Posted on 03/02/2015 9:22:40 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Identify moderate Syrian rebel groups, get them out of the country, train them, equip them, and send them back into the fight. That is supposed to be the West’s plan for combating the Islamic State inside its Syrian stronghold. What this strategy sacrifices in efficacy and directness it makes up for in its ability to forestall the introduction of Western combat troops into that hornets’ nest. But this was always going to be a tactical approach to the war in Syria that had a small window of opportunity, and that window may be closing.
The first band of anti-ISIS rebels in Syria to receive American weaponry recently suffered a catastrophic defeat at the hands of the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. After losing control of their headquarters and the weaponry provided to them by Western powers, this Syrian moderate rebel group simply dissolved.
Nusra fighters boasted on Twitter that they had seized control of U.S.-made TOW anti-tank missiles and other American aid provided to Hazm when they overran the rebels’ headquarters in the town of Atarib in the province of Aleppo. The claims could not be verified, and American supplies of weaponry to moderate rebels in northern Syria had in any case been scaled back in recent months since the battles with Nusra began.
The collapse comes as the Pentagon embarks on a new effort to train moderate rebels to fight the Islamic State, a different extremist group that is at odds with Jabhat al-Nusra and has severed ties with al-Qaeda.
Hazm, which once claimed to have 5,000 fighters, had received U.S. weapons under a separate covert program launched last year by the CIA that was intended to bolster moderate rebels and put pressure on President Bashar al-Assad to compromise with the opposition.
Disheartening developments like these may explain why Syria’s former U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford performed an about-face on the matter of arming Syrian dissidents. In 2014, Ford resigned his post and issued a stinging condemnation of the Obama administration’s foot-dragging when it came to the conflict in Syria. Today, however, Ford is backing off his calls to arm moderate Syrian opposition groups. The former ambassador now insists that Syrian opposition forces are untrustworthy, increasingly friendly toward anti-Western insurgency organizations, and strictly on the defensive.
“We have to deal with reality as it is,” said Ford, who’s now with the Middle East Institute in Washington. “The people we have backed have not been strong enough to hold their ground against the Nusra Front.”
Ford today sounds like a different person from the optimist who only six months ago wrote an essay in Foreign Policy that began: “Don’t believe everything you read in the media: The moderate rebels of Syria are not finished. They have gained ground in different parts of the country and have broken publicly with both the al Qaida affiliate operating there and the jihadists of the Islamic State.”
Now, however, on panels and in speeches, Ford has accused the rebels of collaborating with the Nusra Front, the al Qaida affiliate in Syria that the U.S. declared a terrorist organization more than two years ago. He says opposition infighting has worsened and he laments the fact that extremist groups now rule in most territories outside the Syrian regime’s control.
It is apparent that the most effective anti-ISIS rebel group in Syria might be the Nusra Front, and some reports have indicated that these two Islamist militant organizations are engaging in a rapprochement. But with its al-Qaeda affiliations and support from benefactors in Qatar and Turkey, Nusra will never be a friend to the West. Ford, who observed that it is now impossible to field an effective counterinsurgency force of the size required to defeat ISIS in Syria even if there was uniform agreement in the West about what groups might constitute that force, has begun to concede that it is past time for Washington to consider American “boots on the ground.”
That was the last thing that the Obama administration wanted, and it is going to avoid reintroducing American combat forces into the Middle East at all costs. As a consequence of its paralysis, however, the Obama White House let the clock wind down and has let another period of advantage slip away in Syria. It is clear at this point that this administration’s Syria strategy is to hope this conflict remains relatively contained until the president can bequeath this mess to his successor.
can we get our arms back?....................
I didn’t think so......................
RE: can we get our arms back?....................
ISIS probably has all of them now ( much like what happened when the Iraqi’s abandoned their arms ).
Arm them, train them, fund them, hand it all to ISIS. Repeat.
We have become the dark side.
I am willing to personally bop on the head every single person who is surprised by this.
Nor the training. And the training can be used to train others, and others, and others. The arms at least will eventually wear out.
The JV team is winning.
What’s the major difference between Big Foot and moderate muslims?
Big Foot has actually been spotted several times.
Dumb. Where's our intelligence about these people in the middle east? Dealing effectively with them takes as much brains as brawn. Maybe it will dawn on our intelligence that the whole Arab world is unstable, splintered with tribal factions going back thousands of years, fighting constantly against themselves and others. Your friend today could be your enemy tomorrow. It is dawning on the west that Islam underlies the whole world over there.
The U.S. would be well advised to keep to her own best interests in foreign affairs especially in the Islamic world. Leave 'em alone except those who have attacked us or imminently threaten to attack us or our interests. Use covert intelligence and "smart" tools in dealing with potentially threatening nations. I do believe in this day and age, we should have good, sharp intelligence everywhere around the world to guard and protect U.S. interests.
What about when one nation wrongfully invades another sovereign, free nation? Well, first of all, if we are doing what we should be doing on the intelligence front, we should know of such plans long before it happens. As long as we are the leading power in the free world, I believe it is our best interests to deal intelligently, justly, and decisively with nations that threaten the free sovereignty of other, weaker nations who are our friends.
The Islamic thing is different with other nations that voluntarily allow their infiltration. But I think we should help weaker nations who can't stop infiltration or invasion by militant Islamic groups like ISIS. IMO, we shouldn't have invaded Iraq in the first place but once we did were definitely responsible for the results.
There are no moderates in Syria.
Arming them was foolish.
McCain and Graham are fools.
I have an idea. Why not support Assad and the troops that have been loyal to Assad and help him defeat the revolutionaries destroying that corner of the world?
“Moderates;” those with out convictions or ideals. They can swing either way.
If we supplied them with AK-47’s, and probably did, they will last a long time...............
Keep in mind that Obama is bringing in refugees from Syria into the US. I wonder if they’re as well-vetted as the troops he’s training, financing, and arming are.
Uh, no. They can turn too.
How about we not support any of them?
‘Moderates’ means they sharpen the knife first before they chop off your head.
Assad falls, nothing's left to save Lebanon. ISIS gets a huge corridor to the Med and there's no stopping them from overwhelming southern Europe.
Look at the map. Regime change against Assad is maybe the dumbest foreign policy initiative of the US in our history.
I don’t count on Obama on doing too much in the interests of the U.S. One thing Obama may have done unintentionally is spark a renewed vigilance with some to renew the constitutional limitations of the federal government.
“Identify moderate Syrian rebel groups, get them out of the country, train them, equip them, and send them back into the fight.”
Because that worked so well when we tried it with Cubans about 60 years ago.
Uh, that was the PLAN ALL ALONG, GUYS.
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