Critics are frustrated by the Obama administration’s Syria policy, attacking him for indecisiveness or lack of will to defeat Assad, but President Barack Obama seems to have learned from the mistakes of Libya, analyst Alexander Decina writes for The Daily Beast:
Rather than a headlong pursuit to take down Assad, Obama seems to be mindful of the consequences of an abrupt regime collapse. Instead of arming every group that memorizes the right talking points about democracy and pluralism, the administration has tried, though in some cases unsuccessfully, to limit its support and equipment to carefully vetted rebels.
One of the key lessons, adds Decina, a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, is:
People lie—especially when money and weapons are on the line. When the U.S. offered its support to the National Transitional Council in Libya back in 2011, its members proclaimed their beliefs in democracy and pluralism, assuring outside backers that they would uphold these values.
Figures in the NTC may or may not have intended to stick to these promises, but in designing their security forces, they essentially paved the way for radical and anti-democratic groups to receive state funding and weapons.
About 60 percent of rebel fighters in Syria adhere to Islamist extremist ideology, and about a third share the ideology of the Islamic State, according to the Centre on Religion and Geopolitics, an initiative of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.
“Current Western efforts to define ‘moderate’ and ‘extremist’ rebels are bound to fail, because the groups themselves rarely make the distinction, the report says. “Some 60% of Syria’s major rebel groups are Islamist extremists, and many of the groups share the same aims.”
“Fewer than a quarter of the rebels surveyed were not ideological, and many were willing to fight alongside extremists and would probably accept an Islamist political settlement to the civil war.”
“While military efforts against ISIS are necessary, policy makers must recognize that its defeat will not end the threat of Salafi-jihadism unless it is accompanied by an intellectual and theological defeat of the pernicious ideology that drives it.”
The report says the greatest danger to the international community are groups who share the IS ideology but are currently being ignored – they number about 100,000 fighters, the BBC reports.
Current Western efforts to define ‘moderate’ and ‘extremist’ rebels are bound to fail, because the groups themselves rarely make the distinction, the report says.
“Some 60% of Syria’s major rebel groups are Islamist extremists, and many of the groups share the same aims,” the study finds.
“Fewer than a quarter of the rebels surveyed were not ideological, and many were willing to fight alongside extremists and would probably accept an Islamist political settlement to the civil war.”
Washington should pressure its allies, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, to stop supporting these Salafist militias before their hold on northwestern Syria is solidified, Decina argues.
