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U.S. forces began withdrawing from areas in northeastern Syria after President Donald Trump agreed with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan to establish a safe area, bringing to mind Trump's retreat from the withdrawal and a series of ambiguous US positions on its involvement in the Syrian war.

Below, we recall the most important American positions during the years of the revolution and the Syrian war since March 2011, which ranged from the limited support for the opposition to the Bashar al-Assad regime's intimidation, the intervention in favor of the Kurdish militias and the volatility towards the position of the Turkish ally.

July 13, 2011: Former US President Barack Obama considers Assad “losing his legitimacy in the eyes of his people,” after Assad's supporters attacked the US embassy in Damascus.

September 20, 2012: Obama warns Assad that moving or using chemical or biological weapons in the struggle against the opposition will be a "red line." However, this did not prevent the Assad regime from committing several chemical weapons massacres against civilians, the largest of which was on August 21, 2013 in the Eastern Ghouta of Damascus, which claimed hundreds of lives.After that, the Obama administration only accepted the destruction of the regime's chemical weapons arsenal, an action that is not yet complete.

October 22, 2012: During the final debate to run for his second term, Obama is confident that Assad's days are numbered.

Obama expresses confidence in 2012 that Assad's days are numbered (Getty Images)

August 7, 2014: Obama announces the start of US airstrikes within the forces of an international coalition of Arab and Western countries against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. In the same period, the United States began providing non-lethal assistance to selected FSA factions (food rations and pickup trucks) to counter the expansion of Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS, with some intelligence support and training in northern Syria.

August 2, 2017: The New York Times revealed that the CIA in the Obama administration spent half a billion dollars on a plan to train 15,000 Syrian fighters, but only succeeded in training dozens, and then ended Trump in 2017.

April 7, 2017: Trump orders bombing of Shirat Military Airport in Homs province with 59 Tomahawk missiles, the airport from which the regime is believed to have carried out a chemical attack on civilians. The bombing came less than two and a half months after Trump arrived at the White House, the first direct US targeting of Syrian regime forces, which Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham saw as proof that the Trump administration could make the right decisions in Syria unlike his predecessor Obama.

January 17, 2018: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirms that the Trump administration intends to maintain an open military presence in Syria, not only to confront al-Qaeda and the state, but also to counter Iran's influence and overthrow Assad, and to create conditions for the return of refugees.

December 18, 2018: Trump announces that he discussed with Erdogan the withdrawal of US troops from Syria within a month, with Turkey taking over the fight against ISIS. A day later, US Secretary of Defense James Mattis resigned. Two weeks later, officials in Washington said Trump had reversed his decision and decided to extend the withdrawal plan.

Trump and Erdogan during a meeting in Brussels last year (Reuters)

Feb. 25, 2019: The White House announces that the United States will leave a "small peacekeeping group" of 200 US troops in Syria for a while.

August 2019: Turkey and the United States agree to establish a “joint operations center” to coordinate and manage the creation of a “safe area” in northern Syria.

8 September 2019: The first joint ground patrol between the Turkish and US armies is conducted in the eastern Euphrates region of Syria, as part of the Safe Zone Agreement.

September 30, 2019: Ankara's deadline for establishing a safe area in partnership with Washington expires, without a clear US response. Erdogan is chairing a security meeting announcing Turkey's intention to establish the region individually.

October 7, 2019: The White House announces that US forces will not take part in the Turkish operation in northern Syria, and confirms that the troops have begun withdrawing from Syria justifying that ISIS has become defeated. The Kurdish-majority Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) consider that "US forces have not fulfilled their obligations".