President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday that the U.S. military should stay out of the escalating conflict in Syria as a shock opposition offensive closes in on the capital, declaring in a social media post, “This is not our fight.”
With world leaders watching the rapid rebel advance against Syria’s Russian- and Iranian-backed president, Bashar Assad, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser separately stressed that the Biden administration had no intention of intervening, reports AP.
“The United States is not going to ... militarily dive into the middle of a Syrian civil war,” Jake Sullivan told an audience in California.
He said the U.S. would keep acting as necessary to keep the Islamic State — a violently anti-Western extremist group not known to be involved in the offensive but with sleeper cells in Syria’s deserts — from exploiting openings presented by the fighting.
Insurgents’ stunning march across Syria sped faster Saturday, reaching the gates of Damascus and government forces abandoning the central city of Homs. The government was forced to deny rumors that Assad had fled the country.
Trump’s comments on the dramatic rebel push were his first since Syrian rebels launched their advance late last month. They came while he was in Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame cathedral.
In his post, Trump said Assad did not deserve U.S. support to stay in power.
Assad’s government has been propped up by the Russian and Iranian military, along with Hezbollah and other Iranian-allied militias, in a now 13-year-old war against opposition groups seeking his overthrow. The war, which began as a mostly peaceful uprising in 2011 against the Assad family’s rule, has killed a half-million people, fractured Syria and drawn in a more than a half-dozen foreign militaries and militias.
The insurgents are led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist group and says has links to al-Qaida, although the group has since broken ties with al-Qaida.
Bd-pratidin English/Tanvir Raihan
