UAE ready to send ground troops to Syria to combat ISIS

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has agreed to support the US-led coalition force’s ground operation against ISIS.

Foreign Affairs minister Anwar Gargash told reporters: “Our position throughout has been that a real campaign against Daesh has to include a ground force”.

“We have been frustrated at the slow pace of confronting Daesh”, he said, referring to “IS” by its Arabic acronym.

Asked about the possibility of Saudi ground troops entering Syria, he said logic would suggest this is unlikely, but that “with the insane Saudi leadership nothing is far-fetched”.

Kerry and Al-Jubeir also discussed the ongoing war in Yemen, “and the hope that perhaps over the course of these next weeks it may become possible to try to engage in some productive conversations about how to bring that conflict to a close”, Kerry said. “We need to combine both to achieve better results on the ground”, Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri said on Thursday.

“Any ground intervention onto Syrian land without the agreement of the Syrian government is an act of aggression…and we regret that those (who do so) will return to their countries in coffins”, he said.

Saudi Arabian and Moroccan military forces have allegedly begun collaborating in order to launch joint ground operations against the so-called Islamic State (ISIS). A Saudi-led coalition is battling Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who captured the capital of Sana’a in January 2015.

An ISIS fighter hoists the traditional black flag of the group.

Shortly after receiving the Saudi proposal, US Department of State spokesman John Kirby said that US policymakers were not clear what Riyadh was actually proposing and required more details.

The United States has for weeks been calling on partners in the 65-member coalition bombing the IS group in Iraq and Syria to contribute more. He added that Saudi Arabia is fully prepared for this and his statement came on the eve of a conference for the defence ministers of countries participating in the global coalition to fight terrorism which is scheduled to be held in Brussels today.

Reacting to the Saudi plan Ira’s IRGC chief commander Mohammad Ali Jafari said that Saudi Arabia would not dare to dispatch troops to Syria and if the kingdom goes through such a plan, it would be suicidal.