Above photo: AFP.
Washington quietly doubled the official number of troops present inside Syria at an unspecified point before the fall of Damascus.
Pentagon Press Secretary General Pat Ryder revealed on 19 December that the US has “around 2,000” troops deployed inside Syria, more than double the figure Washington has previously claimed to have inside the war-torn country.
“As you know, we have been briefing you regularly that there are approximately 900 US troops deployed to Syria. In light of the situation in Syria and the significant interests, we recently learned that those numbers were higher,” Ryder told reporters on Thursday, adding that he “learned today there are approximately 2,000 US troops in Syria.”
How does the Pentagon “recently learn” that it has more than double the number of US troops in Syria than it claimed to have a day earlier? pic.twitter.com/fydxpWcNqT
— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) December 20, 2024
Ryder goes on to reveal that the unannounced increase started before the fall of the Syrian government – without specifying a time frame – and that the deployment includes temporary forces for “shifting mission requirements.”
The US illegally deployed troops in Syria in November 2015 to allegedly “prevent the return of ISIS.” This came just two months after Russia accepted the request of Damascus to provide air support to the Syrian army, Iranian special forces, and Hezbollah in their fight against ISIS forces who threatened to overrun the Syrian capital.
In the chaos that ensued, Washington and allied Kurdish militias seized control of Syria’s resource-rich northeast, where the US army remains to this day and regularly loots Syrian resources. Hundreds of US troops are also present in the massive Al-Tanf base near the tri-border area connecting Syria, Iraq, and Jordan.
“Whether Washington chooses to admit it or not, the US now has direct influence over the vast majority of Syria’s most productive oil fields,” Syria analyst Jennifer Cafarella of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote in 2017. She also explained that the territorial gains of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) “are Syrian national treasures that, when added up, amount to brute geopolitical power for the US.”
In 2019, US President-elect Donald Trump detailed why Washington intends to uphold the occupation of northeast Syria, saying, “We want to bring our soldiers home. But we did leave soldiers because we’re keeping the oil .… I like oil. We’re keeping the oil.”
For the past several years, the US claimed to have only “900 troops” inside Syria. However, local sources and observers have said the actual number was likely closer to 2,000 troops, which are rotated in and out from US bases in Iraq.
Since the start of the US–Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, the Pentagon has repeatedly reinforced its bases in Syria to confront attacks by Iraqi resistance factions.