Last month, Trump announced a small fraction of U.S. troops from Syria, leading to the resignation of then Secretary of Defense James Mattis and wide opposition from home and abroad. "We will continue our work with the Global Coalition to deny ISIS safe haven anywhere in the world," Shanahan said in a statement.ĭeclaring victory over the IS, Trump announced in December the withdrawal of U.S. Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan on Saturday called the liberation of the territory once held by IS in Iraq and Syria "a critical milestone," adding that the work "is far from complete." In 2014, the extremist group captured Raqqa Province in Syria and declared the establishment of a caliphate.Īcting U.S. The IS emerged in Syria after the Syrian crisis began in 2011, after it was formed first in Iraq amid the U.S.-led invasion of the country.Ību Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group's leader, broke ties with al-Qaeda and renamed his group "the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" in 2013. The SDF, with the help of the U.S.-led coalition, has been fighting the IS group in the region of eastern bank of the Euphrates River since last September. The victory ended the IS rule that once spanned a third of Iraq and Syria.
The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced Saturday the defeat of the IS militant group in eastern Syria. "We will remain vigilant against ISIS (IS) by aligning global counterterrorism efforts to fight ISIS until it is finally defeated wherever it operates," the president added. Trump said in a statement that the United States, together with its partners in Global Coalition to Defeat IS, has liberated "100 Percent of 'the caliphate.'"
![isis territory isis territory](https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Islamic-State-1280x720.gif)
Trump gestures towards supporters as he prepares to board Marine One after taking questions from the media as he departs the White House in Washington, DC for a weekend in Mar-a-Lago, Florida on Friday, March 22, 2019. President Donald Trump claimed Saturday the "liberation" of all territory controlled by the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq, while vowing to remain vigilant until "it is finally defeated."