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CIA begins sizing up Islamic extremists in Syria for drone strikes
March 15, 2013|By Ken Dilanian and Brian Bennett, Los Angeles Times
The strategy is part of the agency's secret contingency planning to
protect the U.S. and its allies as the violence there grows. Some
militants in Syria are seen as closely linked to Al Qaeda.
WASHINGTON — The CIA has stepped up secret contingency planning to
protect the United States and its allies as the turmoil expands in
Syria, including collecting intelligence on Islamic extremists for the
first time for possible lethal drone strikes, according to current and
former U.S. officials.
The Counterterrorism Center, which runs the CIA’s covert drone killing
program in Pakistan and Yemen, recently shifted several targeting
officers to improve intelligence collection on militants in Syria who
could pose a terrorist threat, the officials said.
The targeting officers have formed a unit with colleagues who were
tracking Al Qaeda operatives and fighters in Iraq. U.S. officials
believe that some of these operatives have moved to Syria and joined
Islamic militias battling to overthrow President Bashar Assad.
The CIA effort, which involves assembling detailed dossiers on key
militants, gives the White House both lethal and nonlethal options if it
concludes that Syria’s 2-year-old civil war — which has caused 70,000
deaths, according to United Nations estimates — is creating a haven for
terrorists. The intelligence files also could be used to help opposition
figures with moderate views prevail over extremists.
full: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/15/world/la-fg-cia-syria-20130316
NY Times August 8, 2013
As Foreign Fighters Flood Syria, Fears of a New Extremist Haven
By ANNE BARNARD and ERIC SCHMITT
BEIRUT, Lebanon — As foreign fighters pour into Syria at an increasing
clip, extremist groups are carving out pockets of territory that are
becoming havens for Islamist militants, posing what United States and
Western intelligence officials say may be developing into one of the
biggest terrorist threats in the world today.
Known as fierce fighters willing to employ suicide car bombs, the
jihadist groups now include more than 6,000 foreigners, counterterrorism
officials say, adding that such fighters are streaming into Syria in
greater numbers than went into Iraq at the height of the insurgency
there against the American occupation.
Many of the militants are part of the Nusra Front, an extremist group
whose fighters have gained a reputation over the past several months as
some of the most effective in the opposition.
But others are assembling under a new, even more extreme umbrella group,
the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, that is merging some Syrians with
fighters from around the world — Chechnya, Pakistan, Egypt and the West,
as well as Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni insurgent group that rose to
prominence in the fight against the American occupation in the years
after the 2003 invasion. The concern is that a new affiliate of Al Qaeda
could be emerging from those groups.
It was the fear of militants coming to dominate the opposition that
caused the United States and its Western allies to hold off providing
lethal aid to the Syrian opposition, at least until now. But as a
result, counterterrorism analysts say, they lost a chance to influence
the battle in Syria. Even Congressional supporters of the C.I.A.'s
covert program to arm moderate elements of the Syrian opposition fear
the delivery of weapons, set to begin this month, will be too little,
too late.
The stakes are high. American intelligence officials said this week that
Ayman al-Zawahri, the overall leader of Al Qaeda in Pakistan, has had
regular communications with the Nusra Front in Syria, reflecting how
favorably the Qaeda leadership views the long-term potential for Syria
as a safe haven. Juan Zarate, a former senior counterterrorism official
in the George W. Bush administration, said that Syria lay in the center
of an arc of instability, stretching from Iran through North Africa, and
“in that zone, you may have the regeneration and resurrection of a new
brand of Al Qaeda.”
In Syria, the battle lines have hardened in recent months. The Syrian
government, backed by Iran and Hezbollah, has seized new momentum and
retaken territory in the south and east from the rebels. At the same
time, power within the badly fractured opposition, numbering about 1,200
groups, has steadily slipped into the hands of the jihadists based in
the northeast, where this week they seized a strategic airport in the
area. They also hold sway in the provincial capital of Raqqa.
The idea that Syria could supplant Pakistan as the primary haven for Al
Qaeda someday, should the government fall, is a heavy blow to the
Western-backed Syrian opposition and its military arm, the Free Syrian
Army. It plays directly into the hands of Syria’s president, Bashar
al-Assad, whose government has sought to portray itself as the only
alternative to Islamic extremism and chaos, and has made the prospect of
full-on American support even more remote than it already was.
Mr. Assad’s argument “began as a fiction during the period of peaceful,
unarmed protests but is now a reality” because of Mr. Assad’s own
efforts to divide the country as well as the success of the extremists,
Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine,
wrote in a recent essay that appeared in The National.
In Raqqa recently, a commander of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
sipped coffee after breaking the Ramadan fast, wearing a Pakistani-style
outfit. The commander, Abu Omar, was Syrian, a member of a tribe in the
area, but he described his movement’s goals as reaching far beyond the
country’s borders.
He did not speak of attacking the United States. But he threatened
Russia, and he spoke of a broad-based battle against Shiite-led Iran and
its quest to dominate the region, and said Sunnis from across the world
were justified in flocking to Syria to fight because of the government’s
reliance on Shiite fighters from Lebanon and Iraq.
He rejected calls from some in the Syrian opposition to keep the
fighting focused inside Syria and aimed at toppling Mr. Assad. “We have
one enemy,” Iran, he said, “and we should fight this enemy as one front
and on different fronts.”
He also seemed to suggest that Russia would be a legitimate target for
its role in supporting Mr. Assad and for its brutal suppression of
Muslim militants in the Caucasus.
“Russia is killing Muslims in southern Muslim republics and sends arms
and money to kill Muslims in Syria as well,” he said. “I swear by God
that Russia will pay a big price for its dirty role in the Syrian war.”
The leader of the Free Syrian Army, Gen. Salim Idris, recently accused
the jihadists of working for or receiving aid from the Assad government,
not a completely far-fetched proposition, given that Western officials
widely believe the Assad government played a major role in funneling
Syrians and other foreigners into Iraq during the insurgency there. Some
rank-and-file rebels say that government artillery and warplanes attack
them fiercely while largely leaving jihadist positions alone.
Free Syrian Army fighters have clashed with jihadist groups in recent
weeks over weapons and supplies, and civilian anti-Assad activists have
struggled with them over their efforts to impose religious rules on
society. The groups have kidnapped and imprisoned dozens of activists.
Yet the lines dividing the Free Syrian Army from jihadist groups are
fluid, and the conflicts have not stopped F.S.A. leaders from working
with their fighters, whose fierceness on the battlefield is undisputed.
That has helped create a divergence between statements by exile
opposition leaders rejecting extremists and their ideology and actions
by ground commanders eager for any help they can get.
“We are getting big accusations that we are implementing foreign agendas
to divide the Syrian rebel groups or we are agents for the Assad
regime,” Abu Omar said. “But we are the ones who made the big military
operations against the Assad regime. When we fight any military position
we get it or die for God’s sake.”
This week, the jihadist group Jaish al-Muhajireen wal Ansar, or the Army
of Emigrants and Supporters, led by a fighter from the Caucasus known as
Abu Omar al-Shesheni — the Chechen — worked with Free Syrian Army
battalions to take the Menagh air base in Aleppo Province after 10
months of trying.
What appeared to turn the battle around, said Charles Lister, an analyst
with IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center, were the relentless
suicide vehicle bombings on the walls of the base — five or six times in
the past two weeks, he said.
After the battle, Col. Abdul Jabbar al-Okaidi, the head of the United
States-backed opposition’s Aleppo military council, appeared in a video
alongside Abu Jandal, a leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
In camouflage, Colonel Okaidi offered thanks to “our brothers
al-Muhajireen wal Ansar and others,” adding: “We’re here to kiss every
hand pressed on the trigger.” He then ceded the floor to Abu Jandal and
a mix of jihadist and Free Syrian Army leaders, who stood together, each
praising his men, like members of a victorious basketball team.
Such cooperation has complicated efforts to isolate the jihadists within
the insurgency, where commanders of all political stripes realize they
have little choice but to collaborate with any ally available.
“There’s an awful lot of pragmatism on the ground,” Mr. Lister said.
“There’s a realization that without extensive coordination on the ground
this could go on for years and years or the opposition could be
defeated, so no matter what the long-term objective, it might be still
worth it in the medium term to coordinate across groups.”
But that same pragmatism, Mr. Ibish said, suggests there is hope that
many of the Syrians fighting alongside extremists are not ideologically
committed to those groups’ goal of an Islamic state, and could peel away
from it if offered an alternative.
The extremist ideology, he said, “runs counter to most traditional
culture and lived realities of modern Syria, which is a heterogeneous
and typically tolerant society.”
Abu Omar, in Raqqa, laid out his vision for the future: women must cover
their hair, but are not required to cover their faces; bars and
nightclubs and eating during the Ramadan fast are forbidden.
“Everyone is free in his house but not free to break God’s law in
public,” he said “The Shariah law is the best justice, not the Western
democracy which gives us bad regimes like Assad’s.”
Anne Barnard reported from Beirut, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. An
employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Raqqa, Syria.
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