Jim Mattis: US will send more diplomats, contractors to Syria

This file photo taken on November 09, 2017 shows US Defense Minister James Mattis delivering a press conference during the second day of a Defense Ministers Meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels. (Photo by AFP)

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis says he is expecting to see a larger US civilian presence in Syria, where there are already 2,000 American troops without the authorization of the Syrian government.

Mattis said Friday that the US would deploy more contractors and diplomats to the war-torn country, with which Washington has suspended diplomatic relations.

"What we will be doing is shifting from what I would call an offensive, shifting from an offensive terrain-seizing approach to a stabilizing... you'll see more US diplomats on the ground," Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon.

"Well when you bring in more diplomats, they are working that initial restoration of services, they bring in the contractors, that sort of thing," he added.

"There is international money that has got to be administered, so it actually does something, it doesn't go into the wrong people's pockets."

He also claimed that the diplomats and contractors might train local forces in parts of the country retaken from Daesh to clear improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and hold territory to help ensure that Daesh does not take back territory.

"It is an attempt to move towards the normalcy and that takes a lot of support," said Mattis.

He did not give any specific information about the number of US diplomats who would serve in Syria and when.

Daesh unleashed a campaign of bloodshed and destruction in Syria in 2014, overrunning considerable expanses of territory.

This photo taken on September 5, 2017, shows smoke billowing out following a US-led coalition airstrike in the western al-Daraiya neighborhood of the embattled northern Syrian city of Raqqah. (Photo by AFP)

The same year saw the United States launch a so-called campaign against the terrorists together with a coalition of its allies.

The military alliance had done little in the fight against Daesh, and has instead been repeatedly accused of targeting and killing civilians and hampering Syrian government operations against the Takfiri group.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on November 23 that 2,759 civilians, including 644 minors and 470 women, had been killed in US-led aerial attacks against civilian areas in Syria over the past 38 months.

The American forces support the anti-Damascus Kurdish militants in the north, who have, according to Syria, been seeking to gain more territory under the pretext of fighting terror.