Syria: A Renewed Focus on Arming the Rebels

Summary


With the U.S. military preparing for a possible intervention in Syria, most of the debate around whether the U.S. Congress should authorize military action against the Syrian regime has focused on a potential strike. However, some lawmakers and White House officials are pushing to dramatically increase the supply of weapons to Syrian rebels as well. The United States already has such a program in place through the CIA, but the Obama administration has proposed shifting responsibility for arming and training the rebels to the Pentagon, which has units specifically designed for this type of operation and the logistical capability to pull it off in a timely manner.

While such a program would likely put the rebels on more equal footing with forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al Assad, it could have long-term repercussions. A rapid, massive increase in the flow of weapons into Syria would inevitably result in guns falling into the hands of fighters who Washington fears would use them against U.S. interests in the future. Because of this risk, the imperative to keep the Syrian civil war and its long-term consequences manageable will frame U.S. decisions about whether and how to more forcefully intervene.

Analysis


Throughout Syria's civil war, the rebels have been outgunned by forces loyal to al Assad, which have access to a much wider spectrum of weapons. This imbalance has prompted continual pleas from rebel groups and their representatives for access to advanced small arms, including anti-tank guided missiles and man-portable air-defense systems, capable of offsetting the regime's armor and air power.

However, the West has resisted efforts to heed such calls. The Syrian opposition consists of hundreds of groups espousing a variety of ideologies, including secularism, nationalist Islamism and radical jihadism. The fear is that arming the wrong group would mean that, say, a man-portable air-defense system supplied initially for use against al Assad's air force could be used months or years later to attack an airplane full of civilians elsewhere in the world.







Approving a faction and supplying it weapons that would make a difference on the battlefield but could not be transferred to another group is difficult. The West wants to control exactly where the weapons go, but that is nearly impossible to achieve considering the number of third-party fighters involved in the war. Already there is considerable video evidence that weapons provided by foreign sponsors to the Free Syrian Army, an approved group, have ended up in the hands of jihadist groups.

After an alleged chemical weapons attack in June, the United States agreed in principle to arm the rebels. Since 2012, the CIA has overseen the vetting and arming of rebel groups with assistance from other countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. As a clandestine organization with responsibilities across the globe, it has been necessary to outsource much of this operation to third parties and manage it from afar. Weapons have indeed made it to Syria and been used to some effect, but the arming process has been slow and the volume delivered has been so small that their battlefield impact has been minimal. Presently, there is no evidence that the United States has provided any arms directly to the rebels.
Impact of Pentagon Control

Shifting oversight of the operation to the Pentagon and making it overt would leverage various assets that could rapidly accelerate the flow of weapons to the rebels. The Pentagon already has units that are designed for this type of task, specifically the U.S. Army Special Forces (known commonly as the Green Berets), though other special operations forces could also be utilized. One of the Green Beret's main unit missions is training foreign personnel in weapons usage and basic tactics. Moreover, the U.S. military's strategic logistics network is peerless and equipped to rapidly move huge amounts of materiel and numbers of men into theaters. The Pentagon simply is better able to move large volumes of weapons, along with soldiers who can teach rebels how to use them.

Done effectively, this effort could have positive effects on the ground for the rebels over a short time frame. Nonetheless, the risk of long-term repercussions would remain. Even if rebel groups could be vetted quickly enough to keep up with the influx of weapons, it would still be impossible to fully control the movements of weapons once they are in theater. In a combat zone, it must be assumed that a certain percentage of weapons will be sold, traded, stolen or simply given away.

These weapons would be operational for decades, and even ones with tracking chips or wired to fail after a certain amount of time could be modified by enterprising fighters or merchants. Some could be used against Western interests throughout the region once the focus shifts away from the al Assad regime. As demonstrated by the flow of arms away from Libya after the Western intervention there in 2011, such weapons can be used in unintended ways over a large geographic area.

Thus, U.S. planners will be weighing the option of arming the rebels in balance with the depth and scope of whatever strike operation in Syria, if any, is chosen. It is impossible for the United States to fully manage the Syrian civil war, but it will make every effort to contain the fallout.

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