By Christina Cameron
On Tuesday, 130 American military “assessors” arrived in Iraq, according to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
These “assessors,” who generally differ little from regular combat troops, were sent to the violence-stricken state to evaluate the humanitarian crisis currently affecting hundreds of thousands displaced Iraqi civilians. According to the Associated Press, many of these displaced civilians are members of the Yazidi ethno-religious minority, and are trapped on Sinjar Mountain in northern Iraq.
The troops sent to the area are made up of military advisers, marines and special operations forces. They have not been sent to engage in combat, but rather to assess the current Iraqi situation. “This is not a combat boots on the ground kind of operation,” Hagel said at Camp Pendleton in California.
The displaced Iraqis who are trapped on Sinjar Mountain had received food and water from U.S. airdrops in recent days, according to Business Week.
The troops will also be addressing other issues regarding the intensifying struggle between local forces and Islamic militants from the Islamic State (IS). The United States has been executing air strikes against fighters from the militant group over the course of the past few days.
According to the Huffington Post, “the 130 are in addition to 90 U.S. military advisers already in Baghdad and 160 in a pair of operations centers — one in Irbil and one in Baghdad — working with Iraqi security forces.
So the new total of U.S. military advisers is 380. They are in addition to about 455 U.S. security forces and 100 military personnel working in the Office of Security Cooperation in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.”
As time progresses, the United States is considering an international rescue mission to save the trapped refugees, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Despite these drastic actions, President Barack Obama insists that he will not send ground forces into Iraq again.