Pentagon acknowledges 2,000 U.S. troops deployed in Syria

After several weeks of uncertainty in Syria, following the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime, the Pentagon confirmed Thursday that the official number of U.S. troops deployed in Syria is higher than previously announced.

The United States, which maintains the Al Tanf base near the Iraqi border, claimed to have some 900 uniformed personnel on active duty in the country. However, the press secretary of the Department of Defense, Brigadier General Pat Ryder, said that this number currently exceeds 2,000.

According to Ryder, the increase comes "in light of the situation in Syria." The general assured that these additional forces are considered "temporary rotational forces" that are deployed to meet changing mission needs, while the core 900 deployed are on longer-term deployments.

"As you know, for many of our deployments, numbers will fluctuate from time to time. But given that this number is significantly higher than what we've been briefing, I wanted to let you know as soon as I found out this information," he said.

U.S. troops have been present in numbers and strength in Syria since Western intervention against the Assad regime began, following its use of chemical weapons in the civil war in 2014, as well as to fight the Islamic State.

As of 2019, the Trump administration, which initially beefed up the military presence in Syria, began withdrawing some troops, especially in the northern region of the country, where Turkish forces and Turkish-backed rebels were advancing against Kurdish rebels of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Since the Islamist rebels re-launched a forceful offensive against government forces, leading to the fall of the al-Assad regime, the United States has conducted some strikes in Syria, targeting armed Islamists. The rest of its known operations have been limited to supporting the SDF in the northeast of the country.

Diplomatic mission meets with Islamist leaders

U.S. envoys arrived in Syria for talks with the country's new Islamist-dominated authorities, the State Department said Friday.

It is the first official diplomatic mission sent by Washington to Damascus since the outbreak of the bloody civil war in 2011 and led this month to the fall of President Bashar al-Assad, who fled to Russia.

The U.S. diplomats will meet with representatives of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the group at the forefront of the victorious rebel offensive that Washington has labeled "terrorist," and members of Syrian civil society.

The aim is to talk about "their vision for the future of the country and how the United States can help them," the State Department said.

The delegation is headed by Barbara Leaf, the State Department's Middle East desk officer, and Daniel Rubinstein, a diplomat specializing in the Arab world who is now in charge of contacts with Syria, the same source said.