The U.S.
administration is considering a plan to greatly increase the number of
American special operations forces deployed to Syria as it looks to
accelerate recent gains against Islamic State, U.S. officials told
Reuters. The officials, with
direct knowledge of the proposal's details, declined to disclose the
exact increase under consideration. But one of them said it would leave
the U.S. special operations contingent many times larger than the around
50 troops currently in Syria, where they operate largely as advisors
away from the front lines. The
proposal is among the military options being prepared for President
Barack Obama, who is also weighing an increase in the number of American
troops in Iraq. A White House spokeswoman declined comment. The
proposal appears to be the latest sign of growing confidence in the
ability of U.S.-backed forces inside Syria and Iraq to claw back
territory from the hardline Sunni Islamist group. Islamic
State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, controls the cities of Mosul in Iraq
and Raqqa in Syria and is proving a potent threat abroad, claiming
credit for major attacks in Paris in November and Brussels in March. But there are mounting indications that the momentum in Iraq and Syria has shifted against Islamic State. U.S. officials say
the group is losing a battle to forces arrayed against it from many
sides in the vast region it controls. In Iraq, the group has been
pulling back since December when it lost Ramadi, the capital of the
western province of Anbar. In Syria, the jihadist fighters have been
pushed out of the strategic city of Palmyra by Russian-backed Syrian
government forces. Since
U.S.-backed forces recaptured the strategic Syrian town of al-Shadadi in
late February, a growing number of Arab fighters in Syria have offered
to join the fight against the group, the U.S. officials said. U.S.
forces have also had increased success in eliminating top ISIS leaders.
Air strikes in recent weeks killed a top official called Abd al-Rahman
Mustafa al-Qaduli, and an Islamic State commander described as the
group's "minister of war" -- Abu Omar al-Shishani, or Omar the Chechen. The United States
announced last December it was deploying a new force of special
operations troops to Iraq to conduct raids against Islamic State there
and in neighboring Syria. That followed its announcement in October that
dozens of U.S. special forces would be deployed in Syria, the first
U.S. ground troops to be stationed there. The
additional U.S. forces in Syria would be primarily assigned to
establishing sites where they would train Arab tribesmen who have been
volunteering to fight ISIS. The tribesmen eventually would be provided
weapons, paving the way for offensive against the de facto ISIS capital
of Raqqa under U.S. air cover. The
dozens of U.S. special operations forces now in Syria are working
closely with a collection of Syrian Arab groups within an alliance that
is still dominated by Kurdish forces. The United States has been
supplying Arabs in the thousands-strong alliance with ammunition since
October. While the strategy
is showing results so far, U.S. officials and Kurdish leaders agree that
a predominately Arab force is needed to take Raqqa, a majority Arab
city whose residents would consider Kurds as occupiers. The
new push by U.S. special operations forces in Syria would be separate
from a revised U.S. military effort under way to train a limited number
of Syrian fighters in Turkey. That effort is focused on teaching them to
identify targets for U.S.-led coalition air strikes.
U.S. weighs ramping up deployment of special forces to Syria

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