| New York Times | - |
IRBID, Jordan - When rebels want to return to Syria to fight, Jordan's intelligence services give them specific times to cross its border.
IRBID,
Jordan — When rebels want to return to Syria to fight, Jordan’s
intelligence services give them specific times to cross its border. When
the rebels need weapons, they make their request at an “operations
room” in Amman staffed by agents from Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the
United States.
During
more than three years of civil war in Syria, this desert nation has
come to the world’s attention largely because it has struggled to
shelter hundreds of thousands of refugees. But, quietly, Jordan has also
provided a staging ground for rebels and their foreign backers on
Syria’s southern front. In the joint Arab-American operations room in
Amman, the capital, for example, rebels say they have collected salaries
as an incentive not to join better-funded extremist groups.
But
this covert aid has been so limited, reflecting the Obama
administration’s reluctance to get drawn into another Middle Eastern
conflict, that rebels say they have come to doubt that the United States
still shares their goal of toppling President Bashar al-Assad.
In
fact, many rebels say they believe that the Obama administration is
giving just enough to keep the rebel cause alive, but not enough to
actually help it win, as part of a dark strategy aimed at prolonging the
war. They say that in some cases their backers even push them to avoid
attacking strategic targets, part of what they see as that effort to
keep the conflict burning.
“The
aid that comes in now is only enough to keep us alive, and it covers
only the lowest level of needs,” said Brig. Gen. Asaad al-Zoabi, a
Syrian fighter pilot who defected and now works in the operations room.
“They
call it aid, but I don’t consider it aid,” he said. “I consider it
buying time and giving people the illusion that there is aid when really
there is not.”
While
much attention has been focused on Syria’s northern front, where rebels
move in freely from neighboring Turkey, the southern region has been
far more controlled. And despite recent reports of an invigorated
“southern front” of rebel forces, recent interviews with more than two
dozen rebel commanders, fighters and Jordanian and foreign officials
painted a picture of a largely stagnant southern battlefield, one that
is heavily influenced by outside powers whose main goals are to limit
the rise of extremists and preserve stability in Jordan.
Increasing the military threat against Mr. Assad is not part of the plan, rebels say.
Publicly, the United States is providing more than $260 million
in “nonlethal support” to the Syrian opposition, including rebel groups
it does not consider extremist. But the military aid is covert, and the
countries involved have not disclosed what they provide.
None
of this aid has significantly advanced the rebels’ cause or helped
achieve the American goal of a negotiated end to the war. To the
contrary, peace talks have been suspended indefinitely and Mr. Assad is
likely to remain president, perhaps for a long time to come.
But
a White House spokeswoman, Caitlin Hayden, said on Thursday that “the
notion that the United States wants fighting to be drawn out is flat
wrong. We are committed to building the capacity of the moderate
opposition and seeking a way to end the bloodshed and the needless
suffering of the Syrian people.”
She added: “There is no military solution to this conflict. What is needed is a negotiated political transition.”
The State Department and the C.I.A. declined to comment, and Jordan publicly denies helping any of Syria’s warring parties.
But
in the towns near Jordan’s border with Syria where many rebels keep
their families and take breaks from the war, the operations room, known
as the Military Operations Command, is an open secret.
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Rebel commanders say they travel to Amman to appeal to the officials there for arms and cash for their fighters.
“We
go to them, we explain what we want to do, and they ask about the
target and how many fighters we have,” said Brig. Gen. Abdullah
Qarayiza, who leads a rebel group in the Syrian town of Nawa. His arms
requests had been rejected twice, he said.
But for each of the last two months, he said he had received $25,000 in cash to pay his men $50 each.
“What is $50 for a fighter who has a wife and kids?” he said. “He can barely buy cigarettes.”
Rebels
who have visited the operations headquarters say its decisions balance
the interests of the main players: Saudi Arabia provides funding and
pushes for greater rebel support; Jordan manages the border and urges
caution; and the United States supervises, maintaining a veto on weapon
shipments.
While
the operations room has provided ammunition, rifles and antitank
missiles, it refuses to provide the antiaircraft missiles that rebels
say could stop the bombings of rebel towns that have killed thousands of
civilians.
The
center also coordinates a C.I.A. program to train rebel fighters that
was authorized by President Obama in April of last year. It was supposed
to provide 380 fighters a month with training, rifles, ammunition and
antitank weapons so they could return to Syria and train their
colleagues.
But
officials and rebel leaders say the program is actually much smaller.
General Zoabi said that there had been three sessions in the Jordanian
desert with 15 to 30 fighters each, and that the training scarcely
benefited fighters who already had extensive battlefield experience.
“It’s
as if you take someone who runs the 100-meter dash in 10 seconds and
you tell him, ‘I’m going to teach you to run it in 20,’ ” he said.
Other
rebels estimated that a few hundred fighters had been trained, but even
as the Obama administration considers expanding the program, Jordan
imposes limits to try to keep the program secret.
“It
has been essentially a check-the-box exercise that has not been large
enough to make a difference on the ground or to prevent the exodus of
Syrian men to jihadist groups that have food, money, ammunition and can
take care of their people,” said Frederic C. Hof, a former State
Department official who is now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council
in Washington.
Video|3:26
Credit Ahmad Aboud/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Syrian Opposition, Explained
There are believed to be hundreds, if not
thousands, of groups fighting in Syria. These opposition groups are
fighting the Assad regime, but recently turned on each other with
increased ferocity.
Rebels are of two minds about the support. They like the antitank missiles
that have helped against Mr. Assad’s armor, and they acknowledge that
Jordan’s border management has prevented the chaos seen in the north,
where Turkey’s lax border controls have helped create a free-for-all
zone of jihadists backed by private funds.
In
the south, the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s main affiliate in Syria, is not a
leading power, and the radical Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has
almost no presence.
“The
situation is good: Jordan controls the border and arms are not brought
in randomly,” said Bashar al-Zoabi, the head of the Yarmouk Division, a
rebel group.
But he was frustrated that the rebels’ supporters seemed more interested in conflict management than in a victory.
“We know that if you wanted to, you could topple Bashar al-Assad in 10 days,” he said.
Jordan
has approached the war cautiously, because its population is divided
over the uprising and its leaders know they will remain next door to
Syria regardless of who wins the war.
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At
times, Jordan has pressured the rebels to withdraw from strategic
territory. Last year, rebels blocked the main highway between Amman and
Damascus for more than a month, halting trade until Jordan intervened
with rebel leaders to open the road, said General Zoabi of the Military
Operations Command in Amman.
Now,
cargo trucks ply the road daily and enter Jordan through a crossing
still run by the Syrian government, which is surrounded by rebel forces
who know that attacking the facility could jeopardize their own border
access.
Some
rebels played down the importance of the Military Operations Command,
saying it had no role in rebel victories like the recent seizure of a prison. And General Zoabi acknowledged that its main job was to coordinate humanitarian aid and that its military support was minimal.
“If
the revolutionaries need 100 percent, what they get is 10 percent,” he
said. Other supplies are captured or purchased inside Syria, he said,
but that still leaves the rebels with only 50 percent of what they need.
Like
many rebels, General Zoabi said he suspected that the limited aid
sought to prolong the war as a way to weaken Syria so that it could not
threaten Israel.
When
asked why he continued to work for the Military Operations Command, he
compared himself to a man dying of thirst who can see clean water in the
distance but can reach only dirty water.
“Do
I die, or do I drink from the water that isn’t clean?” he said. “I am
forced to drink dirty water, but it is better for me to live than to
die.”
Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, and Anne Barnard from Geneva.
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