U.S. proposes sending more Special Forces to Syria

The Obama administration is considering sending 250 additional U.S. special forces to Syria to advise rebel groups as part of a broader Pentagon recommendation on how to increase the pace of operations against ISIS, a U.S. defense official said Friday.

The goal is to lay the groundwork for local forces to retake both Raqqa, Syria, and Mosul, Iraq, and eliminate ISIS' ability to use them as areas from which to plan external attacks.

President Barack Obama emphasized the importance of that goal after a meeting with top commanders at the White House earlier this week. "We should no longer tolerate the kinds of positioning that is enabled by them having headquarters in Raqqa and Mosul. We've got to keep on putting the pressure on them," Obama said Tuesday.

An increased level of Special Forces is just one of a number of possibilities. If approved, these troops would grow the current U.S. Special Operations effort of up to 50 troops authorized to be in Syria. They are there to provide advice and assistance to moderate Syrian forces fighting ISIS.

That effort has proven successful in several recent battles, including efforts to cut ISIS travel between Raqqa and Syria and to retake the key town of Shaddadi in Syria. "We are considering a number of different proposals to accelerate the defeat of ISIL by better enabling local forces, but no decisions have been made," said Navy spokesman Capt. Jeff A. Davis, using a different acronym for the terror group.

U.S. officials had originally told CNN the proposed increase would be just a few dozen because of the need to provide additional support forces such as aviation and intelligence. But another emerging line of thinking is to agree to an overall significant increase, publicly announce it and then send in the forces gradually over time.

As the Pentagon looks at trying to accelerate its campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, the idea of increasing reliance on Special Operations forces is gaining traction, but officials caution a final decision still must be made. A number of options have been presented to the White House.

There will be an increased risk if the number of Special Operations forces rises. Their work is highly dangerous, as they operate in small teams potentially far from their base in northern Syria near the Turkish border. The number of Special Operations forces inside Syria ebbs and flows, with perhaps less than half the authorized amount inside Syria at any one time, one official said.

The idea being discussed is to add more teams to the effort so perhaps the moderate forces can accelerate their own fighting. But some officials advocate keeping the numbers relatively small so they can maintain a low profile and not require additional transportation and supply support that might become visible.

One of the major tasks ahead is trying to get opposition forces geared up in the coming months to fight to retake Raqqa, ISIS' self-declared capital in Syria. The U.S. hopes Syrian Arab forces, as well as some members of the Syrian Democratic Front, which includes non-Arab fighters, will be in a position to do that with U.S. advice and assistance, the officials said. The U.S. military has also restarted a small training effort for Syrian anti-ISIS fighters months after an initial effort failed. The current training program has small numbers of U.S.-selected fighters from various groups, transporting them across the border to Turkey for several days of basic training. The fighters are given radios and taught how to communicate with U.S. forces. When they see potential targets, they inform the U.S., which then sends its own reconnaissance aircraft to determine if the target should be struck.

Options to increase efforts in Iraq may be less dramatic. U.S. officials are trying to see if the Iraqi government would accept additional fire support from either ground-based artillery or Apache helicopters. Additional U.S. trainers are expected to be sent to Iraq, with all of the increases aimed at helping the Iraqi forces prepare to retake Mosul.

Article from CNN Politics 8 April 2016

US Special Forces Engage ISIS for First Time, Inflict Heavy Casualties

US Special Forces Engage ISIS for First Time, Inflict Heavy Casualties An article by Hunter Roosevelt, published on Controversial Times.com on December 17, 2014

Reports out of Iraq indicate that American Special Forces “advisers” have engaged ISIS in ground combat for the first time.

ISIS forces attacked an Iraqi Army outpost occupied by more than 100 Americans around 1 a.m. local time. The American forces responded “equipped with light and medium weapons, supported by F-18? fighter jets according to sources on the ground.

According to Shafaq News Iraq, US troops have entered with its Iraqi partner, according to Colonel, Salam Nazim in line against ISIS elements and clashed with them for more than two hours, to succeed in removing them from al-Dolab area, and causing losses in their ranks, at a time American fighter jets directed several strikes focused on ISIS gatherings that silenced their heavy sources of fire. He points out that the clashes took place between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m.

A field commander told reporters that the Americans were able to inflict heavy casualties on ISIS while suffering no casualties of their own while forcing the terror group back to their base some 10 kilometers away.

Sheikh Mahmud Nimrawi, a prominent tribal leader in the region, said that “US forces intervened because of ISIS started to come near the base, which they are stationed in so out of self-defense, they responded, welcoming the US intervention, which I hope will not be the last.“

The Sheikh continued, “We have made progress in al-Dolab area, in which ISIS has withdrawn from to the villages beyond, after the battles which involved a private American force , and provided a great impetus firearm, and opened hubs around the region enabled them to storm and surprise ISIS fighters.”

The short version is that ISIS attacked a base where more than 100 Special Forces “advisers” are stationed and took a two hour beating from both the air and the ground while the good guys took no casualties.

Why US Special Forces failed to rescue James Foley

US intelligence officials still know relatively little about the workings of Islamic State militants. James Foley may have been traded by insurgent groups before ending up in IS hands, which complicates the intelligence picture stated Anna Mulrine, a Staff writer for the Christian Science Monitor in an August 21st article.

The failed attempt to rescue journalist James Foley before he was killed by Islamic State militants – and the ongoing efforts to track down other American hostages before it’s too late – illustrate a glaring shortcoming in US military capabilities: that good US military intelligence on these militant groups is in short supply.

Although the Pentagon greenlighted the deployment of Special Operations Forces (SOF) to Syria – along with the US military’s most high-tech air and ground components – the mission did not result in a rescue.

“Unfortunately, the mission was not successful, because the hostages were not present at the targeted location,” Rear Adm. John Kirby, Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement Wednesday evening.

Even so, defense officials sought to put a positive spin on the mission. “This operation, by the way, was a flawless operation,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in a briefing with reporters Thursday afternoon. “But the hostages were not there.”

The Pentagon’s unusual confirmation of a failed Special Forces mission – made at the behest of the White House – was in large part an effort to reassure the American public that the United States has not sat idly by during the meteoric rise of the Islamic State (IS).

But the news drove home the point, too, that US intelligence officials still know relatively little about the workings of IS.

Pentagon officials bristled at this implication, however. “Was this a failure of intelligence? No,” Secretary Hagel insisted. “The fact is that intelligence does not come wrapped in a package with a bow. It is a mosaic of many pictures, many factors.”

The problem, he added in a favorite Pentagon maxim, is that “the enemy always has a say in everything.”

True, hostage rescue operations using Special Forces are “extraordinarily complicated” under any circumstances, says Rick “Ozzie” Nelson, a nonresident fellow in the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

That’s in large part because “high-value hostages are high-value assets to our adversaries, and they’re going to do what they can to preserve that asset, so they are going to be kept in highly protected, inaccessible places,” he says.

This is further complicated by the fact that as Al Qaeda leadership has been fragmented through US military strikes, the jihadist movement has become more diffuse as well, with “increasing numbers of groups and jihadist fighters,” says Paul Scharre, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security who previously served as a specialist on intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance programs at the Pentagon.

Mr. Foley, for example, may have been traded and bartered by different insurgent groups before ending up in IS hands, which in turn complicates the intelligence picture.

“Hostages may be traded for weapons, for territory. Government forces could give a hostage to a rebel group in exchange for leaving them alone in certain areas,” says Mr. Nelson, whose last military assignment before retiring from the Navy was with the Joint Special Operations Command.

Even when the intelligence picture is clearer, “one of the things people may not be aware of is that in Iraq and Afghanistan, when SOF would go on raids and go after terrorist networks, a huge number of those raids ended up in the person you’re looking for not being there,” Mr. Scharre says.

But even failed missions can be of intelligence value, analysts note.

“If the hostage had spent time at the site, you might have access to people who had been holding him at one time,” Nelson says. Then it might be possible to pick up information about “everything from when was the last time the hostages ate to their health, to what rank or role do you have in this terrorist organization, to what are your next set of battle plans?” he adds. “You rarely walk away with nothing.”

Even the grisly video of the execution itself is being scrubbed now by intelligence analysts, Nelson notes. “We now dust for electronic prints the way we used to dust for fingerprints. Every piece of intelligence is a piece of intelligence we can use,” he says. “Who was standing next to Foley in the video? Where did it happen? These are electronic clues.”