Bolster Special Operations

Pentagon Officials Say They’ll Bolster Special Operations Force in Iraq

By HELENE COOPERDEC

The Pentagon will expand its Special Operations force in Iraq as part of a ramped-up war effort against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter told a House hearing on Tuesday.

Mr. Carter said that a specialized expeditionary American military force would be able to target Islamic State militants in Iraq and make targeted raids into Syria. “These special operators will over time be able to conduct raids, free hostages, gather intelligence and capture ISIL leaders,” Mr. Carter said, using an acronym for the Islamic State.

Mr. Carter did not say precisely how many new forces would be added but said they would be more than 50. He also did not say where exactly they would be based in Iraq. A Defense Department official said on Tuesday that these would be new troops and not troops reassigned from other parts of Iraq.

Aws, 25, a former resident of Raqqa, Syria, used to be a member of the Khansaa Brigade, the Islamic State's female morality police. Her first husband was a jihadist, and when he died in a suicide operation she reluctantly agreed to marry another fighter.

President Obama has already authorized the deployment up to 50 special operators in Syria to help organize Arab and Kurdish fighters there.

“We are at war,” Mr. Carter told the House Armed Services Committee. He appeared alongside General Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Mr. Carter’s comments came at a testy hearing that featured familiar themes: Republican lawmakers complained that the Obama administration does not have a strategy for dealing with the rise of the Islamic State, and called for more American forces on the ground in both places, while Mr. Carter’s carefully worded answers seemed to reflect the caution of his boss, who has been loath to send more troops to the region after more than a decade of war.

Defense officials said the new special operators would work with Kurdish and Iraqi troops in Iraq, as well as possibly Syrian and Arab troops, during targeted raids in Syria. Mr. Carter called the new operators a “standing force” based in Iraq.

“I think you can expect to see a slow ramp-up” of American forces in Iraq and perhaps even Syria, a Defense Department official said Tuesday, speaking on grounds of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly. “The consensus is there; it’s just a question of how quickly the White House wants to move.”

An American military official, who asked not to be identified because he was talking about confidential plans, said the new force would look to conduct raids against Islamic State leaders in Iraq and Syria — what the Pentagon calls “high-value targets.” In addition, they would help analyze intelligence, identify targets and collaborate with Iraq’s special forces.

The move appears to be one of a series of steps the Obama administration is taking to raise the pressure on the Islamic State without fundamentally altering its cautious strategy. It is a step that has long been proposed by some of the administration’s conservative critics, who have also urged the administration to deploy advisers with Iraqi brigades and use American Apache helicopters.

The president has resisted such moves, which could bring American forces into closer contact with Islamic State militants. Mr. Obama’s backers say he is wary of taking over the fight from the Iraqis, who some officials argue must lead the effort to drive the Islamic State out of their own country.

But after avoiding the war in Syria for four years now, Mr. Obama has, in recent weeks and amid a worsening crisis, deepened American involvement in the war there. In agreeing to send 50 special operators to Syria in October, Mr. Obama crossed a line that he had refused to step over, committing American ground forces inside Syria. Military officials say they expect the number of special operators in Syria to increase in the coming months.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said the deployment of more troops was “a belated step forward” in a written statement. But he called it “yet another reactive and incremental step, adding, “A comprehensive strategy to defeat ISIL is totally absent, urgently needed and long overdue.”

The American escalation has come as Russia has inserted itself into the multisided civil war to support President Bashar al-Assad, bombing opposition forces initially and then, eventually, Islamic State targets, after the militant group claimed credit for downing a Russian passenger jet over Egypt. The White House has since taken pains not to characterize any American ramp-up as a response to the Russian moves.

Once intent on using only American air power to help local forces on the ground, Mr. Obama has now sent 3,500 American troops to Iraq, mostly to advise and train Iraqi troops.

“And there will be more,” Mr. Carter said.

He said the United States would continue to increase its presence in Iraq. “We’ve intensified the air campaign against ISIL’s war-sustaining oil enterprise, a critical pillar” of the group’s financial infrastructure, he told the committee. General Dunford said attacks by the American-led coalition in the last month against the Islamic State had disrupted 43 percent of the group’s revenue stream.

Mr. Carter said the new special operators could help in Syria as well, alluding to the pursuit of high-value targets like Islamic State leaders. “It puts everybody on notice in Syria. You don’t know at night who’s going to be coming in the window.”