U.S. is Conducting Another Program in Turkey to Train Syrian Opposition Fighters; the 2015 Training Effort in Turkey, a Country That Covertly Supports ISIS, Failed

The US military is now training dozens of Syrian fighters to stare down ISIS

April 1, 2016

Business Insider - The U.S. military said on Friday it has started training dozens of Syrian opposition fighters to battle the militant group Islamic State as part of a revamped program that aims to avoid mistakes that doomed its first training effort in Turkey last year.

Training for the first group of recruits includes how to identify targets for U.S.-led coalition airstrikes to allow coalition aircraft to better strike Islamic State from the air.

"That allows us to bring significantly more fires into play in any of these skirmishes, battles, and firefights that are taking place throughout Syria," said U.S. Army Colonel Steve Warren, a Baghdad-based spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition.

Warren said no Syrian fighters had yet graduated from the program.

The Pentagon has declined to say where the training is being conducted, but U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have told Reuters it is in Turkey.

The failure of the original program, which sought to train thousands of fighters, has been a concern for President Barack Obama, whose strategy depends on local partners combating Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq.

The 2015 program was problematic from the start, with some of the first class of Syrian fighters being attacked by al Qaeda's Syria wing, Nusra Front, in their battlefield debut. At one point, a group of U.S.-trained rebels handed over ammunition and equipment to Nusra Front.

Instead of trying to pull entire units from the fight for training, as the Pentagon sought to do last year, the new program will take small groups of fighters from the front-lines for training.

"If it works we'll do more. And if it doesn't, we'll shift again," Warren said.

The U.S. strategy against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, where the Sunni militant group has carved out a self-declared caliphate, aims to force the collapse of its two major power centers of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.


Although Iraq-led operations to retake Mosul have already begun, U.S. officials have declined to say if they think the city can be recaptured this year.

The timing of any operation to capture Raqqa is less clear.

Ex-CIA operative: How Hillary Clinton betrayed Syrian rebels

April 2, 2016

New York Post - It’s the top-secret mission that never was: the US plan to oust Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in 2012.

A former CIA agent named Douglas Laux reveals the Obama administration’s paralysis — and that of our European allies — in his heavily redacted new memoir, “Left of Boom” (St. Martin’s Press).

After meeting with members of the Syrian rebellion, Laux was summoned back to DC, where he briefed his superiors in June 2012.

“It became clear right away that everyone involved in the Syrian issue, from the White House on down, regarded it as a political hot potato,” Laux writes. “They wanted to aid the Syrian rebels, but were wary of being drawn into a war that could spread throughout the region and make them look bad politically.”

Still, Laux says he spent two months drawing up plans and traveling to European capitals, attempting to sway US allies into taking action. Like the rest of the book, names, dates, even whole conversations are blacked out — the result of CIA vetting before publication.

“It quickly became clear,” he writes, “that [our allies] wanted to support the program but expected us to do everything.”

On Aug. 10, 2012, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Turkey and publicly announced that the US was seriously considering a no-fly zone over Syria.

Laux was stunned — the CIA had given him no heads-up, and he had no idea if they even knew about this announcement. He immediately met with Syrian rebel leaders who, he writes, “were elated by Clinton’s statement.”

Once suspicious of US motives in the region, they now “happily shared everything with me — the state of their forces, where they were deployed, the names of important leaders, etc. It yielded an intel bonanza.”

A week went by with no US air power over Syria. Two weeks, and the rebels were angry and suspicious, despite President Obama’s public statement that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be “a red line,” resulting in likely military force.

After three weeks, the rebels felt so betrayed that they stopped meeting entirely with Laux, who realized Clinton’s statement had been a bluff — a clumsy attempt to flush Assad out diplomatically.

“What it [the consideration a no-fly zone over Syria] accomplished,” Laux writes, “was to flush the slim credibility we had in Syria down the drain.”

Laux returned to CIA headquarters in September. He was shocked to hear that both the CIA and the White House wanted specific plans drawn up on how to oust Assad.

By October, Laux writes, his task force had drafted and presented 50 options. He doesn’t reveal whether those options included assassination or simply removing Assad from power for exile or trial. He heard good feedback, but no action was taken — his own “stagmire.”

“It was immensely frustrating,” he writes. 

US allies in Europe and the Middle East were doing nothing while Russia, China and Iran actively backed Assad, causing more civilian deaths and the worst refugee crisis since World War II.

Laux knew what was going on, even if no one would admit it. He drafted one of his last memos, “suggesting that we change our end goal from removing Assad to backing away from the conflict . . . [since we] now appeared feckless and weak in the eyes of people all over the globe, we should pull out of the Syria crisis completely.”

Laux resigned from the CIA weeks after President Obama, in December 2012, walked back his comments on a red line.

“We’re kind of boxed in,” an administration official said at the time. “There’s an issue of presidential credibility here. But our options are quite limited.”

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