NORTHEAST SYRIA—The nearly eight-year-old U.S. deployment to Syria to combat the ISIS terrorist group is still worth the risk, the top U.S. military officer said on Saturday, after a rare, unannounced visit to a dusty base in the country’s northeast to meet U.S. troops.
Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, flew to Syria to assess efforts to prevent a resurgence of the terrorist group and review safeguards for American forces against attacks, including from drones flown by Iran-backed militia.
While ISIS is a shadow of the group that ruled over a third of Syria and Iraq in a Caliphate declared in 2014, hundreds of terrorists are still camped in desolate areas where neither the U.S.-led coalition nor the Syrian army, with support from Russia and Iranian-backed militias, exert full control….