America's Syria pointman James Jeffrey will also serve as the United States envoy to the international coalition against the Islamic State jihadist group, the State Department said on Friday.

"With this additional responsibility, Ambassador Jeffrey will lead and coordinate US Department of State relations with the Global Coalition to defeat (IS) and Department efforts to implement President Trump's announcement of a responsible US troop withdrawal from Syria," spokesman Robert Palladino said in a statement.

Jeffrey, a former US ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, will replace Brett McGurk as anti-IS envoy, a post from which he resigned following US President Donald Trump's controversial decision in December to withdraw American forces from Syria.

Critics say the move puts US-allied Kurdish forces at risk of attack by Turkish troops. The US-allied Kurds have played a major role in the war against IS, the jihadist group that seized swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria but has since suffered major defeats.

The December 21 announcement of McGurk's departure followed that of Jim Mattis, who quit as defense chief over fundamental disagreements with Trump, including over Syria.

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Syria army allows more pre-2011 conscripts home
Damascus (AFP) Dec 31, 2018
Syria's army has issued demobilisation orders for a new round of men conscripted for compulsory service in 2010, a year before the civil war started. The decision, announced by state media Monday, ends the drawn-out deployment of Syrians who enlisted for between 18 months and two years of mandatory military service that year, but who ended up serving for more than eight years because of the conflict. The army issued "an order to demobilise officers from Recruitment Class 103" and recruits draft ... read more