‘1,000 European’ troops should deploy in Syria: US senator

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s partial reversal on his Syria withdrawal plan is aimed at getting as many as 1,000 European troops to step into the fray, an influential US senator said on Friday.

The White House quietly announced late on Thursday that 200 American "peace-keeping" soldiers would remain in Syria indefinitely, marking a significant climb down from Trump’s plan to have the more than 2,000 troops there now to all leave by April 30.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a senior Republican, has spent recent weeks publicly calling for Trump to adjust the withdrawal plan.

Speaking to Fox News, he said the 200 residual US forces would catalyze a bigger presence by European allies. "This 200 will attract probably 1,000 Europeans," Graham claimed. "Thousands of Europeans were killed by (IS) fighters coming from Syria into Europe. Now, the burden falls on Europe. Eighty percent of the operation should be European, maybe 20 percent us."

Graham’s claim of IS fighters killing "thousands" of Europeans is an exaggeration. According to various tracking groups, far fewer than 1,000 people have been killed in attacks by Islamists of all origins in Europe since 2014.

But such rhetoric feeds into one of Trump’s favorite topics -- his perception that European and NATO allies aren’t contributing enough to global security. Graham said he had been speaking to Trump "continuously" about the withdrawal and persuaded him that a buffer zone needs to be created to protect US-backed Kurdish fighters from a possible attack by Turkey.

"You don’t want to end one war and start another," Graham said he told Trump. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan last week went to Europe and attempted to convince allies to maintain a troop presence in Syria after the US pulls out. But he struggled to persuade other countries why they should risk their forces with America gone.