, with a recent one hitting Iranian weapons near Damascus International Airport.

Russia initially deployed air defenses to Syria to keep powerful countries like the US from attacking Syrian President Bashar Assad, and later to protect its own air force fighters stationed there. 

The US has long opposed Assad, as he violently shut down peaceful protesters in 2011 and has stood accused of torture, war crimes, and using chemical weapons against civilians during the country’s maddening 7-year-long civil war.

But the US has attacked Syria twice with cruise missiles, and Syria has never proven a single missile intercept. 

According to experts, there’s two likely reasons why Syria’s Russian-made air defenses can’t get the job done: 1. Israel is good at beating Syrian air defenses. 2. Syria is bad at beating Israeli jets. 

Israel is good at this

"One of the Israeli hallmarks when they do these sort of fairly bold strikes within the coverage of the Syrian air defenses is heavy electronic warfare and jamming,” Justin Bronk, an aerial combat expert at the Royal United Services Institute told Business Insider.

Bronk said that Israel, a close US ally that takes part in major training events in the US, has become adept at knocking over Syrian air defenses.

Israel sees Iranian arms shipments through Syria as an existential threat. Although Israel has relationships to maintain with the US and Russia — both key players in the Syrian quagmire — Netanyahu has said resolutely that Israel will stop at nothing to beat back Iran. 

In more than 100 raids admitted by Netanyahu, Israel has only lost a single aircraft. Bronk attributes this to  "many, many tricks developed over decades" for the suppression of enemy air defenses developed by Israel.

Retired US Marine Corps Lt. Col. David Berke, a former F-35, F-22, and F-18 pilot, told Business Insider that Israel finds "innovative, creative, and aggressive ways to maximize the capability of every weapons systems they've ever used."

Syria is bad at this

Syria has demonstrably failed on many occasions to stop air attacks on its territory. While Russia’s air defenses do give US military planners serious pause, Syria’s have yet to prove themselves.

With US Tomahawk cruise missile strikes in consecutive Aprils in 2017 and 2018, Syria claimed both times to have blocked a significant portion of the attack, but never provided any evidence of an intercept. 

Additionally, photos from the second US Tomahawk strike on Syria show Syrian air defenses firing interceptor missiles on ballistic trajectories.

This strongly indicates that the Syrians simply fired blindly into the night sky, unable to detect a thing as US missiles rocked targets across the countryside.

Read more:Photos of the Syria strike appear to show missile interceptors firing blindly, failing to stop missile attack

Finally, Syria shooting down a friendly Russian plane evidences a lack of coordination or situational awareness, whether due to old hardware, Israeli electronic warfare, or simply poor execution. 

Israel’s most recent attacks in Syria took place smack in the middle of Damascus, Russian and Syrian air defenses make for some of the world's most challenging airspace. 

That Israel can still fight in Syria among top Russian air defenses shows either that their force has its tactics down pat, that Syria can’t field decent air defense regimes, or that Russia has turned a blind eye to Israel pounding on Iranian advances in the region. 

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - US President Donald Trump was reeling from sharp rebukes at home and abroad over his surprise announcement last month to immediately pull American troops out of Syria when he flew into the al Asad airbase in neighboring Iraq the day after Christmas.

Inside a canvas Quonset hut, one of the arced prefabricated structures used by the military and surrounded by concertina wire, Trump received operational briefs from US commanders suggesting a territorial victory against Islamic State was within sight, but the military needed just a bit more time, US officials said.

"They were upbeat about their ability to wrap things up," one of the officials told Reuters. "I definitely think that was a seminal meeting" in terms of influencing Trump's thinking.

Lieutenant General Paul LaCamera, the commander of the US-led coalition against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, explained to a president who had lost patience with the war why too rapid a withdrawal could not be done without putting troops at risk, according to three officials familiar with the briefing, the contents of which have not been reported in such detail.

In the chaotic aftermath of Trump's Dec. 19 announcement, which was one of the reasons that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned, the 45-minute briefing appears to have helped crystallize an understanding between Trump and his top brass on the ground. Trump, in remarks to reporters, admitted that he felt better about the situation after talking to commanders in the theater instead of officials in Washington.

The briefing also helped win the US military and diplomats some breathing room to plan a more deliberate exit from Syria.

It was a novel experience for the president, who was making his first visit to a war zone in his nearly two years in office, fresh from a political pummeling over his decision on Syria from fellow Republicans in Congress and US allies.

Nearly three weeks after the briefing, no troops have withdrawn from Syria and only some equipment has moved out.

In 2015, then-President Barack Obama first ordered US special operations forces into Syria after long hesitating to deploy "boots on the ground" in the midst of the Syrian civil war. What started off as a mission involving dozens of commandos eventually turned into hundreds and then just kept growing. There are about 2,000 US forces in Syria today.

Although Trump initially announced plans for a speedy pullout, he has since said it does not need to go quickly.

"We are pulling back in Syria, we are going to be removing our troops, I never said we are doing it that quickly," Trump told reporters at the White House on Jan. 6.

In fact, Trump said on Dec. 19 that American troops were coming home "now" and they had already defeated Islamic State in Syria. No experts believe Islamic State has been defeated, despite the group having lost almost all of the territory it held in 2014 and 2015 after seizing parts of Syria and Iraq and declaring a "caliphate."

The Pentagon said on Friday that the withdrawal "is not subject to an arbitrary timeline," and would take into account conditions on the ground and talks with allies.

Trump's concession of additional time has set off an apparent scramble by the US military and Trump administration officials to accomplish as much as possible in the twilight of the Syria campaign.

US officials tell Reuters that planning for a complete withdrawal from Syria is still underway, despite confusing and sometimes contradictory statements from the White House and tension with Turkey, which was meant to take over the campaign against Islamic State.

Several officials said they expected a withdrawal before the end of March, but would not commit to a date, given fast-evolving policy discussions and hard-to-predict battlefield developments.

Final blows

Privately, some US officials worry the final push will not be enough to preserve hard-won gains against Islamic State or ensure protection for US-backed Kurdish YPG allies who helped in the fight. NATO ally Turkey views Kurdish militia as terrorists, an extension of a Kurdish insurgency in Turkey.

Trump himself acknowledged his concerns for the Kurds on Monday, warning Turkey of "economic devastation" if it attacks a US-allied Kurdish militia in Syria. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he believed Trump was referring to sanctions.

According to US estimates, Islamic State oversaw about 100,000 square kilometers (39,000 square miles) of territory, with about 8 million people under its control. The group had estimated revenues of nearly one billion dollars a year and used its de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria as a base to plot attacks in Europe.

Backed up by US-led coalition airstrikes, artillery and advisers and equipment, US-supported ground forces in Iraq and Syria clawed back towns and cities from the jihadists. Iraq declared victory against the group in 2017.

US military officials are reluctant to predict how quickly Islamic State militants can be vanquished from their final towns in Syria, recalling how the insurgents fought until the death in Mosul, Iraq. The group still influences about 300 square kilometers in the Middle Euphrates River Valley, according to the US-led coalition.

The persistence of the group was one of the reasons that Trump's decision stunned the Pentagon.

But after the initial shock, military and civilians leaders including Mattis met at the Pentagon the week before Christmas to discuss the quickest, safest and most responsible way they could carry out the troop pullout and protect Kurdish allies.

It became clear that a rapid 30-day withdrawal, as initially suggested by the White House, would not meet the criteria of a "safe and responsible" withdrawal. Before Trump's surprise decision, Pentagon planning had suggested four months would be needed.

One source played down Trump's concerns about whether the drawdown would be done in weeks or months.

"All he wants to know is that it is happening," the source said.

Significantly, Mattis' order issued before Christmas did not include a specific timeline, although US officials said military commanders told the White House that a safe and responsible drawdown could not be done in less than 120 days. The order has not been changed since Mattis left office on Dec. 31, when his deputy Patrick Shanahan took over, officials said.

In the meantime, the US-backed forces in Syria, including Kurds, are keeping up the fight — confounding analysts' predictions that they would rapidly head north to prepare for an offensive by Turkey.

In fact, since Trump's withdrawal announcement, those forces have been fighting Islamic State with support from US-led coalition air strikes and artillery.

US allies, who were caught entirely off-guard by Trump's announcement, are still seeking clarification about the timing of America's exit.

The troop pullout from Syria dominated discussions by Pompeo during his meetings in Amman, Cairo, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and Iraq over the past week, in which he told US allies that a withdrawal was a tactical change only.

Allies also want information about any post-withdrawal role by the US military to ensure Islamic State militants do not rise from the ashes of their caliphate, US officials and diplomats said.

But they appear relieved at the apparent slowdown of the pullout.

"It seems that there has been a change that I think is positive," French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian of France said last week.

(Reporting by Steve Holland, Phil Stewart, and Lesley Wroughton; additional reporting by Jonathan Landay; editing by Mary Milliken and Grant McCool)

SEE ALSO: Trump says 'the generals' asked for more time in Syria, but he said 'Nope' because 'We've knocked them silly'

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• ISIS claimed a deadly attack on a coalition patrol in northeastern Syria just weeks after US President Donald Trump said the group was defeated.
• US forces are among the casualties, Operation Inherent Resolve confirmed.

The terrorist group ISIS claimed a suicide attack that was carried out against US forces on patrol in northeastern Syria on Wednesday, just weeks after US President Donald Trump declared victory over ISIS and called for the withdrawal of US troops from the war-torn country.

The coalition forces on patrol were apparently approached by a suicide bomber near a popular restaurant in Manbij. The devastating blast killed more than a dozen people, including four Americans, Reuters reported Wednesday. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.

The US-led coalition in Iraq and Syria, Operation Inherent Resolve, confirmed that US troops were killed in the attack.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) has confirmed that four Americans were killed, specifically two US service members, one Department of Defense civilian, and one contractor supporting the DoD mission. Three service members were injured in the attack.

Amid warnings from senior military leaders, diplomats, lawmakers, and experts that ISIS remained a dangerous threat despite the fall of the physical caliphate in Iraq and Syria, Trump declared victory over the deadly terrorist organization in late December.

"We have won against ISIS," Trump said in a video message on Dec. 19. "We've beaten them, and we've beaten them badly. We've taken back the land. And, now it's time for our troops to come back home."

The withdrawal process has already begun; however, only equipment has been pulled out. US troops are expected to follow at a later date. There are roughly 2,000 US troops serving in Syria.

The president has reportedly been briefed on the situation, but there has been no public reaction yet. "I am building by far the most powerful military in the world," Trump previously tweeted. "ISIS hits us they are doomed!"

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• The single greatest loss of US military lives in Syria took place in an ISIS-claimed attack on Tuesday, just weeks after President Donald Trump declared the terror group a vanquished foe. 
• Trump took wide criticism within his own party for his snap decision to pull out of Syria, lost his invaluable defense secretary becuase of the move, and went back and forth on the specifics of the withdrawal as on-the-ground commanders urged him to stay the course.
• ISIS is not defeated, and Tuesday's attack that killed four US troops gives Trump's reasoning for pulling out a massive black eye. 

The single greatest loss of US military lives in Syria took place in an ISIS-claimed attack on Tuesday, just weeks after President Donald Trump declared the terror group a vanquished foe. 

"We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency," Trump declared on December 19.

The next day, Trump walked back that comment by saying that "Russia, Iran, Syria & many others" would still "have to fight ISIS" after the US pullout. 

In the following weeks, Trump's top advisers and military officials scrambled to make the hasty pull out work or steer him away from a withdrawal altogether. All the while, members of Trump's own party skewered his decision.

Read more: Republicans are furious over Trump's decision to withdraw troops from Syria

Jim Mattis, Trump's former defense secretary, resigned over the decision and took a swipe at Trump on the way out. For US allies around the world, Mattis had represented a steady hand in an otherwise turbulent presidency.

Somehow, during a post-Christmas trip to visit US troops in Afghanistan, commanders on the ground did what Mattis could not and convinced Trump to slow the withdrawal.

The US military's mission in Syria

The US has never had a large military footprint within Syria. Former President Barack Obama first deployed "boots on the ground" in Syria to help train and equip rebel forces fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad, and later launched a coalition that grew to 79 nations to tackle ISIS. 

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But on Tuesday, a suicide bomber reportedly approached a group of US troops and killed more than a dozen people, including 4 US troops, Reuters reported.

To Trump's point, ISIS has lost the vast majority of its fighters and 98% of its territory in Iraq and Syria. ISIS no longer controls rich oilfields or a sizeable population to tax and exploit. Russia, Iran, and Syria likely would have to defeat ISIS to rebuild Syria, as Trump says.

But ISIS is not defeated, as Tuesday's attack showed, and Trump's rationale for pulling out took a massive black eye in the form of the tragic death of four US lives. 

ISIS quickly claimed responsibility for the attack. ISIS frequently claims responsibility for attacks around the world in an effort to promote the image of the withered terror group as a capable fighting force.

But while ISIS's ability to launch international attacks has weakened since its peak in 2015, the group still has thousands of fighters likely able to launch unsophisticated attacks like suicide bombings not far from their remaining territory. 

The US will continue to hammer ISIS with airstrikes from nearby airbases, as it has done since 2014, and although the US started to move equipment out of Syria already, there's no indication Trump's announced pullout spurred the attack on Tuesday.

But experts say that without a ground presence of US troops to train and assist local forces, ISIS's army could reform and again threaten US lives in the region and around the world. 

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• Vice President Mike Pence doubled down on President Donald Trump's claims that ISIS has been defeated at a gathering at the State Department Wednesday.
• His statements came about an hour after reports began rolling in that US troops had been killed in a suicide bombing claimed by the Islamic State.
• The US is in the process of withdrawing American troops from Syria.
• Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, commenting on the fight against terrorism, warned, "Where America retreats, chaos follows.

As reports of US casualties in Syria flowed in, Vice President Mike Pence repeated the president's claims that ISIS in Syria has been defeated.

"The caliphate has crumbled and ISIS has been defeated," he said at the State Department on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press, without offering any new evidence to support this claim that has been widely criticized by experts and military leaders — and now undermined by an attack.

Read More: US troops die in suicide bombing claimed by ISIS, calling into question Trump's declaration of victory

But just prior to his speech, the US-led coalition in Syria said that US troops were killed in a deadly explosion in Manbij, Syria, an attack claimed by ISIS that demonstrates their seeming ability to harm US troops.

"U.S. service members were killed during an explosion while conducting a routine patrol in Syria today. We are still gathering information and will share additional details at a later time," Operation Inherent Resolve tweeted Wednesday.

Pence is said to have made no mention of the casualties during the Global Chiefs of Mission conference at the State Department. His press secretary tweeted that he had been briefed on the situation. "Our hearts go out to the loved ones of the fallen," Alyssa Farah, Pence's official press secretary, tweeted.

Initial reports suggest that multiple US service members were killed in the attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State, a terrorist organization that only a few weeks before had been declared "defeated" by President Donald Trump as a rationale for ordering the rapid pullout of roughly 2,000 troops serving in Syria.

"We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency," Trump tweeted on Dec. 19.

Read More: Trump's Syria policy takes a massive black eye as ISIS-claimed attack kills 4 US troops

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham — who at the time sharply criticized the president's decision to withdraw from Syria as an "Obama-like mistake"— said Wednesday that Trump's statements "set in motion enthusiasm by the enemy we’re fighting."

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• The Trump administration recently announced its plans to withdraw much of the US' aid and troops in northern Syria. 
• While the immediate impacts of this decision remain to be seen, a similar strategy in Iraq led to rampant political instability. 
• In 2003, the US dismissed nearly all leaders of the Iraqi civil service when it toppled dictator Saddam Hussein because they were members of Hussein's Baath Party.
• With much of the civil service gone, local services like water and electricity fell apart and essential public employees fled. This left a perfect vacuum for extremist groups like ISIS to exploit.

Just a few years ago, I was a diplomat working on the Turkish-Syrian border. My job was managing the US government team responsible for delivering aid to Syrian towns and cities loyal to the Syrian opposition.

These were towns that had turned against President Bashar al-Assad when the Arab Spring swept across the Middle East and Assad ordered his army to shoot peaceful civilians protesting against him.

Now I'm retired from the Foreign Service and teaching international relations at the University of Washington in Seattle, where my students struggle to understand why the US never seems to learn from past mistakes in the conduct of our foreign affairs.

Given recent decisions and announcements by President Trump about withdrawing much of our aid and our troops from northern Syria while the civil war continues and the Islamic State Group, or "IS," still threatens, it's a timely question.

Stability and local services

To understand what's at stake in Syria, it's helpful to look at Iraq.

More than 15 years after the US invaded Iraq and eight years after the US said it was leaving the country, Iraq is unstable. Five thousand US soldiers remain in Iraq today, tasked with shoring up the still struggling Iraqi armed forces.

One of the reasons for the instability is the US decision in 2003 to dismiss nearly all leaders of the Iraqi civil service when it toppled dictator Saddam Hussein because they were members of Hussein's Baath Party.

With much of the civil service gone, local services like water and electricity fell apart and essential public employees fled. That left a perfect vacuum for extremist groups like IS to exploit by taking control of essentially ungoverned territory. The US continues to pay the price for this avoidable decision today.

If the US cuts off support for communities inside Syria that oppose Bashar al-Assad and fly the Syrian Opposition flag, and withdraws American troops from the fight against IS — as President Trump has announced — we will be making the same mistake again.

Read more: Pence repeated the claim that ISIS is 'defeated' just hours after US troops died in a devastating ISIS-claimed attack in Syria

We'll be creating a vacuum our enemies can exploit.

Keeping local officials on the job

The US has supported these communities since 2012. I directed the distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars in US government aid from 2012 until 2016, as head of the team known as the Syria Transition Assistance Response Team.

Syrian refugees will never go back home if their towns can't offer the basic services they enjoyed before the war.

Our simple strategy was that when peace returns to Syria, key local officials would still be on the job, ready to reconnect their communities to the national systems that provided services before the war.

Thus would begin the long, difficult process of reuniting Syria.

The money and supplies my team and I delivered helped keep important local officials on the job so they wouldn't give up and flee their country to seek refuge in Turkey, Lebanon, or Jordan, like millions of others before them. These were experienced civilians who could keep the water and power on, manage the sewers, and clean the streets.

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We helped them with small stipends — a portion of their former salary — because the Syrian government had stopped paying them. And we provided equipment they needed to do their jobs: garbage trucks, generators, water tanks, and fire trucks. We helped teachers, doctors, and local police with small stipends, supplies, and equipment, too.

Nothing was more satisfying for me than seeing videos of a new garbage truck that we sent from Turkey removing piles of garbage from the streets of Saraqib or one of the new ambulances we provided tending to innocent civilians injured in the latest barrel bombing in Aleppo.

It's in everyone's interest to keep civil service workers on the job, paid something, and equipped. That will help put Syria back together again someday and deny ungoverned space for IS and other extremist groups.

The last thing the US and countries in the region need is for Syria to disintegrate into warring regions, like Iraq and Libya today.

International aid

Other countries joined the effort to rebuild Syria, notably the UK, the Netherlands, and Denmark. Still more countries are contributing to an international fund based in Jordan that helps the same communities; my team cooperated closely with this effort.

Read more: Trump's plan to get out of Syria is collapsing already

Stopping this funding means jeopardizing Syria's future at the worst possible time, just as the conflict appears to be coming to an end. I believe that reuniting the country should be the priority now.

Syria's neighbors, especially Turkey, long supported the US approach because it kept Syrians in Syria, diminishing the flood of refugees to Turkey.

Of course, the Syrian government and its supporters, Russia, and Iran, opposed our aid. The assistance we gave sustained communities that the government and its allies continue to bomb into submission and surrender, particularly in Idlib province.

But the aid President Trump cut, sometimes called stabilization assistance, goes to local civilian officials, working to help the sick and wounded and keep children in school.

An opening for IS

Similarly, withdrawing US troops sent to Syria to eliminate IS — when our own count suggests at least 1,000 IS fighters remain there — may serve short term political ends, but will likely come back to haunt the US and Syria's neighbors.

President Trump may worry about the price tag for rebuilding Syria, once the war ends. He is right to be concerned. The cost will be enormous and arguably the US should not spend a dime.

The old adage — you broke it, you fix it — applies to the Syria conflict. I believe we should let Syria, Russia, and Iran pay the billions it will take to fix what they broke — the infrastructure of bombed-out cities and towns.

The modest US investment in local communities that the White House cut off — $200 million, not billions — could have helped prevent the collapse of communities in the future.

So, what do I tell my students in Seattle?

I remind them that they are our future leaders. I tell them that if we are not to repeat the mistakes of my generation, they should study and learn from history, and avoid short-term fixes to disentangle the US from future foreign interventions.

"Silver bullets" don't work — and usually force us to return later, at a greater cost.

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NOW WATCH: Ian Bremmer: America is more politically divided than ever — here's why

• Top Republicans pointed to an ISIS-claimed attack in Syria on Wednesday as a sign President Trump should not move forward with his plan to withdraw US troops from the country. 
• "My concern by the statements made by President Trump is that you have set in motion enthusiasm by the enemy we're fighting," Sen. Lindsey Graham said. 
• Meanwhile, Sen. Marco Rubio warned about the consequences of "retreat."
• The deaths of the four Americans on Wednesday, including two US soldiers, were a result of a suicide bombing in Manbij, Syria.

Top Republicans on Wednesday warned President Trump against embracing "retreat" in Syria after an ISIS-claimed attack killed two US soldiers and two other Americans, pointing to the deadly attack as yet another sign the president should back down on his plan to withdraw troops from the war-torn country.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a key Trump ally who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, suggested Trump's Syria pullout had bolstered ISIS' resolve. 

"My concern by the statements made by President Trump is that you have set in motion enthusiasm by the enemy we're fighting," Graham said in impromptu remarks as he chaired a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

Read more:US troops die in suicide bombing claimed by ISIS, calling into question Trump's declaration of victory

Graham made it clear he hopes Trump will take a careful look at his policy toward Syria following Wednesday's attack. 

"You make people we're trying to help wonder about us. As they get bolder, the people we're trying to help become more uncertain. I saw this in Iraq. And I’m now seeing it in Syria," Graham said in an apparent reference to the rise of ISIS in the years that followed the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq in 2011. 

Graham said he understood people's frustrations at the ongoing presence of US troops in Syria, and that "every American" wants them to "come home." But he suggested that keeping troops in Syria is a matter of ensuring America's safety.

"We’re never going to be safe here unless we're willing to help people over there who will stand against this radical ideology," Graham said. 

"To those who lost their lives today in Syria, you were defending America, in my view," the South Carolina senator added. "To those in Syria who are trying to work together, you're providing the best and only hope to your country. I hope the president will look long and hard about what we're doing in Syria."

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who also sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, echoed Graham's sentiments. 

"[ISIS] has claimed credit for killing American troops in [Syria] today,"Rubio tweeted on Wednesday. "If true, it is a tragic reminder that ISIS not been defeated and is transforming into a dangerous insurgency. This is no time to retreat from the fight against ISIS. Will only embolden & strengthen them."

Meanwhile, GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a US Air Force veterean who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, also warned of the dangers of "retreating" in Syria. 

"Retreating from a fight against ISIS is only gonna send the wrong message and frankly, pour fuel on the recruiting efforts of ISIS,"Kinzinger told CNN on Wednesday. 

The deaths of the four Americans on Wednesday were a result of an explosion in Manbij, Syria. Three other troops were also injured in the incident. 

"U.S. service members were killed during an explosion while conducting a routine patrol in Syria today. We are still gathering information and will share additional details at a later time,"Operation Inherent Resolve tweeted Wednesday.

In a statement on the incident that made no mention of ISIS, the White House on Wednesday said, "Our deepest sympathies and love go out to the families of the brave American heroes who were killed today in Syria. We also pray for the soldiers who were wounded in the attack. Our service members and their families have all sacrificed so much for our country."

Read more:Pence repeated the claim that ISIS is 'defeated' just hours after US troops died in a devastating ISIS-claimed attack in Syria

Wednesday's lethal attack came exactly four weeks after Trump tweeted, "We have defeated ISIS in Syria." This came as Trumpabruptly announced a plan to withdraw the roughly 2,000 troops stationed in Syria, prompting alarm in Washington due to the ongoing, well-documented presence of ISIS in the region.

In the days that followed, Trump flip-flopped on his claim ISIS is defeated as he scrambled to justify the controversial, hasty plan. 

The president has faced criticism from the military and politicians on both sides of the aisle over the pullout and the opacity surrounding it. Former Defense Secretary James Mattis resigned a day after Trump made the announcement. Mattis had disagreed with Trump on an array of issues, but the Syria pullout seemed to be the final straw.

The White House has offered little in the way of specifics about the pullout which has led to confusion in the Pentagon and beyond. No US troops have been pulled out of Syria yet, but the military has started withdrawing equipment. 

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• The suicide bombing at a restaurant in what was thought to be a safe zone in northern Syria may have been targeted because it was a favorite of US troops, according to a New York Times report.
• The ISIS-suspected attack at the popular Palace of the Princes restaurant in the city of Manbij on Wednesday killed at least 15 people; including two US service members, a defense contractor, and a Defense Department civilian.
• The two-story restaurant, which reportedly served foods like grilled chicken, french fries, and shawarma sandwiches, had a number of US troops visiting several times a week.
• US lawmakers, including Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, also visited the establishment and an adjacent outdoor marketplace in July - wearing no body armor.
• The accounts described by the locals stands in real contrast to the US military's advice for troops who deploy into active war zones.
• Service members should be trained to modify their daily routines, including differentiating their patrol routes, to keep their habits unpredictable to the enemy.

The suicide bombing at a restaurant in what was believed to be a safe zone in northern Syria may have been influenced by the frequency of visiting US troops, according to a New York Times report on Thursday.

"They stop here for chicken and shawarma whenever they have a patrol in the city," Jassim al-Khalaf, a local produce seller, told The Times. "People here are used to it, so it's not a new thing to see them."

The ISIS-suspected attack at the Palace of the Princes restaurant in the city of Manbij on Wednesday killed at least 15 people; including two US service members, a defense contractor, and a Defense Department civilian. At least one of the US casualties is believed to be a Special Forces soldier, according to US officials cited in the report.

The two-story restaurant, which reportedly served foods like grilled chicken, fries, and shawarma sandwiches, had a number of regular US troops visit several times a week. Troops would stop and order take-out sandwiches or park their vehicles in front of the establishment to dine-in, according to local residents in the report.

"I know that whenever they went to the city because there was a patrol or a mission, they'd pass by that restaurant," a Manbij Military Council spokesman said to The Times.

US lawmakers, including Republic Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, also visited the establishment and the adjacent outdoor marketplace in July without body armor.

"It's heartbreaking to hear about the loss of American soldiers and innocent civilians in a cowardly attack in Manbij, Syria," Graham said in a statement on Wednesday. "I was in Manbij just a few months ago with Senator Shaheen meeting with Arabs, Kurds, Christians, and other groups who reject terrorism and do not want to be dominated by a foreign power."

Lt. Gen. Paul Funk, the commanding general of coalition forces in Syria and Iraq, was also present during Graham's and Shaheen's trip and described the scene at the time as stable and "what winning looks like."

The accounts described by locals stands in stark contrast to the military's advice for troops who deploy into active warzones.

Service members who deploy to austere environments are warned not to grow complacent and are trained to modify their daily routines, including differentiating their patrol routes, to keep their habits unpredictable to the enemy.

Manbij was previously a stronghold for ISIS militants until 2016, after the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces retook the city. The neighboring country of Turkey, which appears to be emboldened after President Donald Trump signaled a rapid pullout of US forces from the region, considers the Kurdish-composed SDF an enemy and announced it would launch military operations after the US withdraws.

The suicide attack follows Trump's proclamation that the US would be pulling its roughly 2,000 troops out of Syria, citing the defeat of ISIS: "We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency," Trump tweeted in mid-December.

Vice President Mike Pence, who echoed Trump's remarks about an hour after US forces confirmed it sustained fatalities in the attack, said in a speech that "the caliphate has crumbled and ISIS has been defeated." In a later statement offering condolences to the victim's families, Pence's office said the US had "crushed the ISIS caliphate and devastated its capabilities."

SEE ALSO: Sen. Lindsey Graham: It's time for Trump to declare a national emergency

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NOW WATCH: North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un is 35 — here's how he became one of the world's scariest dictators

• President Donald Trump's mangled Syria pull out has breathed "new life" into ISIS, the former US official in charge of the ISIS fight said.
• Trump directly contradicted statements from his own State Department, Pentagon, and National Security Adviser in announcing the pull out.
• The official said that Trump totally surrendered the US's role in Syria to Turkey after a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and that the decision wounded the US's credibility and standing with its allies. 

President Donald Trump's mangled Syria pullout has breathed "new life" into ISIS, the very terror group Trump vowed to destroy before declaring it defeated, the former US official in charge of the ISIS fight said.

Brett McGurk, the former special presidential envoy in charge of the 79-nation coalition to fight ISIS, wrote a blistering op-ed in the Washington Post exposing the chaos at the Pentagon and among US allies after Trump's snap decision to leave Syria.

McGurk, along with former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, resigned following Trump's move. Since then, Trump has hit back at the former officials, calling McGurk a "grandstander," and later claiming he had fired Mattis, rather than Mattis resigning. 

But McGurk says that Trump totally surrendered the US's role in Syria to Turkey after a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and that the decision wounded the US's credibility and standing with its allies. 

Read more: Trump's own party slams his Syria 'retreat' after ISIS-claimed attack kills US troops

Trump's declaration that US had finally defeated ISIS and the only reason for US forces in Syria was to fight the terror group directly contradicted statements from his own State Department, Pentagon, and national security advisor. 

According to McGurk, Trump's decision will expose the Syrian Democratic Forces — a group of 60,000 regioinal Kurds, Arabs, and Christians that have won hard-fought battles against ISIS on the ground, sometimes fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with US troops — will now be exposed to Turkey's wrath, as they back opposing forces and veiw the Kurdish elements of the SDF as terrorists. 

Read more: Trump outright ignored Pentagon, State Department Syria policy in a big win for Putin

"My counterparts in coalition capitals were bewildered. Our fighting partners in the SDF, whom I had visited regularly on the ground in Syria, expressed shock and then denial, hoping Trump would change his mind," wrote McGurk. 

"The president’s decision to leave Syria was made without deliberation, consultation with allies or Congress, assessment of risk, or appreciation of facts," he continued, then concluding that he could not maintain his integrity while carrying out Trump's order, prompting his resignation.

Read more: White House's shock request for strike options on Iran suggests an extremely dangerous possibility

In conclusion, McGurk says that Trump has given ISIS and opponents of the US "new life" by pulling out of Syria in a move that will "precipitate chaos and an environment for extremists to thrive."

Trump's Syria pull out also coincided with the death of four US citizens at a restaurant in what was considered a safe part of Syria under US control. The ISIS-claimed attack doubled the US death toll in Syria, which had only claimed two lives since the campaign launched in 2015. 

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• Inadequate policy coordination, incoherent presidential tweets, and discordant remarks by senior advisors have created confusion across the Middle East, argues Amanda Sloat, a Senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
• She says confusion will only increase tensions between Turkey — a NATO ally with legitimate security concerns — and Kurdish People's Protection Units fighters who spilled blood for the United States.
• The deaths of US soldiers and civilians following an Islamic State suicide bombing on Wednesday show how dangerous the situation remains, and how unprepared the Trump administration is to address it.

Although there is little worth salvaging in the United States' flawed approach to the conflict in Syria, the Trump administration should stop making the situation worse.

Inadequate policy coordination, incoherent presidential tweets, and discordant remarks by senior advisors have created confusion across the Middle East. And the disorderly withdrawal of US troops, which President Donald Trump has already put in motion, will only serve to exacerbate tensions between Turkey — a NATO ally with legitimate security concerns — and Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) fighters who spilled blood for the United States and deserve fair treatment.

This tension has long been at the heart of US military activity in Syria.

Former President Barack Obama long resisted calls to directly intervene in the Syrian civil war but sought an expeditious way to defeat the Islamic State.

When the United States launched an air campaign against the Islamic State in Syria in September 2014, it deployed special operators to assist local forces on the ground. They found a faction of Syrian Kurds — the YPG — to be effective fighters and began developing their capabilities. The problem: They are affiliated with Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which Turkey and the United States designate as a terrorist group.

Although the United States argues that the YPG has not received the same designation, government officials and congressional leaders acknowledge the ties.

Read more: Trump's own party slams his Syria 'retreat' after ISIS-claimed attack kills US troops

Gen. Raymond Thomas, the head of US Special Operations Command, said he told the YPG to rebrand given Turkish concerns — which led to the creation of the Syrian Democratic Forces: an umbrella group composed of YPG and a small number of Syrian Arab fighters. The Trump administration continued this approach.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan objected all along to US cooperation with the YPG.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan objected all along to US cooperation with the YPG. He said fighters moved freely between the YPG and PKK, worried supplies provided to the YPG by the United States could reach the PKK, and described a YPG-controlled region along the Turkish border as an existential threat.

Although the YPG itself has not threatened Turkey, it has refused to sever operational ties to the PKK. This gives cause for concern, as the PKK's armed struggle against the Turkish state for Kurdish rights has resulted in some 40,000 deaths in recent decades.

Tensions in Syria also spilled into Turkey's domestic politics, contributing to the breakdown in July 2015 of peace talks that Erdogan had initiated with the PKK, as well as a 30-month cease-fire.

The United States made several promises to assuage Turkish concerns.

The military vowed to collect weapons from the YPG at the end of the Islamic State campaign. Former Vice President Joe Biden publicly promised that YPG fighters would leave the predominantly Arab city of Manbij after clearing out the Islamic State. And State Department officials said US cooperation with the YPG was "temporary, transactional, and tactical."

Read more: Pence repeated the claim that ISIS is 'defeated' just hours after US troops died in a devastating ISIS-claimed attack in Syria

In addition, the Turkish government has long sought to create a buffer zone. This would serve the dual purposes of pushing back YPG forces and providing a safe haven for some of the 3.5 million Syrian refugees flooding the country.

The United States negotiated with Turkey throughout 2015 on a joint military operation, whereby US air support to Turkish and Syrian opposition fighters would create a de facto buffer zone.

These plans floundered over divergent opinions on whether certain Syrian fighters were sufficiently "moderate" for the United States to support, suspicion of Turkey's desire to defeat Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria rather than the Islamic State, and Erdogan's insistence on a no-fly zone; they became moot after the Russian military entered Syria in September 2015.

So Turkey launched its own missions in northwestern Syria: Operation Euphrates Shield in summer 2016 and Operation Olive Branch in spring 2018 succeeded in pushing the Islamic State off the Turkish border and blocking further YPG expansion.

When Trump spoke to Erdogan in December, staffers prepared him to caution the Turkish leader against a new military operation targeting US-backed YPG fighters (and intermingled US forces) in northeastern Syria.

Instead, Trump seized the opportunity to fulfill a campaign pledge.

Instead, Trump seized the opportunity to fulfill a campaign pledge to bring home US troops and task Turkey with defeating the remaining remnants of the Islamic State.

The details quickly became garbled, with US National Security Advisor John Bolton outraging Erdogan by conditioning US withdrawal on Turkish assurances of the security of the Kurds.

Trump upped the ante with tweets threatening to "devastate Turkey economically if they hit Kurds," warning "the Kurds [not] to provoke Turkey," and obliquely referencing the creation of a "20 mile safe zone."

Although a subsequent phone call smoothed relations, the United States needs to articulate and implement a single Syria policy. As Trump has repeatedly stressed his desire to leave Syria, his advisors have done him a disservice by setting out longer-term objectives (for instance, to counter Iranian influence) that he clearly does not share.

The best solution would be to develop a holistic approach that addresses the root of the problem. 

In particular, the administration should encourage the PKK and Turkish government to resume a peace process: If the PKK is no longer a threat at home, its YPG affiliates will not be a threat next door.

Read more: The US has a crucial weapon in the fight against ISIS: garbage collection

As Asli Aydintasbas wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post, "Americans would need to do what they have been avoiding — that is, rolling out maps and engaging in geostrategic engineering, to develop a comprehensive peace plan between Turks and Kurds across Turkey, Syria, and Iraq."

The Trump administration likely lacks the required time, patience, and diplomatic heft.

Yet the Trump administration likely lacks the required time, patience, and diplomatic heft (with no US ambassador in Ankara since October 2017).

At minimum, the Trump administration should conclude diplomatic and military negotiations with Turkey that ensure an orderly withdrawal of US troops and prevent a leadership vacuum that Russia and Iran will readily fill.

The United States must honor past promises to Ankara, which include collecting all heavy weapons given to the YPG and finishing a "Manbij roadmap" that addresses security and governance arrangements.

The United States must also help Turkey feel secure along its border. The administration is rightly concerned that sustained Turkish attacks on YPG forces could harm civilians in a burgeoning part of a war-torn country, spark conflict with Russia, distract attention from the Islamic State's efforts to regroup, and exhaust the Turkish military.

Yet as Turkey and the United States discuss the creation of a buffer zone along the border, many significant details remain to be clarified — including its size, its scope, and the composition of forces policing it.

Any Turkish-created zone must respect diversity on the ground: Given the large number of Kurds living there, it should enable local governance and not provoke a mass exodus. It should also be a temporary solution, tied to the goal of a broader political settlement in Syria.

Although the Trump administration did not create this Syria conundrum, it must help resolve it responsibly. The deaths of US soldiers and civilians in Manbij following an Islamic State suicide bombing on Wednesday show how dangerous and volatile the situation remains.

Amanda Sloat is a Robert Bosch senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. 

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• The Pentagon released the names of three Americans killed in a bombing attack this week in Manbj, Syria.
• A US Navy servicewoman and a former Navy SEAL are among the four Americans killed in a suicide bombing this week in northern Syria that the United States believes was likely carried out by Islamic State, US officials said on Friday.
• The Pentagon did not identify the fourth person killed, a contractor working for a private company.

(Reuters) - A US Navy servicewoman and a former Navy SEAL are among the four Americans killed in a suicide bombing this week in northern Syria that the United States believes was likely carried out by Islamic State, US officials said on Friday.

Army Chief Warrant Officer Jonathan Farmer, 37, of Boynton Beach, Florida; Navy Chief Cryptologic Technician Shannon Kent, 35, identified as being from upstate New York, and Scott Wirtz, a civilian Department of Defense employee from St. Louis, died during the Wednesday attack in Manbij, Syria, the Department of Defense said in a statement.

The Pentagon did not identify the fourth person killed, a contractor working for a private company.

The Manbij attack on US forces in Syria appeared to be the deadliest since they deployed on the ground there in 2015. It took place in a town controlled by a militia allied with US-backed Kurdish forces.

Kent joined the Navy in 2003 and in her years of service received nearly one dozen honors, including the National Defense Service Medal and two Joint Service Commendation Medals, Navy officials said in a statement.

Wirtz, a Navy SEAL for 10 years, had been employed by the Defense Intelligence Agency since 2017 and completed three deployments for the agency in the Middle East, the agency said.

Army officials did not immediately respond to requests for more details on Farmer.

Two US government sources told Reuters on Thursday that the United States views the Islamic State militant group as likely responsible for the attack. Islamic State has claimed responsibility.

The attack occurred nearly a month after President Donald Trump confounded his own national security team with a surprise Dec. 19 decision to withdraw all 2,000 US troops fromSyria, declaring Islamic State had been defeated there.

If Islamic State carried out the attack, that would undercut assertions, including by US Vice President Mike Pence several hours after the blast on Wednesday, that the militant group has been defeated.

Experts do not believe Islamic State has been beaten despite its having lost almost all of the territory it held in 2014 and 2015 after seizing parts of Syria and Iraq and declaring a "caliphate."

While the group's footprint has shrunk, experts say it is far from a spent force and can still conduct guerilla-style attacks. An Islamic State statement on Wednesday said a Syrian suicide bomber had detonated his explosive vest in Manbij.

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York; Editing by Scott Malone and Steve Orlofsky)

SEE ALSO: Former US official in charge of destroying ISIS says Trump's Syria pull out helps the terror group

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• Israel's Defense Forces (IDF) have tweeted that they have begun striking Iranian targets inside Syria.
• Israel's powerful military tweeted that they are targeting elite units of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, known as The Quds.
• Normally reticent, the IDF has not provided any further information, but did warn Syria not to 'harm' any Israeli's or Israeli territory.
• The move is a calculated response by the IDF which said earlier on Sunday that it intercepted missiles launched out of Syria toward Israel.

Israel's Defense Forces says they have begun striking Iranian targets inside Syria, tweeting that they are targeting the Iranian Revolutionary Guards elite forces, the Quds.

Israel has not provided any other details, but it's military warned Syria on Twitter not to "harm" Israeli forces or territory.

Tensions have escalated quickly between forces within the two neighboring countries. 

Netanyahu: "We have a defined policy: to harm Iranian entrenchment in Syria."

"We warn the Syrian Armed Forces against attempting to harm Israeli forces or territory,"Haaretz.com reported the IDF as saying, adding that the IDF hit targets belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' elite unit Quds Force.

The move is a calculated response by the IDF which said earlier on Sunday that it intercepted missiles launched out of Syria toward Israel.

Syrian media say air defenses managed to repel "an Israeli aerial attack," following reports of strikes in and around the Syrian capital Damascus early on Monday.

Associated Press reports that earlier on Sunday the IDF said it had intercepted a rocket over the Golan Heights.

The statement is a surprising break with protocol for an Israeli military with a reputation for adhering to its own discipline and systems.

The IDF very rarely signals its intent with a statement to media or via any public admissions most particularly when considering its largely covert military operations in Syria.

With so much at stake, Israel has sought to keep its profile and involvement in the bloody and drawn out civil war to a minimum.

According to Syrian military the IDF began intensive airstrikes, launching groups of missiles shortly after 1 a.m.local time. Reports via the BBC suggest that the Syrian air defenses destroyed most of the missiles before they hit their targets.

On Sunday, Syrian state media confirmed that air defenses successfully protected the international airport south of Damascus.

Syrian state TV said the war torn nation's air defenses "prevented" the attack, saying Israel targeted 6 missiles near Damascus International Airport. State TV said that 5 were intercepted while the last was "diverted."

Witnesses heard explosions overnight and while the damage remains uncertain, the BBC reports that the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights believes Israeli rockets were directly targeting Damascus.

Read More: Israel blows hundreds of thousands firing Iron Dome missile at nothing in a bizarre, costly mistake

The operation comes after Israeli said that "a rocket was fired at the northern Golan Heights and was intercepted by the Iron Dome Aerial Defence System".

While Israel rarely confirms or denies it's strategic operations inside Syria, or elsewhere, but with the political future of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the spotlight, the prime minister issued a warning himself while in Chad on Sunday.

After Israel’s "Iron Dome" missile shield intercepted a rocket fired toward the Golan Heights, Netanyahu, released a a statement reminding his constituents if Israel's standing policy.

Israel's Iron Dome

“We have a defined policy: to harm Iranian entrenchment in Syria and to harm anyone who tries to harm us.”

Netanyahu has previously claimed that Israel has destroyed hundreds of Iran-linked objectives in Syria, including a  weapons facility linked to Hezbollah two weeks ago. 

In May last year, Israel said it destroyed almost all of Iran's military infrastructure inside Syria in its such biggest assault since the start of the Syrian civil war 8 years ago

SEE ALSO: Israel's Iron Dome missile interceptor might not be as successful as some people think

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• The Israel Defense Forces shared a video that it says shows its Iron Dome air-defense system intercepting a rocket over a ski resort in the occupied Golan Heights.
• The IDF said the rocket was launched by Iranian forces in Syria on Sunday, calling it a "premeditated attack."
• On Monday, the IDF said it was targeting Iran's Quds Forces in Syria and confirmed carrying out a series of strikes. A monitoring group said 11 people were killed.
• The IDF accused Iran of "attempting to entrench itself in Syria" and said it would "continue operating as needed to defend Israeli civilians."

The Israel Defense Forces shared a video Sunday that it said showed its Iron Dome defense system intercepting a rocket over a ski resort.

In the video, people can be seen skiing and snowboarding on a mountain when two objects are seen and heard roaring overhead. The video was said to be taken in the Hermon resort in the Israeli-occupied portion of the Golan Heights. An IDF spokesman told Business Insider the video showed an Israeli missile taking off.

The IDF said the rocket was fired by Iranian forces in Syria, tweeting on Monday that "Iranian Quds Forces operating in Syria launched a surface-to-surface rocket from Syria" aimed at the Golan Heights. Israel annexed the region in 1981 in a move that was not recognized internationally. The Quds Forces are elite units of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

"The Iron Dome Aerial Defense System intercepted the rocket," the IDF said.

Israel's Iron Dome, which has been operating since 2011, is a missile-interceptor system designed to detect and shoot down incoming rockets.

The IDF claimed the rocket was launched by Iran in a "premeditated" attack intended to stop Israel from conducting airstrikes against its troops, The Times of Israel reported.

After the rocket launch, the IDF said it started striking Iranian military targets in Syria, where Iran has sent military personnel to support President Bashar Assad in the country's civil war.

Israel said it hit munition storage sites, a site at Damascus International Airport, an Iranian intelligence site, and an Iranian military training camp.

The UK-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 11 fighters, including two Syrians, were killed in that attack, according to the BBC.

The Iranian air force chief, Brig. Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh, said his country was "fully ready and impatient to confront the Zionist regime and eliminate it from the earth," according to the Young Journalist Club, a website supervised by Iranian state TV, as cited by Reuters.

Read more: Israeli military tweets that a missile attack on Iranian elite forces in Syria is underway

Israel's announcement was a change from Israel's usual policy of staying quiet about its military operations in Syria, even as tensions have escalated quickly between forces within the two neighboring countries.

Syria's military said Israel conducted intensive airstrikes with successive waves of guided missiles just after 1 a.m. on Monday, the Associated Press reported. But it said Syrian air defenses destroyed most of the missiles before they could reach their targets.

On Sunday, before the missile over the Golan Heights, Syrian state media said that the country's air defenses repelled an Israeli air raid near Damascus International Airport, the BBC reported.

The IDF warned Syria not to "harm" any Israelis or any Israeli territory. It said the rocket the IDF intercepted showed that Iran "is attempting to entrench itself in Syria, endangering the State of Israel & regional stability."

"We hold the Syrian regime responsible for everything taking place within Syria and warn them against targeting Israel or permitting others to target Israel from their soil," the IDF wrote.

"We are prepared for all scenarios and will continue operating as needed to defend Israeli civilians."

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• President Donald Trump has ordered the withdrawal of the roughly 2,000 US military personnel currently serving in Syria.
• There are plans, however, to keep some troops stationed at the al-Tanf garrison, a strategic outpost that plays a critical role in countering hostile Iranian activities, Foreign Policy reported Friday.
• Not only are there questions about the legality of such a move, there are also concerns about whether or not the president would it.
• Tensions between Washington and Tehran have been on the rise since Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal.

The US is pulling its troops out of Syria, but some US forces may be staying behind at a remote outpost as a check on hostile Iranian activity, Foreign Policy reported Friday.

"We have won against ISIS," President Donald Trumpannounced last month. Since then, the Trump administration has said the roughly 2,000 US military personnel fighting the Islamic State in Syria will be pulling out even as uncertainty persists over the timeline.

"Our troops are coming out," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said earlier this month. But, he stressed that "the counter-Iran campaign continues." Apparently, that could mean maintaining a US military presence at the strategic al-Tanf garrison, a position that has blocked Iranian ambitions.

While the majority of the US troops in Syria are serving in the northeastern part of the country, there are a few hundred US troops working with local partner forces at the al-Tanf garrison in southeastern Syria. The current plans would see these troops withdrawn last, but the government is considering a plan to keep some US military personnel stationed at this strategic facility, government sources told Foreign Policy.

It remains unclear whether doing so is legal, as the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force permits the use of force against non-state militants, not nation states like Iran, no matter how problematic they may be. And then there is the question of whether the president will approve a plan that keeps US troops in Syria.

The Pentagon has kept quiet on the status of al-Tanf, providing only limited information in response to past Business Insider requests. "We are focused on a deliberate, coordinated withdrawal from Syria. For operational security reasons, we are not going to discuss timelines or specific movements," Department of Defense spokesman Cmdr. Sean Robertson told Foreign Policy.

The presence of US forces at al-Tanf prevents Iran from establishing a continuous land bridge across Iraq and Syria and into Lebanon, giving it the ability to threaten Israel.

"Al-Tanf is a critical element in the effort to prevent Iran from establishing a ground line of communications from Iran through Iraq through Syria to southern Lebanon in support of Lebanese Hezbollah," a former senior US military commander told Foreign Policy.

The base lies at the heart of a deconfliction zone with a roughly 34 miles radius. The US military reserves the right to open fire on hostile forces that enter the area without authorization. The base has long been a thorn in the side of not only Iran, but also Russia and the Syrian regime.

Read More:A US base in Syria is a huge thorn in Russia and Iran's side — but they can't do much more than complain about it

The US military has made a point of keeping adversaries out of the deconfliction zone. When the Russian military threatened to conduct strikes in the zone last September, the US Marines conducted a live-fire exercise in the area, warning the Russians and others to keep out.

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• Sarajevo's War Childhood Museum has opened a tribute to the children living in the shadow of the war in Syria.
• Driven by memories of his own childhood during the Balkans conflict in the 1990s, founder Jasminko Halilovic has made the museum a treasure trove of personal items donated by those who were children then too.
• Having amassed more than 4,000 exhibits and over 150 hours of a video archive of oral history interviews, his team started collecting personal items from children affected by other wars, such as Syria, Ukraine, and Afghanistan.
• Sunday's exhibition relied on items donated by children in Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Toys, house keys and diaries hang suspended from the ceiling or sit on plain white pedestals at Sarajevo's War Childhood Museum in a simple tribute to the children living in the shadow of the war in Syria.

Driven by memories of his own childhood during the Balkans conflict in the 1990s, founder Jasminko Halilovic has made the museum a treasure trove of personal items donated by those who were children then too.

He now wants to turn it into the world's biggest archive on wartime childhoods.

Sunday's exhibition relied on items donated by children in Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon. A colorful keychain in the shape of sandal was given to the museum by 15-year-old Marwa.

"The keys opened the doors to the most beautiful house I have ever seen. My room had pink and green walls. Unfortunately, the house burned during the war, so we don't have the house anymore," she wrote.

According to UNICEF, there are 2.5 million Syrian refugee children living outside Syria and 2.6 million internally displaced.

"We want to show that war children are not only the passive victims, as we often see them, but also resilient survivors," Halilovic said.

Having amassed more than 4,000 exhibits and over 150 hours of a video archive of oral history interviews, his team started collecting personal items from children affected by other wars, such as Syria, Ukraine and Afghanistan.

The Syrian collection was assembled with the help of Abed Moubayed, 35, from Aleppo, during his two-month internship with the museum, part of his master degree program in post-war recovery at the University of York.

"This is a chance for the Syrian children to raise their voices and tell the whole world about their experience and suffering. It is really important to show that history is repeating itself and we, all of us, need to do something to stop it," Moubayed, who left Syria in 2012, told Reuters.

"Syrian children have no idea what the future holds for them and you can see it from their stories."

The Bosnian 1992-95 war, which claimed 100,000 lives and displaced more than 2 million people, was Europe's bloodiest since World War Two.

"I have worn this bracelet only once. I put it on the day before we left. We came by bus, and the trip lasted for more than two and a half days", said Nasiba who was born in 2005.

"I got this teddy bear from my girlfriend Amira! Then the war came to our region. Amira moved to Damascus, and we lost contact. I don't know anything about her today", said Jaber who was born in 2005.

"I used this notebook for maths. I liked our teacher because she respected us as students and played with us during breaks. Everything I learned is in this notebook", said Mahmoud who was born in 2007.

• The US-led coalition is close to retaking the last remaining pieces of ISIS controlled territory in the Middle Euphrates River Valley in Syria, according to the Pentagon.
• Acting Secretary of Defense Pat Shanahan said 100% of ISIS-controlled territory in Syria will be returned to the Syrians in "a couple of weeks."
• Although the fall of the caliphate is imminent, it appears that the terrorist organization is far from defeated, despite the president's claims.
• Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats says ISIS "still commands thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria."

The US military, together with its coalition partners, is close to liberating the last of the ISIS-controlled territory in Syria, the Pentagon's top official said Tuesday.

"I'd say 99.5% plus of ISIS-controlled territory has been returned to the Syrians," Acting Secretary of Defense Pat Shanahan told reporters. "Within a couple of weeks, it will be 100%."

"ISIS is no longer able to govern. ISIS no longer has freedom to mass forces. Syria is no longer a safe haven," Shanahan added.

The secretary's update that the fall of the physical caliphate in Syria is imminent comes weeks after President Donald Trump declared victory over the terrorist organization.

"We have won against ISIS," President Donald Trump announced last month, as he called for the withdrawal of American troops. "We've beaten them, and we've beaten them badly. We've taken back the land. And, now it's time for our troops to come back home."

Despite the president's claims, many observers argue that ISIS is far from defeated, despite the organization's crumbling caliphate.

Direct of National Intelligence Dan Coats, commenting on the Worldwide Threat Assessment, stated Tuesday that ISIS "has returned to its guerrilla warfare roots while continuing to plot attacks and direct its supporters worldwide," adding that "ISIS is intent on resurging and still commands thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria."

ISIS forces targeted a coalition patrol recently, killing two US service members, a Department of Defense civilian employee, and an American contractor.

Shanahan said, as others have, that there is still more work to be done, explaining that the planned troop withdrawal is still in the "early stages."

Since Trump's victory tweet, administration officials have said conflicting things about the timeline and full scope of the pullout, often indicating that this may be a long, drawn-out process.

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