A)US-backed Syrian rebels suffer heavy losses
Lt. Gen. Raymond A. Thomas III testifies during an Armed Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, March 9, 2016.
|  |
Stars and Stripes
WASHINGTON
— The Pentagon report that it has likely killed the Islamic State’s top
military commander near the front lines in Syria is evidence of the
terrorist group’s dire position in the war, Lt. Gen. Tony Thomas, who is
nominated to lead Special Operations Command, told the Senate on
Wednesday.
But the strategic victory was built on
“extraordinary” battlefield losses among allied Syrian rebels in
northeastern Syria who are at the center of the U.S. military’s renewed
effort to train-and-equip friendly forces against the militants, Thomas
told the Senate Armed Services Committee. More than 70 Syrian rebels
were killed during the past month, he said.
Thomas’
testimony comes a day after the announcement that coalition airstrikes
are believed to have killed Abu Omar al-Shishani, a 30-year-old Chechen,
near the town of al-Shadadi, where the United States has focused
strikes and cleared vast stretches of territory.
“I
think it is telling, it speaks volumes about how dire their fight is
that their senior military commander was in the thick of it at a
relatively tactical location,” Thomas said.
The
Pentagon on Wednesday could not confirm al-Shishani had been killed in
the March 4 strike about 80 miles east of Raqqa, the terrorist group’s
defacto capital.
Shishani, described as the
Islamic State group’s “emir of war” or defense secretary, likely
traveled to the front lines from Raqqa to rally his troops, who have
taken heavy losses recently in battles with Syrian Democratic Forces,
said Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman.
Thomas
said the progress around al-Shadadi was possible by developing several
surrogate rebel forces in northeastern Syria through the use of special
operations forces. The effort has allowed the U.S. coalition to clear
chunks of territory that are the combined size of New Jersey, Delaware
and Rhode Island.
The U.S. trained and equipped
rebels “have performed very, very well,” Thomas said. “Every time
they’ve met their march objective on time or ahead of time and with
pretty extraordinary losses.”
Special operators on
the ground in Syria were able to confirm that 70-75 rebel fighters were
killed in battles during the past month, Thomas said.
“They’re losing a lot of people to carry the fight against [the Islamic State], so I’m impressed with their tenacity,” he said.
The
Obama administration’s original Syria train-and-equip program was
viewed as an abject failure. During the summer, U.S. Central Command
admitted only a handful of rebels had been produced by the $500-million
program approved by Congress in 2014.
Now a new
effort is underway as the role of special operations expands in Iraq and
Syria. Last month, an Islamic State chemical weapons engineer was
captured in Iraq by special operators, which appears to be part of the
re-started Obama administration initiative.
Still, the war in Syria remains intense and complex, and the train-and-equip program still has skeptics in Congress.
Sen.
Joe Manchin, D-W.V., said conditions in Syria are testing his past
belief that sending American trainers and weapons to that country would
make the United States safer.
“What I am hearing from the region further supports my belief that maybe it hasn’t,” he said.
Stars and Stripes reporter Corey Dickstein contributed to this story.
==========================================
Β)Success and failure in Syria
by MOTHAX
If media reports are to be believed, Tarkhan Batirashvili, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Omar al-Shishani - Omar the Chechen - has been killed by a United States air strike in Syria. He is one of the most well-known foreign fighters in ranks of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Originally from the Republic of Georgia in the South Caucasus, his fair skin and red beard have become a regular feature in ISIL propaganda.
If true, his death would be a significant, but not fatal, blow to ISIL, which is also known as ISIS. It would also mark the death of the most senior ISIL commander by the US-led anti-ISIL coalition to date.
OK, obviously killing a bad guy is
great news. But then you read more about this particular bad guy, and
find out that we're the ones who trained him.
It was Shishani who posed with the stolen US Humvees that ISIS had seized from Mosul and brought back into Syria.
And it was Shishani who had led successful ISIS military campaigns throughout Syria as well as a blitz through western Iraq that put the group within 100 miles of Baghdad.
These military successes are not simply the result of any innate military capabilities. Instead, Shishani spent years conducting military campaigns against the Russians, first as a Chechen rebel and then as a soldier in the Georgian military. During Shishani's four years in the military, from 2006 to 2010, his unit received some degree of training from American special forces units.
“He was a perfect soldier from his first days, and everyone knew he was a star,” an unnamed former comrade who is still active in the Georgian military told McClatchy DC. “We were well trained by American special forces units, and he was the star pupil.”“We trained him well, and we had lots of help from America,” another anonymous Georgian defense official told McClatchy about Shishani. “In fact, the only reason he didn’t go to Iraq to fight alongside America was that we needed his skills here in Georgia.”
And that right there is our
problem in a nutshell. We can't seem to figure out the good guys from
the bad, and some of the times when we find good guys, they turn out to
not be good at actually fighting. Recall this:
So, I get the
reticence to introduce American ground combat elements to the fight in
Syria, but everytime we train people, they either stink at actually
fighting, or they end up fighting against us. Here's another story from today:
But the strategic victory was built on “extraordinary” battlefield losses among allied Syrian rebels in northeastern Syria who are at the center of the U.S. military’s renewed effort to train-and-equip friendly forces against the militants, Thomas told the Senate Armed Services Committee. More than 70 Syrian rebels were killed during the past month, he said...
The U.S. trained and equipped rebels “have performed very, very well,” Thomas said. “Every time they’ve met their march objective on time or ahead of time and with pretty extraordinary losses.”Special operators on the ground in Syria were able to confirm that 70-75 rebel fighters were killed in battles during the past month, Thomas said.“They’re losing a lot of people to carry the fight against [the Islamic State], so I’m impressed with their tenacity,” he said.
Hey,
I'm all for tenacity, but training up guys so they can go off and get
killed almost immediately just seems like it would breed resentment.
The only ones I have any faith in is the Peshmerga (the Kurds) but we
can't openly work with them for fear of turning off our Turkish allies.
So
I guess this is one step back and then one step forward? We train a
guy, he decides to fight us, and so we kill him. As far as a long term
plan of success, that one kind of stinks. I admit I can't think of any
better idea, and everything I think of just comes out to varying degrees
of how bad an idea it is. Anyone have any thoughts? Besides using
nuclear devices to turn the whole area to glass, which is neither
helpful nor ever going to happen.
==============================================
Γ)SOCOM chief: US lacks plan for long-term detention of Islamic State fighters
The
commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, Gen. Joseph L. Votel,
testifies during an Armed Services Committee hearing March 8, 2016, on
Capitol Hill.
|  |
Stars and Stripes
WASHINGTON
— The Pentagon does not have a plan for long-term detention of captured
Islamic State fighters, despite more aggressive operations against the
terrorist group in Iraq, Syria and now Libya, the top U.S. special
forces commander told Congress on Tuesday.
Before
President Barack Obama took office, militants captured in Iraq and
Afghanistan were sent to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in
Cuba. But since Obama signed an executive order in 2009 to begin the
process to close the facility, no new prisoners have been sent there.
At
a hearing at the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Sen. Kelly
Ayotte, R-N.H., pressed Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of U.S. Special
Operations Command, about what the United States plans to do if
longer-term detention is necessary.
“You would
agree that long-term interrogation was quite helpful, for example, in
gathering the information we needed to get [Osama] Bin Laden?” Ayotte
asked. “What do we do in a long-term setting? Do we know?”
Votel responded: “I would agree there is a requirement for long-term detention, senator.”
In
the last seven years, it has been a priority of Obama’s administration
to transfer all of the remaining detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Of the
more than 800 people who were sent there at the height of the facility’s
operations, 91 remain. Thirty-five of those prisoners are cleared to be
moved to other countries. The rest likely will remain in U.S. custody
permanently because it is believed they pose a threat to national
security.
During the questioning Tuesday in the Senate, Votel said he did not know where long-term prisoners would be housed.
“That is a policy decision that I think is being debated,” he said.
Congress
has resisted the White House plan to permanently close the prison at
Guantanamo Bay. Lawmakers passed legislation prohibiting the president
from using any funds to do so. A plan submitted by the White House last
month to close the detention center and move the non-releaseable
detainees to a federal prison in the United States has been stalled by
congressional Republicans.
Now the Pentagon has
started to face questions about what it plans to do with Islamic State
fighters if a longer-term detention is necessary, as U.S. forces
increase operations targeting the terrorist group.
At the Pentagon on Tuesday, Press Secretary Peter Cook said the focus for the United States is short-term detention.
“We’ve
said previously that if there are people captured on the battlefield,
that there would be every expectation that they would be a short-term
detention. We’d work with the local authorities in those circumstances
and people will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis,” he said.
Last
month, U.S. special operators captured a high-level Islamic State
fighter in Iraq, who has not been identified, and continue to detain him
for questioning. DOD officials told news outlets last week that the
United States will only detain the prisoner for the short term then
transfer him to Iraqi Kurds.
Prior
to that capture, the only high-level Islamic State official captured by
U.S. forces was Umm Sayyaf, the wife of a prominent Islamic State
financier, who had a role in the kidnapping and death of American Kayla
Mueller. She also was transferred to Kurdish officials.
Cook said Tuesday that there are options available beyond Guantanamo Bay.
“But I’m not going to get into hypotheticals here,” he said.
==========================================================
Γ)Why Syria Won't Save U.S.-Russia Relations
Many of those who seek a more functional U.S.-Russia relationship—in both Washington and Moscow—have hoped that cooperation
in stabilizing Syria and combating the so-called Islamic State could
provide an important new opportunity to stabilize U.S.-Russia ties as
well. Unfortunately, this is likely to be considerably more difficult
than some may expect. And even the optimists recognize that rebuilding
U.S.-Russia relations will be quite challenging.
The view that working together on Syria could help elsewhere derives from traditional thinking about international diplomacy. From this perspective, success in implementing the partial and tentative “cessation of hostilities” in Syria could help to restore communication and even a degree of mutual trust between the United States and Russia, facilitating efforts to tackle bigger problems, including sharp differences over Ukraine.
At
the same time, some believe that a success in Syria would demonstrate
that the two countries can work together to address serious
international problems despite their other differences. This latter view
is probably more widely held among Moscow’s foreign policy elite, where
engagement with the United States validates Russian aspirations for an
acknowledged role as a major power. Recognizing the asymmetries between
America’s and Russia’s economies and militaries, U.S. elites are thus
far not similarly tempted. It is notable that the thin slice of American
experts focused on nuclear weapons—perhaps the area of greatest
symmetry and one of great consequence—has been among the most motivated
to engage with Moscow.
The flaw in the success-begets-success approach is that it ignores political realities among elites in both countries. In brief, an initial success is unlikely to contribute to future successes if it is domestically controversial; for a success to be a success requires not only the two governments, but also their respective political elites, to see it as such. Thus, for U.S.-Russian cooperation in Syria to stimulate sustainable improvements in U.S.-Russia relations, it will require broader political support than it so far appears to have, especially in the United States. Because Washington and Moscow elites generally have profoundly divergent zero-sum views of the central issue in Syria, namely President Bashar al-Assad’s future, satisfying political elites in America and Russia at the same time would require a combination of creative diplomacy and courageous and skillful politics that has been rather rare.
Indeed, success-begs-success has already failed twice in recent years. The first failure was the Obama administration’s Reset policy, which foundered in no small part because the administration was unable to persuade congressional Republicans that its policies had produced benefits for the United States. Rather than appreciating Moscow’s assistance to the U.S. military in Afghanistan, many Republicans resented that Russia was not doing more and harbored suspicions of the Kremlin’s aims in Central Asia. Likewise, instead of celebrating the New START arms control treaty, many Republicans were angered by the administration’s heavy-handed effort to secure ratification of what they viewed as a weak and disadvantageous agreement. This further politicized the Reset, which crumbled soon thereafter as domestic political processes inside both countries drove America and Russia apart.
The second failure was the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). In that case, like current hopes surrounding the Syria talks, those pursuing the success-begets-success model were predominantly in Moscow rather than Washington, where deep skepticism about U.S.-Russia relations has reigned since Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. Thus, while the Iran agreement might be the best deal that the Obama administration could have reached, few Republicans saw it as the best deal that America could have reached. On the contrary, not unlike the New START agreement, many viewed it as the undesirable product of an effort to secure a diplomatic settlement at almost any cost. As a result, it looked more like a success for Iranian and Russian diplomacy than for U.S.-Russia cooperation.
Lest anyone think that America’s Republicans are the principal obstacle to a better U.S.-Russia relationship—which is far from the truth, especially in view of Russia’s increasingly assertive foreign policy and its unattractive domestic practices—it is important to recognize that if the Obama administration had extracted more from Moscow in order to satisfy them, America could have faced different, but still real, problems in dealing with Russia anyway.
Seeing this requires looking back to the 1990s, when the Clinton administration squeezed a much weaker Russia into acquiescing to NATO enlargement and to NATO interventions in the former Yugoslavia. Those moves dramatically reoriented the Russian political elite’s (and public’s) views of the United States and its foreign policy goals, creating one pillar of the widespread domestic support that Russian President Vladimir Putin enjoys today. Having no New START or JCPOA, or conversely, somehow maneuvering Moscow (and, in the latter case, Tehran) into accepting terms that would have won broad support in the United States, would probably have reinforced Russia’s existing resentments and could also have removed or lessened Russia’s self-imposed constraints on its conduct.
Notwithstanding the efforts of Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the U.S.-Russia relationship won’t improve in any enduring way without wider support among elites in the two countries. In practice, this requires both a considerable effort to explain why it serves U.S. interests (in Washington) and Russian interests (in Moscow)—something the outgoing Obama administration probably could not do successfully even if it wanted to—and a considerable effort by each to engage more effectively with skeptics in the other country.
When working with nongovernmental groups in Russia, the United States has focused too heavily on the reliably pro-American opposition, which is not an influential force within Russia’s contemporary politics and is unlikely to become one anytime soon. For its part, Russia’s government has done too little to work with the opposition party in the United States.
A dysfunctional U.S.-Russia relationship has high costs for both American and Russian foreign policy objectives and, indeed, for each country’s national security—from nuclear proliferation to terrorism to regional stability in Europe and the Middle East, where the price has been obvious. Yet, since International Monetary Fund projections estimate the nominal size of the U.S. economy as over fourteen times larger than Russia’s in 2015, and U.S. defense spending may be ten times higher, most Americans believe that a workable relationship with the United States is probably much more important for Russia than the reverse. Whether or not this is true, this sentiment has a powerful influence on public debates and decision making in Washington. As a result, whatever may happen in Syria, the chances that it will become a new foundation for U.S.-Russia relations are slim if Moscow does not take a hard look at its priorities.
Anyone in Washington who wants to help that process along—or merely to avoid a dangerous long-term confrontation with Russia—would do well to consider how the United States can explain that an escalating rivalry with America could produce precisely the dangers to Russian security the Putin government wants to avoid, while simultaneously reassuring the Kremlin that America does not pose an existential threat to Russia or its elites.
Paul J. Saunders is executive director of the Center for the National Interest. He served as a U.S. State Department senior adviser during the George W. Bush administration.
Image: Wikimedia Commons/Kremlin.ru
The view that working together on Syria could help elsewhere derives from traditional thinking about international diplomacy. From this perspective, success in implementing the partial and tentative “cessation of hostilities” in Syria could help to restore communication and even a degree of mutual trust between the United States and Russia, facilitating efforts to tackle bigger problems, including sharp differences over Ukraine.
The flaw in the success-begets-success approach is that it ignores political realities among elites in both countries. In brief, an initial success is unlikely to contribute to future successes if it is domestically controversial; for a success to be a success requires not only the two governments, but also their respective political elites, to see it as such. Thus, for U.S.-Russian cooperation in Syria to stimulate sustainable improvements in U.S.-Russia relations, it will require broader political support than it so far appears to have, especially in the United States. Because Washington and Moscow elites generally have profoundly divergent zero-sum views of the central issue in Syria, namely President Bashar al-Assad’s future, satisfying political elites in America and Russia at the same time would require a combination of creative diplomacy and courageous and skillful politics that has been rather rare.
Indeed, success-begs-success has already failed twice in recent years. The first failure was the Obama administration’s Reset policy, which foundered in no small part because the administration was unable to persuade congressional Republicans that its policies had produced benefits for the United States. Rather than appreciating Moscow’s assistance to the U.S. military in Afghanistan, many Republicans resented that Russia was not doing more and harbored suspicions of the Kremlin’s aims in Central Asia. Likewise, instead of celebrating the New START arms control treaty, many Republicans were angered by the administration’s heavy-handed effort to secure ratification of what they viewed as a weak and disadvantageous agreement. This further politicized the Reset, which crumbled soon thereafter as domestic political processes inside both countries drove America and Russia apart.
The second failure was the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). In that case, like current hopes surrounding the Syria talks, those pursuing the success-begets-success model were predominantly in Moscow rather than Washington, where deep skepticism about U.S.-Russia relations has reigned since Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. Thus, while the Iran agreement might be the best deal that the Obama administration could have reached, few Republicans saw it as the best deal that America could have reached. On the contrary, not unlike the New START agreement, many viewed it as the undesirable product of an effort to secure a diplomatic settlement at almost any cost. As a result, it looked more like a success for Iranian and Russian diplomacy than for U.S.-Russia cooperation.
Lest anyone think that America’s Republicans are the principal obstacle to a better U.S.-Russia relationship—which is far from the truth, especially in view of Russia’s increasingly assertive foreign policy and its unattractive domestic practices—it is important to recognize that if the Obama administration had extracted more from Moscow in order to satisfy them, America could have faced different, but still real, problems in dealing with Russia anyway.
Seeing this requires looking back to the 1990s, when the Clinton administration squeezed a much weaker Russia into acquiescing to NATO enlargement and to NATO interventions in the former Yugoslavia. Those moves dramatically reoriented the Russian political elite’s (and public’s) views of the United States and its foreign policy goals, creating one pillar of the widespread domestic support that Russian President Vladimir Putin enjoys today. Having no New START or JCPOA, or conversely, somehow maneuvering Moscow (and, in the latter case, Tehran) into accepting terms that would have won broad support in the United States, would probably have reinforced Russia’s existing resentments and could also have removed or lessened Russia’s self-imposed constraints on its conduct.
Notwithstanding the efforts of Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the U.S.-Russia relationship won’t improve in any enduring way without wider support among elites in the two countries. In practice, this requires both a considerable effort to explain why it serves U.S. interests (in Washington) and Russian interests (in Moscow)—something the outgoing Obama administration probably could not do successfully even if it wanted to—and a considerable effort by each to engage more effectively with skeptics in the other country.
When working with nongovernmental groups in Russia, the United States has focused too heavily on the reliably pro-American opposition, which is not an influential force within Russia’s contemporary politics and is unlikely to become one anytime soon. For its part, Russia’s government has done too little to work with the opposition party in the United States.
A dysfunctional U.S.-Russia relationship has high costs for both American and Russian foreign policy objectives and, indeed, for each country’s national security—from nuclear proliferation to terrorism to regional stability in Europe and the Middle East, where the price has been obvious. Yet, since International Monetary Fund projections estimate the nominal size of the U.S. economy as over fourteen times larger than Russia’s in 2015, and U.S. defense spending may be ten times higher, most Americans believe that a workable relationship with the United States is probably much more important for Russia than the reverse. Whether or not this is true, this sentiment has a powerful influence on public debates and decision making in Washington. As a result, whatever may happen in Syria, the chances that it will become a new foundation for U.S.-Russia relations are slim if Moscow does not take a hard look at its priorities.
Anyone in Washington who wants to help that process along—or merely to avoid a dangerous long-term confrontation with Russia—would do well to consider how the United States can explain that an escalating rivalry with America could produce precisely the dangers to Russian security the Putin government wants to avoid, while simultaneously reassuring the Kremlin that America does not pose an existential threat to Russia or its elites.
Paul J. Saunders is executive director of the Center for the National Interest. He served as a U.S. State Department senior adviser during the George W. Bush administration.
Image: Wikimedia Commons/Kremlin.ru
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