USA on Syyriassa CIA:n kautta aika lahjakkaasti ainakin osallistunut hallinnon vastaiseen toimintaan. Joku voisi jopa väittää että pelannut täysin ISISin pussiin.
CIA activities in Syria - Wikipedia
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War, 2011–2017[edit]
Main articles:
Timber Sycamore and
American-led intervention in Syria
In 2011,
WikiLeaks reported that the U.S. government had been covertly funding the democratic Syrian opposition and civil society groups since 2006, mainly the London-based
Movement for Justice and Development in Syria and an associated
satellite TV channel
Barada TV.
[40] Special Activities Division teams are speculated[
by whom?] to have been deployed to Syria during the uprising to ascertain rebel groups, leadership and potential supply routes.
[41]
In early September 2013, President
Barack Obama told U.S. Senators that the CIA had trained the first 50-man insurgent element and that they had been inserted into Syria.
[42] The deployment of this unit and the supplying of weapons may be the first tangible measure of support since the U.S. stated they would begin providing assistance to the opposition.
[43][44] However, the CIA had been facilitating the flow of arms from
Libya to Syria "for more than a year" beforehand in collaboration with "the
UK,
Saudi Arabia and
Qatar"; "the operation was largely run out of a covert CIA annex in
Benghazi." U.S. military intelligence predicted "the fall of the
Assad regime would lead to chaos and, potentially, to Syria's takeover by jihadi extremists, much as was then happening in Libya."
[45]
Obama's refusal to directly arm or train Syrian rebels prior to 2013, and his rejection of a 2012 outline for "CIA intervention in Syria" suggested by "then-
CIA Director"
David Petraeus was motivated by his own belief that past instances of the CIA supporting insurgencies rarely "worked out well." The program he ultimately approved was designed
not to give the rebels enough support to achieve victory, but rather to engineer a stalemate that would encourage a negotiated resolution of the
Syrian Civil War—which U.S. officials envisioned as including the resignation of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad. The CIA trained 10,000 rebels "in
Jordan and
Turkey" at facilities run with the cooperation of the Jordanian and Turkish governments, but strict prohibitions were placed on the U.S. or its allies introducing "certain classes of weapons" (such as
MANPADs) into the conflict due to fears they could be captured by terrorists—this despite the fact that all CIA-supported rebels are "vetted" for possible extremist ties. Assad was in danger of being overthrown until the 2015
Russian military intervention in Syria changed the course of the war, causing a split within the Obama administration between officials like CIA Director
John O. Brennan and
Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter—who advocated "doubling down" on the program—and opponents including
White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and
Secretary of State John Kerry—who expressed doubts that escalating the CIA's role could achieve meaningful results without forcing "an asymmetric response by Russia." Against the backdrop of the
siege of "rebel-held sections" of the city of Aleppo by Russian and Syrian aircraft, on October 14, 2016 Obama was presented by his
National Security Council with a "Plan B" to "deliver truck-mounted antiaircraft weapons that could help rebel units but would be difficult for a terrorist group to conceal and use against civilian aircraft"; Obama declined to make a decision on the matter, raising the prospect "that tens of thousands of CIA-backed fighters will search for more-reliable allies, and that the United States will lose leverage over regional partners that until now have refrained from delivering more-dangerous arms to Assad's opponents." Following Russia's intervention, top U.S. officials began emphasizing "
the fight against the
Islamic State [ISIL], rather than against the Assad government," but supporters of the CIA program "disagree with this rationale, saying that the Islamic State can't be eradicated until a new government emerges capable of controlling the terrorist group's territory in
Raqqa and elsewhere," and that "the [
Free Syrian Army] remains the only vehicle to pursue those goals." In contrast, "one senior U.S. official said that it is time for a 'ruthless' look at whether agency-supported fighters can still be considered moderate, and whether the program can accomplish anything beyond adding to the carnage in Syria," asking: "What has this program become, and how will history record this effort?"
[46] After the Defense Department's
overt $500 million effort to train thousands of Syrians to fight ISIL was revealed to have produced only "four or five" active combatants as of September 2015, largely because the vast majority of potential recruits considered Assad their main enemy—an admission that prompted widespread
Congressional derision—the U.S. military began airdrops of lethal equipment to established rebel organizations; reports soon emerged of "CIA-armed units and
Pentagon-armed ones" battling each other.
[47][48]
While the Defense Department's program to aid predominantly
Kurdish rebels fighting ISIL will continue, it was revealed in July 2017 that President
Donald Trump had ordered a "phasing out" of the CIA's support for anti-Assad rebels, a move some U.S. officials characterized as a "major concession" to Russia.
[49] According to
David Ignatius, writing in
The Washington Post, while the CIA program ultimately failed in its objective of removing Assad from power, it was hardly "bootless": "The program pumped many hundreds of millions of dollars to many dozens of militia groups. One knowledgeable official estimates that the CIA-backed fighters may have killed or wounded 100,000 Syrian soldiers and their allies over the past four years."
[50]
During an interview with the
WSJ in July 2017 President Donald Trump claimed many of the CIA-supplied weapons ended up in the hands of “Al Qaeda”, which often fought alongside the CIA-backed rebels."