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“The U.S. government does not trust the Free Syrian Army much at all,
that’s pretty clear. They are basically telling the FSA that they are
not part of their plans and they are going to start from scratch.”
No Syrian Rebels Allowed at ISIS War Conference
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/14/no-syrian-rebels-allowed-at-isis-war-conference.html
There will be no Syrians at Tuesday’s 21-nation coalition meeting on
ISIS, as the U.S. makes clear to the existing moderate Syrian rebels
they are not part of the mission.
President Obama will join a meeting of top defense officials from 21
countries Tuesday to discuss the war against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
Missing from the confab: anyone that’s actually from Syria.
The U.S. government has no near-term plans to include the Free Syrian
Army or any other moderate rebel group in the military mission to
fight ISIS. None of these opposition figures were even invited to the
anti-ISIS coalition meeting being held at Andrews Air Force Base near
Washington and chaired by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey.
U.S. defense officials told The Daily Beast the Syrian rebel groups
are simply not partners in the airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and
Syria, which have been failing to stop the Islamic State’s advances
both in northern Syria and western Iraq.
“We’ve said this is an Iraq-first strategy,” Col. Edward Thomas,
spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told The Daily Beast. “We
have not yet moved to the stage in Syria where we would work with
partners on the ground.”
Top administration officials have repeatedly acknowledged that
airstrikes will not be enough to accomplish President Obama’s stated
goal to degrade and destroy ISIS. But a month after the U.S. and its
partners began bombing inside of Syria, there is still no military
coordination with the rebels fighting ISIS on the ground—and no plans
to do so.
The U.S. strategy is to train and equip a new rebel army slowly in
bases in Saudi Arabia and possibly Turkey, but not to work with the
Free Syrian Army structure as it exists now.
“Some of [the FSA] elements may be brought into a credible force in
the future, but we’re not there yet,” Thomas said.
Being excluded from Tuesday’s coalition meeting is only the latest
clear signal to the Syrian Opposition Coalition and the FSA from the
Obama administration that they don’t see these groups as a credible or
trusted partner in the fight against ISIS.
Before the airstrikes began, the Obama administration was promising to
work with the opposition groups. Gen. Bashir, the chief of staff of
the Supreme Military Command, came to Washington in May with Syrian
Opposition Coalition leadership and met with top officials. But now
those leaders are being marginalized.
The moderate Syrian opposition was not part of the decision to strike
inside Syria and they say the lack of coordination led to an incident
last month when the U.S. almost bombed an FSA base near Idlib. The CIA
maintains discreet relationships with a few opposition fighting groups
but has not increased the weapons flows to these brigades since the
U.S. led war against ISIS inside Syria began.
“The U.S. government does not trust the Free Syrian Army much at all,
that’s pretty clear. They are basically telling the FSA that they are
not part of their plans and they are going to start from scratch.”
Multiple Syrian opposition leaders told The Daily Beast that FSA
brigades in northern and eastern Syria, who have been fighting and
losing to ISIS all year, have been trying to feed targeting
intelligence and other useful information to the U.S. military but
they have not gotten any response and they claim the airstrikes have
been undermined because ISIS has been able to avoid taking any real
damage.
“If the Supreme Military Council and the Free Syrian Army are not
involved in the upcoming meeting in Washington regarding eliminating
ISIS, then we are excluding our ground troops and commanders that have
real-time intelligence and expertise in fighting ISIS and thus
undermining the entire strategy to defeat ISIS,” said Mouaz Moustafa,
an official with the Coalition for a Democratic Syria, an umbrella
group of Syrian-American NGOs.
U.S. military officials said that the FSA is simply not up to the
task. Thomas noted that the Tuesday coalition meeting was focused on
defense ministers from countries. The SOC and the SMC have some
connections to fighting groups on the ground, but don’t operate as a
real military command structure and don’t have direct influence on all
the fighters carrying the FSA banner. What’s more, the “moderates”
often wind up in alliances of convenience with hard-core Islamists.
One of the reason the FSA base in Idlib was almost bombed? It was
right next to an outpost
