After a Decade, the Last U.S. Troops Leave Syria

The final convoy of American soldiers and equipment rolled out of the Qasrak air base in Hasakah province on Thursday, ending a ten-year military presence in Syria. The withdrawal, routed through Jordan to avoid clashes with Iran-backed paramilitaries in Iraq, marks the close of a chapter that began in 2015 under the banner of fighting ISIS.

Syria's 60th Division, composed largely of Kurdish fighters formerly aligned with the Syrian Democratic Forces, took control of the base and its airstrip. Damascus confirmed that all U.S. military sites in the country have now been transferred to Syrian authority. The two other major American installations, al-Tanf in the south and al-Shaddadi in the northeast, were vacated earlier this year.

What makes this withdrawal notable isn't just the departure itself, but how it was achieved. Rather than a chaotic exit or an indefinite occupation, Washington helped broker a deal between the SDF and Damascus that integrated Kurdish forces into Syria's national security framework. The SDF agreed to relinquish control of territories including Raqqa and Deir Ezzor to the central government, and Syria assumed full responsibility for counterterrorism operations.

That deal was only possible because of a convergence of diplomatic breakthroughs. Turkey's ongoing peace negotiations with the PKK removed a major obstacle, since Ankara had long viewed the U.S.-SDF partnership as a threat. And President Ahmed al-Sharaa's defeat of the Assad regime in December 2024 created a new government that both Washington and the SDF could negotiate with in good faith.

Syria's foreign ministry framed the handover as proof that "the Syrian state [has assumed] full responsibility for combating terrorism," calling the SDF integration into national structures a success. Whether that integration holds, particularly in the volatile east, will be the real test. But the framework itself is significant: former adversaries choosing negotiation over continued fragmentation.

For a region too often defined by foreign intervention and frozen conflicts, Syria's path toward consolidating its own security is worth watching closely. The levers used here, negotiation, integration, and mutual concession, are the same ones available to fractured societies everywhere. The harder question is whether Syrians will have the political space to hold their new government accountable as it consolidates power.