UAE ready to send ground troops in to Syria to combat IS

“Our position throughout has been that a real campaign against Daesh has to include a ground force”, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said at a news conference in Abu Dhabi, referring to Islamic State by its Arabic acronym.

“We are talking about troops on the ground that will lead the way, that will train, that will support and so forth”, he said, adding that “US leadership on this” would be a crucial factor.

The news comes days after Saud Arabia said it was ready to participate in ground offensive operations against Daesh in Syria under the umbrella of the U.S.-led coalition.

Russian and Syrian government forces have intensified an assault on rebel-held areas around the Syrian city of Aleppo, prompting tens of thousands of refugees to flee to the Turkish border.

US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, who last month chastised some countries for doing “nothing at all”, is meeting next week in Brussels with defence officials from Saudi Arabia and other coalition members to outline the next steps in the anti-IS campaign.

He added that the UAE had been frustrated at the slow pace of the global efforts against Islamic State “although there has been some progress in Iraq recently, of confronting Daesh”.

Saudi Brig. Gen. Ahmad Asiri on Thursday announced the Kingdom’s willingness to send troops into the blood-soaked battlefields of Syria, where Daesh has taken up territory and spread barbaric destruction.

Iran, a key ally of Syrian President Bashaar Al-Assad, also issued a warning, saying Saudi troops would be “wiped out” if they were deployed to war-torn Syria.

“I shudder to think about how some hastily assembled, ill-trained, agenda-driven, incompetent Arab expeditionary force would perform”, analyst Aaron David Miller told Newsweek.

“They talk big”, Jafari said. We are talking of troops to lead the operation.