On 4 December, Mark Esper told Reuters that the U.S. had scaled down its presence in northeast Syria and consolidated its forces in the country to a flexible 600 troops, a 40 percent reduction in troop levels since Donald Trump's initial October order to withdraw 1,000; it was not clear if the 600 estimate included the ~200-250 troops at al-Tanf, which would raise the actual total estimate to around 800-850.