Less than 50 USA special forces troops will be deployed to Kurdish-controlled areas in Syria to help Kurdish and Arab fighters with planning and logistics, the White House said, while insisting that the US troops don’t have a combat mission in Syria.
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A senior US official told reporters at the Pentagon that the special operations forces will arrive in northern Syria within the next month to start their advisory mission, which, according to the official, will stop short of accompanying fighters on operations against the extremist Islamic State (ISIL) group.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the new troops will not be on a “combat mission”.
In July, Obama authorized the use of US air power to assist U.S.-trained rebels, if they were attacked by ISIS militants or the Assad regime, according to a Bloomberg News report.
US troops have been on the ground in Syria before, Earnest said, noting a rescue mission more than a year ago and a more recent raid. They could also help coordinate air strikes from the ground, the officials said.
The reactions made clear the widespread dissatisfaction with the USA strategy in Syria – but also showed there’s little consensus on Capitol Hill on how the country should deal with a crisis that’s grown increasingly complex – especially in the wake of Russian air strikes to prop up Syrian President Bashar Assad that could potentially put the US forces in greater danger.
The Obama administration is under pressure to ramp up America’s effort against Islamic State, particularly after the fall of the Iraqi city of Ramadi to Islamic State in May and the failure of a USA military programme to train and arm thousands of Syrian rebels. However, the USA has conducted special operations raids into Syria before now and will continue to do more unilateral raids.
One of the groups the USA troops will be working with is a Kurdish militia known as the YPG, which could pose a political problem for the United States. They won’t move to the front lines, go into battle with those troops, or be used to call in airstrikes into Syria.
The official number of United States special forces being sent into Syria is said to not exceed 50.
The decision to send USA special forces to Syria will put US forces “in harm’s way”, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Friday, adding he did not rule out the possibility of further special forces deployments to Syria. Rubio said on the CBS program “Face the Nation”.
For years, the president has cast the chaos in Syria as exactly the type of situation he was elected to keep the US military out of.
Asked if accepting Iran at the Syria talks isn’t a sign of diplomatic realism, White says, “I don’t think we have to accept Iran at the table simply because they have forces on the ground involved in the fight”. However, they would be open to it to ensure the safety of USA troops on the ground, the official added.
It seems the Obama non-interventionist era has officially ended.
The Observatory said at least 50 fighters on the government side were killed or wounded, and that clashes were raging further west on the outskirts of Sadad, a nearby town mostly inhabited by Christians, as Islamic State pressed its advance.
The surge in violence came after more than a dozen countries, including the US and Russian Federation, agreed during talks in Vienna on Friday to pursue a new peace effort involving Syria’s government and opposition groups. But here is my nightmare: “My nightmare is that the United States once again gets caught up in a quagmire, which never ends and which leads to perpetual warfare”, Sanders said.
Russian Federation and the Syrian government have been waging an air offensive against insurgents in the west and northwest of Syria.
On this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday”, Sen. Sen.
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“We can not reasonably expect that the deployment of Special Operations Forces would be limited in scope or duration”, Schatz said.
