Carter said the force might be American-only but more likely would be a mixed force with perhaps Kurdish troops or others.
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Much as special operations forces operated against al Qaeda in Iraq during the previous USA military in Iraq, “our operations will be intel driven”, said Dunford. More are on the way.
“The Iraqi government stresses that any military operation or the deployment of any foreign forces – special or not – in any place in Iraq can not happen without its approval and coordination and full respect of Iraqi sovereignty”, Abadi said in a statement. “That creates a virtuous cycle of better intelligence, which generates more targets, more raids and more momentum”, he said. We have the long reach that no one else has.
Chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Joseph Dunford said that he was encouraging United States military forces in Iraq to go beyond the President’s current force limit of 3,500 troops in the country.
He said the expanded US presence ultimately will allow for targeted raids and other operations in Syria, where Islamic State – also known as ISIL or ISIS – is based.
“It puts everybody on notice in Syria”.
In May, a Delta Force raid in Syria killed ISIS financier Abu Sayyaf, yielding intelligence about the group’s structure and finances.
Carter stressed that Turkey’s geography – “right there next to Iraq and Syria” – makes it an especially useful asset to the US-led mission against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), but its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally has failed to pull its weight so far. They both also said that, while the country should center around the government in Baghdad, there must be a level of decentralization so the Sunnis and Kurds each have a degree of self-government.
The effort aims to divide the Islamic State territory in Iraq from the areas it holds in Syria. Over the past year a small number of one-off targeted raids in Syria have already been conducted.
Officials noted that Carter, speaking to Congress, stressed that any USA operations by the unit in Iraq would be carried out at the invitation of the Iraqi government. The British are debating it. The Germans are capable of doing more, we certainly want them to do more.
Thomas Donnelly, defense and security policy analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, said that while the Obama administration has been slowly “edging toward the direction” of increasing the number of ground troops in Syria and Iraq, the new operation represents “a quantitative increase but not a qualitative change”. “So we’re going to go where the enemy is and we’re going to conduct operations where they most effectually degrade the capabilities of the enemy”.
Dunford told the committee when asked that, “We have not contained” IS.
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This marked the first official deployment of USA troops on the ground in Syria since an worldwide coalition formed previous year to counter the militant group. USA forces came to the aid of Kurdish partners who had been pinned down by enemy fire while trying to free hostages from an ISIL stronghold.
