The US Defense Department has raised the number of troops in both Syria and Iraq in a change from the previous statistics. For years the Pentagon has stated it had approximately 900 troops in Syria and 2,500 in Iraq to fight ISIS. However, recent exposure shows that the number of military personnel of the United States in Syria is way beyond the published information.
Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said that Germany now hosts more than double of what was there earlier this year and an additional 1,100 service members in Syria have been conducted to ‘force protection,’ ‘logistics,’ ‘transportation’, and ‘maintenance’, for operational requirements. Ryder further said that the aforementioned troops were temporarily deployed in Syria in accordance with changing mission needs to fight ISIS and assert security. He pointed out that increased troop presence is due to enhanced threats and operational requirements which have evolved in time. However, Ryder understood that SOPs and diplomatic realities meant that Defense could not publicize the full arrangements of the deployment.
Similarly, the violence situation is like that of Syria with Pentagon adding that more temporary enablers have been deployed to support existing forces in Iraq. These extra employees were utilized because of elevated threat levels in the area especially after the collapse of Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad’s government. Although the Pentagon has been transparent about the personnel deployed as part of the Iraq campaign, it is fiercely reticent about the details of the new deployments because of security and courtesy considerations.
This increase in troop numbers comes in the wake of escalation of tension in both Syria and Iraq especially in view of on-going crises. The conflict between Turkey and the groups affiliated with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the United States’ partner, is troubling in Syria. The SDF an alliance of Kurdish fighters has been used in combating the ISIS as well as) securing detention centers that contain ISIS militants. He said the Pentagon has recently stepped up its meetings to review developments in Syria and the emerging realities on the ground in the aftermath of the Assad regime change.
The Biden administration is in its last months of presidency, and there is the future of the America’s policy in the region after the potential second Trump presidency. Before the toppling of Assad, insiders informants told Trump’s team that people such as Ahmed al-Sharaa who leads the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group would enjoy the lion share in the Syrian state. As the situation develops in both Syria and Iraq it is rather obvious, that US military’s role in the region will remain in focus for the near future.
The fact again lies in activity and number of troops which the US has not revealed and preferred to keep them low and secretive for various reasons. Taking this into consideration, it looks like looking forward, as tensions escalate and threat multiplier is active, Pentagon will keep adapting their forces to the new state and keep local balances pristine to protect assets of interest in the Middle East.
