| New York Times | - |
WASHINGTON
- Russian aircraft carried out a bombing attack against Syrian
opposition fighters on Wednesday, including at least one group trained
by the C.I.
Russia May Not Have Attacked ISIS
Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said the Russian airstrikes in Syria were probably not in areas with Islamic State forces.
By REUTERS on Publish Date September 30, 2015.
Photo by Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images.
Watch in Times Video »
WASHINGTON
— Russian aircraft carried out a bombing attack against Syrian
opposition fighters on Wednesday, including at least one group trained
by the C.I.A., eliciting angry protests from American officials and plunging the complex sectarian war there into dangerous new territory.
Russia’s entry into the Syrian conflict, foreshadowed by a rapid military buildup in the past three weeks at an airbase in Latakia, Syria,
makes the possibility of a political settlement in Syria more difficult
and creates a new risk of inadvertent incidents between American and
Russian warplanes flying in the same area. And it adds a powerful but
unpredictable combatant to a civil war that has already resulted in
hundreds of thousands of deaths and a flood of refugees.
President Vladimir V. Putin
of Russia justified his country’s entry into the conflict by saying
that Russia was acting “preventatively, to fight and destroy militants
and terrorists on the territories that they already occupied, not wait
for them to come to our house.”
But
American officials said the attack was not directed at the Islamic
State but at other opposition groups fighting against the government of
the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad,
whom Mr. Putin has vowed to support. American officials said Russian
warplanes and helicopter gunships dropped bombs north of the central
city of Homs, where there are few, if any, militants of the Islamic
State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
“By
supporting Assad and seemingly taking on everybody fighting Assad,”
Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said on Wednesday, Russia is “taking
on the whole rest of the country that’s fighting Assad.” Some of those
groups, he added, are supported by the United States and need to be part
of a political resolution in Syria.
“That’s why the Russian position is doomed to fail,” Mr. Carter said.
Both
Mr. Carter and Secretary of State John Kerry were critical of Russia
for failing to fully inform American officials ahead of time of their
mission. The notification consisted of contacting the American Embassy
in Baghdad one hour before the strikes with the warning that American
planes should avoid Syrian airspace. No effort was made to coordinate
the airstrikes with American air operations in the region.
Russian Military Action in Syria
Over the past few weeks, Russia has stepped up its efforts to bolster the government of President Bashar
al-Assad of Syria. On Wednesday, Russian pilots began dropping bombs in a rebel-controlled area of the country.
al-Assad of Syria. On Wednesday, Russian pilots began dropping bombs in a rebel-controlled area of the country.
TURKEY
Aleppo
Raqqa
SYRIA
Latakia
Hama
Locations of
Russian airstrikes
Tartus
Homs
Russia has long had a naval base in the coastal city of Tartus.
Russia has deployed warplanes, tanks and marines at an airfield near Latakia.
On Wednesday, Russian warplanes dropped bombs near the city of Homs.
By The New York Times
Illustrating
the widening complexity of the war, the United States conducted its own
airstrikes in Syria on Wednesday, near Aleppo, without warning to the
Russians. “No, we did not,” an American official said afterward. “It
should come as a surprise to no one that we’re conducting airstrikes in
Syria.”
Mr.
Kerry raised Russia’s handling of the mission Wednesday morning with
Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, and after a
late-afternoon meeting at the United Nations, Mr. Kerry told reporters
that the two sides had agreed to begin talks on avoiding unintended
confrontations in Syria and clarifying which targets the Russians are
picking as soon as possible, maybe even Thursday.
“It is one thing, obviously, to be targeting ISIL,” Mr. Kerry said. “We are concerned, obviously, that is not what’s happening.”
Though
Russia and the United States remain far apart on the critical question
of whether Mr. Assad should remain in power, Mr. Kerry said that the two
sides had agreed to explore “options” to ease the conflict. “We think
we have some very specific steps that may be able to help lead in the
right direction,” said Mr. Kerry, who did not provide any details. “That
needs to be properly explored.”
At
least one and possibly more Syrian opposition groups that have been
secretly armed and trained by the C.I.A. were among the rebel groups
targeted by the Russian airstrikes, a senior United States official
said. The official would not identify which group or groups were
attacked or where they were located. Nor would he assess the damages or
casualties suffered by the Syrian fighters other than to say, “It was
not minor.” American officials said they were still sorting through the
battle damage reports coming in from the field.
While
the Pentagon’s $500 million program to train and equip Syrian fighters
has largely failed — at one point this month only four or five
American-trained combatants were in the fight in Syria — the C.I.A.’s
covert program to train other fighters has weathered some setbacks to
produce 3,000 to 5,000 fighters in the nearly two years it has been
operating.
Mr.
Kerry, speaking to the Security Council, warned Russia not to carry out
airstrikes in areas of Syria in which the Islamic State is not believed
to be operating. With his Russian counterpart in the chair, Mr. Kerry
said that the Obama administration would welcome “any genuine effort” by
Moscow to target the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s
branch in Syria.
But
Mr. Kerry made clear that the United States would have “grave concerns”
if the Russians bombed other moderate rebel groups and repeated the
American position that Mr. Assad would eventually need to leave power as
part of a political transition that would be intended to bring peace to
Syria. He also said that the United States-led coalition is poised “to
dramatically accelerate” airstrikes against the Islamic State.
When
a reporter asked Mr. Lavrov about Mr. Carter’s assertion that the
Russian airstrikes appeared to have been directed at parts of Syria not
known to be under the control of the Islamic State, he said, “Don’t
listen to the Pentagon about the Russian strikes.”
But
Western diplomats warned that Russia was sending a dangerous message if
its attacks were aimed primarily against opponents of Mr. Assad, rather
than the Islamic State.
Putin on Intervention in Syria
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia
said that he believes the only way to deal with terrorists in Syria is
to act preemptively.
By REUTERS on Publish Date September 30, 2015.
Photo by Justin Lane/European Pressphoto Agency.
Watch in Times Video »
“We
need the Russians to understand that in coming to defense of the regime
to attack ISIL, what they will do is forge a single united force under
ISIL leadership against the regime,” said the British foreign secretary,
Philip Hammond. “That’s the huge danger we face.”
A
spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov,
said its pilots were engaged in precision strikes “against the military
equipment, communication centers, transport vehicles, arms depots,
ammunition and fuels and lubricant materials belonging to ISIS
terrorists.”
But in a video on YouTube,
a rebel commander in Hama Province, Jamil al-Saleh, said that his
forces had eavesdropped on communications between Syrian Air Force
pilots and their bases, which confirmed that Russian warplanes were
aloft. His group, the Izza Gathering, is one of the remaining fragments
of the loosely knit Free Syrian Army, relatively secular groups that
have received some Western support.
The
attacks, according to state-run television and rebel sources, occurred
north of Homs and into Hama Province. Recent advances in Hama by a
coalition of insurgents opposed to Mr. Assad as well as to the Islamic
State have posed new threats to the coastal Alawite heartland, where Mr.
Assad enjoys his strongest support. That coalition has a range of
groups, including the Nusra Front, less-extremist Islamist groups and
relatively secular groups like Mr. Saleh’s.
In
his comments, Mr. Putin said that the only long-term solution for Syria
was through political change and dialogue between the opposition and
the government. “I know that President Assad understands that and is
ready for this process,” Mr. Putin said. He said Russia hoped Mr. Assad
would make “compromises in the name of his country and his people.”
But
the United States has long held that Mr. Assad must step down before a
stable peace can be achieved. Lately, President Obama has added some
nuance, saying that Mr. Assad could be part of a “managed transition” to
a new government.
In
Syria, the state-run news media strongly endorsed the move by Russia.
Supporters of Mr. Assad seemed particularly pleased that Moscow was
sending military aid because they felt his endorsement at the United
Nations two days ago was a bit tepid.
Mr.
Putin harbors both international and domestic reasons for interfering
in Syria. On the international front, he wants to restore Russian
influence as a global power and try to force an end to the diplomatic
and financial isolation the West imposed after Moscow seized Crimea and
supported separatists in southeastern Ukraine. He also wants to maintain
control over Russia’s naval station at Tartus, in Syria, its only
remaining overseas military base outside the former Soviet Union.
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