Trump freezes funds for recovery efforts in Syria
President Donald Trump has frozen over $200 million in funds for recovery efforts in Syria a day after he announced that the US will withdraw from Syria "very soon,” a report says.
Trump ordered the State Department on Friday to put on the hold the spending, another indication the president wants to disengage from Syria, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Citing officials, the journal added that the president made the decisions to do so as his administration reevaluates Washington’s role in the conflict in the war-torn country.
The decision came after he read a news report, saying the US had recently committed an additional $200 million to back up early recovery efforts in Syria, it noted.
In February, departing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was attending a meeting of the global coalition against Daesh in Kuwait, promised an additional aid of $200 million.
Complaining that the US has wasted trillions of dollars in the Middle East wars, Trump said Thursday that "we will be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now.”
"We spent $7 trillion in the Middle East. And you know what we have for it? Nothing," Trump declared, promising to focus future US spending on building jobs and infrastructure at home.
The US and its allies have been bombarding what they call Daesh positions inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate.
Syria has on several occasions written to the UN, complaining that the US was flagrantly violating its sovereignty. The US supports militants fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad and has repeatedly attacked Syrian army positions.
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