WASHINGTON: The United States turned up the heat on the Islamic State group Thursday, sending an additional 400 US troops into Syria to support an offensive to retake Raqa, the jihadists’ de facto capital.
The administration also announced a high level meeting on March 22 of the 68 countries in the US-led coalition to discuss plans to accelerate IS’s defeat.
The announcements in Washington come as US-backed forces tighten their hold around militants bastions in Iraq’s northern city of Mosul and in Raqa.
More than two and a half years after the start of a US air war against ISIS, the militants are under siege in western Mosul, abandoned to their fate by ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.
And a US-backed coalition of Arab-Kurdish fighters are closing in on Raqqa, manoeuvring to isolate the city from the rest of Syria’s militant-controlled territory.
But the battle there is not yet won, and the Pentagon wants to make sure that the city of 300,000, a onetime propaganda showcase for ISIS, falls.
Among the additional US troops deployed in Syria is a Marine Corp artillery battery equipped with 155mm howitzers, according to the Pentagon.
A US military spokesman on Thursday said that the extra troops were “temporary,” and their deployment would not lead to a long-term increase in American troop levels in Syria. But the movement comes as President Donald Trump weighs options for an intensified anti-ISIS campaign. US media reports say the Pentagon is proposing the deployment of additional special operations forces, artillery and attack helicopters in support of an offensive by local ground forces. Complicating the US strategy is the fact that NATO ally Turkey is dead set against Raqqa falling to an Arab-Kurdish force grouped under the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Trained and advised by US special operations troops, the SDF has proved to be the most reliable US ally on the ground in Syria, and the only local force it considers capable of rapidly taking Raqqa. But Turkey regards the SDF as a cover for the Kurdish YPG militia, branded as a terrorist organisation by Ankara.—Agencies
