Pentagon admits presence of more than 2,500 US troops in Iraq
Pentagon admits presence of more than 2,500 US troops in Iraq
2024-12-24
Shafaq News/ The Pentagon admitted that there may be more than 2,500 troops in Iraq, which is the basic number the military used for its military presence in the country, but the Pentagon did not provide any details about the number of additional troops in Iraq, and only said that there are “some temporary additional forces deployed on a rotational basis.”
“However, due to security and diplomatic considerations, we do not have further details to provide,” Ryder said in the statement. The vague reference to additional troops in Iraq leaves open the possibility of a much larger presence than previously acknowledged, just as there is in Syria.
The US military presence in Iraq is a sensitive issue for Iraqi officials, who have publicly said they want US forces out of their country.
Officials have made clear that if the Iraqis see a surge in troops in Syria, they fear the United States will do the same in Iraq, too, which it now appears likely to do. It’s a particularly sensitive issue amid negotiations over the future of the U.S. military presence in Iraq.
For more than a year, Washington and Baghdad have been engaged in a series of talks about the future of the US military presence in the country, through the so-called Supreme Military Committee.
In January, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani made clear the goal of the discussions when he said the aim was to “end the presence of international coalition forces in Iraq permanently.”
The US presence in Syria depends on support from US forces in Iraq, and this may require a larger presence in both countries.
Defense officials insist the Pentagon has not misled the public about the baseline number of troops in Syria, which they have said since 2020 is about 900. Most of those are special operations forces, one defense official said, and the military rarely acknowledges changes in special operations force levels.
Officials say about 1,100 additional troops deployed there in recent months are “temporary enabling” forces, primarily with the Army, intended to augment the base presence with logistical and defensive assistance.
But those troops are typically replaced once they finish their rotations, which are often three months or less, so the total has steadily risen above 900 over the years, officials say.
The concealment of the true number of US forces in Syria dates back to the first Trump administration. In 2020, the outgoing US envoy to Syria, Jim Jeffrey, admitted that his team routinely misled senior military leaders about troop levels there, suggesting that it was not exclusively military officials who kept the total number of troops secret.
“We were always playing secret games to not make it clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” Jeffrey told Defense One at the time.
Jeffrey added that Trump agreed in 2019 to keep about 200-400 US troops in Syria, but the actual number was “much higher,” and there are more civilian contractors in the country.
A report by the Congressional Research Service said there were more than 5,400 contractors in Iraq and Syria in the second quarter of 2024.
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