We have the numbers to retake Raqqa, say US-backed Syrian militias

Late last month, Pentagon leaders sent a new plan on how to defeat IS to the White House, including a variety of options for the ongoing fight in Iraq and Syria.

USA forces are setting up an outpost some 20 miles south of the city, where they will establish an artillery battery that will fire powerful 155mm shells from M777 howitzers, in support of the coalition force’s offensive, according to Defense Department sources who spoke to the Washington Post.

The comments by Cihan Sheikh Ehmed, the spokeswoman of the Syrian Democratic Forces, came as US troops are playing a bigger role on the ground in the battle to capture Raqqa in northern Syria. Turkey views the YPG as a threat to its national security.

US -trained CTS units battled sniper and mortar fire, often moving from house to house, reaching the Aamel district of western Mosul on Friday, in a push to tighten the noose around Islamic State fighters dug into the old city center. She did not provide any figures regarding the number of USA -led coalition troops.

This troop movement came right after another recent temporary deployment of some dozens of army forces to the outskirts of Manbij, Syria, named a “reassure and deter” mission by the Pentagon.

The new plan by the U.S.to counter Islamic State in Syria and Iraq involves the deployment of 1,000 soldiers to Kuwait, a US military official told VOA on Friday.

While Turkey has not yet agreed to work with the Kurds (included in the SDF) to retake Raqqa, the U.S.is discussing what role they could play. “And we don’t think this is going to help”.

But Syria is not Iraq. “The Americans lost almost every war”, he continued.

“For the base in Syria to be useful, it must be within about 20 miles of the operations that US -backed forces are carrying out”.

The Kurdish militia has secured major roads in and out of Raqqa, disrupting the Islamic State’s ability to replenish manpower and supplies, as well as the group’s ability to launch attacks on targets in the United States and Europe, Dorrian said.

Turkish tanks crossed the Syrian border as artillery and fighter jets pounded the militants in an operation backed by the US-led coalition. If the U.S.is able to capture Raqqa, it will be able to carve out a base in eastern Syria from where it can further wage its war to neo-colonize Syria.

United States special forces are already on the ground, advising the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance.

From the start, Turkey’s goal with its military incursion into Syria has been to push IS militants back from its border and prevent Kurdish forces from holding contiguous territory from east to west across the border. He said a complicating factor is that the USA does not have a partner government to work with in Syria as is the case in Iraq.

The U.S. -led coalition said Wednesday that it was winning the broader war against ISIS. In the Syrian army’s advance against IS troops in Palmyra, the troops were indirectly aided by USA airstrikes against the group. Earlier this week, US intelligence reported that ISIS leaders are attempting to leave the city, where there are about 4,000 ISIS terrorists.

The only option that the Trump administration has that could remotely succeed is by taking a far less strident town during the UN-sponsored, intra-Syrian negotiations that are now ongoing in Geneva.

Turkey supports “terrorism that killed tens of thousands” and has “destroyed part of the country’s infrastructure”, wrote the Syrian Foreign and Expatriate Ministries in two letters.

“Turkey has always set the Euphrates as a red line”, Noah Bonsey, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, said in a telephone interview. And yet which country or coalition of countries would actually man the zones and how those zones would contribute to an end to the war is hard to envision. The recent surge in military budget by billions of dollars is indicative that the USA has no interest in peace, the economy is heavily supported by militarism and investing in the death, destruction, and occupation of sovereign nations. “They will be providing partner support for the Syrian Democratic Forces”.