Pentagon Document Shows US Knew Syria Strategy Would Aid Rise Of ISIS

A newly declassified document from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) from 2012 reveals the US government’s understanding that the policy it was pursuing in Syra would foster the rise of ISIS. As has been noted continually by critics of the Obama Administration’s Syria policy, DIA’s analysis surmised that the Syrian opposition was comprised primarily of Islamic fundamentalists who hated the US not “moderates” who wanted to build a liberal democracy as Syrian war advocates claimed.

The Obama Administration’s decision to arm the Syrian rebels – at one point evenbypassing a US law against arming terrorists – did not alter the composition of the Syrian rebels and the weapons sent by the US into Syria ended up being captured by Al Qaeda and other Islamist militants.

But as the Pentagon document shows, the problem with the Obama Administration’s policy was deeper than its arms program. The US “allies” in the region such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey specifically wanted a Sunni-based Islamic State in order to undermine Assad and check Iranian influence in the region.

 

In a strikingly prescient prediction, the Pentagon document explicitly forecasts the probable declaration of “an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria.” Nevertheless, “Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey are supporting these efforts” by Syrian “opposition forces” fighting to “control the eastern areas (Hasaka and Der Zor), adjacent to Western Iraqi provinces (Mosul and Anbar)”:

“… there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).” The secret Pentagon document thus provides extraordinary confirmation that the US-led coalition currently fighting ISIS, had three years ago welcomed the emergence of an extremist “Salafist Principality” in the region as a way to undermine Assad, and block off the strategic expansion of Iran. Crucially, Iraq is labeled as an integral part of this “Shia expansion.”

 

So what was the point of the Obama Administration’s press strategy calling the Syrian rebels “moderates” when analysts were privately telling them that the rebels were far from moderate and their triumph would lead to an Islamic State? President Obama later repudiated his own talking point in 2014 and claimed that it had “always been a fantasy”to believe the moderates would ever be the force that prevailed within the Syrian opposition. No kidding.

Now the “Salafist Principality” previously forecast by US defense analysts has not only come into being but is proving to be quite resilient. Then again, it’s not like no one saw it coming.

 

 

FDL