US Special forces to enter Rojava "very soon"

ERBIL (K24) - US special presidential envoy to the anti-IS coalition Brett McGurk said on Sunday that American Special Operatives' mission in Northern Syria will be to organize forces on the ground.

Talking to John Dickerson on "Face the Nation" on CBS TV, Brett McGurk said 50 special forces operatives are going to enter Syria "very soon," though refraining from specifying when. He said he has recently been to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and talked to the US task force there about the issue.

Without naming them, McGurk praised the local forces that the US operatives will be working with as "very successful." He told CBS that those forces have taken eleven hundred square kilometers and killed about three hundred IS fighters just in the last two weeks alone in north-eastern Syria. McGurk said a broad coalition of forces began to push toward Raqqa --an objective "we couldn't have done six months ago."

The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG)-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have been on the offensive against the Islamic State group in Hasaka Province in northwest Syria since last month. The SDF, backed by the US-led coalition air forces liberated the town of Al-Hawl, some 40 kilometers southeast of the city of Hasaka and dozens of surrounding villages more than a week ago.

The Obama administration announced last month that US special forces will be sent to Northern Syria. White House press secretary Josh Earnest clarified that these forces "are not being deployed with a combat mission."