Updated: Dec. 20, 9:54 a.m.
The U.S. military has some 2,000 troops in Syria—more than twice the figure of 900 that the Pentagon has cited for years, a spokesman said Thursday.
The higher number includes “temporary rotational forces that deploy to meet shifting mission requirements,” Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said. “These forces, which augment the defeat-ISIS mission, were there before the fall of the Assad regime.”
Ryder said that he only recently learned that the force in Syria was larger than publicly declared.
Since the collapse of the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad last week, the United States has been increasing its anti-ISIS operations in the country, striking 75 ISIS targets in the hours after militant groups toppled the government. On Monday, an airstrike killed 12 ISIS militants, U.S. Central Command said.
On Friday, CENTCOM announced a successful airstrike against ISIS leader Abu Yusif aka Mahmud in the Dayr az Zawr Province. “ISIS has the intent to break out of detention the over 8,000 ISIS operatives currently being held in facilities in Syria. We will aggressively target these leaders and operatives,” CENTCOM Commander Gen. Michael Kurilla said in a statement.
Russia appears to be vacating installations in Syria that it has long used by permission of the Assad regime. On Wednesday, satellite photos from space-based intelligence provider BlackSky showed Russian forces moving military equipment to the tarmac of its Khmeimim air base in preparation for removal.
On Monday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters, “When you look at Russia’s history inside Syria, it is one of being complicit in the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians. Russia propped up the brutal, murderous regime that gassed its own people, that murdered its own people, and so certainly, I think that Russia has a lot to answer for for its actions inside Syria.”
Elsewhere in the country, Turkish and U.S.-backed Kurdish forces continue to clash, despite State Department assurances that the two sides had extended a ceasefire agreement from last week.
The White House is reportedly increasing its diplomatic outreach to the new Syrian government, sending top U.S. Middle East diplomat Barbara Leaf to meet with the country’s new leaders in the coming days, Axios reported Thursday.
The United States lists the main militant group that seized power in Syria, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, as a terrorist group. But Syria’s new prime minister, Mohammed al-Bashir, has taken an inclusive tone to his public statements, promising to lead an inclusive Syria that respects the rights of all the nation’s minority groups.
On Monday, Miller at the State Department said that the United States would consider lifting sanctions imposed on Syria but not until the government takes action on those promises and agrees to work with the United States on destroying the Assad regime’s chemical weapons stockpiles.
“An uncertain path ahead about who is going to control Syria and who is going to control the Assad regime’s quite significant military stockpiles that they have taken steps to ensure that those stockpiles don’t fall into the hands of terrorists. We have been in conversation with them about that goal,” Miller said.
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