(Adnkronos) – There are “about two thousand” American troops in post-Assad Syria. The Pentagon confirmed this. And they are more than double the 900 that were known so far. They are all in Syria as part of the fight against ISIS, said spokesman Patrick Ryder, specifying that for the 900 soldiers it is a “long-term” mission, while for the others it is a matter of “additional forces, ” deployed temporarily for “changing mission requirements.” There was no attempt to hide the actual number of units present in the Arab country, the spokesman assured, stating that he had learned the exact data shortly before the communication to the press.
Meanwhile, the State Department announced today, a US delegation arrived in Damascus, for the first mission since the end of the Bashar al-Assad era, to meet with representatives of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which led the lightning offensive against forces loyal to the deposed regime. The delegation includes Barbara Leaf, the top US diplomat for the Middle East; Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs; and Daniel Rubinstein, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Levant affairs. Carstens, CNN points out, was in Lebanon and Jordan in the past two weeks as work continues to determine the fate of Austin Tice, the American journalist arrested in Syria 12 years ago, at the time of the bloody conflict that broke out after the start, in 2011, of anti-government protests soon quelled by repression.
Since 2014, US forces have been present in Syria as part of the fight against ISIS and since then have collaborated with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The end of the Assad regime has brought back fears about the ISIS threat. Thousands of ISIS fighters and their families remain in ‘makeshift’ prisons, guarded by Kurdish forces (supported by the US, but opposed by Turkey), with limited weapons available, Politico wrote in recent days, while Kurdish forces continued to clash against Ankara-backed fighters and still active ISIS cells. “I usually hate this cliché, but it’s the closest thing we have to a ticking time bomb,” said a US counterterrorism official, certain that if the attacks against the SDF do not stop, we may have to deal with a “mass escape from prisons”.
Joseph Votel, a retired general who for three years from 2016, the era of the war against ISIS, led the US Central Command, spoke of a “terrorist army in detention” and is “very concerned.”
Most of the ISIS fighters who have been captured, Politico pointed out, are from Iraq and Syria, but the jihadists also came from European countries, Central Asia and North America, including the United States. And the issue of the return of foreign fighters has been at the center of debate for years. The newspaper wrote of the long-standing legal limbo for some 9,000 ISIS fighters and another 50,000 people, including wives and children.
In recent days, the US has conducted dozens of airstrikes against ISIS targets. ISIS “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 that “have allowed” the group to “extend control over new areas”, said Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein yesterday, raising the alarm over “the danger of ISIS members escaping from prisons” and “the worsening situation in the Al-Hol (refugee) camp, with repercussions for the security of Syria and Iraq”. For Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al Sudani, who claims the readiness of Baghdad’s security and intelligence forces, the jihadist group is no longer a threat to Iraq. “The remnants of the defeated ISIS gangs – he is convinced – no longer represent a threat to Iraqi territory.”
