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US lawmakers decry lack of Syria military strategy as Russia, Iran consolidate control
Syria is Russia and Iran's now. They will be determining the future -Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker |
Democrats joined in the criticism, with Senator Chris Coons, warning that Trump's administration has "failed to deliver on a coherent plan" in Syria.
"If we completely withdraw, our leverage in any diplomatic resolution or reconstruction, or any hope for a post-Assad Syria, goes away."
Meanwhile, Colonel Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for the US-led coalition fighting IS in Syria and Iraq, said Assad's regime and Russia have not always been able to hold the terrain recaptured from IS.
"As we look at ISIS in areas where we are not operating, where we are not supporting our partners on the ground, there has been ISIS elements who have been able to come back and take territory (including in) some of the neighbourhoods in southern Damascus," Dillon said.
"We've seen ISIS start to resurge in areas west of the Euphrates River."
The US military is closely watching IS in Syria and Iraq, where the group have lost 98 percent of the land they once held, according to the Pentagon.
Progress however has halted in recent weeks in areas where the US-led coalition is fighting IS through the Syrian Democratic Forces, a local proxy group, due to Turkish military action in the north.
Ankara in January launched a bloody operation around Afrin to push Kurdish fighters out of the city.
Many of the Kurds who had been engaged in anti-IS operations have quit that fight to support comrades in Afrin.