C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition

By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: June 21, 2012


WASHINGTON — A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers.

The weapons, including automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons, are being funneled mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the officials said.

The C.I.A. officers have been in southern Turkey for several weeks, in part to help keep weapons out of the hands of fighters allied with Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, one senior American official said. The Obama administration has said it is not providing arms to the rebels, but it has also acknowledged that Syria’s neighbors would do so.

The clandestine intelligence-gathering effort is the most detailed known instance of the limited American support for the military campaign against the Syrian government. It is also part of Washington’s attempt to increase the pressure on President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who has recently escalated his government’s deadly crackdown on civilians and the militias battling his rule. With Russia blocking more aggressive steps against the Assad government, the United States and its allies have instead turned to diplomacy and aiding allied efforts to arm the rebels to force Mr. Assad from power.

By helping to vet rebel groups, American intelligence operatives in Turkey hope to learn more about a growing, changing opposition network inside of Syria and to establish new ties. “C.I.A. officers are there and they are trying to make new sources and recruit people,” said one Arab intelligence official who is briefed regularly by American counterparts.

American officials and retired C.I.A. officials said the administration was also weighing additional assistance to rebels, like providing satellite imagery and other detailed intelligence on Syrian troop locations and movements. The administration is also considering whether to help the opposition set up a rudimentary intelligence service. But no decisions have been made on those measures or even more aggressive steps, like sending C.I.A. officers into Syria itself, they said.

The struggle inside Syria has the potential to intensify significantly in coming months as powerful new weapons are flowing to both the Syrian government and opposition fighters. President Obama and his top aides are seeking to pressure Russia to curb arms shipments like attack helicopters to Syria, its main ally in the Middle East.

“We’d like to see arms sales to the Assad regime come to an end, because we believe they’ve demonstrated that they will only use their military against their own civilian population,” Benjamin J. Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said after Mr. Obama and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin, met in Mexico on Monday.

Spokesmen for the White House, State Department and C.I.A. would not comment on any intelligence operations supporting the Syrian rebels, some details of which were reported last week by The Wall Street Journal.

Until now, the public face of the administration’s Syria policy has largely been diplomacy and humanitarian aid.

The State Department said Wednesday that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton would meet with her Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, on the sidelines of a meeting of Asia-Pacific foreign ministers in St. Petersburg, Russia, next Thursday. The private talks are likely to focus, at least in part, on the crisis in Syria.

The State Department has authorized $15 million in nonlethal aid, like medical supplies and communications equipment, to civilian opposition groups in Syria.

The Pentagon continues to fine-tune a range of military options, after a request from Mr. Obama in early March for such contingency planning. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told senators at that time that the options under review included humanitarian airlifts, aerial surveillance of the Syrian military, and the establishment of a no-fly zone.

The military has also drawn up plans for how coalition troops would secure Syria’s sizable stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons if an all-out civil war threatened their security.

But senior administration officials have underscored in recent days that they are not actively considering military options. “Anything at this point vis-à-vis Syria would be hypothetical in the extreme,” General Dempsey told reporters this month.

What has changed since March is an influx of weapons and ammunition to the rebels. The increasingly fierce air and artillery assaults by the government are intended to counter improved coordination, tactics and weaponry among the opposition forces, according to members of the Syrian National Council and other activists.

Last month, these activists said, Turkish Army vehicles delivered antitank weaponry to the border, where it was then smuggled into Syria. Turkey has repeatedly denied it was extending anything other than humanitarian aid to the opposition, mostly via refugee camps near the border. The United States, these activists said, was consulted about these weapons transfers.

American military analysts offered mixed opinions on whether these arms have offset the advantages held by the militarily superior Syrian Army. “The rebels are starting to crack the code on how to take out tanks,” said Joseph Holliday, a former United States Army intelligence officer in Afghanistan who is now a researcher tracking the Free Syrian Army for the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.

But a senior American officer who receives classified intelligence reports from the region, compared the rebels’ arms to “peashooters” against the government’s heavy weaponry and attack helicopters.

The Syrian National Council, the main opposition group in exile, has recently begun trying to organize the scattered, localized units that all fight under the name of the Free Syrian Army into a more cohesive force.

About 10 military coordinating councils in provinces across the country are now sharing tactics and other information. The city of Homs is the notable exception. It lacks such a council because the three main military groups in the city do not get along, national council officials said.

Jeffrey White, a defense analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who tracks videos and announcements from self-described rebel battalions, said there were now about 100 rebel formations, up from roughly 70 two months ago, ranging in size from a handful of fighters to a couple of hundred combatants.

“When the regime wants to go someplace and puts the right package of forces together, it can do it,” Mr. White said. “But the opposition is raising the cost of those kinds of operations.”




Neil MacFarquhar contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon. Souad Mekhennet also contributed reporting.


A version of this article appeared in print on June 21, 2012, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: C.I.A. Said to Aid In Steering Arms To Syrian Rebels.

--------------

COMMENTS



So, we're assisting those who could be radical religionists (with lethal weapons). The US government doesn't learn a whole lot from history. What needs to happen is a complete arms embargo in Syria (try telling that to those who manufacture arms). Lecturing the Russian government while we do the same thing in Syria is totally hypocritical, yet consistent with US foreign policy.
=====


Is it terrorism for the opposition in Syria, largely made up of normal Syrian, men, women, and yes children, to want freedom and democracy and the ability to live in peace and security like you and i do here in the US, instead of under a vise grip of a brutal and murderous dictator like Bashar al Assad, who has fomented terrorism of his own lethal kind throughout the region? They are fighting for their own lives and just as the CIA may be directing arms to them the brutal and duplicitous Russians, Chinese and Iranians have been arming, training and murdering civilians themselves. Perhaps you should read more news Yossarian.
=======

To all of you complaining that these leaks should be stopped and the media should not be divulging any of the secret information they obtain, be reminded that the NYT and the rest of the 4th estate are not government entities and are not in the business of keeping information away from the public.
Thank goodness for that.
One man's "leak" is another man's deep and dark secret which he is trying to hide from public view. Nixon found that out the hard way.
You can't have it both ways.
====

If anyone believes that the US has been sitting on its hands watching the horrors unfold in Syria, they need to be disabused of that pronto. It would be the height of immorality to allow this to go on without an effort to check it.
Apparently, Senator McCain, who has been calling for US arming of the rebels has not been kept in the loop. Something I find admirable, in this overheated Presidential campaign, when Obama has more on his plate to worry about than defending himself from Romney.
It had to be suspected, if not known, that Saudi Arabia and Qatar who see the dangers of a Shia dominated neighborhood would waste no time in coming to the rebels aid, if surreptitiously. Turkeys proximity to the events endanger Turkey, and they are to be praised for their efforts.
The US has tried to convince Russia and China that Assad has to go and the bloodletting stopped. Only Russia and China know why they are behaving as they are, though it appears peevish to the rest of the world.
If Putin and Obama agreed to disagree in Mexico, it should be no surprise that today's papers are privy to CIA involement. Obama has apparently decided to call a spade a spade, and rightly so.
I am impressed with Obama. He gets the nations' work done quietly and efficiently. Who can blame him if he takes the credit when his efforts succeed? Everyone's ready to trash him when he fails. But he has never shirked.
===

And I thought that the CIA was an information gathering organization - not a gun-running outfit... You learn something new every day. No seriously, if the US wants Assad out of power, then you better believe that they'll find a way to, directly and/or indirectly, arm the opposition. And if that opposition represents a better government for Syrians, then I'm all for it. The big question is what type of opposition government does the US wish to replace Assad's current rule with? Hopefully not another right-wing, repressive government.
==

There's only one way out of this situation, and unfortunately that way is through it. Yes, Assad must and will be defeated. But then what? We are in the midst of a world wide "paradigm shift," and we are unable to control the outcome-- not just in Syria but throughout the Middle East and beyond. The next few years should be interesting.

----
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all