What happened when a force of Wagner mercenaries faced off against elite US special forces operators in a proxy war in Syria in February 2018? What geopolitical concerns brought each side there in the first place? This event called the battle of conoco fields marks the first time Americans and Russians met in ground combat since an American Expeditionary Force was sent to Siberia during the 1917 Russian Civil War. We finally were able to observe how old Soviet horde tactics fared against modern U.S. tactics and weapon systems - and the results were surprising.

Written by: Chris Cappy and Patrick Griffin
Edited by: Michael Michaelides

To set the stage, In November 2015, the Obama administration first authorized the deployment of U.S. special forces inside Syria where a civil war had been raging since 2011. The goal was twofold to the publicly stated task of assisting local rebels in their battle against the terrorist organization ISIL and the less official goal of preventing Iran from having a clear route to smuggle weapons into Iraq while also protecting the oil field development. If the Iranian forces inside Syria were allowed to successfully take the town of al-Tanf, there would be a direct supply route link between Iran's capital of Tehran, Iraq’s capital of Baghdad and Syria’s capital of Damascus. US soldiers had a side quest mission to prevent this.

Only two months prior in September 2015 the Russian military intervened in Syria on the opposite side supporting the Assad Regime. Russia couldn’t afford to lose another ally in the middle east and preventing collapse would increase their influence in the region. Wagner had just been established one year prior in 2014 and an estimated 5,000 Wagner soldiers were sent to train, advise and coordinate Syrian forces. This is a job similar to what the US special forces are tasked with. At this point the Syrian government was widely perceived to be on a collision course for imminent collapse and unacceptable outcome for Russia.

In 2018, U.S. supported Kurdish and Arab fighters operating under the “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF) in the north eastern Syrian province of Deir el-Zour. The US controlled the territory east along the Euphrates river. Meanwhile, Russian Wagner Mercenaries, and Bashar al Asad’s Syrian forces supplemented with Iranian-armed militia groups, patrolled the west banks of the river. Life in this area is heavily concentrated along the river. Travel just a couple hundred meters away from either side of its banks and the terrain becomes an endless wasteland of sand.

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