LONDON • Mission accomplished. Or so thought United States President Donald Trump when he recently announced that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist organisation was "close to 100 per cent defeated" and that, as a result, US forces are about to "get out" of Syria.

The announcement of such a precipitous American troop withdrawal from what is still the Middle East's most acute civil war flatly contradicted promises made by US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, who vowed that his soldiers were "not just going to walk away" before a political settlement is reached between the various protagonists which have torn Syria apart over the past seven years.