PARIS (Dispatches) – The number of U.S. diplomats in Syria has doubled after Daesh terrorists are near a military defeat, U.S. Defense Secretary Mattis said on Tuesday.
 "Our diplomats there on the ground have been doubled in number. As we see the military operations becoming less, we will see the diplomatic effort now able to take (root)” Mattis said, without giving a specific number.
A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Mattis was referring to State Department employees, including diplomats and personnel involved in humanitarian assistance, and the increase was recent.
The United States does not have an embassy in Syria.
Mattis also said units from the Turkish and U.S. militaries have started training for joint patrols near Syria’s northern town of Manbij, which has been a source of tension between the two NATO allies for months.
"The training now is under way and we’ll just have to see how that goes,” Mattis told reporters during his trip to Paris, France.
The Manbij patrols are part of a "road map” Turkey and the U.S. agreed on in June to defuse tensions amid demands for the withdrawal of Washington-backed Kurdish militants from the flashpoint town.
The road map agreed in June called for the withdrawal of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-dominated and anti-Damascus terrorist group that has the support of Washington, from Manbij.
Ankara considers the SDF as largely composed of militants from the People’s Protection Units (YPG), viewed by the Turkish government as a terror group and the Syrian branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The latter has been fighting for an autonomous region inside Turkey since 1984.
The Syrian government has given a degree of authority to the Kurdish regions to run their own affairs in the face of a foreign-backed militancy. The US, however, has used the vacuum to establish a foothold in those regions with the help of terrorists.
Washington angered Ankara by announcing a plan for the formation of a Kurdish militant force in Syria near the Turkish border, prompting Ankara in January to launch a cross-border military operation inside Syria, code-named Operation Olive Branch, with the aim of eliminating the YPG militants from northern Syria, particularly the Afrin region.