{"id":41526,"date":"2019-11-10T18:22:40","date_gmt":"2019-11-10T18:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41526"},"modified":"2019-11-10T18:22:40","modified_gmt":"2019-11-10T18:22:40","slug":"hezbollah-says-its-arm-wont-be-twisted-as-lebanon-crisis-deepens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41526","title":{"rendered":"Hezbollah says its \u2018arm won\u2019t be twisted\u2019 as Lebanon crisis deepens"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"60\">\n<p>\nWASHINGTON: US troop levels in northern Syria will probably stabilize around 500, a top American military leader said Sunday, weeks after President Donald Trump had announced a complete withdrawal.<br \/>\u201cThere will be less than 1,000, for sure,\u201d General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on ABC\u2019s \u201cThis Week.\u201d \u201cProbably in the 500ish frame, maybe six.\u201d<br \/>Trump\u2019s abrupt announcement last month that he had ordered a full troop withdrawal drew angry rebukes at home and abroad, with critics saying it could allow a resurgence of Daesh, while leaving US-allied Kurdish fighters in Syria vulnerable to a Turkish invasion.<br \/>The US president later relented in part, saying he would leave some troops in the region to protect valuable oil fields.<br \/>Milley, who has commanded troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, told ABC that it was important for US troops to remain in Syria so long as Daesh has a presence there.<br \/>\u201cThere are still Daesh fighters in the region,\u201d he said, using an alternate term for Daesh. \u201cUnless pressure is maintained, unless attention is maintained on that group, there\u2019s a very real possibility there could be a re-emergence of Daesh.\u201d<br \/>Asked about the killing Oct. 26 of Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi by a US special forces unit, Milley said it would have a \u201csignificant disruptive effect on the organization.\u201d He said the US had \u201ca considerable amount of information on his successor,\u201d Abu Ibrahim Al-Hashimi Al-Quraishi.<br \/>\u201cWhere opportunities arise,\u201d Milley said, \u201cwe\u2019ll go after him.\u201d<br \/>Trump has said he wants to wind down US military entanglements abroad where possible, but Milley predicted that American troops, already in Afghanistan for 18 years, would remain there \u201cfor several more years.\u201d<br \/>He was also asked whether he knew Alexander Vindman, the army lieutenant colonel and White House Ukraine expert who has testified about his concerns over a controversial phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.<br \/>Milley declined to comment \u201con a witness to an active investigation\u201d \u2014 the House of Representatives\u2019 impeachment inquiry into Trump.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON: US troop levels in northern Syria will probably stabilize around 500, a top American military leader said Sunday, weeks after President Donald Trump had announced a complete withdrawal.\u201cThere will be less than 1,000, for sure,\u201d General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on ABC\u2019s \u201cThis Week.\u201d \u201cProbably in the 500ish&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":41527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}