President Barack Obama’s strategy to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) relies entirely on allied forces on the ground doing the work that can’t be done by U.S. airpower. That formula may have made some progress in Iraq in recent weeks, but in Syria it lacks ready partners on the ground. ISIL currently controls approximately 35 percent of Syrian territory, according to opposition-aligned human rights monitors, and fights against both the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Syrian rebel forces. The question facing U.S. military planners is which forces on the ground will move in to clear and hold towns after ISIL positions have been bombed into retreat. Without such a partner, the U.S. will simply be repeating the Israeli approach to Gaza, cynically dubbed mowing the lawn by Israeli officials — an approach that not only fails to eliminate adversaries but can even work to their political advantage. Obama has ruled out cooperating with Assad, whose forces control a bit less than half of Syria’s land mass (although a lot more than half the population lives in areas under government control). Instead, Obama informed the world that he would work with Syria’s “opposition.” Tellingly, he named no names. The Syrian opposition remains notoriously fragmented and undependable. Obama did not name a militia or organization with which to partner because even after three and a half years of vetting rebel groups, the U.S. has yet to identify a credible ally. U.S. intelligence estimates that Syrian rebels are organized into more than 1,500 groups of widely varying political leanings. They control a little less than 20 percent of Syrian territory. Those designated as moderate rebel forces control less than 5 percent of Syria. To arm and fund them without first unifying them under a single military and political command would be to condemn Syria to rebel chaos. The U.S. is arming and funding 12 to 14 militias in northern Syria and 60 more groups in the south, according to the head of the Syrian Opposition Coalition. These militias have not, thus far, been particularly successful on the battlefield, and none has national reach. Most are based on one charismatic commander or a single region and have not articulated clear ideologies. All depend on foreign money. The vast majority of Syria’s rebel groups have been deemed too Islamist, too sectarian and too anti-democratic by the U.S. — and these are the groups ranged against the ISIL. They span the Salafist ideological gamut, from al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front to the 40,000-strong conglomeration of rebel forces united under the banner of the Islamic Front. Despite U.S. skepticism, some of the Sunni Arab regimes Obama has courted as key allies in the anti-ISIL effort have worked with these groups. Gulf countries reportedly poured money into the Islamic Front until the U.S. convinced them to stop. Islamic Front leaders decried democracy as the “dictatorship of the strong” and called for building an Islamic state. Zahran Alloush, the military chief of the Islamic Front spooked Americans by insisting that Syria be “cleansed of Shias and Alawites.” The newly appointed head of Ahrar al-Sham and the political chief of the Islamic Front earned his stripes in the ranks of the Iraqi insurgency fighting the U.S.
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 02:47:17 +0000
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