From Syria to Somalia, US troops deployed this holiday season on open-ended missions

America’s forever wars didn’t end. They receded from view — and risk roaring back.

While Washington fixates on China, Iran and Russia, U.S. troops are still fighting, striking and being targeted from the Middle East to the Horn of Africa and the Caribbean corridor. The missions are smaller and quieter than the wars that defined the post‑9/11 era. They are also open‑ended, conducted under authorizations Congress passed more than two decades ago — long after most Americans stopped paying attention.

The footprint shrank, not the wars

Roughly 40,000 U.S. troops remain in the Middle East as of June, a downsized but entrenched presence that belies the notion of a strategic pivot. In Syria and Iraq, in Somalia and off Yemen’s coast, Americans are intercepting drones, launching airstrikes and conducting raids under authorities created to fight a different enemy in a different time. The result is a cycle that is sustainable politically because it is distant — until it isn’t.

Syria: A mission without an end state

About 900 U.S. troops sit in eastern Syria, officially to stabilize territory recaptured from the Islamic State group and to prevent its resurgence. In practice, they are still in an active combat environment: facing rocket, drone and indirect fire, often as regional tensions spike, while carrying out counterterrorism operations with the Syrian Democratic Forces against ISIS cells bent on assassinations, ambushes and prison breaks.

The war re‑entered the headlines in December when two National Guardsmen and an American contractor were shot and killed by a lone suspected Islamic State fighter. U.S. airstrikes and special operations raids continue even as Syria has largely vanished from the national conversation. There is no declared war and no defined end state, only a small, exposed force operating on the logic that leaving might be worse than staying.

Iraq: Winding down, not done

In Iraq, the United States has agreed with Baghdad on a drawdown and a transition that shifts responsibility for ISIS to Iraqi security forces. The coalition footprint — roughly 900 Americans — is slated to shrink by about 20%, consolidate largely in the Kurdish region and wind down by September. Yet the risks that pulled the United States back in 2014 have not disappeared; Iranian‑backed militias still threaten U.S. forces, and the coalition retains authority to strike if ISIS shows signs of revival.

What remains is a paradox: a war that no longer resembles the 2000s but still requires armed Americans on Iraqi soil, with the prospect of escalation whenever regional crises flare.

Somalia: America’s quietest war

Few Americans realize how active the United States remains in Somalia, where several hundred U.S. special operations troops advise and assist Somali forces battling al‑Shabab, the al‑Qaida‑linked insurgency. Airstrikes are routine, press releases are sparse and media attention is fleeting. The campaign ramped up after 2017, shifted to an “over‑the‑horizon” posture in late 2020, and returned to a persistent footprint in 2022. About 500 U.S. troops are there today.

“Africa is very much the front lines,” War Secretary Pete Hegseth said earlier this year, arguing for a maintained presence while promising reviews of force posture. The intent is limited: help local partners degrade a resilient terrorist group without expanding the American role. The reality is familiar: a mission that endures because definitively ending it risks inviting the very resurgence it aims to prevent.

Yemen and the Red Sea: A war at sea, with global stakes

The United States has no base in Yemen, but American sailors and pilots are in direct combat with Iran‑backed Houthi forces firing on commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. U.S. naval and air units have intercepted missiles and drones and launched strikes designed to degrade Houthi missile, drone and radar networks — a defensive campaign meant to keep sea lanes open and deter escalation.

In the spring of 2025, that campaign expanded into weeks of air and naval strikes on Houthi targets across Yemen, hitting more than 1,000 sites tied to weapons infrastructure. The message was twofold: protect global trade; signal that distant threats can still pull the United States into sustained combat.

The Western Hemisphere front: Operation Southern Spear

Closer to home, Operation Southern Spear underscores how counter‑narcotics authorities can shade into near‑conflict conditions. U.S. forces have conducted 28 strikes on alleged narco‑trafficking boats in waters near Venezuela, killing 103 people, as Washington flows assets into the region. Fifteen percent of all U.S. naval assets are now in the Southern Command theater, including the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier.

To date, strikes have stopped short of Venezuelan soil. But posture is policy. The scale and proximity of U.S. forces signal how quickly a campaign aimed at smugglers could tip into a broader showdown with Nicolás Maduro’s government, with all the political and diplomatic costs that would entail.

The constitutional lag: Old laws, new wars

Across these theaters, one constant is legal inertia. None of these conflicts has been formally concluded by Congress. Most operate under the same post‑9/11 authorizations — designed for al‑Qaida and affiliates — that successive administrations have used to justify action against ISIS, al‑Shabab and Iran‑backed militias. The White House’s December national security strategy framed a shift: “The days in which the Middle East dominated American foreign policy… are thankfully over.” It cast the region as a place of “partnership, friendship, and investment.”

The strategy may be right on trajectory. It is less persuasive on the present tense. A lighter footprint is still a footprint. Maritime interdictions and remote strikes are still uses of force that risk retaliation. And the political bargain that keeps these wars running — limited costs, limited scrutiny — is brittle. One shoot‑down, one mass‑casualty incident, one strike that goes wrong can redraw the debate overnight.

What accountability looks like now

If the United States is to maintain dispersed, low‑visibility operations indefinitely, Congress and the public should demand clarity on basics that rarely make the nightly news:

• Legal basis: Which authorizations are being used for each theater, and for what missions? What sunsets or updates are necessary?
• End state: What concrete conditions would allow a drawdown or exit in Syria, Somalia and the Red Sea?
• Risk and escalation: What thresholds would trigger a shift from defensive strikes to broader campaigns, especially near Venezuela and against the Houthis?
• Metrics: How are success and failure measured beyond body counts and sortie numbers?
• Oversight: How and when are civilian casualties, partner‑force abuses and unintended consequences reported and remedied?

Wars without endings are a choice

The post‑9/11 map of American force has been redrawn, not erased. U.S. troops are fewer and further afield; the operations are narrower and more technical. Yet they remain wars by any honest definition — organized violence in pursuit of political aims, undertaken in the name of national security and global stability. If the United States is to keep fighting them, it should say so plainly, set terms the public can evaluate and give service members clear missions with realistic off‑ramps. The alternative is the status quo: conflicts that continue in the shadows until the day they burst into the light.

By Ali Musa

Axadle Times international–Monitoring.