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So far, U.S. officials have yet to reach any kind of deal with Turkey and but remain optimistic, albeit less so with each passing day.
“Nobody feels the need to take that off the table,” the official said of Turkey’s offer to take part. “There might be some role.”
Ideally, the Americans want Turkey’s support for the operation on Raqqa, but for now, would settle for their acquaintance, which to date has not been forthcoming.
“There’s a significant Arab element of the Syrian Defense Forces—a third of them—who would be willing to work with Turks,” the official added.
In addition, the U.S. military hopes to have roughly 6,000 Kurdish YPG troops positioned to cut off ISIS flight from Raqqa, a fourth senior defense official explained to The Daily Beast.
It is all part of what the U.S. military is calling the isolating and shaping campaign of the battle for Raqqa—a process that took eight months before the battle started for Mosul. Raqqa is a smaller city but could have a higher concentration of ISIS fighters.
Carter said that the Raqqa assault would begin within “weeks” and overlap with Mosul one, which appeared to be part of a
messaging campaign to suggest ISIS would face a two-front war. Iraqi forces launched an offensive to take back Mosul from ISIS, on Oct. 17. On Wednesday, Iraqi forces entered the
eastern edge of the city.
The premature prediction of an imminent Raqqa assault could be more about the Obama administration trying to paint its ISIS fight in the best light during the last few weeks of an election.
“I think that any administration in the last few months in office is going to try to shape their legacy and wrap up things they don’t want to leave to the next administration. It could be that Carter’s statement is linked to that desire,” Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
But there is a risk with rushing such a campaign, even one that, if successful, would likely mark the demise of the so-called caliphate.
“The hastier your desire to enter, the uglier your allied forces will be,” Gartenstein-Ross explained.
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