CNN
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The number of U.S. troops in Syria has regularly surged beyond what the Pentagon has disclosed since at least 2020, with the number of U.S. troops in Syria increasing in recent months to about 900 people the U.S. has said has been in Syria for years. According to multiple defense officials, the number of soldiers has more than doubled. This story was reported to CNN.
The Pentagon said last week that the addition of more than 900 troops was “temporary.” But on Monday, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder acknowledged that the number of troops in Syria “generally increases over time as threats to essential forces increase.”
Ryder revealed for the first time on Thursday that the number of troops in Syria is about 2,000, “significantly higher than what we have been describing” in recent months and years. He also said he only learned in recent days that there was a larger footprint there.
The Army’s director of plans, operations and training distributed the true numbers internally earlier this month, two officials told CNN. It is not clear exactly when troop numbers reached their current peak, but the United States surged additional assets and personnel to the Middle East following Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7 of last year.
On Monday, the Pentagon issued a new statement seeking to clarify long-standing discrepancies about the number of troops in Syria.
“In addition to approximately 900 basic troops, there are also approximately 1,100 U.S. military personnel in Syria who are deployed for short periods as temporary support personnel to support force protection, transportation, maintenance, and other emerging operational requirements. “We’re working hard,” Ryder said.
“The number of these additional contingent forces has fluctuated over the past several years based on mission needs, but has generally increased over time as threats to the base force have increased,” he added.
Defense officials have long been reluctant to reveal the true number of troops in Syria because of the risk of angering neighboring countries, especially Iraq, sources told CNN. When the Pentagon first authorized a large-scale military presence, Ryder said, “Diplomatic and operational security are often considered in our deployments.”
Syria is not the only country deploying more troops than the Pentagon has previously announced. In a statement Monday, the Pentagon acknowledged there may be more than 2,500 troops in Iraq, the threshold the military uses for its military presence in the country. But the Pentagon did not provide details on how many additional troops were in Iraq, saying only that “additional temporary support forces are being deployed on a rotational basis.”
“However, due to operational security and diplomatic considerations, we are unable to provide further specifics,” Ryder said in a statement. Vague references to additional troops in Iraq leave open the possibility that, as in Syria, there will be a much larger presence than previously acknowledged.
The presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is a sensitive issue for Iraqi government officials, who have publicly stated that they want U.S. troops to leave. If Iraqis see the number of troops in Syria increasing, they will be concerned that the US is doing the same in Iraq, officials explained, and now It seems possible. It’s a particularly sensitive issue amid negotiations over the future location of U.S. forces in Iraq.
For more than a year, Washington and Baghdad have held a series of talks about the future of the US military presence in the country. In January, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani clarified the purpose of the talks, saying the aim was to “permanently end the presence of United Nations forces in Iraq.” The U.S. military presence in Syria is dependent on U.S. military support in Iraq, and if the former presence becomes large-scale, the latter may require more troops.
Defense officials say the Pentagon has not misled the public about the core number of troops stationed in Syria since 2020, which it says is about 900. Most are special operations forces, one defense official said, and the military rarely approves changes to special forces units. Operational force level. Officials say the approximately 1,100 additional troops stationed in recent months are primarily Army “temporary support” forces intended to augment the core presence with logistics and defense support. states.
But these units are typically replaced as soon as their rotation ends, which often lasts less than three months, so the total number has consistently exceeded 900 over the years, officials said. .
The concealment of the true number of US troops in Syria dates back to the first administration of Donald Trump. In 2020, outgoing US special envoy to Syria Jim Jeffrey admitted that his team routinely misled military leaders about troop levels on the ground. This suggests that military personnel were not the only ones keeping the numbers secret.
“We were constantly playing shell games to keep the leadership from revealing how many troops were there,” Jeffrey told Defense One at the time. President Trump agreed to keep about 200 to 400 U.S. troops in Syria in 2019, but the actual number is “much higher,” Jeffrey said.
There are many more private contractors in this country. There were more than 5,400 contractors in Iraq and Syria in the second quarter of 2024, according to a Congressional Research Service report.
