U.S. goal: Train 5,000 rebels, have them fight Islamic State

REYHANLI, Turkey -- In a secret office near the Syrian border, intelligence agents from the United States and its allies are laying the groundwork for what they hope will become an effective force of Syrian rebels to serve as ground troops in the international battle against the extremist Islamic State group.


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The office, the Military Operations Command, has slowed funding to Islamist groups, paid salaries to thousands of "vetted" rebels and given them ammunition to boost their battlefield mettle.

But even the program's biggest beneficiaries -- the rebels themselves -- acknowledge that turning the relatively small group into a force that can challenge the well-funded and well-armed Islamic State is a challenge that will require tremendous support from its foreign backers.

In President Barack Obama's strategy of building an international coalition to fight the Islamic State without U.S. troops, these moderate rebels loom large as the best force to fight the extremists in Syria. While U.S lawmakers approved an aid package for the rebels, at present they are a beleaguered lot.

Short of arms, they are struggling to hold their own against both the military of President Bashar Assad and the jihadists of the Islamic State. Their leaders have been the targets of assassination attempts. And some acknowledge that battlefield necessity has put them in the trenches with the Nusra Front, al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate, an issue of concern for the U.S.

While they long for greater international support and hate the Islamic State, ousting Assad remains their primary goal, again putting them at odds with their U.S. patrons.

"Just as the priority of the international community is to fight ISIS, our priority is to fight Assad," said Hamza al-Shimali, the head of the Hazm Movement, which has received arms and salaries from the Military Operations Command.

On Tuesday, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the fight against the militants would include the training and equipping of 5,000 Syrian rebels, and Saudi Arabia has volunteered to host the training program on its territory.

This scaled-up training program would be overseen by the Defense Department, unlike the current covert program in Turkey and a similar program in Jordan, both overseen by the CIA.

Throughout Syria's civil war, analysts have blamed the multitude of funding streams for creating a divided rebel movement with hundreds of groups seeking to please foreign backers.

This has changed in recent months. Turkey, which once allowed smugglers and fighters to move freely across its border with Syria, has clamped down, making it harder for private funders to get in.

At the same time, most of the support from governments who back the rebels is now channeled through the Military Operations Command.

This sidesteps the Syrian National Coalition, the exile body that is supposed to guide the rebellion but has little credibility inside Syria. Also sidelined was the coalition's Supreme Military Council, which was widely accused of mismanagement and all but collapsed this year after a leadership dispute.

Instead, the military command has built direct ties with rebel leaders it deems moderate and active inside Syria.

These groups include the Hazm Movement, which was founded this year; the Syrian Revolutionaries Front, whose leader, Jamal Maarouf, has vowed to fight both the Islamic State and Assad; and other groups that came to prominence while pushing the Islamic State out of parts of northern Syria.

An opposition official involved in the program said it now helps eight main groups, although others have received support, too. It is paying monthly salaries of at least $100 to about 10,000 fighters in northern Syria, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the covert program.

The commanders have reacted cautiously to Obama's announcement that he will strike the Islamic State in Syria as well as in Iraq. While most support the strikes, they consider them proof that the U.S. only wants to protect itself, not save Syrian lives.

"The international position has to be to fight all kinds of terrorism, both [the Islamic State] and the regime," said Sheik Tawfiq Shahabuddin, the head of the Nureddin Zengi Movement. "You can't treat only one part of the disease."

The program's results so far have been limited. While the groups receiving support can boast no major advances, they say they are gaining fighters, some of them from Islamist groups who now struggle to get funding, with the rerouting of state money and the Turkish clampdown on the border.

Despite the challenges, the rebel commanders remain optimistic that the U.S. will provide the support they need to become an effective fighting force capable of taking on the Islamic State.

"We want to be hand in hand with the West, and for the future of Syria to be with the West," said Col. Hassan al-Hamada, a former fighter pilot. "The problem is that the Americans work very slowly, and we are paying the price in blood."

Information for this article was contributed by Karam Shoumali and staff members of The New York Times.

A Section on 09/20/2014

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