28 may 2019|The Interregnum|Mohamed Elmaazi
Despite claims that the US needed to “do more” in Syria, or that former President Barack Obama “failed to intervene”, there is extensive evidence that Western, and other powers, have been arming and assisting all manner of reactionary militant groups in the country since the conflict began in 2011. All in complete violation of international law.
An earlier version of this article first appeared in Global Research on 19 September 2018.
EDITOR’S NOTE: It is not uncommon for Western politicians and members of the press to lay the entirety of the carnage in Syria at the feet of the Syrian government. And without a doubt the military and security forces of Bashar al-Assad have their fair share of the responsibility. But the role of the UK, US, France, and other allied governments including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, and Israel are too often ignored. Indeed, perhaps no government has done more to fuel the flames in Syria than that of the United States.
At a time when the US is threatening further “action” against Syria in apparent defence of the militant groups in Idlib province, groups that are dominated by rather unsavoury and reactionary theocrats, an overview of US support of armed opposition groups in Syria is in order.
Equipping “fighters allied with Al Qaeda”
On 13 of September 2018 Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard told comedian and satirist Jimmy Dore:
“Since 2011 both overtly and covertly, the United States has been providing arms, intelligence, and equipment to fighters who are allied with, fighting along side, working with, al Qaeda in this regime change war.
So these very same terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. We’ve been supporting for years, as this ground force to fight in this regime change war that we have been quietly waging now for seven years.”
Last-year, on the 17th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Gabbard, a Major in the Army National Guard, criticised Trump‘s opposition the Syrian government’s plans to retake Idlib:
While President Trump & VP Pence give 9/11 speeches about how much they care about the victims of al-Qaeda’s attack on our country, they are simultaneously acting as protectors of AQ in Syria/Idlib, threatening Russia and Syria that if they attack al-Qaeda, we will punish them.
— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) September 11, 2018
The Democratic Congresswoman from Hawaii has been willing to make this argument to anybody who will listen. And mainstream outlets have given her very little pushback on the substance of her claims. Yet the media simultaneously appear to forget this rather crucial critique, every time they report on the conflict in Syria.
It would be simplistic to see every anti-government militant group in Syria as being ideologically identical. But the earliest evidence, including from western establishment sources that support intervention in Syria, is that the dominant ideology among the majority of the (non-Kurdish) armed opposition groups has long been sectarian, theocratic, and reactionary.
Consciously supporting sectarianism and reactionary Islam
A declassified US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report dated August 2012 put their assessment bluntly[pdf, p3]:
“A. Internally, events are taking a clear sectarian direction
B. The Salafist (sic), the Muslim Brotherhood, and [Al Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.
C. The West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey support the Opposition; While Russia, China and Iran support the Regime.”
Operation Timber Sycamore
On 2 August 2017, five years into the war, The New York Times reported that the US had been arming and training Syrian rebels, in alliance with Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, to overthrow the Syrian government. Although the ‘paper of record’ implied that the US only started funnelling weapons to rebels in 2013 (under a programme code-named Timber Sycamore) the available evidence suggests otherwise.
On 12 April 2018 establishment economist and former member of the ‘Chicago Boys’ Jeffrey Sachs also noted this policy in an unusually candid discussion on MSNBC. Sachs told MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski, daughter of the late and infamous national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, how the White House:
“sent in the CIA to overthrow Assad. The CIA and Saudi Arabia, together in covert operations, tried to overthrow Assad. It was a disaster. Eventually it brought in both ISIS as a splinter group to the Jihadists that went in. It also brought in Russia.
So we have been digging deeper, and deeper, and deeper. What we should do now is get out. And not continue to throw missiles. Not have a confrontation with Russia. Seven years has been a disaster, under Obama, continuing under Trump.
Sachs continued explaining:
“This what I would call the permanent state. This is CIA, this is Pentagon, wanting to keep Iran and Russia out of Syria. But no way to do that. And so we have made a proxy war in Syria. Its killed 500,000 people. Displaced 10 million. And I’ll say predictably so ’cause I predicted it seven years ago – that there was no way to do this. […] So what I would plead to President Trump is ‘get out’. […]
We’ve done enough damage – seven years.”
During this discussion James Stavridis, a former US Navy Admiral, essentially ignored the key point of Sachs’s comments. He then called for military strikes against Syria, in retaliation for what was alleged to be a sarin gas attack in Douma, near Damascus, on 7 April 2019.
How the US “armed terrorists” in Syria since 2011
On 22 June 2017 investigative journalist Gareth Porter revealed how the same 2012 DIA report shows that the US funnelled large amounts of weapons, with incredibly destructive potential, into Syria via Libya as early as October 2011.
In an article called How America Armed Terrorists in Syria Porter describes how the CIA facilitated at least:
“2,750 tons of arms bound ultimately for Syria from October 2011 through August 2012.”
Each container shipped included:
“500 sniper rifles, 100 RPG (rocket propelled grenade launchers) along with 300 RPG rounds and 400 howitzers. Each arms shipment encompassed as many as ten shipping containers, it reported, each of which held about 48,000 pounds of cargo.”
Listen to Gareth Porter discuss his article with Scott Horton on Antiwar Radio
The “problematic US-armed groups”
On 6 October 2017 Alexander Decina also penned a very informative article on this subject. Decina, who at the time was a Research Associate with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), argued that policymakers should stop searching for so called ‘moderate rebels’.
Decina wrote:
“U.S.-backed and ostensibly moderate groups have even turned their fire on U.S. personnel. In late August, weeks after Free Syrian Army units first fired on U.S. patrols north of Manbij, U.S. troops finally fired back. One of the groups allegedly involved in the latest incident, the Sultan Murad Division, had received U.S. TOW missiles as late as February 2016.
Beyond these problematic U.S.-armed groups, a number of others that Washington has refrained from arming yet declined to blacklist—thus leaving open the door for Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia to support them—are even more troublesome. These have included Ahrar al-Sham, Jaish al-Islam, and others that have fought al–Qaeda at times, most notably this past July, but have also cooperated closely and formed robust umbrella organizations with the transnational jihadist group. Despite insisting upon their moderate nature, these groups have certainly committed their own atrocities.”
and:
“Basing groups’ moderation on their waving the FSA flag, memorizing talking points about pluralism, and objecting to al–Qaeda has proven insufficient.”
Turkish backed Free Syrian Army [FSA] rebels celebrate in Afrin City centre after sacking it and driving out tens of thousands of residents
Dacina suggested policy makers instead:
“ought to think of the opposition in three categories: viable partners, irreconcilables, and unknowns.”
In other words, lets dispense with the notion of “moderate rebels” and just find people we can ‘work with’ in order to achieve ‘our’ objectives in Syria (whatever those may be).
Understanding the US establishment’s point of view
Decina’s recommendations could well have been the outlook of US policy makers since the very beginning of the conflict. A leaked 2011 US intelligence assessment foresaw a:
“violent, protracted civil conflict, one that will enflame sectarian unrest…”
And while there was “the potential for the regime to collapse” the report concluded that:
“the road to regime change will be a long and bloody one.”
The role of the CFR in shaping US policy is difficult to overstate. It is the premier US think tank which historian Laurence H. Shoup described as:
“the ultimate networking, socializing, strategic-planning, and consensus-forming institution of the dominant sector of the U.S. capitalist class.”
In fact, two-time US presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once told the CFR:
“[I]t’s good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department.
We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.”
Incidentally, Gabbard, Sachs, Brzezinski (both Mika and Zbigniew ) and Stavridis are all members of the invite-only organisation. As is Trump’s current National Security Advisor John Bolton and his Venezuela liaison Elliot Abrams.
Arming Al Qaeda
Reports of the US alliance with reactionary Islamists also came from US troops themselves. On 14 September 2016 Jack Murphy, a US special forces veteran turned journalist, exposed dissension among the ranks of US troops engaged in covert (and illegal) military operations inside Syria.
Murphey, writing in SOFREP (now known as NEWSREP), quoted members of US special forces who said:
“Nobody believes in it. You’re like, ‘Fuck this,’” a former Green Beret says of America’s covert and clandestine programs to train and arm Syrian militias. “Everyone on the ground knows they are jihadis. No one on the ground believes in this mission or this effort, and they know they are just training the next generation of jihadis, so they are sabotaging it by saying, ‘Fuck it, who cares?’”
“The Syria covert action program is [CIA Director John] Brennan’s baby,” a former CIA officer told SOFREP. Weapons were provided to the [Free Syrian Army] by the CIA … after receiving permission from the White House via a presidential finding.
Murphy continued:
“ The FSA made for a viable partner force for the CIA on the surface, as they were anti-regime, ostensibly having the same goal as the seventh floor at Langley.
… As early as 2013, FSA commanders were defecting with their entire units to join al-Nusra. There, they still retain the FSA monicker, but it is merely for show, to give the appearance of secularism so they can maintain access to weaponry provided by the CIA and Saudi intelligence services. The reality is that the FSA is little more than a cover for the al–Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra. ”
In January 2018 FSA rebels allied with the invading Turkish army to ethnically cleanse Afrin of its Syrian Kurdish population, and remove the Kurdish-led democratic government established there. And today Idlib is dominated by an amalgamation of right-wing reactionary groups.
It is also worth noting that as early as 5 January 2012 the website Elite Forces UK reported that British special forces and spies were working with FSA rebels in Libya, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
Beware of NATO powers arming rebels
The point is that Tulsi Gabbard‘s critique of US foreign policy in Syria is not based on rumour or speculation but rather well-documented facts.
Whatever the crimes of the Syrian state, the British and American governments are not honest actors. As Sachs explained their actions in Syria have not only fuelled the devastation in the country, directly contributing to the deaths of hundred hundreds of thousands and displacement of millions, but completely violate international law.
The armed conflict in Syria has reached what may be its final phase, as most of the non-Kurdish, non-democratic, armed opposition are largely contained in Idlib province. Their main benefactor right now is NATO member Turkey who continues to arm the militant groups in Idlib. But given that the population of this region is also estimated to be as high as 2.5 million men, women, and children – retaking the area may also prove to be incredibly bloody if a negotiated settlement cannot be reached. And for the sake of the civilians in the province, all sides must do precisely that.
All this needs to be remembered as voices from the US and UK continue to threaten further military involvement in a country which has already seen far too much.
Please share this article and enter your email near the top on the right hand side of the page to receive notifications of future posts.
And please consider donating monthly or as a one off to keep The Interregnum sustainable