Bloodstained shoes are pictured after Syrian government forces fired missiles on a busy marketplace in Douma, a suburb of Damascus, October 30, 2015.
The Pentagon announced Friday it's deploying special forces troops to Iraq and Syria to combat ISIS.
The Syrian force will be fewer than 50 or 60 strong.
It's not clear yet how big the force will be in Iraq. But it will apparently be based in Erbil in the Kurdish areas.
US air support is also being ramped up, with close support aircraft like the A-10 being deployed to Incirlik airbase in neighboring Turkey.
“I don’t think they’re going to make that much difference on the ground,” Amr al-Azm says of the special forces troops heading to Syria. Azm is a professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio, and a member of the Syrian opposition here in the US. He suspects they will also be based with the Kurds, with the goal of encouraging them to attack the ISIS ‘capital’ at Raqqa in eastern Syria.
Azm is concerned that Russian forces bombing the opponents of Bashar al-Assad could unintentionally hit the US troops.
“This is just an accident waiting to happen,” says Azm. “Despite all the reassurances to the contrary, I doubt there is any real coordination taking place beyond the very superficial, cursory. I don’t see the US giving the Russians their coordinates when they’re on the ground. That’s not going to happen.”
The announcement coincided with an unprecedented international peace conference for Syria, held in Vienna, Austria.
Secretary of State John Kerry met with his counterparts from 18 other nations. For the first time, the conference brought together every nation with a dog in the fight in Syria, including Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Well, almost every nation. No Syrians were present in Vienna.