US plan to retake Daesh stronghold inadequate: analysts

ANKARA

Defense analysts say the U.S. plan to send 50 Special Forces operatives to retake the Daesh stronghold in Syria’s Raqqa is inadequate.

While Russian planes bombard the city, the Pentagon announced its plan to send a team of Special Forces and train militant factions in renewed efforts to drive Daesh out.

However, Michael Pregent, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, pointed out that more efforts would be needed for the plan to succeed.

“It’s not going to work,” told Voice of America Friday.

“What you do not do is telegraph that we are going to be sending 50 special operators into Syria when we have no ground forces in Syria,” he said. “Embedding with an indigenous force only works when you have conventional forces on the ground.”

Moreover, such embedding operations are not without consequences. On Oct. 22, a U.S. soldier was killed in Iraq when a team of U.S. forces joined Iraqi Peshmerga in an operation to rescue Iraqi soldiers held at a Daesh-controlled prison in Hawija near northern Kirkuk.

The incident sparked questions from the press to the Pentagon on why U.S. personnel were actively involved in military operations and under what legal basis. Pentagon spokesman described the Oct.22 action as a “unique” action taken under certain circumstances.

‘Retaking Raqqa’

Speaking on a trip to Alaska on Friday, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter explained why retaking Raqqa is important.

“Ultimately, Raqqa has to be retaken and returned to its citizens and to a decent way of life, which they're not enjoying under the barbaric rule of Daesh now. In the near term, we will apply pressure to them,” Carter said.

The U.S. is working to “identify and enable capable and motivated local forces” Carter said. American personnel already training members of some of the local factions which fight in the region, the Defense Department said in a separate statement on Friday.

The U.K. has also sent 300 members of its special forces to work under U.S. command, a senior British military official told the Express on Monday.

Meanwhile, negotiations to find a political solution to the Syrian conflict, which Russia, U.S., Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, France and representatives of 13 other are supposed to start again on Nov. 13. The first session of the talks, which ended on Oct. 30 in Vienna, came to no agreement as the participants remain deeply divided over the future of the Assad regime.

‘Next step short of an invasion’

While U.S. military activity is clearly being stepped up, it will not be enough to do the job, according to Brookings Institute military analyst Michael O’Hanlon.

“I think we have to do more. The question is, does this point towards a logical next step that is short of an invasion? We're probably going to have to wind up, with several thousand Americans committed to this particular effort in and around Syria, sort of like where we are with Iraq or Afghanistan today,” O’Hanlon told National Public Radio on Sunday.

But Defense Department spokesman Joshua Earnest insisted that the effort would be effective.

“I certainly wouldn't underestimate the capability and capacity of our U.S. Special Operations Forces to be an important force multiplier anywhere around the world they’re deployed. And the president does expect that they can have an impact in intensifying our strategy for building the capacity of local forces inside of Syria to take the fight on the ground to Daesh in their own country,” Earnest said in a press conference on Friday.