A top US official in the fight against so-called Islamic State group has quit over President Donald Trump’s decision to pull troops from Syria.
Brett McGurk, the US special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat IS, brought his departure forward from February.
Before Trump’s announcement he had insisted that the US would continue working against IS in Syria.
Trump described Mr McGurk’s resignation as a “nothing event”.
McGurk’s decision to quit follows the resignation of Defence Secretary Jim Mattis on Thursday.
Gen Mattis had also opposed withdrawing troops from Syria as well as reducing the US presence in Afghanistan.
McGurk, 45, is an experienced diplomat who was appointed to his current role in 2015 under the Obama administration.
In early December he told reporters: “We want to stay on the ground and make sure that stability can be maintained in these areas.”
He went on to say: “It would be reckless if we were just to say, well, the physical caliphate is defeated, so we can just leave now. I think anyone who’s looked at a conflict like this would agree with that.”
In his resignation letter, seen by AP news agency, McGurk said that IS militants in Syria were on the run but not yet defeated. He said that withdrawing US forces from Syria would create the conditions that gave rise to IS.
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In an email to staff quoted by the New York Times, he said Trump’s decision to pull out troops “came as a shock and was a complete reversal of policy”. It “left our coalition partners confused and our fighting partners bewildered”, he said.
“I ultimately concluded I could not carry out these new instructions and maintain my integrity,” he went on to say.
Trump announced his decision to withdraw some 2,000 US troops from Syria on Wednesday, asserting that IS had been defeated.
On Saturday, he continued to insist that the decision to pull out was the right one and that, now that IS was defeated on the ground, other players could take care of the situation.
