President Barack Obama has approved the first deployment of troops to Syria, a small group of about 50 commandos who will work with local forces to combat Islamic State militants.
President Barack Obama has approved the first deployment of troops to Syria, a small group of about 50 commandos who will work with local forces to combat Islamic State militants.Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is sending a small number of Special Operations forces to Syria, marking the first full-time deployment of U.S. troops to the chaotic country, said a senior administration official.

The mission will involve fewer than 50 Special Operations advisers who will be working with resistance forces in northern Syria but will not be engaging in direct combat, administration officials said.

The move, which was recommended late last week by the president’s national security team, represents a significant escalation of the American role in Syria. It also reflects growing dissatisfaction with the halting progress against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

The troops’ main focus will be advising Syria Arab and Kurdish forces who are expected to mount a military offensive on Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto capital in the region in the near future. The push against Raqqa, if it yields results, would mark a major victory for the forces battling the Islamic State.

The introduction of American advisers follows Russia’s stepped-up involvement in the war in support of Syrian President Bashar al Assad and the beginning of a hastily convened meeting of diplomats in Vienna on Thursday to discuss ways to end the increasingly bloody conflict

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he’s ordered his country’s military to strike Islamic State forces, but White House officials said the Russians are indiscriminately targeting all rebel forces arrayed against the regime. Russia’s stepped-up military actions on behalf of the Assad regime have complicated U.S. efforts to help rebels in northern Syria. U.S. officials are worried that the Syrian Arab forces that they are backing will feel compelled to shift their efforts to battling Assad’s forces, which have made some gains with Russia’s recent support

In addition to sending the Special Operations forces, Obama also said he was sending A-10 attack planes and F-15 fighter jets to Incirlik airbase in Turkey, where they will be able to support ground operations against the Islamic State. The heavily armored A-10s, which fly low and slow over the battlefield, are built to back ground troops engaged in combat.

Obama has also said he will step up consultations with Prime Minister Haider al Abadi about establishing a Special Operations task force to target Islamic State leaders in Iraq. The move was foreshadowed earlier this week by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter who told lawmakers that the military’s elite counterterrorism forces would increase the pace of raids like the one in northern Iraq that freed as many as 70 prisoners being held by the Islamic State and resulted in the death of Army Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler.

More costly and ambitious measures in Syria, such as no fly zones or buffer zones that would require tens of thousands of ground troops, did not receive the backing of Obama’s top policy advisers and weren’t among the options forwarded to the president. Many Republicans and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, have said they favor a no fly zone in Syria.

Dems upset by policy shift

WASHINGTON – Congressional Democrats on Friday criticized President Barack Obama’s decision to dispatch a small band of U.S. special operations forces to northern Syria to help local fighters battle the Islamic State, saying they feared “mission creep” from a president who promised to end American involvement in two wars.
Democrats complained the move was being made without a clear U.S. strategy in Syria, torn asunder by years of civil war. They also said the move makes it essential that Congress debate and vote on a new authorization for the use of military force. Obama is relying on war powers given to President George W. Bush after 9/11.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said sending American special forces into Syria represents a major shift in policy that puts the United States on a “potentially dangerous downward slope into a civil war with no end in sight.”
Murphy and other Democrats said the deployment, while small, risks drawing U.S. forces into combat missions and will inevitably increase pressure for the United States to enter the war against Syria President Bashar Assad.
They say it also runs counter to Obama’s address to the nation on Sept. 10, 2013, when he said: “I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria. I will not pursue an open-ended action like Iraq or Afghanistan.”