How the US Armed-up Syrian Jihadists
Published on
Thursday, September 29, 2016
by
Consortium News
How the US Armed-up Syrian Jihadists
The West blames Russia for the bloody mess in Syria, but U.S. Special Forces
saw close up how the chaotic U.S. policy of aiding Syrian jihadists enabled
Al Qaeda and ISIS to rip Syria apart
by
Alastair Crooke
Members of the Al Nusra Front standing in the Yarmuk Palestinian refugee
camp, south of Damascus, in 2014. (Photo: Rami Al-Sayed/Getty Images)
No one on the ground believes in this mission or this effort, a former
Green Beret writes of Americas covert and clandestine programs to train and
arm Syrian insurgents, they know we are just training the next generation
of jihadis, so they are sabotaging it by saying, Fuck it, who cares?. I
dont want to be responsible for Nusra guys saying they were trained by
Americans, the Green Beret added.
In a detailed report, US Special Forces Sabotage White House Policy Gone
Disastrously Wrong with Covert Ops in Syria, Jack Murphy, himself a former
Green Beret (U.S. Special Forces), recounts a former CIA officer having told
him how the the Syria covert action program is [CIA Director John]
Brennans baby
Brennan was the one who breathed life into the Syrian Task
Force
John Brennan loved that regime-change bullshit.
In gist, Murphy tells the story of U.S. Special Forces under one
Presidential authority, arming Syrian anti-ISIS forces, whilst the CIA,
obsessed with overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad, and operating under a
separate Presidential authority, conducts a separate and parallel program to
arm anti-Assad insurgents.
Murphys report makes clear the CIA disdain for combatting ISIS (though this
altered somewhat with the beheading of American journalist James Foley in
August 2014): With the CIA wanting little to do with anti-ISIS operations
as they are focused on bringing down the Assad regime, the agency kicked the
can over to 5th Special Forces Group. Basing themselves out of Jordan and
Turkey operating under military activities authority, rather than under
the CIAs coveted Title 50 covert action authority.
The untold story, Murphy writes, is one of abuse, as well as bureaucratic
infighting, which has only contributed to perpetuating the Syrian conflict.
But it is not the turf wars, nor the abuse and waste, which occupies the
central part of Murphys long report, that truly matters; nor even the
contradictory and self-defeating nature of U.S. objectives pursued. Rather,
the report tells us quite plainly why the attempted ceasefires have failed
(although this is not explicitly treated in the analysis), and it helps
explain why parts of the U.S. Administration (Defense Secretary Ashton and
CIA Director Brenner) have declined to comply with President Obamas will
as expressed in the diplomatic accord (the recent ceasefire) reached with
the Russian Federation.
The story is much worse than that hinted in Murphys title: it underlies the
present mess which constitutes relations between the U.S. and Russia, and
the collapse of the ceasefire.
The FSA [the alleged moderates of the Free Syria Army] 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 [the floor
of the CIA headquarters occupied by the Director and his staff] i.e. the
ousting of President Assad.
But in practice, as Murphy states bluntly: distinguishing between the FSA
and al-Nusra is impossible, because they are virtually the same
organization. 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.
The fact that the FSA simply passed American-made weaponry off to al-Nusra
is also unsurprising considering that the CIAs vetting process of militias
in Syria is lacklustre, consisting of little more than running traces in old
databases. These traces rely on knowing the individuals real names in the
first place, and assume that they were even fighting-age males when the data
was collected by CTC [Counterterrorism Centre] years prior.
Sympathy for Al Qaeda
Nor, confirms Murphy, was vetting any better with the 5th Special Forces
operating out of Turkey: [It consisted of] a database check and an
interview. The rebels know how to sell themselves to the Americans during
such interviews, but they still let things slip occasionally. I dont
understand why people dont like al-Nusra, one rebel told the American
soldiers. Many had sympathies with the terrorist groups such as Nusra and
ISIS.
Others simply were not fit to be soldiers. They dont want to be warriors.
They are all cowards. That is the moderate rebel, a Green Beret told
Murphy, who adds:
Pallets of weapons and rows of trucks delivered to Turkey for
American-sponsored rebel groups simply sit and collect dust because of
disputes over title authorities [i.e. Presidential authorities] and funding
sources, while authorization to conduct training for the militias is turned
on and off at a whim. One day they will be told to train, the next day not
to, and the day after only to train senior leaders. Some Green Berets
believe that this hesitation comes from the White House getting wind that
most of the militia members are affiliated with Nusra and other extremist
groups. [emphasis added.]
Murphy writes: While the games continue on, morale sinks for the Special
Forces men in Turkey. Often disguised in Turkish military uniform, one of
the Green Berets described his job as, Sitting in the back room, drinking
chai while watching the Turks train future terrorists
Among the rebels that U.S. Special Forces and Turkish Special Forces were
training, A good 95 percent of them were either working in terrorist
organizations or were sympathetic to them, a Green Beret associated with
the program said, adding, A good majority of them admitted that they had no
issues with ISIS and that their issue was with the Kurds and the Syrian
regime.
Buried in the text is this stunning one-line conclusion: after ISIS is
defeated, the real war begins. CIA-backed FSA elements will openly become
al-Nusra; while Special Forces-backed FSA elements like the New Syrian Army
will fight alongside the Assad regime. Then the CIAs militia and the
Special Forces militia will kill each other.
Well, that says it all: the U.S. has created a monster which it cannot
control if it wanted to (and Ashton Carter and John Brennan have no interest
to control it they still seek to use it).
U.S. Objectives in Syria
Professor Michael Brenner, having attended a high-level combined U.S.
security and intelligence conference in Texas last week, summed up their
apparent objectives in Syria, inter alia, as
Thwarting Russia in Syria.
Ousting Assad.
Marginalizing and weakening Iran by breaking the Shiite Crescent.
Facilitating some kind of Sunni entity in Anbar and eastern Syria. How can
we prevent it falling under the sway of al-Qaeda? Answer: Hope that the
Turks can domestic al-Nusra.
Wear down and slowly fragment ISIS. Success on this score can cover failure
on all others in domestic opinion.
Jack Murphy explains succinctly why this monster cannot be controlled: In
December of 2014, al-Nusra used the American-made TOW missiles to rout
another anti-regime CIA proxy force called the Syrian Revolutionary Front
from several bases in Idlib province. The province is now the de facto
caliphate of al-Nusra.
That Nusra captured TOW missiles from the now-defunct Syrian Revolutionary
Front is unsurprising, but that the same anti-tank weapons supplied to the
FSA ended up in Nusra hands is even less surprising when one understands the
internal dynamics of the Syrian conflict [i.e. the factional warfare between
the disparate American forces, with the result that Many [U.S. military
trainers] are actively sabotaging the programs by stalling and doing
nothing, knowing that the supposedly secular rebels they are expected to
train are actually al-Nusra terrorists.
How then could there ever be the separation of moderates from Al-Nusra
as required by the two cessations of hostilities accords (February and
September 2016)? The entire Murphy narrative shows that the moderates and
al-Nusra cannot meaningfully be distinguished from each other, let alone
separated from each other, because they are virtually the same
organization.
The Russians are right: the CIA and the Defense Department never had the
intention to comply with the accord because they could not. The Russians
are also right that the U.S. has had no intention to defeat al-Nusra as
required by U.N. Security Council Resolution 2268 (2016).
So how did the U.S. get into this Left Hand/Right Hand mess with the
U.S. President authorizing an accord with the Russian Federation, while in
parallel, his Defense Secretary was refusing to comply with it? Well, one
interesting snippet in Murphys piece refers to hesitations in the militia
training program thought to stem from the White House getting wind that most
of the militia members were affiliated with Nusra and other extremist
groups.
Obamas Inklings
It sounds from this as if the White House somehow only had inklings of
the jihadi monster emerging in Syria despite that understanding being
common knowledge to most on-the-ground trainers in Syria. Was this so? Did
Obama truly believe that there were moderates who could be separated? Or,
was he persuaded by someone to go along with it, in order to give a time
out in order for the CIA to re-supply its insurgent forces (the CIA
inserted 3,000 tons of weapons and munitions to the insurgents during the
February 2016 ceasefire, according to IHS Janes).
Support for the hypothesis that Obama may not have been fully aware of this
reality comes from Yochi Dreazen and Séan Naylor (Foreign Policys senior
staff writer on counter-terrorism and intelligence), who noted (in May 2015)
that Obama himself seemed to take a shot at the CIA and other intelligence
agencies in an interview in late 2014, when he said the community had
collectively underestimated how much Syrias chaos would spur the
emergence of the Islamic State.
In the same article, Naylor charts the power of the CIA as rooted in its
East Coast Ivy League power network, its primacy within the intelligence
machinery, its direct access to the Oval Office and its nearly unqualified
support in Congress. Naylor illustrates the CIAs privileged position within
the Establishment by quoting Hank Crumpton, who had a long CIA career before
becoming the State Departments coordinator for counterterrorism.
Crumpton told Foreign Policy that when then-Director Tenet, declared war
on Al-Qaida as far back as 1998, you didnt have the Secretary of Defense
[declaring war]; you didnt have the FBI director or anyone else in the
intelligence community taking that kind of leadership role.
Perhaps it is simply in Obamas prescient words the case that the CIA
usually gets what it wants.
Perhaps it did: Putin demonized, (and Trump tarred by association); the
Sunni Al Qaeda monster now too powerful to be easily defeated, but too
weak to completely succeed intended as the albatross hung around Russia
and Irans neck, and damn the Europeans whose back will be broken by waves
of ensuing refugees. Pity Syria.
© 2016 Consortium News
Alastair Crooke
Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat who was a senior figure in
British intelligence and in European Union diplomacy. He is the founder and
director of the Conflicts Forum,
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How the US Armed-up Syrian Jihadists
Published on
Thursday, September 29, 2016
by
Consortium News
How the US Armed-up Syrian Jihadists
The West blames Russia for the bloody mess in Syria, but U.S. Special Forces
saw close up how the chaotic U.S. policy of aiding Syrian jihadists enabled
Al Qaeda and ISIS to rip Syria apart
by
Alastair Crooke
8 Comments
Members of the Al Nusra Front standing in the Yarmuk Palestinian
refugee camp, south of Damascus, in 2014. (Photo: Rami Al-Sayed/Getty
Images)
No one on the ground believes in this mission or this effort, a
former Green Beret writes of Americas covert and clandestine programs to
train and arm Syrian insurgents, they know we are just training the next
generation of jihadis, so they are sabotaging it by saying, Fuck it, who
cares?. I dont want to be responsible for Nusra guys saying they were
trained by Americans, the Green Beret added.
In a detailed report, US Special Forces Sabotage White House Policy
Gone Disastrously Wrong with Covert Ops in Syria, Jack Murphy, himself a
former Green Beret (U.S. Special Forces), recounts a former CIA officer
having told him how the the Syria covert action program is [CIA Director
John] Brennans baby
Brennan was the one who breathed life into the Syrian
Task Force
John Brennan loved that regime-change bullshit.
In gist, Murphy tells the story of U.S. Special Forces under one
Presidential authority, arming Syrian anti-ISIS forces, whilst the CIA,
obsessed with overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad, and operating under a
separate Presidential authority, conducts a separate and parallel program to
arm anti-Assad insurgents.
Murphys report makes clear the CIA disdain for combatting ISIS
(though this altered somewhat with the beheading of American journalist
James Foley in August 2014): With the CIA wanting little to do with
anti-ISIS operations as they are focused on bringing down the Assad regime,
the agency kicked the can over to 5th Special Forces Group. Basing
themselves out of Jordan and Turkey operating under military activities
authority, rather than under the CIAs coveted Title 50 covert action
authority.
The untold story, Murphy writes, is one of abuse, as well as bureaucratic
infighting, which has only contributed to perpetuating the Syrian conflict.
But it is not the turf wars, nor the abuse and waste, which occupies the
central part of Murphys long report, that truly matters; nor even the
contradictory and self-defeating nature of U.S. objectives pursued. Rather,
the report tells us quite plainly why the attempted ceasefires have failed
(although this is not explicitly treated in the analysis), and it helps
explain why parts of the U.S. Administration (Defense Secretary Ashton and
CIA Director Brenner) have declined to comply with President Obamas will
as expressed in the diplomatic accord (the recent ceasefire) reached with
the Russian Federation.
The story is much worse than that hinted in Murphys title: it underlies the
present mess which constitutes relations between the U.S. and Russia, and
the collapse of the ceasefire.
The FSA [the alleged moderates of the Free Syria Army] 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 [the floor
of the CIA headquarters occupied by the Director and his staff] i.e. the
ousting of President Assad.
But in practice, as Murphy states bluntly: distinguishing between the FSA
and al-Nusra is impossible, because they are virtually the same
organization. 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.
The fact that the FSA simply passed American-made weaponry off to al-Nusra
is also unsurprising considering that the CIAs vetting process of militias
in Syria is lacklustre, consisting of little more than running traces in old
databases. These traces rely on knowing the individuals real names in the
first place, and assume that they were even fighting-age males when the data
was collected by CTC [Counterterrorism Centre] years prior.
Sympathy for Al Qaeda
Nor, confirms Murphy, was vetting any better with the 5th Special Forces
operating out of Turkey: [It consisted of] a database check and an
interview. The rebels know how to sell themselves to the Americans during
such interviews, but they still let things slip occasionally. I dont
understand why people dont like al-Nusra, one rebel told the American
soldiers. Many had sympathies with the terrorist groups such as Nusra and
ISIS.
Others simply were not fit to be soldiers. They dont want to be warriors.
They are all cowards. That is the moderate rebel, a Green Beret told
Murphy, who adds:
Pallets of weapons and rows of trucks delivered to Turkey for
American-sponsored rebel groups simply sit and collect dust because of
disputes over title authorities [i.e. Presidential authorities] and funding
sources, while authorization to conduct training for the militias is turned
on and off at a whim. One day they will be told to train, the next day not
to, and the day after only to train senior leaders. Some Green Berets
believe that this hesitation comes from the White House getting wind that
most of the militia members are affiliated with Nusra and other extremist
groups. [emphasis added.]
Murphy writes: While the games continue on, morale sinks for the Special
Forces men in Turkey. Often disguised in Turkish military uniform, one of
the Green Berets described his job as, Sitting in the back room, drinking
chai while watching the Turks train future terrorists
Among the rebels that U.S. Special Forces and Turkish Special Forces were
training, A good 95 percent of them were either working in terrorist
organizations or were sympathetic to them, a Green Beret associated with
the program said, adding, A good majority of them admitted that they had no
issues with ISIS and that their issue was with the Kurds and the Syrian
regime.
Buried in the text is this stunning one-line conclusion: after ISIS is
defeated, the real war begins. CIA-backed FSA elements will openly become
al-Nusra; while Special Forces-backed FSA elements like the New Syrian Army
will fight alongside the Assad regime. Then the CIAs militia and the
Special Forces militia will kill each other.
Well, that says it all: the U.S. has created a monster which it cannot
control if it wanted to (and Ashton Carter and John Brennan have no interest
to control it they still seek to use it).
U.S. Objectives in Syria
Professor Michael Brenner, having attended a high-level combined U.S.
security and intelligence conference in Texas last week, summed up their
apparent objectives in Syria, inter alia, as
Thwarting Russia in Syria.
Ousting Assad.
Marginalizing and weakening Iran by breaking the Shiite Crescent.
Facilitating some kind of Sunni entity in Anbar and eastern Syria. How can
we prevent it falling under the sway of al-Qaeda? Answer: Hope that the
Turks can domestic al-Nusra.
Wear down and slowly fragment ISIS. Success on this score can cover failure
on all others in domestic opinion.
Jack Murphy explains succinctly why this monster cannot be controlled: In
December of 2014, al-Nusra used the American-made TOW missiles to rout
another anti-regime CIA proxy force called the Syrian Revolutionary Front
from several bases in Idlib province. The province is now the de facto
caliphate of al-Nusra.
That Nusra captured TOW missiles from the now-defunct Syrian Revolutionary
Front is unsurprising, but that the same anti-tank weapons supplied to the
FSA ended up in Nusra hands is even less surprising when one understands the
internal dynamics of the Syrian conflict [i.e. the factional warfare between
the disparate American forces, with the result that Many [U.S. military
trainers] are actively sabotaging the programs by stalling and doing
nothing, knowing that the supposedly secular rebels they are expected to
train are actually al-Nusra terrorists.
How then could there ever be the separation of moderates from Al-Nusra
as required by the two cessations of hostilities accords (February and
September 2016)? The entire Murphy narrative shows that the moderates and
al-Nusra cannot meaningfully be distinguished from each other, let alone
separated from each other, because they are virtually the same
organization.
The Russians are right: the CIA and the Defense Department never had the
intention to comply with the accord because they could not. The Russians
are also right that the U.S. has had no intention to defeat al-Nusra as
required by U.N. Security Council Resolution 2268 (2016).
So how did the U.S. get into this Left Hand/Right Hand mess with the
U.S. President authorizing an accord with the Russian Federation, while in
parallel, his Defense Secretary was refusing to comply with it? Well, one
interesting snippet in Murphys piece refers to hesitations in the militia
training program thought to stem from the White House getting wind that most
of the militia members were affiliated with Nusra and other extremist
groups.
Obamas Inklings
It sounds from this as if the White House somehow only had inklings of
the jihadi monster emerging in Syria despite that understanding being
common knowledge to most on-the-ground trainers in Syria. Was this so? Did
Obama truly believe that there were moderates who could be separated? Or,
was he persuaded by someone to go along with it, in order to give a time
out in order for the CIA to re-supply its insurgent forces (the CIA
inserted 3,000 tons of weapons and munitions to the insurgents during the
February 2016 ceasefire, according to IHS Janes).
Support for the hypothesis that Obama may not have been fully aware of this
reality comes from Yochi Dreazen and Séan Naylor (Foreign Policys senior
staff writer on counter-terrorism and intelligence), who noted (in May 2015)
that Obama himself seemed to take a shot at the CIA and other intelligence
agencies in an interview in late 2014, when he said the community had
collectively underestimated how much Syrias chaos would spur the
emergence of the Islamic State.
In the same article, Naylor charts the power of the CIA as rooted in its
East Coast Ivy League power network, its primacy within the intelligence
machinery, its direct access to the Oval Office and its nearly unqualified
support in Congress. Naylor illustrates the CIAs privileged position within
the Establishment by quoting Hank Crumpton, who had a long CIA career before
becoming the State Departments coordinator for counterterrorism.
Crumpton told Foreign Policy that when then-Director Tenet, declared war
on Al-Qaida as far back as 1998, you didnt have the Secretary of Defense
[declaring war]; you didnt have the FBI director or anyone else in the
intelligence community taking that kind of leadership role.
Perhaps it is simply in Obamas prescient words the case that the CIA
usually gets what it wants.
Perhaps it did: Putin demonized, (and Trump tarred by association); the
Sunni Al Qaeda monster now too powerful to be easily defeated, but too
weak to completely succeed intended as the albatross hung around Russia
and Irans neck, and damn the Europeans whose back will be broken by waves
of ensuing refugees. Pity Syria.
© 2016 Consortium News
/author/alastair-crooke
/author/alastair-crooke/author/alastair-crooke
Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat who was a senior figure in
British intelligence and in European Union diplomacy. He is the founder and
director of the Conflicts Forum,
