{"id":22921,"date":"2015-08-14T01:31:45","date_gmt":"2015-08-14T05:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joshualandis.com\/blog\/?p=22921"},"modified":"2015-08-19T23:27:22","modified_gmt":"2015-08-20T03:27:22","slug":"how-to-understand-those-60-trainees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joshualandis.com\/blog\/how-to-understand-those-60-trainees\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Understand Those 60 Trainees"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Joel Veldkamp<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI can look out at your faces and see you had the same reaction I do, which is that that\u2019s an awfully small number.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So said American Defense Secretary Ash Carter in testimony<\/a> before an incredulous Senate Armed Services Committee on July 7, explaining that the $500 million American project, announced over a year ago, to train and arm a new Syrian rebel army to bring the Islamic State to its knees and force a political settlement on the Syrian regime simultaneously has, to date, trained just 60 fighters.<\/p>\n

\"Secretary

Photo: Glenn Fawcett (Released)<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s been 53 months since the Syrian uprising started, 48 months since President Obama called for regime change in Syria, 29 months since the Islamic State took over northeast Syria, 14 months since they took over northwest Iraq, and 11 months since Obama promised to destroy them, and the entirety of the U.S.\u2019 publicly-announced ground strategy to dislodge the Islamic State from Syria and end the war there is embodied in five dozen \u201ctrained\u201d Syrians in Turkey somewhere.<\/p>\n

The weeks following Carter’s testimony would bring no more reassurance. On July 29, reports emerged<\/a><\/span> that Jabhat al-Nusra, al Qaeda\u2019s Syria affiliate, had captured a group of fighters from Division 30, a rebel group U.S. officials had earlier claimed was among those participating in the train-and-equip program. What would happen when the U.S.’ chief nemesis crossed the U.S.’ handpicked fighters? Division 30 responded by issuing a statement asking its \u201cbrothers\u201d in JAN to release the fighters for the sake of the opposition\u2019s \u201cunity\u201d and refused to fight<\/a> JAN. The extent of the Pentagon\u2019s response was to vigorously deny that any of the captured Division 30 fighters were themselves recipients of U.S. training.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to understand the consternation of the senators at the Carter hearing. How could the U.S. foreign policy establishment possibly be so incompetent?<\/p>\n

To move beyond incredulity and consternation, we need to put this training project in context. Over four brutal years of civil war, the U.S. has announced a succession of programs to aid \u201cmoderate\u201d anti-government fighters in Syria \u2013 all similarly modest, even embarrassingly so. But U.S. rhetoric about these programs has been jumbled and self-contradictory, and has had only the most tenuous connection to events on the ground \u2013 and to the true scale of U.S. involvement in Syria. The wide gulf between rhetoric and reality evinces a deliberate public information strategy to conceal the nature of that involvement.<\/p>\n

The U.S. and Syria\u2019s Rebels \u2013 Rhetoric<\/strong><\/p>\n

Starting in March 2012<\/a>, a year into the conflict, officials at the White House and the State Department began claiming that the U.S. was directly aiding the Syrian armed opposition with \u201cnonlethal aid,\u201d such as communications gear and medical supplies.<\/p>\n

A year later, after the outgoing Pentagon and State Department chiefs Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton embarrassed the administration by making internal disagreements over Syria public, the incoming Secretary of State John Kerry announced<\/a> that President Obama was going to begin \u201cdirect assistance\u201d to the Syrian armed opposition, \u201cthough nonlethal,\u201d including \u201cfood and medical supplies.\u201d The Associated Press<\/a> hailed this non-announcement as \u201ca significant policy shift.\u201d<\/p>\n

Four months later, in June 2013, responding to mounting reports of regime chemical weapons use and the fall of the strategic city of Qusayr to regime forces, American officials told the New York Times<\/a> that \u201cthe Obama administration\u2026has decided to begin supplying the rebels for the first time with small arms and ammunition.\u201d White House Advisor Ben Rhodes, however, would only speak of \u201cdirect military support<\/a>\u201d to the opposition: \u201cHe would not specify whether the support would include lethal aid, such as weapons.\u201d Since this was the third time direct nonlethal support for the armed Syrian opposition had been announced \u201cfor the first time,\u201d we can sympathize with the journalist who complained at the next day\u2019s State Department press briefing<\/a>, \u201cI have to say \u2013 I hope I\u2019m not alone in this \u2013 there is still quite a lot of confusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

The amounts of \u201cnonlethal\u201d aid that the opposition was said to receive were always small. By May 2014, it totaled just $80 million<\/a>, and included<\/a> \u201c552,000 MREs, 1,500 medical kits, vehicles, communications equipment, generators, and over three tons of surgical and triage medical supplies.\u201d Spread out over two years and a battlefield the size of Syria\u2019s, these figures are only marginally more impressive than Carter\u2019s 60 trained fighters.<\/p>\n

Occasionally \u2013 usually at moments of pressure to \u201cdo something\u201d – American officials let it be known that the U.S. was actually sending \u201clethal\u201d aid to the rebels as well. In September 2013, after President Obama was forced to back down from his threat to bomb Syria after the Damascus countryside chemical weapons massacre, the Washington Post<\/em><\/a> reported that, \u201caccording to U.S. officials,\u201d arms shipments from the CIA, \u201climited to light weapons and other munitions that can be tracked\u201d had begun \u201carriving in Syria.\u201d The Post<\/em> described this as \u201ca major escalation of the U.S. role in Syria\u2019s civil war.\u201d<\/p>\n

In April 2014, after the breakdown of peace talks in Geneva and several months of regime successes in retaking lost ground, U.S. government officials leaked the news that the U.S. had provided rebels in Syria with twelve 20-year-old antitank missile launchers \u2013 news that was given exhaustive coverage by the Post<\/em>, the Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/a>, USA Today<\/em><\/a>, the Brookings Institute<\/a> and the Foundation for the Defense of the Democracies<\/a>, among others.<\/p>\n

Mostly, however, U.S. officials maintained the line of \u201cnonlethal aid\u201d in public. In December 2012, a \u201csenior administration official\u201d told reporters<\/a>, \u201cuntil we understand how these arms promote a political solution, we do not see how provision of arms is a good idea.\u201d In April 2013, Acting Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Jones reaffirmed<\/a>, \u201cWe do not believe that it is in the United States or the Syrian people\u2019s best interest to provide lethal support to the Syrian opposition.\u201d Asked about the possibility of sending arms in February 2014, a senior U.S. official told the BBC<\/a>, \u201cWe already, as you know, provide non-lethal aid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three days before Mosul fell to the Islamic State, National Security Advisor Susan Rice stated publicly, for the first time, that the U.S. \u201cis providing lethal and non-lethal support\u201d to the \u201cmoderate, vetted opposition\u201d in Syria. In reporting this statement, the staff of the Israeli daily Haartez<\/em><\/a> noted, \u201cRice gave more details than are usually provided by Obama administration officials.\u201d<\/p>\n

With so much contradictory information, it is little wonder that confusion reigned on this point, not only among the general public, but among American media organs and policymakers. Thus, after the fall of Mosul, the New York Times<\/a> claimed that the city\u2019s fall had increased \u201cscrutiny\u201d on \u201cthe decision by the Obama administration not to arm moderate Syrian rebels at the outset,\u201d and Hillary Clinton<\/a> was quick to note that she \u201cpushed very hard\u201d for arming moderate rebels. This past June, outgoing Daily Show<\/em><\/a> host Jon Stewart ruthlessly mocked various Republican figures for proposing arming rebels in Syria, and implicitly praised Obama for not doing so. In criticizing the current nuclear deal with Iran, the Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/a> recently editorialized, \u201cThe U.S. could have armed the Free Syrian Army to defeat Iran\u2019s allied Assad regime in Damascus\u201d to get a better deal.<\/p>\n

These statements reveal the widely-held assumption that the U.S. has avoided engagement in the Syria conflict, but these statements can only exist in blissful denial of publicly-available information about the reality of the U.S.\u2019 role in Syria since 2011.<\/p>\n

The U.S. and Syria\u2019s Rebels \u2013 Reality<\/strong><\/p>\n

Among the publicly-reported details of that role:<\/p>\n