Word: syria
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Sunday's surprise raid by helicopter-borne U.S. troops in eastern Syria raises at least three key questions. Given that the U.S. is saying the number of volunteer fighters infiltrating Iraq from Syria has dwindled significantly in the past 18 months, why was this action deemed necessary? Does the raid signal a shift in U.S. tactics in the region? And with just over a week before the U.S. presidential election...
...what is thought to be the first such incursion from the Iraq side since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, at least four U.S. helicopters crossed Iraq's western border with Syria and attacked what officials in Damascus said was a half-constructed building in Sukkariyeh Farm, 5 miles from the Syrian frontier town of Abu Qamal. Eight people were reported to have been killed in the raid. Damascus "condemns this aggression and holds the American forces responsible," said the Syrian government in a statement that went on to demand that the Iraqi government launch an investigation into...
...flow of foreign fighters from Syria into Iraq was Washington's chief complaint with Damascus following the 2003 invasion. Analysis of al-Qaeda documents seized by American troops in Sinjar in northern Iraq last year suggested that 90% of foreign fighters entering Iraq came from Syria. However, the figures have dropped significantly, according to U.S. officials. In July, an estimated 20 fighters per month were reported to be entering Iraq, an 80% drop compared with a year earlier. In September, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat that the number of foreign fighters crossing from...
...South Waziristan province close to the Afghan border, an area suspected of harboring al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Andrew Exum, a former U.S. Army officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as founder of the influential Abu Muqawama counterinsurgency blog, suggests that the American action in Syria shows that the tactic may simply have been exported. "The precedent has already been established of crossing borders into safe havens. Operational commanders would have to be thinking, If we can do it in Pakistan, why can't we do it in Syria?" he says...
Experts with knowledge of the region say they suspect the raid into Syria was conducted by a U.S. special-operations unit rather than regular military forces. They cite Task Force 88, a hunter-killer team, as the unit that most likely carried out the attack. By having such clandestine teams carrying out these strikes, the U.S. government restricts how many people inside the government are aware of the details, enabling Pentagon spokesmen to honestly say they know nothing about them...