US concedes it has double the number of troops in Syria as Biden sends officials to Damascus

By Alex Marquardt, Jennifer Hansler, Natasha Bertrand, Haley Britzky and Michael Conte, CNN

(CNN) — The Pentagon announced the US currently has “approximately 2,000” troops in Syria, more than double the previously disclosed number of 900, a Defense Department spokesperson said at a press briefing on Thursday.

“There are diplomatic and operational security considerations oftentimes with our deployments and some of those numbers, and [that is] certainly the case here,” said Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, who said that the 2,000 troops are all in Syria to fight ISIS.

“As I understand it, and as it was explained to me, these additional forces are considered temporary rotational forces that deploy to meet shifting mission requirements, whereas the core 900 deployers are on longer term deployments,” Ryder said on Thursday.

A US delegation is in Syria on Friday to engage with the interim Syrian government, a State Department spokesperson said, the first high-level American visit since the fall of President Bashar al-Assad.

The delegation – comprised of Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf, Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens and NEA Senior Advisr Daniel Rubinstein – is in the capital city of Damascus.

CNN reported Thursday that this delegation was expected to travel to Syria in the coming days, led by Rubinstein. The State Department spokesperson also confirmed that Rubinstein “will lead the Department’s diplomatic engagement on Syria.”

The delegation intends to meet with representatives of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the de-facto government in Syria, “to discuss transition principles endorsed by the United States and regional partners in Aqaba, Jordan,” the spokesperson said.

Those principles, outlined after a meeting last weekend in the coastal Jordanian city, focus on issues like human rights, preventing a resurgence of terrorist groups like ISIS and destroying chemical weapons.

Carstens has been in neighboring Lebanon and Jordan in the past two weeks leading the search for American journalist Austin Tice, who was detained in Syria over 12 years ago.

The delegation is also expected to discuss efforts to find Tice. These topics have been the focus of the US direct engagement with HTS, which Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed on Saturday. HTS is a US designated terrorist group.

The US troops are focused on efforts to counter ISIS, one of the key issues confronting the international community in the wake of the Assad regime collapse. US officials have repeatedly stressed that the terrorist group must not be able to use the transition in Syria to rebuild.

Pushed by CNN on why the Pentagon had not previously disclosed the accurate number of US forces in Syria, Ryder denied there was any attempt to obfuscate the real number and said he only learned of the true number on Thursday before his briefing.

“Part of the explanation is the sensitivity from a diplomatic and operation security standpoint,” Ryder added, refusing to further detail the diplomatic considerations.

“I’m not going to get into diplomatic discussions,” said Ryder. “But, you know, there’s just diplomatic considerations.”

Ryder said he learned the originally disclosed number was incorrect because he “got word of it recently, as our team was looking at this … and I asked for more information on this, recognizing that if the numbers are not what we briefed, let’s find out what the actual numbers are and go from there.”

Asked if Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was aware of the number of US troops in Syria, Ryder said he is “confident that the secretary is tracking US forces deployed around the world,” but that Austin had not spoken with the commander of US Central Command, Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, who oversees US forces in the region, about this issue.

Ryder also said he wasn’t “tracking any adjustments” to that number of US troops in Syria.

The US has had forces in Syria to fight ISIS since 2014, working with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to combat the terrorist group.

However, the rapid fall of Assad’s regime has led to fears of a power vacuum that could re-empower ISIS, which has not held territory in Syria since 2019.

Further complicating the conflict, though the US still characterizes the SDF as “an important partner,” Turkey has threatened to destroy the group, which is made up of fighters from a group known as the Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG), which is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey.

The US has carried out dozens of airstrikes on ISIS targets in recent days, as the SDF has said they have had to halt anti-ISIS operations amid recent attacks by Turkish-backed militants.

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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