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Key parts from the attached article below:
1. Even those handful of Syrian fighters ("rebels" is the wrong word
since they are individuals, not actual Free Syrian Army groups) that the
US has been trying to recruit to fight ISIS (nearly all actual rebels
told the US to shove the very idea from the outset) are now rebelling
and quitting. I guess, like a lot of pro-Assad "leftists" from the
opposite angle, they also never bothered to read every announcement that
has ever been made about the program from the outset: that it was very
explicitly ONLY to fight ISIS and NOT the fascist regime (eg, see, for
the 100th time, the actual CENTCOM announcement of the program: try to
even find a mention of Assad:
http://www.centcom.mil/en/news/articles/initial-class-of-syrian-opposition-forces-begin-training).
As the article below states: "The issue: the American government's
demand that the rebels can't use any of their newfound battlefield
prowess or U.S.-provided weaponry against the army of Bashar al-Assad or
any of its manifold proxies and allies, which include Iranian-built
militias such as Lebanese Hezbollah. They must only fight ISIS,
Washington insists."
And so since the rebels - who have done more to actually fight ISIS and
drive it out of great chunks of Syria than have any other armed force in
either Syria or Iraq - know that the main enemy remains the regime,
which massacres around 100 people every day, and that in any case it is
impossible to defeat a symptom (ISIS) without defeating the cause
(Assad), they in their mass never signed up; and the US, always hostile
to the actual revolutionary forces like the FSA, never tried to sign up
actual FSA brigades, but rather tried to "vet" individual fighters to
form a new US-puppet armed force from scratch. But now it is even many
of these individual few hundred potential mercs that are quitting: I
guess some people are slow.
2. Even more startlingly (not for me, of course, but for anyone who
STILL doesn't get that the US intervened in Syria as Assad's airforce):
Right now, as ISIS, from its base in northeastern Aleppo province, is
attacking the revolutionary forces in Aleppo, the Assad regime's
warplanes are directly helping ISIS by bombing the rebels in Aleppo:
http://eaworldview.com/2015/06/syria-daily-assads-bombs-aid-islamic-state-offensive-in-aleppo-province/.
So many rebels ask the US: OK, if you say you are here in Syria to
defeat ISIS (even though in fact the US spent last week being Assad's
airforce by ... bombing Nusra, which is allied to the rebels, in Aleppo
...), then why don't you strike ISIS now that it is besieging Aleppo,
just like you bombed ISIS when it was besieging Kobane to help the YPG?
And then the punch-line: the grossly hypocritical and self-perpetuating
answer we have come to expect from the US - we can't help the rebels as
long as they are allied with Nusra - was not the one used in this case.
This time, the US did us one better: the US said, we can't bomb ISIS to
help the rebels, because if we help the rebels in Aleppo, that would
hurt Assad:
“We were rebuffed for the astounding reason that aiding the rebels in
Aleppo would hurt Assad, which would anger the Iranians, who might then
turn up the heat on U.S. troops in Iraq." Wow. The problem with helping
rebels, even against ISIS, is that it would hurt Assad, and the bigger
problem is this in turn would hurt Iran. But in my opinion, while the
added on bit about not wanting to get on Iran's bad side etc is no doubt
valid in itself, the quote may as well have stopped with the word
"Assad." Let's cut to the chase: the US is not bombing Syria to help the
armed masses overthrow a capitalist dictatorship, but quite the
opposite.
Assad is now ISIS’s airforce, at least in selected parts of Syria, and
the US is Assad’s airforce. Conspiracy? Call it whatever you like, the
facts have been in our faces all along, and especially since the US
began bombing.
That doesn’t have to mean they love each other or that it is a dark and
deliberate conspiracy. Counterrevolutionaries can also hate each other:
the US does bomb ISIS in eastern Syria, where there are few rebels, and
the Assad regime also began bombing ISIS out in the east (or at least
bombing civilians in ISIS-ruled areas) after the US began bombing it, in
order to show its worth to the bogus US "war on terror" (in the whole
year before that, Assad's warplanes never touched ISIS). The one thing
none of them will do however is help the revolutionary masses to stave
off one another. This last week or so we are seeing one of the rare
moments when not just two (eg Assad and ISIS, or Assad and US) line up –
that’s really, really old by now – but all three.
Some of us still use the language of class interests. While not a
crystal ball, it generally seems to me to get things right – sometimes
astonishingly so in the case of Syria.
Key Rebels Ready to Quit US Fight Vs ISIS
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/31/key-rebels-ready-to-quit-u-s-fight-vs-isis.html
They were ready to accept American guns and training. But a key rebel
group can’t accept the Obama administration’s insistence that they lay
off Syria’s dictator.
A centerpiece of the U.S. war plan against ISIS is in danger of
collapsing. A key rebel commander and his men are ready to ready to pull
out in frustration of the U.S. program to train a rebel army to beat
back the terror group in Syria, The Daily Beast has learned.
The news comes as ISIS is marching on the suburbs of Aleppo, Syria's
second-largest city. Rebels currently fighting the jihadists there told
The Daily Beast that the U.S.-led coalition isn't even bothering to
respond to their calls for airstrikes to stop the jihadist army.
Mustapha Sejari, one of the rebels already approved for the U.S.
training program, told The Daily Beast that he and his 1,000 men are on
the verge of withdrawing from the program. The issue: the American
government's demand that the rebels can't use any of their newfound
battlefield prowess or U.S.-provided weaponry against the army of Bashar
al-Assad or any of its manifold proxies and allies, which include
Iranian-built militias such as Lebanese Hezbollah. They must only fight
ISIS, Washington insists.
“We submitted the names of 1,000 fighters for the program, but then we
got this request to promise not to use any of our training against
Assad,” Sejari, a founding member of the Revolutionary Command Council,
said. “It was a Department of Defense liaison officer who relayed this
condition to us orally, saying we’d have to sign a form. He told us, ‘We
got this money from Congress for a program to fight ISIS only.’ This
reason was not convincing for me. So we said no.”
“[My men] don’t want to be beholden to this policy because it can be
used against them in Syria—that they’ve betrayed the revolution and now
they’re just mercenaries for the coalition forces.”
Sejari's possible departure wouldn't just mean the loss of a few
fighters for the anti-ISIS army the U.S. is trying to assemble. It could
mean a fracturing of the entire program—a cornerstone of the Obama
administration's plan to fight ISIS in Syria. (The Pentagon was unable
to respond to requests to comment for this article.)
"The train and equip program will be structurally impaired for as long
as those taking part in it are asked to target jihadists first and the
regime second," Charlie Winter, an ISIS specialist at the London-based
Quilliam Foundation, told The Daily Beast. "It would be naïve to think
otherwise: no opposition group will take kindly to being told that they
can only be assisted if they focus their efforts on 'terrorists' and not
the regime that got Syria to this position in the first place."
Even worse, Sejari added, is that by openly aligning with the United
States as a counterterrorism proxy, his troops will have a bullseye
painted on its back for all comers, al Qaeda, the regime, Iran and
Hezbollah. That force, the al-Ezz Front, broke off from Saudi-backed
umbrella opposition group that was routed by Jabhat al-Nusra, the al
Qaeda affiliate, in northern Syria in March.
“[My men] don’t want to be beholden to this policy because it can be
used against them in Syria—that they’ve betrayed the revolution and now
they’re just mercenaries for the coalition forces,” Sejari said.
Sejari has worked for years with the so-called "joint operations
command" in Turkey, where the CIA and a host of Western and regional spy
agencies have coordinated with vetted moderate rebels—sometimes arming
them, although without the stifling proscription on whom they couldn’t
fight. “In the past, we got some support through the [Western-backed]
Friends of Syria group. Very small amounts. We were hoping there would
be more support from the Americans,” Sefjari said.
“The American intelligence services have a fair idea who the good guys
and bad guys are in Syria and they know which groups are fighting both
extremism and dictatorship,” Sejari said. “If the Obama administration
were sincere in putting an end to the suffering of the Syrian people,
they could do that in three months.”
As approved by Congress, the Syrian train-and-equip program would be
overseen not by intelligence officers but by the American
military—definitely in Jordan and Turkey, and likely also in Saudi
Arabia and in Qatar. But Ankara and Washington have never agreed on the
remit of the mission, with Turkey insisting that these rebels be given
air support given that they’ll be targets of the regime’s fighter jets
and attack helicopters. Although U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter has
floated the idea of American air support for the rebels publicly, the
administration hasn’t committed to that and likely won’t. According to
the Wall Street Journal, Obama worries that if any of his built-up Arab
strike teams go after the regime in Syria, then Iran’s Revolutionary
Guards Corps-Quds Force will instruct its Shia militias to turn their
guns on U.S. personnel in Iraq.
The original goal was to graduate 5,000 battle-ready rebels per year,
although the program has suffered numerous setbacks and delays since its
inception. In early May, Carter told reporters at a Pentagon press
conference that just 90 rebels were being put through the first round of
training in Jordan. Col. Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for CENTCOM, claimed
that 3,700 Syrians had volunteered in total, but of that number just 400
were approved with another 800 were being processed. This followed from
an earlier announcement, in April, that Major General Michael Nagata,
the man tapped by Obama spearhead train-and-equip, was stepping down for
unknown reasons. It doesn’t inspire confidence, Sejari said, that he
didn’t know who was in charge of the program he wants nothing to do with
anymore. “We don’t know what happened to Gen. Nagata. No one tells us
anything,” he added.
Sejari said that even if he were to sign up, he doesn’t think the result
would greatly alter the balance of power in Syria or further stated U.S.
objectives. “If anyone with any military knowledge examines this
program, he will realize this program is not designed to make an impact
or support the Syrian people. It will only contribute to dragging out
this conflict much longer,” Sejari said. “We’ve been fighting for four
years. Program, no program— we’ve been fighting for four years. If the
Americans don’t change this precondition, we will carry on fighting.”
In another uninspiring development for the Levantine arm of the war, a
major rebel commander has told The Daily Beast that no matter how hard
he tries, he still cannot get the coalition’s attention for directing
airstrikes against ISIS. And that's allowing the jihadists to make major
gains near the city of Aleppo, a stronghold of both moderate and
Islamist rebels.
“We were hoping that we could work hand-in-hand with coalition forces to
defeat ISIS and that the coalition would launch strikes against
ISIS-held positions in northeast Aleppo. We called on them to do so,”
Brig. Gen. Zaher al-Saket told The Daily Beast in a May 29 Skype
interview.
Al-Saket defected from the Syrian Army in March 2013. He had been an
officer in Assad’s chemical weapons division and today heads both the
Aleppo Military Council and the Chemical Weapons Documentation Center,
which compiles evidence of chlorine gas attacks perpetrated by his
former comrades on Syrian civilians.
"For the past 24 hours, numerous towns in the northern Aleppo suburbs
have been under constant bombardment by Daesh,” al-Shaket said, using a
derogatory name for ISIS. “The jihadists captured Sarwan, a key town,
and is now advancing on two others including Marea, the nerve center for
the rebel groups in Aleppo. The fall of Marea would severely weaken our
capacity across the province. Hundreds of shells have rained on houses
in Sawran and Marea. Ninety percent of the civilians in Marea had to
flee to neighboring areas because their houses were destroyed. The
terrorism carried out by ISIS is not very different from the terrorism
being carried out by Assad.”
And in some ways, Assad's Syria Arab Army (SAA) and ISIS are helping one
another around Aleppo, where the regime is reported bombing rebel
positions. "By attacking opposition positions around northern Aleppo,
ISIS has granted the Assad regime a tactical opportunity, one that it
has already begun exploiting," Winter said. “This is not the first time
the SAA and ISIS have benefited each other, and it will not be the
last."
For weeks, al-Saket has made numerous media appearances in
Arabic-language outlets such as Al Jazeera and Orient TV calling for
close coordination between his rebels and the coalition. He said he has
precise coordinates for ISIS-controlled installations and materiel in
towns such as Raei, Manbej, al-Bab in the Aleppo suburbs. But so far, no
one from U.S. Central Command—the arm of the American military
responsible for the Middle East—has reached out to him.
ISIS launched their assault on northern Aleppo before the weekend,
apparently after it caught wind of a the Syrian opposition’s plan to
retake the rest of the province from the Assad regime, putting it in
control of key supply corridors currently trafficked by ISIS.
The rebels' idea is to replicate the success of Jaysh al-Fateh, a
consortium of Islamist and jihadist rebel groups, largely led by
al-Nusra, which has had stunning successful in driving the regime out of
Idlib province over the past month. Al-Saket said that while al-Nusra is
not part of forces under his command, there was no denying that the al
Qaeda franchise was also at war with ISIS in the province. “If ISIS is
able to capture all the northern suburbs of Aleppo, that would mean they’d
control the borders with Turkey. I don’t have to tell you what this
means for the rebels.”
As al-Saket spoke to The Beast, he was interrupted by a fresh
intelligence report from his field commanders saying that that white
cars with blue covers were currently en route from Dabiq, an
ISIS-controlled town in northern Aleppo, toward Hetemlat whence they’d
no doubt proceed onto Marea. The cars were outfitted with explosives and
driven by ISIS suicide bombers.
“The Syrian-American community asked the Obama Administration for
airstrikes on ISIS near Marea many months ago,” complained Mohammed
al-Ghanem, the senior political advisor for the Syrian American Council,
a Washington, D.C.-based opposition group in constant contact with the
Aleppo Military Council. “We were rebuffed for the astounding reason
that aiding the rebels in Aleppo would hurt Assad, which would anger the
Iranians, who might then turn up the heat on U.S. troops in Iraq. The
rebels are the only ones who can fight ISIS in northern Syria—Assad
forces are losing ground rather quickly now—so I hope President Obama
will reconsider his willingness to compromise the ISIS fight for the
sake of an Iran deal.”
“ISIS is a metastasizing threat, not just for Syria but for the world,”
al-Saket agreed, before hanging up to tend to the incoming car bombs
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