Day: December 12, 2014

Disaster looms

The Middle East Institute discussion today of building support for moderate Syrian rebel forces stirred both mind and blood.With Kate Seelye moderating, the panel offered a multilayered critique of US and coalition policy.

McClatchy’s Roy Gutman launched with a denunciation of US aid cuts to the 8-10,000 vetted fighters, who are losing ground and personnel to the Syrian regime and extremists. While White House favorites like David Ignatius are declaring the moderates don’t exist, in fact they did well fighting extremists for much of this year (after an initial debacle in the north, where their warehouses were raided by ISIS).

The rebels have suffered more recently from having no unified command, lack of coordination among donors, and the need to fight Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al Nusra as well as ISIS and the regime. The US, which a Syrian opined “walks like a turtle while events race like a rabbit,” punishes the opposition for failures that are due in fact to lack of US support. The situation bears all the hallmarks of impending disaster for the moderates. Somehow the opposition is holding its ground in the center of Aleppo, but it is losing manpower to the extremists.

The Syrian Opposition Coalition’s Oubai Shahbandar agreed the situation is difficult, but he thought not impossible. Despite Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps fighters operating on the regime side, Aleppo has held. The rebels are resilient. They are fighting Assad, a fight that is inextricably linked to the fight against ISIS. Defeating ISIS in Iraq and containing it in Syria, as the Obama administration would like to do, is not a viable option. Rebel forces in southern Syria are making real progress in surrounding Damascus. The moderates are not finished. There are still viable options if they get sufficient support.

Retired US Army General Paul Eaton said the US has no strategy, just an incoherent response. This is partly because there are no vital US interests at stake in Syria, only “conditional” ones. The war against ISIS is the main US effort, which we entered because ISIS threatened our Kurdish friends in Erbil (not because journalists were beheaded). But the war is existential for President Assad, who is therefore unrestrained even as the US pursues the art of the possible. The Administration has a choice of two out of three: good, fast and cheap. It has chosen good and cheap (and therefore also slow). One year will not be enough. In the meanwhile, the opposition is unable to hold and build.

Retired Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford underlined that this is a two-front war, east and west. The Administration has given priority to the east (Iraq). The west (Syria) is not going well. But there is no solution only in Iraq. Nor is there a solution unless we fight both the regime and ISIS. It may be too late, as we have failed to bomb ISIS forces that are challenging the Free Syrian Army (FSA) brigades. Assad and the jihadis are winning in the west. It is unrealistic to expect the FSA to fight only Assad. We need to change the balance on the ground in order to get a political solution in Syria.

Asked about the UN “freeze” proposal for Aleppo, Gutman underlined that past ceasefires have essentially amounted to surrenders of the opposition to the regime. The UN is on its third top-notch special envoy. But he won’t succeed either unless something is done to alter the balance on the ground. Ford noted that of three dozen ceasefires, only one has held up. Eaton said that the US could enforce a freeze, but it has to consider the Iranian and Russian responses if it were to do so.

If we move towards a “no fly” zone, Ford emphasized the need for strict conditions on our friends: we would want the Sunnis to pledge protection for Alawites and other minorities, the Turks to pledge not to push Syrian refugees out of Turkey, the donors to tighten coordination and to push for a political solution. Gutman underlined that it is vital for the opposition to set up shop inside Syria, but doing so will require ground forces (which Turkey does not want to provide) as well as protection from the air. Shahbandar thinks a “no fly” zone would help to change the balance on the ground and win hearts and minds, which are being lost now because of US failure to attack regime forces.

Russia and Iran, the panel agreed, are key international players. Russia has been reluctant to force the regime to fight ISIS or to push Assad out. The Administration has told the Iranians it will not bomb Assad’s forces. But Iran is a key factor in supporting ISIS, which it helped revive after its defeat in Iraq. Tehran is the “turboengine” of terrorism in the Levant, Shahbandar said. The US risks losing all Sunni support if it is seen as allied with Iran.

Bottom line: the US still lacks a coherent strategy against ISIS in Syria, which would require stronger support to the moderate opposition and the fight against Assad, a unified opposition military command and logistics, and more effort to undo Iranian and Russian support for the regime. Otherwise disaster looms.

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Doing good is a powerful motive

Below you’ll find my commentary about the second ten of the Senate Committee findings on the CIA interrogation program. These comments are admittedly off the cuff, like my comments on the first ten.
But before proceeding I offer you this from NPR on the question of the effectiveness of the Enhanced Intelligence Techniques (EIT) program:
I am afraid it is true in the public discourse (including statements from Senator Feinstein) that the Senate report is being portrayed as denying any intelligence benefit from the program.
But as I pointed out two days ago, that is not actually what the report says. It says the program was not effective. An ineffective program may still produce some benefits. I assume the intel professionals claiming it did are correct. But the available evidence suggests not nearly enough to justify the methods used (even ignoring the moral issue). That is presumably what CIA Director Brennan meant when he classified the benefits as “unknowable.”
To round out your day, here is a 25-minute interview with the alleged designer of the Enhanced Interrogation Techniques program. Note his emotional crumble at the end. Doing good is a powerful motive for doing bad:
#11:The CIA was unprepared as it began operating its Detention and Interrogation Program more than six months after being granted detention authorities.
The Agency has pretty much agreedĀ with this finding.
#12: The CIA’s management and operation of its Detention and Interrogation Program was deeply flawed throughout the program‘s duration, particularly so in 2002 and early 2003.
While it doesn’t plead guilty to the “deeply flawed” label, CIA in its 2013 response certainly agreed about some of the specific management and operation mistakes.
#13: Two contract psychologists devised the CIA‘s enhanced interrogation techniques and played a central role in the operation, assessments, and management of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program. By 2005, the CIA had overwhelmingly outsourced operations related
to the program.
The Agency actually goes further in admitting fault on this point, saying it
allowed a conflict of interest to exist wherein the contractors who helped design and employ the enhanced interrogation techniques also were involved in assessing the fitness of detainees to be subjected to such techniques and the effectiveness of those same techniques;
#14: CIA detainees were subjected to coercive interrogation techniques that had not been approved by the Department of Justice or had not been authorized by CIA Headquarters.
The former CIA higher ups disagree with this and say everything was approved. This is a factual question that closer examination should elucidate. They have Vice President Cheney on their side. He has said he and the President knew about the details and approved them.
#15: The CIA did not conduct a comprehensive or accurate accounting of the
number of individuals it detained, and held individuals who did not meet the legal standard for detention. The CIA’s claims about the number of detainees held and subjected to its enhanced Interrogation techniques were inaccurate.
The allegation is 26 “wrongfully held.” But for the rest we are getting into the weeds. Sure they should have known precisely how many people they were holding, but that is nowhere near the worst that was done.
#16: The CIA failed to adequately evaluate the effectiveness of its enhanced interrogation techniques.
I haven’t heard anyone dispute this.
#17: The CIA rarely reprimanded or held personnel accountable for serious and significant violations, inappropriate activities, and systemic and individual management failures.
You are not going to get people to do the stuff that was done if you come down hard on them. And if the program had proper authorization, it would be better to focus where that decision was made.
#18: The CIA marginalized and ignored numerous internal critiques, criticisms, and objections concerning the operationand management of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program.
More credit to those officers who spoke up.
#19: The CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program was inherently unsustainable and had effectively ended by 2006 due to unauthorized press disclosures, reduced cooperation from other nations, and legal and oversight
concerns.
More credit again, this time to the press, other nations and whatever those oversight concerns were. Would defenders of the program want to argue that we are at significantly greater risk for the past eight years because this program ended?
#20: The CIA‘s Detention and Interrogation Program damaged the United Statesstanding in the world, and resulted in other significant monetary and
non-monetary costs.
Defenders of the program might argue that it is the Senate report revelations that have really damaged US standing, but that would be fallacious. Anyone pursuing a classified program of this sort should be taking into account the risk that it will some day become public. That is inevitable, and it is an eventuality any classified program should take into account before embarking.
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