Washington insists it was a coincidence that reinforcements had been despatched earlier than the collapse of President Bashar Assad’s authorities
The US has revealed that it has greater than doubled its navy presence in Syria, with a Pentagon spokesman saying that he “only recently discovered” there have been in actual fact roughly 2,000 American forces deployed within the nation, quite than 900 troops as beforehand reported.
For years, the Pentagon had maintained that “about 900” US troops had been stationed within the nation, and officers continued to repeat this determine even after the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad on December 8.
Nevertheless, throughout a press convention on Thursday, Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder stated that “we not too long ago discovered that these numbers [are] increased.”
“Given the distinction in what we’ve been briefing and what the precise quantity is, I simply felt that it was essential to get you that info,” Ryder stated, citing diplomatic and operational safety sensitivities as a part of the explanation for the delay in disclosure.
The Pentagon spokesman defined that the extra troops had been in Syria “at a minimal, months” on a rotational foundation, which has been “happening for some time.”
He insisted that the rise was not associated to the latest occasions and that the timing was merely a coincidence.
“As I perceive it and because it was defined to me, these further forces are thought of short-term rotational forces that deploy to satisfy shifting mission necessities, whereas the core 900 deployers are on longer-term deployments,” Ryder stated.
The US navy has been energetic in Syria since as early as 2014, ostensibly to combat Islamic State (IS, previously referred to as ISIS) terrorists, and has flown numerous airstrikes in opposition to choose militant teams and, at instances, Syrian authorities forces.
Below President Barack Obama, Washington doled out a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in weapons to an array of jihadist insurgent factions in search of to overthrow Assad, though the trouble later fizzled following Russian and Iranian navy involvement on the request of Damascus.
In 2019, President Donald Trump ordered all US troops to withdraw, however Pentagon officers pushed again, and he backtracked later that 12 months, saying: “We’re maintaining the oil… We left troops behind just for the oil.”
Since then, the US has saved some 900 troops scattered throughout a number of bases. Syrian officers have repeatedly accused the Pentagon of “stealing” the nation’s oil reserves from provinces within the northeast, the place American forces have been embedded with Kurdish militia teams.
Earlier this month, Syrian opposition forces led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) jihadists launched a shock offensive throughout the nation, capturing Damascus and forcing Assad to resign as president and search asylum in Russia.
On Friday, Washington despatched a delegation to Damascus for the primary time since 2012, and introduced it’s going to not provide a $10 million bounty for the HTS chief.
