The number of American troops in Syria has steadily increased over time, the Pentagon now says.

CNN-

The number of U.S. troops in Syria has steadily increased, higher than the Pentagon has publicly disclosed since at least 2020, and has increased in recent months to more than double the roughly 900 troops the U.S. has long said is in Syria , several defense officials familiar with the matter told CNN.

The Pentagon said last week that the additional troops beyond 900 were temporary. But on Monday, Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, acknowledged that the number of forces in Syria in general has increased over time as the threat to base forces has grown.

Ryder revealed for the first time on Thursday that the number of troops in Syria is around 2,000, significantly higher than we have reported in recent months and years. He also said he only discovered the larger footprint in recent days.

The Army's director of plans, operations and training distributed the true figure internally earlier this month, two officials told CNN. It is unclear when troop numbers reached their current peak, but the United States sent additional assets and personnel to the Middle East following Hamas' attack on Israel last year.

On Monday, the Pentagon released a new statement attempting to clarify the long-standing discrepancy over troop numbers in Syria.

In addition to the approximately 900 core troops, there are also approximately 1,100 U.S. military personnel in Syria who are deployed for shorter durations as temporary enablers to support force protection, transportation, maintenance or other needs emerging operational challenges, Ryder said.

The number of these additional temporary forces has fluctuated in recent years depending on mission needs, but has generally increased over time as the threat to base forces has increased, he said. he added.

Defense officials have long been reluctant to reveal the true number of troops in Syria because it could risk angering neighboring partner countries, particularly Iraq, sources told CNN. When the Pentagon first acknowledged the larger troop presence, Ryder said our deployments often included diplomatic and operational security considerations.

Syria is not the only country where the Pentagon has deployed more troops than it previously announced. In its statement Monday, the Pentagon acknowledged that there could be more than 2,500 troops in Iraq, the baseline figure the military uses to determine its military presence in the country. But the Pentagon provided no further details on the number of additional troops in Iraq, saying only that additional temporary reinforcements would be deployed on a rotational basis.

However, due to operational security and diplomatic considerations, we do not have further details to provide, Ryder said in the statement. The vague reference to additional troops in Iraq leaves open the possibility of a much larger presence than previously admitted, just as in Syria.

The U.S. military presence in Iraq is a sensitive issue for Iraqi officials, who have publicly said they want U.S. troops to leave the country. If the Iraqis saw their troop numbers increase in Syria, they would fear that the United States would do the same in Iraq, the officials said, which now appears to be the case. This is particularly tricky amid negotiations over the future U.S. military footprint in Iraq.

For more than a year, Washington and Baghdad have been holding a series of discussions on the future of the American military presence in the country. In January, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani made clear the goal of the talks when he said the goal was to permanently end the presence of international coalition forces in Iraq. The US military presence in Syria relies on support for US troops in Iraq, and a larger presence in the former country could require more troops in the latter.

Defense officials insist the Pentagon has not misled the public about the number of core troops in Syria, which they say has been around 900 troops since 2020. Most of They are special operations forces, a defense official said, and the military rarely recognizes changes in special forces. levels of operational troops. Officials say the approximately 1,100 additional personnel stationed there in recent months are temporary forces, primarily within the military, intended to bolster the main presence with logistical and defensive assistance.

But those troops are typically replaced as soon as they finish their rotation, which often lasts three months or less, so their total numbers have consistently topped 900 over the years, officials said.

The cover-up of the true number of US troops in Syria dates back to the first administration of Donald Trump. In 2020, the outgoing US envoy to Syria, Jim Jeffrey, acknowledged that his team routinely misled senior military officials about troop levels there, suggesting that it was not exclusively military officials who were keeping secrets these figures.

We were always playing word games to not make it clear to our leaders how many soldiers we had there, Jeffrey told Defense One at the time. Trump agreed in 2019 to keep about 200 to 400 U.S. troops in Syria, but the actual number was much higher, Jeffrey said.

There are even more civilian contractors in the country. A report from the Congressional Research Service indicates that there were more than 5,400 contractors in Iraq and Syria in the second quarter of 2024.

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