ISIS, which at the height of its powers in 2014 controlled a significant area in the region that straddles Syria and Iraq, has now been pushed out of about 99 percent of the territory it held, according to Brett McGurk, the special presidential envoy for the global coalition to counter the Islamic State. Yet fighting them remains significantly more expensive than the just-ended civilian-aid program—the Pentagon is set to receive $15.3 billion in fiscal year 2019, which begins October 1, for the purpose. That figure is a slight increase from the amount of money spent this fiscal year, $13 billion. But as Anthony Cordesman, a defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noted, the increase is “almost solely because of the expanding effort to create more effective forces in Iraq.” The U.S. has about 2,000 troops in Syria, who train, advise, and assist forces that fight ISIS; another 3,765 U.S. troops remain in Iraq serving the same purpose.

While ISIS might have been pushed out of nearly all of the areas it controls in Syria, it is Assad’s forces, backed by Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, that have retaken much of that territory, as well as many of the areas once controlled by anti-Assad rebel forces—and nearly all of the country’s population centers. The areas Assad’s forces haven’t retaken, such as the rebel-controlled Idlib province in the northwest, are firmly in Assad’s crosshairs.

Surviving in Syria’s ‘forgotten province’

By withdrawing the civilian funds, the Trump administration will likely help delay the return of millions of Syrians displaced by the conflict. The overwhelming majority of those displaced live in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. More than a million have also made their way to Europe. The U.S. has resettled about 20,000 Syrians since the conflict began in 2011, including 56 in 2017 as of July 31. In Moscow, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, accused the U.S. of “trying to artificially slow down the process of the refugees’ return by refusing to participate in the restoration of infrastructure in Syria.”

As Syria starts shifting from conflict to reconstruction, a process that is expected ultimately to cost hundreds of billions of dollars, the U.S. says it won’t support international funding unless the United Nations unequivocally says there is progress in the political process in Syria. “We have been very clear, as clear as it is possible to be, with the government of Russia that there will be no international reconstruction assistance for Syria without the irreversible political process validated by the UN,” David Satterfield, the top U.S. diplomat for the region, said in the same conference call with Nauert. “There should be no ambiguity about that.”

Nor should there be any ambiguity about the fact that the U.S. military will remain in the region for some time. McGurk said on the Friday call that the U.S. is preparing the final phase of its plans to defeat ISIS.

“That will be a very significant military operation because we have a significant number of ISIS fighters holed up in a final area of the Middle Euphrates Valley,” he said. “And after that, you have to train local forces to hold the ground to make sure that the area remains stabilized so ISIS cannot return. So this mission is ongoing and is not over.”