Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect (14 page)

The White House then tried to rally popular support at home. But a Reuters/IPSOS poll taken just a few days after the Al Ghouta massacre, when public opinion should have tilted in the president's favor, showed 60 percent of Americans opposing a UN-sanctioned attack on Syria and only 9 percent backing unilateral US action.
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With mounting pressure at home, Obama agreed to allow Congress to vote on the issue. Strange political alliances developed. Centrist Democrats
who had opposed the Iraq War joined mainstream Republicans in Obama's support. Progressive Democrats joined Libertarian and ultra-right-wing Republicans in opposition. Some of these same Republicans who had vocally supported President George W. Bush's wars suddenly became concerned about unnecessary foreign entanglements. Had Obama actually submitted a war resolution to the House of Representatives, he would likely have lost the vote.

Republican leaders promoted the narrative that Obama had been weak and indecisive. They argued that Obama had bumbled along from the beginning with no real Syria policy. He refused to adequately arm the rebels. He vacillated. He drew a red line at the use of chemical weapons but then wimped out when Assad used sarin in Khan Al Asal.

In reality, Obama had a Syria policy—it just didn't work. The CIA began working with Syria exiles very early but was unable to find or create credible, pro-US rebel groups despite strenuous efforts. The United States formed two different civilian coalitions, backed the Free Syrian Army, and then tried to broaden the FSA by creating a thirty-man directorate called the Supreme Military Council.

As for Obama's “red line,” he faced a rather troublesome problem. A month after the Khan Al Asal attack, the White House announced that chemical weapons had been used. Intelligence agencies concluded that the Assad regime was responsible, but only “with varying degrees of confidence.”
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That's intel-speak for “We're not sure.” We now know that at least some intelligence officers suspected that al-Nusra or ISIS used sarin in Khan Al Asal. The United States couldn't very well go to war based on a chemical attack perpetrated by the rebels. Neither could it reveal the rebel role, lest it weaken the entire anti-Assad campaign.

So Obama waited, which the Republicans interpreted as dithering. The White House insisted on more definitive proof and ultimately didn't attack that spring. When Obama did announce plans for war, he faced an unprecedented defeat, in part engineered by Republicans.

The administration did manage to make lemonade from a batch of very sour Syrian lemons. Secretary of State John Kerry made an offhanded remark at a press conference in London. When asked what
Assad could do to stop the looming US attack, Kerry replied, “He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week—turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow the full and total accounting…. But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done.”
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The Russians, who had previously discussed that idea with the United States, seized the moment to propose a compromise. They pressured the Assad regime to give up its chemical weapons in return for the White House agreeing not to bomb. Until that moment, the Syrian regime had never officially acknowledged that it even had chemical weapons. Both sides quickly drew up protocols for destroying the chemicals, and the process began amid very difficult wartime conditions.

The United States insisted that all of Syria's chemical weapons be destroyed by mid-2014, an extremely short deadline, particularly since the United States had delayed the destruction of its own chemical stockpiles for years. Under terms of the Chemical Weapons Convention, the United States had agreed to destroy its Cold War–era stockpiles of deadly chemicals by 2012. But in 2013, the United States still had some three thousand tons of sarin, VX, and mustard gas in violation of the convention.
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Washington unilaterally extended the deadline to destroy the chemicals, indicating it would cost some $35 billion and couldn't be completed until 2023 at the earliest.
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The Obama administration hailed Syria's agreement to destroy its chemical stocks as a major breakthrough. But the failure to bomb Syria was criticized by both conservative and ultraconservative rebels. In their view, Washington not only failed to provide adequate weapons, it now had a vested interest in keeping Assad in power, at least until he destroyed the chemical weapons.

In the months leading up to the Al Ghouta attack, the Syrian army had been on the offensive, seeking to turn the tide militarily. Nowhere was that more clear than in Qusayr, a small, dusty town located south of Homs and only a few miles from the Lebanese border. In antiquity, it was the site of the world's largest known chariot battle—between the Egyptians
and the Hittites. The town would soon become famous for yet another battle.

Qusayr had become important to both the rebels and the Syrian army because of its strategic location. Rebels smuggled men and arms into Syria from nearby Lebanon. Al-Nusra and other rebel groups had taken power in Qusayr and nearby towns. The army fought to take them back throughout the spring of 2013. Fighting continued for months with the rebels sandbagging apartments and digging deep tunnels under buildings. The Syrian government bolstered its forces with an estimated 1,200 elite troops from its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah.
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After weeks of house-to-house fighting, in June the Syrian army and Hezbollah retook Qusayr in what they described as a turning point in the war. A Hezbollah leader told me the fighting was intense. “The Qusayr battle was very difficult,” Hezbollah spokesperson Haj Ghassan admitted during an interview in the eastern Lebanese city of Hermel, just a few miles from Qusayr. “The rebels had built many tunnels and had a lot of reinforcements.”
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But Qusayr was a pyrrhic victory. Residents had fled. The fierce fighting had destroyed the entire downtown area. Interviewed just one day after the victory, Ghassan admitted the high cost of the win. “It's almost the complete destruction of Qusayr caused by both sides,” said Ghassan. Whenever Syrian soldiers came under fire from rebels, he said, they retaliated with tanks and heavy weapons. “The Syrian army destroyed any place that shots came from. Now the Syrian government has to rebuild.” The Assad regime boasted that the Qusayr victory would lead quickly to the retaking of Aleppo, Homs, and other important cities. Six months later, those cities remained partially under rebel control, as they had been in June. Qusayr turned out to be just one more battle in a very long war. Another battle turned out to be even more significant, but not for the reasons you might suspect.

With its concrete buildings and rutted streets, Raqqa was the somewhat threadbare capital of the Raqqa Governate in north-central Syria. Before the civil war, its population was about 240,000, but an estimated
800,000 refugees fled there from other areas of the country. In March 2013, a coalition of rebel groups from the Free Syrian Army, Ahrar al-Sham, al-Nusra, and ISIS took control of the city and created a rebel administration. It was the first time rebels had captured a regional capital—a huge defeat for the government. Raqqa residents strongly opposed the Assad regime. At first they welcomed the rebel coalition. One American reporter visited Raqqa in March and noted, “The city was ruled by a coalition of militias, and it was possible to move around as a woman without a headscarf. I met with an Alawite nurse who worked alongside Sunni peers.”
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Conservative and ultraconservative Islamist groups predominated from the beginning. They had a reputation of incorruptibility and military prowess. Ahrar al-Sham, in particular, included many members from Idlib Governate just a few miles away. The rebels faced many difficult problems governing a large city devastated by civil war. The local economy was in shambles. Farmers were short of seed, and fertilizer from Turkey was very expensive. Some civil servants continued to receive their government salaries; others were not paid for months. The lack of government salaries remained an important issue because the government was a major employer. The government withdrew its troops but continued to bomb civilian areas with missiles and barrel bombs. Dropped from helicopters, those bombs—oil drums filled with shrapnel and explosives—were particularly devastating on civilians.

But the main threat to residents didn't come from the army. ISIS believed it was an Islamic state, not merely a powerful rebel group. In Raqqa and other northern cities, it proclaimed itself as the sole government, implementing a harsh version of Shariah law. It publicly beheaded three Alawites in the Raqqa central square. It forced women to wear the hijab, gender segregated the public schools, and banned smoking. Christians fled the city in fear, and churches were ransacked.
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Within two months, ISIS launched military assaults against fellow rebels for not following strict Islamic law. On August 14, ISIS blew up a car bomb in front of the headquarters of a rival rebel group, killing and wounding civilians. ISIS jailed and tortured rebels who disagreed with
its policies. By monopolizing power, ISIS alienated Raqqa residents, who then held marches and rallies against them. A number of civil-society activists became ISIS victims.

Father Paolo Dall'Oglio is an Italian Jesuit priest who had lived in Syria for over thirty years. He was well known and respected for frequently participating in intrareligious events. He fasted during Ramadan out of respect for Islam. Unlike some other Christian leaders, Father Paolo opposed the Assad regime and supported the rebels. He spoke at a civil-society rally in Raqqa. On July 29, 2013, he entered ISIS headquarters in Raqqa in an effort to stop the internecine fighting and to find out the whereabouts of kidnapped activists and journalists. Father Paolo was not seen again after that meeting. Many months later, he remained missing, apparently one more ISIS victim.
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Anger at ISIS swelled so much that by the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014, a new ad hoc alliance of Islamist groups fought back against ISIS. For a time they drove ISIS out of Raqqa, but ISIS eventually regained control. Meanwhile, civil-society activists attempted to maintain the gains made after the Assad troops fled. Raqqa was home to civil-society organizations providing emergency relief supplies and small economic programs. Other groups worked to organize teachers, students, and cultural workers.
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Rebels fought among themselves in other parts of the country as well. The Western-backed Supreme Military Council (SMC) didn't fare well. On December 6, 2013, the Islamic Front overran the SMC headquarters and warehouses, which were chock-full of US-provided armaments and supplies. SMC leader General Idris was reportedly forced to flee to Turkey from his headquarters in Atmeh, just a few miles inside Syria from the Turkish border. Stolen items included forty pickup trucks, buses, fifty thousand military rations, office and communications equipment, assault rifles, and even tanks. An SMC commander told the
New York Times
that the Islamic Front “stole everything in the headquarters.”
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Later, Idris claimed it was all a big misunderstanding. He had
asked for Islamic Front assistance because ISIS was going to overrun the headquarters. He also claimed to have been in Turkey the whole time.
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It was never clear, however, if the depot was really threatened by ISIS or if that was an Islamic Front ruse. In any case, the front looted the buildings and never returned the supplies, causing a huge embarrassment for the United States and rebel ally Idris.

In response, the US State Department announced suspension of
nonlethal
aid to rebels operating near the Turkish border, but the aid resumed within a few months. There was no announcement of halting the CIA's
lethal
aid. On February 16, 2014, the SMC commanders held a secret meeting, sacked Idris without prior notice, then replaced him with Brigadier General Abdul-Ilah al-Bashir, considered by the United States to be a “moderate.”
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The SMC didn't even bother to notify General Bashir until after the fact. “I swear to God, no one was in touch with me,” Bashir told the
New York Times
.
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The Obama administration once again began to revamp a failed policy. The White House was confronted with the waning power of its chosen military ally and the growing strength of ultra-right-wing Islamist groups—ISIS, al-Nusra, and the Islamic Front. One faction in the administration wanted to support the extremist Islamic Front by simply redefining it as “moderate.” The United States opened up talks with the Islamic Front and pointedly did not declare it a terrorist organization, as it had with al-Nusra. The front leader has made numerous speeches calling for an Islamic state governed by Shariah and attacking Alawites (see
chapter 5
).

John Hudson wrote for the online magazine
Foreign Policy
that “US interest in the group [Islamic Front] reflects the bedraggled state of the Supreme Military Council and the desire to keep military pressure on President Bashar al-Assad.” A senior congressional aide told him, “The SMC is being reduced to an exile group and the jihadists are taking over.”
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The Obama administration considered another option. It could temporarily ally with Assad to defeat the extremist rebels and then return to the antiregime fight at a later time. Such a policy had been
implicitly implemented when the administration and the Syrian regime agreed to dismantle the chemical weapons. It was in US interests to keep Assad in power at least until the process was completed. And in early February 2014, the opposition groups negotiating with the regime in Geneva quietly dropped their demand for Assad's resignation prior to forming a transitional government representing both sides.
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The Obama administration weighed yet another option. It could double down on its support for the SMC and provide pro-US rebels with advanced antiaircraft weaponry. Several media reported that the United States had agreed to spend millions of dollars to pay SMC salaries and had given Saudi Arabia permission to provide rebels with shoulder-fired missiles, which could seriously escalate the war.
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