{"id":68285,"date":"2015-12-28T12:00:42","date_gmt":"2015-12-28T12:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=68285"},"modified":"2017-05-09T16:03:15","modified_gmt":"2017-05-09T15:03:15","slug":"military-to-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/12\/military-to-military\/","title":{"rendered":"Military to Military"},"content":{"rendered":"

US Intelligence Sharing in the Syrian War<\/em><\/p>\n

Barack Obama\u2019s repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office \u2013 and that there are \u2018moderate\u2019 rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him \u2013 has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagon\u2019s Joint Staff. Their criticism has focused on what they see as the administration\u2019s fixation on Assad\u2019s primary ally, Vladimir Putin. In their view, Obama is captive to Cold War thinking about Russia and China, and hasn\u2019t adjusted his stance on Syria to the fact both countries share Washington\u2019s anxiety about the spread of terrorism in and beyond Syria; like Washington, they believe that Islamic State must be stopped.<\/p>\n

The military\u2019s resistance dates back to the summer of 2013, when a highly classified assessment, put together by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then led by General Martin Dempsey, forecast that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to chaos and, potentially, to Syria\u2019s takeover by jihadi extremists, much as was then happening in Libya. A former senior adviser to the Joint Chiefs told me that the document was an \u2018all-source\u2019 appraisal, drawing on information from signals, satellite and human intelligence, and took a dim view of the Obama administration\u2019s insistence on continuing to finance and arm the so-called moderate rebel groups. By then, the CIA had been conspiring for more than a year with allies in the UK, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to ship guns and goods \u2013 to be used for the overthrow of Assad \u2013 from Libya, via Turkey, into Syria. The new intelligence estimate singled out Turkey as a major impediment to Obama\u2019s Syria policy. The document showed, the adviser said, \u2018that what was started as a covert US programme to arm and support the moderate rebels fighting Assad had been co-opted by Turkey, and had morphed into an across-the-board technical, arms and logistical programme for all of the opposition, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State. The so-called moderates had evaporated and the Free Syrian Army was a rump group stationed at an airbase in Turkey.\u2019 The assessment was bleak: there was no viable \u2018moderate\u2019 opposition to Assad, and the US was arming extremists.<\/p>\n

Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, confirmed that his agency had sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the civilian leadership about the dire consequences of toppling Assad. The jihadists, he said, were in control of the opposition. Turkey wasn\u2019t doing enough to stop the smuggling of foreign fighters and weapons across the border. \u2018If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic,\u2019 Flynn told me. \u2018We understood Isis\u2019s long-term strategy and its campaign plans, and we also discussed the fact that Turkey was looking the other way when it came to the growth of the Islamic State inside Syria.\u2019 The DIA\u2019s reporting, he said, \u2018got enormous pushback\u2019 from the Obama administration. \u2018I felt that they did not want to hear the truth.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Our policy of arming the opposition to Assad was unsuccessful and actually having a negative impact,\u2019 the former JCS adviser said. \u2018The Joint Chiefs believed that Assad should not be replaced by fundamentalists. The administration\u2019s policy was contradictory. They wanted Assad to go but the opposition was dominated by extremists. So who was going to replace him? To say Assad\u2019s got to go is fine, but if you follow that through \u2013 therefore anyone is better. It\u2019s the \u201canybody else is better\u201d issue that the JCS had with Obama\u2019s policy.\u2019 The Joint Chiefs felt that a direct challenge to Obama\u2019s policy would have \u2018had a zero chance of success\u2019. So in the autumn of 2013 they decided to take steps against the extremists without going through political channels, by providing US intelligence to the militaries of other nations, on the understanding that it would be passed on to the Syrian army and used against the common enemy, Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State.<\/p>\n

Germany, Israel and Russia were in contact with the Syrian army, and able to exercise some influence over Assad\u2019s decisions \u2013 it was through them that US intelligence would be shared. Each had its reasons for co-operating with Assad: Germany feared what might happen among its own population of six million Muslims if Islamic State expanded; Israel was concerned with border security; Russia had an alliance of very long standing with Syria, and was worried by the threat to its only naval base on the Mediterranean, at Tartus. \u2018We weren\u2019t intent on deviating from Obama\u2019s stated policies,\u2019 the adviser said. \u2018But sharing our assessments via the military-to-military relationships with other countries could prove productive. It was clear that Assad needed better tactical intelligence and operational advice. The JCS concluded that if those needs were met, the overall fight against Islamist terrorism would be enhanced. Obama didn\u2019t know, but Obama doesn\u2019t know what the JCS does in every circumstance and that\u2019s true of all presidents.\u2019<\/p>\n

Once the flow of US intelligence began, Germany, Israel and Russia started passing on information about the whereabouts and intent of radical jihadist groups to the Syrian army; in return, Syria provided information about its own capabilities and intentions. There was no direct contact between the US and the Syrian military; instead, the adviser said, \u2018we provided the information \u2013 including long-range analyses on Syria\u2019s future put together by contractors or one of our war colleges \u2013 and these countries could do with it what they chose, including sharing it with Assad. We were saying to the Germans and the others: \u201cHere\u2019s some information that\u2019s pretty interesting and our interest is mutual.\u201d End of conversation. The JCS could conclude that something beneficial would arise from it \u2013 but it was a military to military thing, and not some sort of a sinister Joint Chiefs\u2019 plot to go around Obama and support Assad. It was a lot cleverer than that. If Assad remains in power, it will not be because we did it. It\u2019s because he was smart enough to use the intelligence and sound tactical advice we provided to others.\u2019<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

The public history of relations between the US and Syria over the past few decades has been one of enmity. Assad condemned the 9\/11 attacks, but opposed the Iraq War. George W. Bush repeatedly linked Syria to the three members of his \u2018axis of evil\u2019 \u2013 Iraq, Iran and North Korea \u2013 throughout his presidency. State Department cables made public by WikiLeaks show that the Bush administration tried to destabilise Syria and that these efforts continued into the Obama years. In December 2006, William Roebuck, then in charge of the US embassy in Damascus, filed an analysis of the \u2018vulnerabilities\u2019 of the Assad government and listed methods \u2018that will improve the likelihood\u2019 of opportunities for destabilisation. He recommended that Washington work with Saudi Arabia and Egypt to increase sectarian tension and focus on publicising \u2018Syrian efforts against extremist groups\u2019 \u2013 dissident Kurds and radical Sunni factions \u2013 \u2018in a way that suggests weakness, signs of instability, and uncontrolled blowback\u2019; and that the \u2018isolation of Syria\u2019 should be encouraged through US support of the National Salvation Front, led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian vice president whose government-in-exile in Riyadh was sponsored by the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood. Another 2006 cable showed that the embassy had spent $5 million financing dissidents who ran as independent candidates for the People\u2019s Assembly; the payments were kept up even after it became clear that Syrian intelligence knew what was going on. A 2010 cable warned that funding for a London-based television network run by a Syrian opposition group would be viewed by the Syrian government \u2018as a covert and hostile gesture toward the regime\u2019.<\/p>\n

But there is also a parallel history of shadowy co-operation between Syria and the US during the same period. The two countries collaborated against al-Qaida, their common enemy. A longtime consultant to the Joint Special Operations Command said that, after 9\/11, \u2018Bashar was, for years, extremely helpful to us while, in my view, we were churlish in return, and clumsy in our use of the gold he gave us. That quiet co-operation continued among some elements, even after the [Bush administration\u2019s] decision to vilify him.\u2019 In 2002 Assad authorised Syrian intelligence to turn over hundreds of internal files on the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and Germany. Later that year, Syrian intelligence foiled an attack by al-Qaida on the headquarters of the US Navy\u2019s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, and Assad agreed to provide the CIA with the name of a vital al-Qaida informant. In violation of this agreement, the CIA contacted the informant directly; he rejected the approach, and broke off relations with his Syrian handlers. Assad also secretly turned over to the US relatives of Saddam Hussein who had sought refuge in Syria, and \u2013 like America\u2019s allies in Jordan, Egypt, Thailand and elsewhere \u2013 tortured suspected terrorists for the CIA in a Damascus prison.<\/p>\n

It was this history of co-operation that made it seem possible in 2013 that Damascus would agree to the new indirect intelligence-sharing arrangement with the US. The Joint Chiefs let it be known that in return the US would require four things: Assad must restrain Hizbullah from attacking Israel; he must renew the stalled negotiations with Israel to reach a settlement on the Golan Heights; he must agree to accept Russian and other outside military advisers; and he must commit to holding open elections after the war with a wide range of factions included. \u2018We had positive feedback from the Israelis, who were willing to entertain the idea, but they needed to know what the reaction would be from Iran and Syria,\u2019 the JCS adviser told me. \u2018The Syrians told us that Assad would not make a decision unilaterally \u2013 he needed to have support from his military and Alawite allies. Assad\u2019s worry was that Israel would say yes and then not uphold its end of the bargain.\u2019 A senior adviser to the Kremlin on Middle East affairs told me that in late 2012, after suffering a series of battlefield setbacks and military defections, Assad had approached Israel via a contact in Moscow and offered to reopen the talks on the Golan Heights. The Israelis had rejected the offer. \u2018They said, \u201cAssad is finished,\u201d\u2019 the Russian official told me. \u2018\u201cHe\u2019s close to the end.\u201d\u2019 He said the Turks had told Moscow the same thing. By mid-2013, however, the Syrians believed the worst was behind them, and wanted assurances that the Americans and others were serious about their offers of help.<\/p>\n

In the early stages of the talks, the adviser said, the Joint Chiefs tried to establish what Assad needed as a sign of their good intentions. The answer was sent through one of Assad\u2019s friends: \u2018Bring him the head of Prince Bandar.\u2019 The Joint Chiefs did not oblige. Bandar bin Sultan had served Saudi Arabia for decades in intelligence and national security affairs, and spent more than twenty years as ambassador in Washington. In recent years, he has been known as an advocate for Assad\u2019s removal from office by any means. Reportedly in poor health, he resigned last year as director of the Saudi National Security Council, but Saudi Arabia continues to be a major provider of funds to the Syrian opposition, estimated by US intelligence last year at $700 million.<\/p>\n

In July 2013, the Joint Chiefs found a more direct way of demonstrating to Assad how serious they were about helping him. By then the CIA-sponsored secret flow of arms from Libya to the Syrian opposition, via Turkey, had been underway for more than a year (it started sometime after Gaddafi\u2019s death on 20 October 2011).\u200b\uff0a<\/a> The operation was largely run out of a covert CIA annex in Benghazi, with State Department acquiescence. On 11 September 2012 the US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was killed during an anti-American demonstration that led to the burning down of the US consulate in Benghazi; reporters for the Washington Post<\/em> found copies of the ambassador\u2019s schedule in the building\u2019s ruins. It showed that on 10 September Stevens had met with the chief of the CIA\u2019s annex operation. The next day, shortly before he died, he met a representative from Al-Marfa Shipping and Maritime Services, a Tripoli-based company which, the JCS adviser said, was known by the Joint Staff to be handling the weapons shipments.<\/p>\n

By the late summer of 2013, the DIA\u2019s assessment had been circulated widely, but although many in the American intelligence community were aware that the Syrian opposition was dominated by extremists the CIA-sponsored weapons kept coming, presenting a continuing problem for Assad\u2019s army. Gaddafi\u2019s stockpile had created an international arms bazaar, though prices were high. \u2018There was no way to stop the arms shipments that had been authorised by the president,\u2019 the JCS adviser said. \u2018The solution involved an appeal to the pocketbook. The CIA was approached by a representative from the Joint Chiefs with a suggestion: there were far less costly weapons available in Turkish arsenals that could reach the Syrian rebels within days, and without a boat ride.\u2019 But it wasn\u2019t only the CIA that benefited. \u2018We worked with Turks we trusted who were not loyal to Erdo\u011fan,\u2019 the adviser said, \u2018and got them to ship the jihadists in Syria all the obsolete weapons in the arsenal, including M1 carbines that hadn\u2019t been seen since the Korean War and lots of Soviet arms. It was a message Assad could understand: \u201cWe have the power to diminish a presidential policy in its tracks.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n

The flow of US intelligence to the Syrian army, and the downgrading of the quality of the arms being supplied to the rebels, came at a critical juncture. The Syrian army had suffered heavy losses in the spring of 2013 in fighting against Jabhat al-Nusra and other extremist groups as it failed to hold the provincial capital of Raqqa. Sporadic Syrian army and air-force raids continued in the area for months, with little success, until it was decided to withdraw from Raqqa and other hard to defend, lightly populated areas in the north and west and focus instead on consolidating the government\u2019s hold on Damascus and the heavily populated areas linking the capital to Latakia in the north-east. But as the army gained in strength with the Joint Chiefs\u2019 support, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey escalated their financing and arming of Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State, which by the end of 2013 had made enormous gains on both sides of the Syria\/Iraq border. The remaining non-fundamentalist rebels found themselves fighting \u2013 and losing \u2013 pitched battles against the extremists. In January 2014, IS took complete control of Raqqa and the tribal areas around it from al-Nusra and established the city as its base. Assad still controlled 80 per cent of the Syrian population, but he had lost a vast amount of territory.<\/p>\n

CIA efforts to train the moderate rebel forces were also failing badly. \u2018The CIA\u2019s training camp was in Jordan and was controlled by a Syrian tribal group,\u2019 the JCS adviser said. There was a suspicion that some of those who signed up for training were actually Syrian army regulars minus their uniforms. This had happened before, at the height of the Iraqi war, when hundreds of Shia militia members showed up at American training camps for new uniforms, weapons and a few days of training, and then disappeared into the desert. A separate training programme, set up by the Pentagon in Turkey, fared no better. The Pentagon acknowledged in September that only \u2018four or five\u2019 of its recruits were still battling Islamic State; a few days later 70 of them defected to Jabhat al-Nusra immediately after crossing the border into Syria.<\/p>\n

In January 2014, despairing at the lack of progress, John Brennan, the director of the CIA, summoned American and Sunni Arab intelligence chiefs from throughout the Middle East to a secret meeting in Washington, with the aim of persuading Saudi Arabia to stop supporting extremist fighters in Syria. \u2018The Saudis told us they were happy to listen,\u2019 the JCS adviser said, \u2018so everyone sat around in Washington to hear Brennan tell them that they had to get on board with the so-called moderates. His message was that if everyone in the region stopped supporting al-Nusra and Isis their ammunition and weapons would dry up, and the moderates would win out.\u2019 Brennan\u2019s message was ignored by the Saudis, the adviser said, who \u2018went back home and increased their efforts with the extremists and asked us for more technical support. And we say OK, and so it turns out that we end up reinforcing the extremists.\u2019<\/p>\n

But the Saudis were far from the only problem: American intelligence had accumulated intercept and human intelligence demonstrating that the Erdo\u011fan government had been supporting Jabhat al-Nusra for years, and was now doing the same for Islamic State. \u2018We can handle the Saudis,\u2019 the adviser said. \u2018We can handle the Muslim Brotherhood. You can argue that the whole balance in the Middle East is based on a form of mutually assured destruction between Israel and the rest of the Middle East, and Turkey can disrupt the balance \u2013 which is Erdo\u011fan\u2019s dream. We told him we wanted him to shut down the pipeline of foreign jihadists flowing into Turkey. But he is dreaming big \u2013 of restoring the Ottoman Empire \u2013 and he did not realise the extent to which he could be successful in this.\u2019<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

One of the constants in US affairs since the fall of the Soviet Union has been a military-to-military relationship with Russia. After 1991 the US spent billions of dollars to help Russia secure its nuclear weapons complex, including a highly secret joint operation to remove weapons-grade uranium from unsecured storage depots in Kazakhstan. Joint programmes to monitor the security of weapons-grade materials continued for the next two decades. During the American war on Afghanistan, Russia provided overflight rights for US cargo carriers and tankers, as well as access for the flow of weapons, ammunition, food and water the US war machine needed daily. Russia\u2019s military provided intelligence on Osama bin Laden\u2019s whereabouts and helped the US negotiate rights to use an airbase in Kyrgyzstan. The Joint Chiefs have been in communication with their Russian counterparts throughout the Syrian war, and the ties between the two militaries start at the top. In August, a few weeks before his retirement as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Dempsey made a farewell visit to the headquarters of the Irish Defence Forces in Dublin and told his audience there that he had made a point while in office to keep in touch with the chief of the Russian General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov. \u2018I\u2019ve actually suggested to him that we not end our careers as we began them,\u2019 Dempsey said \u2013 one a tank commander in West Germany, the other in the east.<\/p>\n

When it comes to tackling Islamic State, Russia and the US have much to offer each other. Many in the IS leadership and rank and file fought for more than a decade against Russia in the two Chechen wars that began in 1994, and the Putin government is heavily invested in combating Islamist terrorism. \u2018Russia knows the Isis leadership,\u2019 the JCS adviser said, \u2018and has insights into its operational techniques, and has much intelligence to share.\u2019 In return, he said, \u2018we\u2019ve got excellent trainers with years of experience in training foreign fighters \u2013 experience that Russia does not have.\u2019 The adviser would not discuss what American intelligence is also believed to have: an ability to obtain targeting data, often by paying huge sums of cash, from sources within rebel militias.<\/p>\n

A former White House adviser on Russian affairs told me that before 9\/11 Putin \u2018used to say to us: \u201cWe have the same nightmares about different places.\u201d He was referring to his problems with the caliphate in Chechnya and our early issues with al-Qaida. These days, after the Metrojet bombing over Sinai and the massacres in Paris and elsewhere, it\u2019s hard to avoid the conclusion that we actually have the same nightmares about the same places.\u2019<\/p>\n

Yet the Obama administration continues to condemn Russia for its support of Assad. A retired senior diplomat who served at the US embassy in Moscow expressed sympathy for Obama\u2019s dilemma as the leader of the Western coalition opposed to Russia\u2019s aggression against Ukraine: \u2018Ukraine is a serious issue and Obama has been handling it firmly with sanctions. But our policy vis-\u00e0-vis Russia is too often unfocused. But it\u2019s not about us in Syria. It\u2019s about making sure Bashar does not lose. The reality is that Putin does not want to see the chaos in Syria spread to Jordan or Lebanon, as it has to Iraq, and he does not want to see Syria end up in the hands of Isis. The most counterproductive thing Obama has done, and it has hurt our efforts to end the fighting a lot, was to say: \u201cAssad must go as a premise for negotiation.\u201d\u2019 He also echoed a view held by some in the Pentagon when he alluded to a collateral factor behind Russia\u2019s decision to launch airstrikes in support of the Syrian army on 30 September: Putin\u2019s desire to prevent Assad from suffering the same fate as Gaddafi. He had been told that Putin had watched a video of Gaddafi\u2019s savage death three times, a video that shows him being sodomised with a bayonet. The JCS adviser also told me of a US intelligence assessment which concluded that Putin had been appalled by Gaddafi\u2019s fate: \u2018Putin blamed himself for letting Gaddafi go, for not playing a strong role behind the scenes\u2019 at the UN when the Western coalition was lobbying to be allowed to undertake the airstrikes that destroyed the regime. \u2018Putin believed that unless he got engaged Bashar would suffer the same fate \u2013 mutilated \u2013 and he\u2019d see the destruction of his allies in Syria.\u2019<\/p>\n

In a speech on 22 November, Obama declared that the \u2018principal targets\u2019 of the Russian airstrikes \u2018have been the moderate opposition\u2019. It\u2019s a line that the administration \u2013 along with most of the mainstream American media \u2013 has rarely strayed from. The Russians insist that they are targeting all rebel groups that threaten Syria\u2019s stability \u2013 including Islamic State. The Kremlin adviser on the Middle East explained in an interview that the first round of Russian airstrikes was aimed at bolstering security around a Russian airbase in Latakia, an Alawite stronghold. The strategic goal, he said, has been to establish a jihadist-free corridor from Damascus to Latakia and the Russian naval base at Tartus and then to shift the focus of bombing gradually to the south and east, with a greater concentration of bombing missions over IS-held territory. Russian strikes on IS targets in and near Raqqa were reported as early as the beginning of October; in November there were further strikes on IS positions near the historic city of Palmyra and in Idlib province, a bitterly contested stronghold on the Turkish border.<\/p>\n

Russian incursions into Turkish airspace began soon after Putin authorised the bombings, and the Russian air force deployed electronic jamming systems that interfered with Turkish radar. The message being sent to the Turkish air force, the JCS adviser said, was: \u2018We\u2019re going to fly our fighter planes where we want and when we want and jam your radar. Do not fuck with us. Putin was letting the Turks know what they were up against.\u2019 Russia\u2019s aggression led to Turkish complaints and Russian denials, along with more aggressive border patrolling by the Turkish air force. There were no significant incidents until 24 November, when two Turkish F-16 fighters, apparently acting under more aggressive rules of engagement, shot down a Russian Su-24M jet that had crossed into Turkish airspace for no more than 17 seconds. In the days after the fighter was shot down, Obama expressed support for Erdo\u011fan, and after they met in private on 1 December he told a press conference that his administration remained \u2018very much committed to Turkey\u2019s security and its sovereignty\u2019. He said that as long as Russia remained allied with Assad, \u2018a lot of Russian resources are still going to be targeted at opposition groups \u2026 that we support \u2026 So I don\u2019t think we should be under any illusions that somehow Russia starts hitting only Isil targets. That\u2019s not happening now. It was never happening. It\u2019s not going to be happening in the next several weeks.\u2019<\/p>\n

The Kremlin adviser on the Middle East, like the Joint Chiefs and the DIA, dismisses the \u2018moderates\u2019 who have Obama\u2019s support, seeing them as extremist Islamist groups that fight alongside Jabhat al-Nusra and IS (\u2018There\u2019s no need to play with words and split terrorists into moderate and not moderate,\u2019 Putin said in a speech on 22 October). The American generals see them as exhausted militias that have been forced to make an accommodation with Jabhat al-Nusra or IS in order to survive. At the end of 2014, J\u00fcrgen Todenh\u00f6fer, a German journalist who was allowed to spend ten days touring IS-held territory in Iraq and Syria, told CNN that the IS leadership \u2018are all laughing about the Free Syrian Army. They don\u2019t take them for serious. They say: \u201cThe best arms sellers we have are the FSA. If they get a good weapon, they sell it to us.\u201d They didn\u2019t take them for serious. They take for serious Assad. They take for serious, of course, the bombs. But they fear nothing, and FSA doesn\u2019t play a role.\u2019<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s bombing campaign provoked a series of anti-Russia articles in the American press. On 25 October, the New York Times<\/em> reported, citing Obama administration officials, that Russian submarines and spy ships were \u2018aggressively\u2019 operating near the undersea cables that carry much of the world\u2019s internet traffic \u2013 although, as the article went on to acknowledge, there was \u2018no evidence yet\u2019 of any Russian attempt actually to interfere with that traffic. Ten days earlier the Times<\/em> published a summary of Russian intrusions into its former Soviet satellite republics, and described the Russian bombing in Syria as being \u2018in some respects a return to the ambitious military moves of the Soviet past\u2019. The report did not note that the Assad administration had invited Russia to intervene, nor did it mention the US bombing raids inside Syria that had been underway since the previous September, without Syria\u2019s approval. An October op-ed in the same paper by Michael McFaul, Obama\u2019s ambassador to Russia between 2012 and 2014, declared that the Russian air campaign was attacking \u2018everyone except the Islamic State\u2019. The anti-Russia stories did not abate after the Metrojet disaster, for which Islamic State claimed credit. Few in the US government and media questioned why IS would target a Russian airliner, along with its 224 passengers and crew, if Moscow\u2019s air force was attacking only the Syrian \u2018moderates\u2019.<\/p>\n

Economic sanctions, meanwhile, are still in effect against Russia for what a large number of Americans consider Putin\u2019s war crimes in Ukraine, as are US Treasury Department sanctions against Syria and against those Americans who do business there. The New York Times<\/em>, in a report on sanctions in late November, revived an old and groundless assertion, saying that the Treasury\u2019s actions \u2018emphasise an argument that the administration has increasingly been making about Mr Assad as it seeks to press Russia to abandon its backing for him: that although he professes to be at war with Islamist terrorists, he has a symbiotic relationship with the Islamic State that has allowed it to thrive while he has clung to power.\u2019<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

The four core elements of Obama\u2019s Syria policy remain intact today: an insistence that Assad must go; that no anti-IS coalition with Russia is possible; that Turkey is a steadfast ally in the war against terrorism; and that there really are significant moderate opposition forces for the US to support. The Paris attacks on 13 November that killed 130 people did not change the White House\u2019s public stance, although many European leaders, including Fran\u00e7ois Hollande, advocated greater co-operation with Russia and agreed to co-ordinate more closely with its air force; there was also talk of the need to be more flexible about the timing of Assad\u2019s exit from power. On 24 November, Hollande flew to Washington to discuss how France and the US could collaborate more closely in the fight against Islamic State. At a joint press conference at the White House, Obama said he and Hollande had agreed that \u2018Russia\u2019s strikes against the moderate opposition only bolster the Assad regime, whose brutality has helped to fuel the rise\u2019 of IS. Hollande didn\u2019t go that far but he said that the diplomatic process in Vienna would \u2018lead to Bashar al-Assad\u2019s departure \u2026 a government of unity is required.\u2019 The press conference failed to deal with the far more urgent impasse between the two men on the matter of Erdo\u011fan. Obama defended Turkey\u2019s right to defend its borders; Hollande said it was \u2018a matter of urgency\u2019 for Turkey to take action against terrorists. The JCS adviser told me that one of Hollande\u2019s main goals in flying to Washington had been to try to persuade Obama to join the EU in a mutual declaration of war against Islamic State. Obama said no. The Europeans had pointedly not gone to Nato, to which Turkey belongs, for such a declaration. \u2018Turkey is the problem,\u2019 the JCS adviser said.<\/p>\n

Assad, naturally, doesn\u2019t accept that a group of foreign leaders should be deciding on his future. Imad Moustapha, now Syria\u2019s ambassador to China, was dean of the IT faculty at the University of Damascus, and a close aide of Assad\u2019s, when he was appointed in 2004 as the Syrian ambassador to the US, a post he held for seven years. Moustapha is known still to be close to Assad, and can be trusted to reflect what he thinks. He told me that for Assad to surrender power would mean capitulating to \u2018armed terrorist groups\u2019 and that ministers in a national unity government \u2013 such as was being proposed by the Europeans \u2013 would be seen to be beholden to the foreign powers that appointed them. These powers could remind the new president \u2018that they could easily replace him as they did before to the predecessor \u2026 Assad owes it to his people: he could not leave because the historic enemies of Syria are demanding his departure.\u2019<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Moustapha also brought up China, an ally of Assad that has allegedly committed more than $30 billion to postwar reconstruction in Syria. China, too, is worried about Islamic State. \u2018China regards the Syrian crisis from three perspectives,\u2019 he said: international law and legitimacy; global strategic positioning; and the activities of jihadist Uighurs, from Xinjiang province in China\u2019s far west. Xinjiang borders eight nations \u2013 Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India \u2013 and, in China\u2019s view, serves as a funnel for terrorism around the world and within China. Many Uighur fighters now in Syria are known to be members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement \u2013 an often violent separatist organisation that seeks to establish an Islamist Uighur state in Xinjiang. \u2018The fact that they have been aided by Turkish intelligence to move from China into Syria through Turkey has caused a tremendous amount of tension between the Chinese and Turkish intelligence,\u2019 Moustapha said. \u2018China is concerned that the Turkish role of supporting the Uighur fighters in Syria may be extended in the future to support Turkey\u2019s agenda in Xinjiang. We are already providing the Chinese intelligence service with information regarding these terrorists and the routes they crossed from on travelling into Syria.\u2019<\/p>\n

Moustapha\u2019s concerns were echoed by a Washington foreign affairs analyst who has closely followed the passage of jihadists through Turkey and into Syria. The analyst, whose views are routinely sought by senior government officials, told me that \u2018Erdo\u011fan has been bringing Uighurs into Syria by special transport while his government has been agitating in favour of their struggle in China. Uighur and Burmese Muslim terrorists who escape into Thailand somehow get Turkish passports and are then flown to Turkey for transit into Syria.\u2019 He added that there was also what amounted to another \u2018rat line\u2019 that was funnelling Uighurs \u2013 estimates range from a few hundred to many thousands over the years \u2013 from China into Kazakhstan for eventual relay to Turkey, and then to IS territory in Syria. \u2018US intelligence,\u2019 he said, \u2018is not getting good information about these activities because those insiders who are unhappy with the policy are not talking to them.\u2019 He also said it was \u2018not clear\u2019 that the officials responsible for Syrian policy in the State Department and White House \u2018get it\u2019. IHS-Jane\u2019s Defence Weekly<\/em> estimated in October that as many as five thousand Uighur would-be fighters have arrived in Turkey since 2013, with perhaps two thousand moving on to Syria. Moustapha said he has information that \u2018up to 860 Uighur fighters are currently in Syria.\u2019<\/p>\n

China\u2019s growing concern about the Uighur problem and its link to Syria and Islamic State have preoccupied Christina Lin, a scholar who dealt with Chinese issues a decade ago while serving in the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld. \u2018I grew up in Taiwan and came to the Pentagon as a critic of China,\u2019 Lin told me. \u2018I used to demonise the Chinese as ideologues, and they are not perfect. But over the years as I see them opening up and evolving, I have begun to change my perspective. I see China as a potential partner for various global challenges especially in the Middle East. There are many places \u2013 Syria for one \u2013 where the United States and China must co-operate in regional security and counterterrorism.\u2019 A few weeks earlier, she said, China and India, Cold War enemies that \u2018hated each other more than China and the United States hated each other, conducted a series of joint counterterrorism exercises. And today China and Russia both want to co-operate on terrorism issues with the United States.\u2019 As China sees it, Lin suggests, Uighur militants who have made their way to Syria are being trained by Islamic State in survival techniques intended to aid them on covert return trips to the Chinese mainland, for future terrorist attacks there. \u2018If Assad fails,\u2019 Lin wrote in a paper published in September, \u2018jihadi fighters from Russia\u2019s Chechnya, China\u2019s Xinjiang and India\u2019s Kashmir will then turn their eyes towards the home front to continue jihad, supported by a new and well-sourced Syrian operating base in the heart of the Middle East.\u2019<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

General Dempsey and his colleagues on the Joint Chiefs of Staff kept their dissent out of bureaucratic channels, and survived in office. General Michael Flynn did not. \u2018Flynn incurred the wrath of the White House by insisting on telling the truth about Syria,\u2019 said Patrick Lang, a retired army colonel who served for nearly a decade as the chief Middle East civilian intelligence officer for the DIA. \u2018He thought truth was the best thing and they shoved him out. He wouldn\u2019t shut up.\u2019 Flynn told me his problems went beyond Syria. \u2018I was shaking things up at the DIA \u2013 and not just moving deckchairs on the Titanic<\/em>. It was radical reform. I felt that the civilian leadership did not want to hear the truth. I suffered for it, but I\u2019m OK with that.\u2019 In a recent interview in Der Spiegel<\/em>, Flynn was blunt about Russia\u2019s entry into the Syrian war: \u2018We have to work constructively with Russia. Whether we like it or not, Russia made a decision to be there and to act militarily. They are there, and this has dramatically changed the dynamic. So you can\u2019t say Russia is bad; they have to go home. It\u2019s not going to happen. Get real.\u2019<\/p>\n

Few in the US Congress share this view. One exception is Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat from Hawaii and member of the House Armed Services Committee who, as a major in the Army National Guard, served two tours in the Middle East. In an interview on CNN in October she said: \u2018The US and the CIA should stop this illegal and counterproductive war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad and should stay focused on fighting against \u2026 the Islamic extremist groups.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Does it not concern you,\u2019 the interviewer asked, \u2018that Assad\u2019s regime has been brutal, killing at least 200,000 and maybe 300,000 of his own people?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018The things that are being said about Assad right now,\u2019 Gabbard responded, \u2018are the same that were said about Gaddafi, they are the same things that were said about Saddam Hussein by those who were advocating for the US to \u2026 overthrow those regimes \u2026 If it happens here in Syria \u2026 we will end up in a situation with far greater suffering, with far greater persecution of religious minorities and Christians in Syria, and our enemy will be far stronger.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018So what you are saying,\u2019 the interviewer asked, \u2018is that the Russian military involvement in the air and on-the-ground Iranian involvement \u2013 they are actually doing the US a favour?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018They are working toward defeating our common enemy,\u2019 Gabbard replied.<\/p>\n

Gabbard later told me that many of her colleagues in Congress, Democrats and Republicans, have thanked her privately for speaking out. \u2018There are a lot of people in the general public, and even in the Congress, who need to have things clearly explained to them,\u2019 Gabbard said. \u2018But it\u2019s hard when there\u2019s so much deception about what is going on. The truth is not out.\u2019 It\u2019s unusual for a politician to challenge her party\u2019s foreign policy directly and on the record. For someone on the inside, with access to the most secret intelligence, speaking openly and critically can be a career-ender. Informed dissent can be transmitted by means of a trust relationship between a reporter and those on the inside, but it almost invariably includes no signature. The dissent exists, however. The longtime consultant to the Joint Special Operations Command could not hide his contempt when I asked him for his view of the US\u2019s Syria policy. \u2018The solution in Syria is right before our nose,\u2019 he said. \u2018Our primary threat is Isis and all of us \u2013 the United States, Russia and China \u2013 need to work together. Bashar will remain in office and, after the country is stabilised there will be an election. There is no other option.\u2019<\/p>\n

The military\u2019s indirect pathway to Assad disappeared with Dempsey\u2019s retirement in September. His replacement as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Joseph Dunford, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in July, two months before assuming office. \u2018If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I\u2019d have to point to Russia,\u2019 Dunford said. \u2018If you look at their behaviour, it\u2019s nothing short of alarming.\u2019 In October, as chairman, Dunford dismissed the Russian bombing efforts in Syria, telling the same committee that Russia \u2018is not fighting\u2019 IS. He added that America must \u2018work with Turkish partners to secure the northern border of Syria\u2019 and \u2018do all we can to enable vetted Syrian opposition forces\u2019 \u2013 i.e. the \u2018moderates\u2019 \u2013 to fight the extremists.<\/p>\n

Obama now has a more compliant Pentagon. There will be no more indirect challenges from the military leadership to his policy of disdain for Assad and support for Erdo\u011fan. Dempsey and his associates remain mystified by Obama\u2019s continued public defence of Erdo\u011fan, given the American intelligence community\u2019s strong case against him \u2013 and the evidence that Obama, in private, accepts that case. \u2018We know what you\u2019re doing with the radicals in Syria,\u2019 the president told Erdo\u011fan\u2019s intelligence chief at a tense meeting at the White House (as I reported in the LRB<\/em> of 17 April 2014<\/a>). The Joint Chiefs and the DIA were constantly telling Washington\u2019s leadership of the jihadist threat in Syria, and of Turkey\u2019s support for it. The message was never listened to. Why not?<\/p>\n

_____________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Seymour M. Hersh has been a contributor to <\/em>The New Yorker since 1993. He is a regular at <\/em>London Review of Books and is writing an alternative history of the war on terror. His journalism and publishing awards include a Pulitzer Prize, five George Polk Awards, two National Magazine Awards, and more than a dozen other prizes for investigative reporting. Hersh won a National Magazine Award for Public Interest for his 2003 articles \u201cLunch with the Chairman,\u201d \u201cSelective Intelligence,\u201d and \u201cThe Stovepipe.\u201d In 2004 he exposed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in a series of pieces; in 2005, he again received a National Magazine Award for Public Interest, an Overseas Press Club award, the National Press Foundation\u2019s Kiplinger Distinguished Contributions to Journalism award, and his fifth George Polk Award, making him that award\u2019s most honored laureate. He lives in Washington DC.<\/em><\/p>\n

Vol. 38 No. 1 \u00b7 7 January 2016<\/a><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 lrb.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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