I am “about two thousand” American soldiers in post-Assad Syria. The Pentagon confirmed it. And they are more than double the 900 we knew about so far. They are all in Syria as part of the fight against IS, said spokesman Patrick Ryder, specifying that for 900 soldiers it is a “long-term” mission, while for the others there is talk of “additional forces”deployed temporarily for “changing mission requirements.” There was no attempt to hide the real number of units present in the Arab country, the spokesperson assured, stating that he had learned the exact data shortly before communicating it to the press.
Meanwhile, yesterday a US delegation arrived in Damascus, for the first mission since the end of the Bashar al-Assad era, to meet representatives of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Hts), who led the lightning offensive against the forces loyal to the deposed regime. It was a “positive” meeting between Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani (Ahmed al-Sharaa) and the delegation, a Syrian leader told AFP, underlining that “the results will be positive, God willing”. However, the press conference scheduled by the US delegation, which includes Barbara Leaf, the State Department's highest ranking official for the Middle East, was “cancelled for security reasons”. Rana Hassan, a US embassy official, indicated this.
US forces have been present in Syria since 2014 as part of the fight against IS and have since collaborated with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (DFS). The end of the Assad regime has brought back fears relating to the IS threat. Thousands of fighters from the self-styled Islamic State and their families remain in 'improvised' prisons, guarded by Kurdish forces (supported by the US, but opposed by Turkey), with weapons limited available, Politico wrote in recent days, while the Kurdish forces continued to face fighters supported by Ankara and IS cells that are still active. “I usually hate this cliché, but it's the closest thing we have to a time bomb,” said a US counter-terrorism officer, certain that if the attacks against the FDS don't stop we might have to deal with a “mass escape from prisons”.
Joseph Votel, a retired general who for three years from 2016, the time of the war against IS, led the US Central Command and is “very worried” spoke of a “terrorist army in detention”.
Most of the IS fighters who were captured, Politico highlighted, are from Iraq and Syria, but the jihadists also came from European countries, Central Asia and North America, including the USA. AND the topic of the return of foreign fighters has been at the center of the debate for years. The newspaper wrote about the long-standing legal limbo for around 9,000 IS fighters and 50,000 other people, including wives and children.
In recent days the US has conducted dozens of air raids against IS targets. IS “is reorganizing its ranks, since it has come into possession of large quantities of weapons due to the collapse of the Syrian Army and the presence of abandoned weapons depots”, factors which “allowed” the group to “extend control to new areas”, said Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein yesterday, raising the alarm for “the danger of escape from the prisons of IS members” and “the worsening of the situation in the (refugee) camp of Al-Hol, with repercussions on the security of Syria and Iraq”. For the Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al Sudani, who claims the preparation of the forces of security and intelligence in Baghdad, the jihadist group is not a threat to Iraq. “The remnants of the defeated IS gangs – he is convinced – no longer represent a threat to Iraqi territory”.
