Trump Critics of Syria Withdrawal Fueled Rise of ISIS
December 27, 2018
Too many of those protesting the removal of U.S. forces are authors of the
catastrophe that tore Syria to pieces, reports Max Blumenthal for Consortium
News.
By Max Blumenthal
Special to Consortium News
President Donald Trump's announcement of an imminent withdrawal of US troops
from northeastern Syria summoned a predictable paroxysm of outrage from
Washington's foreign policy establishment. Former Secretary of State and
self-described "hair icon" Hillary Clinton perfectly distilled the
bipartisan freakout into a single tweet, accusing Trump of "isolationism"
and "playing into Russia and Iran's hands."
Michelle Flournoy, the DC apparatchik who would have been Hillary's
Secretary of Defense, slammed the pull-out as "foreign policy malpractice,"
while Hillary's successor at the State Department, John Kerry, threw bits of
red meat to the Russiagate-crazed Democratic base by branding Trump's
decision "a Christmas gift to Putin." From the halls of Congress to the K
Street corridors of Gulf-funded think tanks, a chorus of protest proclaimed
that removing US troops from Syria would simultaneously abet Iran and bring
ISIS back from the grave.
Yet few of those thundering condemnations of the president's move seemed
able to explain just why a few thousand U.S. troops had been deployed to the
Syrian hinterlands in the first place. If the mission was to destroy ISIS,
then why did ISIS rise in the first place? And why was the jihadist
organization still festering right in the midst of the U.S. military
occupation?
Too many critics of withdrawal had played central roles in the Syrian crisis
to answer these questions honestly. They had either served as media
cheerleaders for intervention, or crafted the policies aimed at collapsing
Syria's government that fueled the rise of ISIS. The Syrian catastrophe was
their legacy, and they were out to defend it at any cost.
Birthing ISIS From the Womb of Regime Change
During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Clinton, Kerry, and the rest of
the Beltway blob lined up reflexively behind George W. Bush. The insurgency
that followed the violent removal of Iraq's Ba'athist government set the
stage for the declaration of the first Islamic State by Abu Musab Zarqawi in
2006. Five years later, with near-total consent from Congress, Hillary
enthusiastically presided over NATO's assault on Libya, cackling with glee
when she learned that the country's longtime leader, Moammar Gaddafi, had
been sodomized with a bayonet and shot to death by Islamist insurgents - "We
came, we saw, he died!" It was not long before an Islamist Emirate was
established in Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte, while 31 flavors of jihadi
militias festered in Tripoli and Benghazi.
Clinton and Kerry: Architects of chaos in Syria.
While still defending her vote on Iraq, Hillary made the case for arming the
anti-Assad opposition in Syria. "In a conflict like this," she said, "the
hard men with the guns are going to be the more likely actors in any
political transition than those on the outside just talking."
In 2012, the CIA initiated a one billion dollar arm-and-equip operation to
fund the so-called "moderate rebels" united under the banner of the Free
Syrian Army (FSA). A classified Defense Intelligence Agency memo distributed
across Obama administration channels in August of that year warned that
jihadist forces emanating from Iraq aimed to exploit the security vacuum
opened up by the US-backed proxy war to establish a "Salafist principality
in eastern Syria" - an "Islamic State," in the exact words of the memo.
Referring to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia's Syrian affiliate by its name, Jabhat
al-Nusra, before Western media ever had, the DIA emphasized the close ties
the group had fostered with Syria's "moderate rebels": "AQI supported the
Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the
media. AQI declared its opposition to Assad's regime from the beginning
because it considered it a sectarian regime targeting Sunnis."
The memo was authored under the watch of then-Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who
was convicted this year of failing to register as a foreign agent of Turkey
- an extremely ironic development considering Turkey's role in fueling the
Syrian insurgency. Predictably, the document was ignored across the board by
the Obama administration. Meanwhile, heavy weapons were flowing out of the
U.S. Incirlik air base in Turkey and into the hands of anyone who could grab
them across the Syrian border.
As early as February 2013, a United Nations independent inquiry report
concluded, "The FSA has remained a brand name only." The UN further issued a
damning assessment of the role of the United States, UK and their Gulf
allies in fueling extremism across Syria. "The intervention of external
sponsors has contributed to the radicalization of the insurgency as it has
favoured Salafi armed groups such as the al-Nusra Front, and even encouraged
mainstream insurgents to join them owing to their superior logistical and
operational capabilities," the report stated.
US Arms, ISIS Caliphate
How ISIS overran large swaths of territory in northeastern Syria and
established its de facto capital Raqqa is scarcely understood, let alone
discussed by Western media. That is partly because the real story is so
inconvenient to the established narrative of the Syrian conflict, which
blames Assad for every atrocity that has ever occurred in his country, and
for some horrors that may not have ever taken place. Echoing the Bush
administration's discredited attempts to link Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda,
some neoconservative pundits hatched a conspiracy theory that accused Assad
of covertly orchestrating the rise of ISIS in order to curry support from
the West. But the documented evidence firmly established the success of ISIS
as a byproduct of the semi-covert American program to arm Assad's supposedly
moderate opposition.
Opposition activists fly the flag of the US-backed Free Syrian Army
alongside the flag of ISIS in the center of Raqqa, December 2013. (Raqqa
Media Center)
Back in March 2013, a coalition of Syrian rebel forces representing the
CIA-backed FSA, the Turkish and Qatari proxy, Ahrar al-Sham, and the Al
Qaeda affiliate, al-Nusra, overwhelmed the Syrian army in Raqqa. Opposition
activists declared the city the "icon of the revolution" and celebrated in
Raqqa's town center, waving the tricolor flags of the FSA alongside the
black banners of ISIS and al-Nusra, which set up its headquarters in the
city's town hall.
But disorder quickly spread throughout the city as its residents attempted
to order their affairs through local councils. Meanwhile, the US-backed FSA
had ceded the city to al-Nusra, taking the fight to the front lines against
government forces further afield. The chaos stirred by the insurgents and
their foreign backers had created the perfect petri dish for jihadism to
fester.
A month after Raqqa was taken, the Iraqi zealot and ISIS commander Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi revealed that al-Nusra had been a Trojan horse for his
organization, referring to its commander, Mohammed Jolani, as "our son."
Jolani, in turn, admitted that he had entered Syria from Iraq as a soldier
of the Islamic State, declaring, "We accompanied the jihad in Iraq as
military escorts from its beginning until our return [to Syria] after the
Syrian revolution."
By August, Baghdadi completed his coup, announcing control over the city.
According to the anti-Assad website, Syria Untold, the U.S.-backed FSA had
"balked in the face of ISIS and avoided any military confrontation with it."
Many of its fighters quickly jumped ship to either the Islamic State or
al-Nusra.
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"The [FSA] battalions are scared to become the weakest link, that they will
be swallowed by ISIS," a media activist named Ahmed al-Asmeh told the
journalist Alison Meuse. "A number joined ISIS, and those who were with the
people joined Jabhat al-Nusra."
Backing "Territorial ISIS"
As the insurgency advanced towards Syria's coast, leaving piles of corpses
in its wake and propelling a refugee crisis of unprecedented proportions,
the U.S. stepped up its arm-and-equip program. By 2015, the CIA was pouring
anti-tank missiles into the ranks of Nourredine Al-Zinki, an extremist
militia that eventually forged a coalition with bands of fanatics that made
no attempt to disguise their ideology. Among the new opposition umbrella
group was one outfit called, "The Bin Laden Front."
Despite all its war on terror bluster, the U.S. was treating ISIS as an
asset in its bid to topple Assad. Then Secretary of State Kerry copped to
the strategy in a leaked private meeting with Syrian opposition activists in
Sept. 2016: "We were watching," Kerry revealed. "We saw that Daesh [ISIS]
was growing in strength and we thought Assad was threatened. We thought,
however, we could probably manage, you know, that Assad might negotiate and
instead of negotiating, you got Assad, ah, you got Putin supporting him."
When Russia directly intervened in Syria in 2015, the Obama administration's
most outspoken interventionists railed against its campaign to roll back the
presence of Al Qaeda and its allies, comparing it to the Rwandan genocide.
These same officials were curiously quiet, however, when Russia combined
forces with the Syrian military to drive ISIS from the city of Palmyra, to
save the home of the world's most treasured antiquities from destruction.
At a March 24, 2016, press briefing, a reporter asked U.S. State Department
spokesman Mark Toner, "Do you want to see the [Syrian] regime retake
Palmyra, or would you prefer that it stays in Daesh's [ISIS] hands?"
Toner strung together empty platitudes for a full minute.
"You're not answering my question," the reporter protested.
Toner emitted a nervous laugh and conceded, "I know I'm not."
About a year later, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman openly called
for the U.S. to use ISIS as a strategic tool, reiterating the cynical logic
for the strategy that was already in place. "We could simply back off
fighting territorial ISIS in Syria and make it entirely a problem for Iran,
Russia, Hezbollah and Assad," Friedman proposed. "After all, they're the
ones overextended in Syria, not us. Make them fight a two-front war-the
moderate rebels on one side and ISIS on the other."
Giving ISIS 'Breathing Space'
Palmyra saved twice from ISIS. (Wikimedia Commons)
When the U.S. finally decided to make a move against ISIS in 2017, it was
gripped with anxiety about the Syrian government restoring control over the
oil-rich areas ISIS controlled across the northeast.
With help from Russia, and against opposition from the U.S., Syria had
already liberated the city of Deir Ezzor from a years-long siege by the
Islamic State. Fearing that ISIS-occupied Raqqa could be next to be returned
to government hands, the U.S. unleashed a brutal bombing campaign while its
allies in the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (a rebranded offshoot of
the People's Protection Units or YPG) assaulted the city by ground.
The U.S.-led campaign reduced much of Raqqa to rubble. In contrast to
Aleppo, where rebuilding was underway and refugees were returning, Raqqa and
outlying towns under U.S. control were cut off from basic government
services and plunged into darkness.
The U.S. proceeded to occupy the city and its outlying areas, insisting that
the Syrian government and its allies were too weak to prevent the resurgence
of ISIS on their own. But almost as soon as U.S. boots hit the ground, ISIS
began to gather strength. In fact, a report this August by the UN Security
Council's Sanctions Monitoring Team found that in areas under direct
American control, ISIS had suddenly found "breathing space to prepare for
the next phase of its evolution into a global covert network."
This October, when Iran launched missile strikes against ISIS, nearly
killing the ISIS emir, Baghdadi, the Pentagon complained that the missiles
had struck only three kilometers from U.S. positions. The protest raised
uncomfortable questions about what the top honchos of the Islamic State were
doing in such close proximity to the American military, and why the U.S. was
unwilling to do what Iran just had done and attack them. No answers from the
Pentagon have arrived so far.
Target: Iran
With the appointment this August of James Jeffrey, a self-described "Never
Trumper" from the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as
Trump's special representative for Syria engagement, it became clear that
the mission to eradicate ISIS was of secondary importance. In testimony
before Congress this December, Jeffrey laid out an agenda that focused
heavily on what he called "Iran's malign influence in the region,"
"countering Iran in Syria," and "remov[ing] all Iranian-commanded forces and
proxy forces from the entirety of Syria." In all, Jeffrey made 30 mentions
of Iran, all of them hostile, while referring only 23 times to ISIS. It was
clear he had regime change in Tehran on the brain.
Trump, for his part, had been mulling a removal of U.S. forces from northern
Syria since at least last Spring, when he put forward a vision for an
all-Arab military force funded by Saudi Arabia to replace them. But when
Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was sawed apart inside his country's
embassy in Istanbul this October, Trump's plan went to pieces as well.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan exploited the Khashoggi saga to
perfection, helping to transform Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman from
the darling of America's elite into persona non grata in Washington. As a
result, he arranged a front line position for Turkey in the wake of any U.S.
withdrawal.
There are now real reasons to fear that a Turkish advance will ignite a
resurgence of ISIS. Turkey was not only a source of aid and oil sales to the
jihadist group, it currently oversees a mercenary force of Salafi militiamen
that includes droves of former Islamic State fighters. If the Turkish
onslaught proves destabilizing, Iran and its allied Shia militias could ramp
up their deployment in Syria, which would trigger a harsh reaction from
Israel and its Beltway cut-outs.
Then again, the Kurdish YPG is in high level negotiations with Damascus and
may team up with the Syrian military to fill the void. From an anti-ISIS
standpoint, this is clearly the best option. It is therefore the least
popular one in Washington.
Whatever happens in Syria, those who presided over U.S. policy towards the
country over the past seven years are in no position to criticize. They set
the stage for the entire crisis, propelling the rise of ISIS in a bid to
decapitate another insufficiently pliant state. And though they may never
face the accountability they deserve, the impending withdrawal of American
troops is a long overdue and richly satisfying rebuke.
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of books
including best-selling Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That
Shattered the Party, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, The Fifty
One Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza, and the forthcoming The Management
of Savagery, which will be published by Verso. He has also produced numerous
print articles for an array of publications, many video reports and several
documentaries including Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie and the newly released
Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded the GrayzoneProject.com in 2015 and serves
as its editor.