The U.S. has had to make a very difficult decision.
Here was the question: "Does the U.S. try to get rid of Assad still and lose all the governments in the middle east to ISIL or does the U.S. and the coalition take on ISIL and know that this likely means Assad stays in power at least a few more years?
Obviously, the U.S. and the coalition sacrificed getting rid of Assad for now in order to get rid of ISIL as a country so ALL governments in the middle east don't collapse under the weight of ISIL.
begin quote:
US options in Syria shrivel as Islamists and Assad regime make gains
| CNN | - |
(CNN) -- The fortunes of potential U.S. allies among Syrian rebel groups are ebbing fast as hardline Salafist groups and especially al Qaeda's affiliate go on the offensive.
U.S. options in Syria shrivel as Islamists and Assad regime make gains
updated 2:28 PM EST, Thu December 4, 2014
A man drives his motorcycle
through a puddle in Aleppo, Syria, on Wednesday, November 26. The United
Nations estimates more than 190,000 people have been killed in Syria
since an uprising in March 2011 spiraled into civil war.
HIDE CAPTION
Syrian civil war in 2014
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Hardline Salafist groups and especially al Qaeda's affiliate on offensive in Syria
- Moderates suffer from poor morale, lack of resources, allowing others to prosper
- Making things still worse, there appears to be at least truce between al-Nusra and ISIS
- West has stark choice: Bashar al-Assad or ISIS and other jihadist groups
This is a growing
headache for the Obama administration, which is trying to identify,
train and "stand up" moderate rebel factions to take on the Islamic
State in Iraq and Syria. Washington has announced a $500 million program
to train 5,000 fighters over one year.
But it is yet to begin,
and some of these groups are now in retreat or on the verge of
extinction. Those that aren't are wary of being identified as
"Washington's guys" because of the administration's focus on degrading
ISIS but not going after Syrian government forces.
Fighting by the fallen in Kobani
CNN crosses into ISIS wreckage
Syria's youngest refugees
Tough road for moderate groups
Analysts say moderate
groups are caught between a rock and a hard place, pilloried by radical
factions for taking Western weapons but failing to get enough of them
(or quickly enough) to become serious players.
Noah Bonsey of the
International Crisis Group writes in Foreign Policy, "For a rebel
commander seeking to convince his fighters that cooperation with
Washington is in the rebellion's best interest, American strikes that
ignore the Assad regime while hitting (Islamist rebels in) Ahrar al-Sham
are extremely difficult to explain."
Moderate groups also suffer from poor morale and a lack of resources.
All in all, says Kimberly Kagan,
president of the Institute for the Study of War, "the forces that the
U.S. has nominally been backing have suffered losses at the hands of the
Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra (al Qaeda's Syrian franchise) and the
regime." The current trajectory, she says, means "the moderate
opposition remains marginal and incapable of shaping the battlefield in
any material way."
Bonsey said coalition
airstrikes against ISIS had allowed President Bashar al-Assad to refocus
on hitting mainstream rebels, and the regime had made gains around Hama
and Aleppo. Combined with al-Nusra's advances in Idlib and the threat
of a renewed offensive by ISIS, moderate groups were now in danger of a
rapid decline.
Kristen Gillespie,
founder of the website Syria Direct, agrees: "American policy freed up
the regime to step up bombings of its own civilians, which we are seeing
in areas across Syria such as Jobar, Hama and Homs."
Al-Nusra appears to have
benefited from the limited strikes against its subsidiary, the Khorasan
Group, which the U.S. alleges is planning attacks on the West.
Observers say the strikes, and reports of civilian casualties, have
gained the group sympathy and support.
Making things still
worse, there appears to be at least a truce between al-Nusra and ISIS,
allowing each to focus on other enemies, whether moderate groups, the
regime or the Kurds, and consolidate control over their respective
strongholds. The U.S. director of national intelligence, James Clapper,
last month spoke of "tactical accommodations" between the two groups.
Other sources say smaller Salafist groups that share the jihadist
outlook of al-Nusra and ISIS have helped broker local agreements.
An al-Nusra spokesman,
Abu Azzam al-Ansari, told Syria Direct last month that al-Nusra is
looking for a cease-fire, though not a larger merger with ISIS, because
it wants to focus on fighting "just the Alawites (regime)."
Such a truce may allow al-Nusra free rein in the northwest of Syria, while ISIS focuses on its heartland in the northeast.
In the past month, it
has overwhelmed forces of the Syrian Revolutionaries' Front and Harakat
Hazm in Idlib, both supported by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. The
Revolutionaries' Front had been seen as a potential U.S. ally since it
helped expel ISIS fighters from the region in January. Dozens of Harakat
Hazm fighters defected to al-Nusra, according to local activists.
Al-Nusra fighters are
within a few kilometers of border crossings into Turkey, a source of
revenue and resupply. Local activists and analysts also see al-Nusra
developing a closer relationship with the most powerful group within the
Islamic Front: Ahrar al-Sham.
Gillespie says Ahrar is
popular in Idlib as many of its members are from the province. "They
have the popularity; Nusra has more of the military might," she says.
Together, "they appear to be a formidable foe for anyone looking to take
over Idlib."
Al-Nusra's propaganda machine has showcased the social services it is providing and its convoys parading through Idlib.
To some analysts,
al-Nusra appears to be emulating ISIS in building its own emirate in
northern Syria. In a recording leaked in July, al-Nusra's leader, Abu
Muhammad al-Julani, was heard saying the time had come to establish "an
Islamic emirate in the Levant." Bonsey says it has "withdrawn assets
from key fronts with the regime and shifted them to establish unilateral
control of other areas."
Al-Nusra has begun
implementing sharia law and building local government, releasing images
of its Da'wah (Islamic preaching) offices in the town of Sarmada and
elsewhere. But Gillespie says "they are moving slowly, because people
still fear Nusra is a version of ISIS. Nusra is launching campaigns to
create gardens, pick up trash and other measures that improve people's
quality of life."
Even so, other factions are apprehensive that it's on the way to emulating ISIS and building its own caliphate, says Bonsey.
Stark choice
In neighboring Aleppo
province, an area the al-Assad regime has fought hard to control, the
battlefield is even more complex. After Damascus, the city of Aleppo
remains the most important theater for both the regime and its
opponents. Western reporters who have managed to get into Aleppo say the
Islamic Front -- an umbrella group of Islamist militia -- is in control
of rebel-held neighborhoods, while al-Nusra dominates in the
countryside to the north.
Al-Nusra and its allies
are engaged in a bitter battle against the regime and fighters of the
Lebanese militia Hezbollah for control of two nearby towns -- Zahra and
Nubul -- inhabited largely by pro-regime Shiites.
Videos and photographs
uploaded in recent days suggest a sustained assault against Zahra and
Nubul: In one instance, al-Nusra appears to have used a captured armored
troop carrier as a massive suicide bomb.
Success against the
regime in these towns would secure a vital supply route for rebels
clinging on in Aleppo in the face of aerial and artillery bombardment,
but for now ,the towns' defenders are holding out.
Al Nusra is launching campaigns to create gardens, pick up trash and other measures that improve people's quality of life.
Kristen Gillespie
Kristen Gillespie
Al-Nusra is clearly
taking territory while it can, perhaps wary of ISIS suddenly turning on
it (as it did in August) or the emergence of better-equipped groups
supported by the West. As the regime and rebels fight to a standstill
around Aleppo, ISIS waits in the wings, looking for an opportunity to
take further territory (if not the city itself) from exhausted
combatants.
ISIS holds rural areas
near the town of Marea, 20 miles north of Aleppo. Among the groups lined
up against it are fighters of the Jaish al Mujahideen, a mainstream
outfit that has U.S. support and claims to have about 6,000 fighters.
But one of the group's commanders, Abdulaziz, told Reuters
this week that only 50 men have received training in a CIA-sponsored
program. They would be hard-pressed to resist a renewed ISIS assault in
the area.
Ultimately, Bonsey says,
"to reverse jihadist gains, you need to strengthen moderate groups and
get as many of them as possible on the same page."
The creation last week
of the Revolutionary Command Council, which includes a wide spectrum of
rebel groups, could be significant -- if it survives and so long as it
doesn't become just a vehicle for Salafist factions such as Ahrar
al-Sham. So far, says Bonsey, "the bottom line is that the pace and
scale of U.S. support is not sufficient to halt, let alone reverse, the
erosion of moderate forces."
Most territory in Syria is essentially shared by the "big three": ISIS, al-Nusra and its allies, and the regime.
"The Americans have
painted themselves into a corner, left to work only with so-called
moderates, who at this point have mostly been kidnapped, killed, exiled
or absorbed into Islamist factions," says Gillespie.
That fits the al-Assad
regime's game plan. Kill off the mainstream groups and leave the West
with a stark choice: Bashar al-Assad or ISIS and other jihadist groups
turning Syria into an Islamic state.
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