U.S. troops have withdrawn from the outpost in Syria where a handful of American special operators and Marines fought off an assault by Russian mercenaries in 2018, a battle in which the American troops left a force 10 times their size scattered across the desert battlefield. The end of the U.S. presence at Mission Support Site Euphrates came as part of a wider drawdown in Syria in May, with American troops withdrawing from multiple bases used in the fight against ISIS, according to a new quarterly report from the Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General on Operation Inherent Resolve.
Mission Support Site Euphrates is an outpost on the eastern banks of the Euphrates River in Khasham, Deir ez-Zor province. In 2018, a small group of U.S. troops and Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, were at the base, along a line of demarcation along the Euphrates River meant to help avoid conflict with Russian military elements backing the Assad regime. But in February 2018, the outpost was attacked by a force of roughly 500 pro-regime forces. That included members of the Russian mercenary firm the Wagner Group.
What ensued over the subsequent hours came to be known as the Battle of Khasham, or Battle of the Conoco Fields. U.S. Army Green Berets and Delta Force soldiers, Air Force Combat Controllers and Marines held the outpost as American war planes and helicopters poured bombs and rockets onto the Russian and Syrian troops. The Department of Defense — as well as the Wagner Group and the now-deposed Assad regime — have been historically tight-lipped about the events of the battle in the years since, although some details have come out. One of the most revealing reports came from the citation for an Air Force Cross given in 2020 to an Air Force combat controller who participated in the fight.
On Feb. 7, 2018, “a professionally trained and technically proficient combined arms enemy assault comprised of main battle tanks, armored personnel carriers, heavy artillery tubes and a battalion of infantry soldiers” advanced across the river and attacked the outpost. Roughly 30 American special operations forces were there with Kurdish SDF fighters. When Delta Force soldiers and Army Rangers at the outpost came under attack, a platoon-sized force of Marines and Green Berets were about 20 miles away and began making their way toward the fight. But it took them far longer to get to the outpost than they imagined, in part due to poor visibility and damaged roads.
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