Obama to Send Special Forces to Syria

KABUL: (Middle East Press) The US President, Barack Obama has ordered up to 50 special operations forces to Syria, to fight Islamic State militants in the country, the White House announced on Friday.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the US forces will be sent to Kurdish-controlled territory in northern Syria and will help local Kurdish and Arab forces fighting ISIS with logistics to bolster their efforts.

The Pentagon has also been “consulting” with the Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, to establish a special operations taskforce to fight Isis “leaders and networks” across the Syrian border in Iraq, a senior administration official told the Guardian on Friday.

But the White House insisted that its overall strategy to combat ISIS remained the same and said the special forces would be helping coordinate local ground forces in the north of the country and other non-specified “coalition efforts” to counter ISIS rather than engaging in major ground operations.

“The decision the president has made is to further intensify our support for our forces who have made progress against ISIS,” Earnest stated.

The move came as diplomats worked in Vienna to restart talks on a political transition that would remove Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. At the discussions with leaders from Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, framed the troop announcement as part of a shifting policy that included this major diplomatic push to initiate talks that would bring about a political transition in Syria.

America has bombed targets in Syria since September 2014 without stopping ISIS, and it has largely failed in a mission to recruit and train moderate rebels in Syria to take on the terror group. In recent months, the U.S. has also bolstered its aid to local forces, air-dropping weapons, ammunition and other supplies to rebel forces inside Syria.

Obama has long resisted an American military presence on the ground to combat ISIS in Iraq and Syria but has reluctantly escalated U.S. involvement in that fight over time since launching the military effort in 2014.

The number of U.S. military forces in Iraq has swelled to more than 3,500 since Obama first announced the deployment of up to 300 American military advisers to Iraq in June 2014.