A senior official said the US soldiers would organise local forces in their fight against Isis as the Syrian president said his troops were ‘advancing on every front’

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Dozens of US special operations troops will arrive in Syria “very soon” as promised by president Barack Obama’s administration, a senior official has said.



The troops will help organise local forces battling the self-proclaimed Islamic State in northern Syria, according to special envoy Brett McGurk.

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“They will be going in very soon,” McGurk told CBS television’s Face the Nation.

His comments came as Syrian president Bashar al-Assad said his troops were advancing on “nearly every front” in the country’s four-year civil war thanks to Russian airstrikes that began in September.

The embattled president also said he favoured new peace talks to be hosted in Moscow, but stressed that the Syrian conflict could not be resolved without “defeating terrorism”.

In an interview with Hong Kong-based Phoenix television, Assad said the situation in Syria had “improved in a very good way” since Russia began airstrikes on 30 September.

“Now I can say that the army is making advancement in nearly every front... in many different directions and areas on the Syrian ground,” he said, speaking in English.

Russia has coordinated its airstrikes with Damascus, unlike the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group, which Assad and his government criticise as ineffectual.

The army has made minimal progress on the ground, according to groups monitoring the war, though the Russian strikes have reportedly boosted morale among government troops and supporters.

In late October, Obama authorised no more than 50 special operations forces to deploy to northern Syria in a non-combatant, advisory role to help coordinate local ground troops and anti-Isis coalition efforts.



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It marks the first official deployment of US troops on the ground in Syria since a coalition formed to counter the violent extremist group.

The US troops will assist an Arab-Kurd coalition that includes the main Syrian Kurdish militia the People’s Protection Units (YPG), Arab groups and Syriac Christians.

These local forces had conducted “a very successful operation”, McGurk said. “This is focused on isolating the capital of [Islamic State] in Raqqa.”

He said the local forces had retaken about 1,100 square kilometers (435 square miles) in the last two weeks and killed about 300 IS fighters.

The US-led coalition aimed to “suffocate and strangle them in the core” of IS in Iraq and Syria through multiple coordinated offensives, McGurk said.

The coalition was also trying to cut off access for IS to the Syrian border in order to cut off the main route between Raqqa and the Iraqi city of Mosul, McGurk explained.

Although there appeared to be progress on defeating Isis, there was no agreement on the fate of Assad, whom the opposition and their backers want gone, but allies such as Iran and Russia say should be allowed to run in new elections if he wants.

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Assad said it was “my right” to run in new elections but it was “too early” to say if he intended to.

“(It) depends on how my feeling is regarding the Syrian people. I mean, do they want me or not? You cannot talk about something that’s going to happen maybe in the next few years,” he said.

Assad said he backed Moscow’s efforts to organise new dialogue between the regime and opposition in a “Moscow 3” conference, but insisted a political solution could only be achieved with the defeat of “terrorism”.

“We need to make the dialogue, but the concrete steps should follow at least a major defeat of the terrorists and the government takes control of a major area that has been captured by the terrorists,” he said.