Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect (12 page)

In July 2011, seven Syrian army defectors publically announced the formation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). In the following months, the FSA tried to bring under its wing the disparate militias springing up
throughout the country. The FSA became the armed wing of the SNC and its successor group, the National Coalition for Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.

The United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar backed the FSA. The State Department officially allocated $15 million to provide nonlethal aid, such as medical supplies and communications equipment, although the actual figure was much higher (see
chapter 11
). The “nonlethal” category continued to expand until it included pickup trucks, night-vision goggles, and flak vests—a fact exposed when an FSA depot was looted in December 2013.
²⁵

The FSA had some initial successes. Affiliated militias captured some towns in the northeast, near the Turkish border. They also took control of towns in central Syria around Homs and Aleppo. But it was difficult to assess the actual popular support for the FSA because local militias frequently changed affiliation. We know for sure that ultraconservative groups grew in strength as the FSA declined.

By the spring of 2012, the FSA faced a crisis. Rebels in the field complained that they lacked effective weapons, such as shoulder-fired missiles capable of bringing down aircraft. The CIA refused to provide such weapons, fearing they would fall into the hands of extremist groups. The CIA and Turkish authorities established a control room in Istanbul to coordinate military activities and funnel arms to favored groups. By controlling the arms flow, the United States hoped to direct the rebellion politically and lessen the influence of the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. The CIA still didn't provide Stinger missiles but did improve the quality of assault rifles, sniper rifles, RPGs, and ammo (see
chapter 11
).

In December 2012 the Free Syrian Army announced the formation of the Supreme Military Council (SMC), which would try to coordinate all the militias in Syria. It was led by Brigadier General Salim Idris. Idris's plain features and receding hairline make him look more like a professor than a general. That's because he's both. His father was a farmer when Idris was born in 1958 in Mubarakiyah, south of Homs. Idris entered the Syrian army, was sent to study in East Germany, and
returned with a PhD to become a professor at the Academy of Military Engineering in Aleppo. He taught there for twenty years and became dean. Idris defected to the rebels in July 2012.

In many ways, Idris fit the profile of a pro–United States strongman who could eventually rule Syria. He was a military man who promised free elections, opposed extremist rebels, and remained vague about what kind of government would replace Assad. He courted some powerful American friends. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) sneaked across the Lebanese border into rebel-held Syria and met with Idris. “General Idris and his fighters share many of our interests and values,” the senator said later in a statement.
²⁶
Critics disparaged Idris's fighting skills, noting that he showed more prowess meeting with foreign donors than he displayed on the battlefields of Syria.
²⁷
As head of the SMC, Idris immediately faced problems.

The CIA and Turkey wanted to focus training on defecting Assad's soldiers. Conservative Islamists considered the defectors traitors if they worked with the CIA. The SMC, which was supposed to be a general command, failed to incorporate the other major armed groups. The SMC became just one more fighting group. “Every time they set up a council to oversee the war effort, it turns into a militia,” wrote one rebel in Deir Ezzor.
²⁸

Another group, Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam), formed from the September 2013 merger of dozens of smaller militias, mostly in the Damascus area. It was led by Zahran Alloush, son of Sheikh Abdullah Mohammed Alloush, a well-known Saudi-based religious scholar. The Assad regime released the younger Alloush from jail at the beginning of the uprising, along with other ultraconservative political prisoners. Al-Islam received funding from Saudi Arabia.
²⁹

Leaders of al-Islam claimed to be carrying out the principles of Islam. Military decisions are made by a
shura
(council) consisting of Shariah law specialists, military officers, and Alloush.
³⁰
Al-Islam is one of the extremist groups claiming that Syria is being overrun by Iran and Shia Muslims. In a YouTube video, Alloush said, “The jihadists
will wash the filth of the
rafida
[a slur used to describe Shia] from Greater Syria, they will wash it forever, if Allah wills it.”
³¹
Al-Islam refused to negotiate with the Assad regime, a stand consistent with other ultraconservative groups. Al-Islam flies the black flag of jihad rather than the Syrian flag.
³²
At the end of 2013, al-Islam helped form the Islamic Front.

Al-Islam and al-Nusra participated in a massacre of dozens of civilians in Adra, an industrial city just outside Damascus. In December 2013, both groups rounded up Alawites, Druze, and other minorities to execute them with pistol shots and beheadings, claiming they were Assad supporters. “Zahran Alloush has committed a massacre,” one antiregime activist told Reuters.
³³

Ahrar al-Sham (Islamic Movement of the Free Men of the Levant) was one of the largest militias in Syria. In this context,
Levant
refers to Syria and Lebanon. Founded in 2011 by ultraconservative former political prisoners, it operated mainly in the Idlib Governate (province) in northwestern Syria next to the Turkish border. It also had fighters in the cities of Hama and Aleppo. Al-Sham is led by Hassan Aboud. Another leader, Abu Khalid al-Suri, admitted to being a longtime member of al-Qaeda.

Al-Sham sought to overthrow the Assad regime and establish a Sunni Islamic state. It differed from some of the other ultraconservatives by acknowledging that Syrians weren't currently willing to accept such a state. So al-Sham urged a go-slow approach. It initially cooperated with the SMC but later broke with General Idris and the US-backed militias.

As an indication of how complicated on-the-ground alliances became, some wealthy members of the Muslim Brotherhood funded al-Sham. That helped create a link between the two groups. But al-Sham also received funding from ultra-right-wing religious leaders in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. By 2012 al-Sham broke with the brotherhood politically and ideologically.
³⁴

In November 2013, al-Sham joined with other conservative groups
to form the Islamic Front, which opposed both the SMC/FSA and the al-Qaeda-affiliated groups al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. The Islamic Front charter rejected a representative parliamentary system, saying only “God is sovereign.” The charter proclaimed that secularism is “contradictory to Islam.”
³⁵
By early 2014 the front emerged as one of the strongest rebel alliances and may have caused the Obama administration to recalculate its strategy in Syria (see
next chapter
).

Another rebel group, Jabhat al-Nusra (The Support Front for the People of the Levant), was initially funded and armed by an al-Qaeda affiliate in Iraq, although that was kept secret at the time. The Islamic State of Iraq, also known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, helped form al-Nusra in an effort to expand its influence into Syria. But al-Qaeda operates more like a franchise system than a centrally controlled group, and as we'll see below, even al-Qaeda's top leader can't control the franchises.

Al-Nusra is led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, who had fought against both the United States and the Nouri al-Maliki government in Iraq. Rather than support a parliamentary system, al-Nusra advocated a religious regime that would implement a harsh interpretation of Shariah. Al-Nusra “has a plan to consult Muslim scholars to establish the rule of Islamic law,” Jolani told the
New York Times.
“We want the Islamic Shariah to prevail.”
³⁶
An al-Nusra spokesperson was even more explicit during an interview with CNN: “In the period after the regime falls, our main goal is to create an Islamic state that is ruled by the Koran,” he said. “It can have civilian institutions, but not democracy.”
³⁷

In December 2012, the US State Department put al-Nusra on its list of terrorist organizations because of its ties to al-Qaeda. Other rebel groups, including those backed by the United States, strongly objected, arguing that al-Nusra played an important military role in the fight against the regime. The SMC-affiliated militias continued to cooperate with al-Nusra in the field.

But within less than a year, rebel criticisms of al-Nusra began to
surface publically. In May of 2013, Ahrar al-Sham issued a statement, posted on its webpage, criticizing al-Nusra for sectarianism and weakening the rebel cause by openly affiliating with al-Qaeda. Al-Sham said al-Nusra was going too fast toward creating an Islamic state and lacked the legitimacy to provide Islamic rule. The statement “is written in the tone of honest advise for an ally who has committed a damaging mistake,” according to Syria expert Aron Lund.
³⁸
Within a few months, al-Sham broke with al-Nusra altogether.

By far the most extreme of the major Islamist groups is the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), sometimes translated as Islamic State of Iraq in the Levant (known as
Da'aash
in Arabic). It's headed by an Iraqi rebel named Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and was initially affiliated with al-Qaeda. The group began in 2007 in Iraq as part of the ultra-right-wing movement opposed to the United States occupation of Iraq but also calling for an Islamic state. Al-Qaeda in Iraq (ISI), as it was then known, was largely defeated during the US-Iraqi “surge” in 2007 and 2008. ISI had alienated itself from fellow Sunnis by killing and torturing other anti-US rebels with whom it disagreed. The US State Department labeled Baghdadi a “Global Terrorist” in 2011 and offered $10 million for his capture.

After the US Army withdrew from Iraq in 2011, the Maliki government in Baghdad alienated many Sunni groups by trying to monopolize power. ISI became reinvigorated. When the Syrian uprising turned toward armed struggle in 2012, ISI set up shop on both sides of the porous Iraq–Syria border and changed its name to ISIS.

ISIS had some military successes against the Syrian army. Using fighters and weapons smuggled from Iraq, it was able to capture several towns. It played an important role in overrunning the Mennagh military airport outside Aleppo in August 2013 after a nine-month siege. ISIS received financing from wealthy gulf donors; from businessmen in Anbar, Iraq; from border tolls; and by “taxing” Syrians in areas under its control. ISIS provided protection to Christians, for example, provided they paid money to ISIS leaders.

In April 2013 Baghdadi formally announced the existence of ISIS
and claimed that he had merged al-Nusra and ISIS, which would have created one of the largest political-military groups in Syria. Both ISIS and al-Nusra called for a transnational Islamic state governed by a strict interpretation of Shariah law. Both have reputations for opposing criminality and corruption, unlike some of the SMC brigades. ISIS tried to win hearts and minds by, for example, establishing bakeries and selling bread at below black-market prices.

But al-Nusra criticized ISIS's sectarianism and its desire to dominate the entire movement. ISIS saw itself as an established state on the way to forming a united Muslim caliphate in Syria and Iraq, not just one rebel group among many. Al-Nusra took a slower approach, realizing that it had to build support over time to achieve the same goals. Baghdadi's announcement of the proposed ISIS–al-Nusra merger reflected the arrogance and sectarianism of ISIS. “It is time to announce to the Levantine people and the whole world that Jabhat al-Nusra is merely an extension and part of the Islamic State of Iraq,” Baghdadi said.
³⁹

Rifts appeared immediately as al-Nusra continued to use its own name and fight under its own banner. Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri sided with al-Nusra and criticized ISIS. By the end of the year, the proposed merger had fallen apart as al-Nusra and other rebels took up arms against ISIS. In February 2014, Zawahri formalized the split by cutting ties completely with ISIS.
⁴⁰

Both al-Nusra and ISIS attracted a large number of foreign fighters, but ISIS has the reputation for being almost exclusively composed of foreigners. While the leaders and special forces are largely foreign, ISIS foot soldiers are mostly Syrian. Nevertheless, ISIS appeared to be fighting fellow rebels more than the Assad regime. In various northern and central cities, as well as in Aleppo, ISIS seized the headquarters of other rebel groups. It detained, tortured, and murdered some of the leaders.

Meanwhile, ISIS stepped up activity in Iraq. It took advantage of the increased unpopularity of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and seized the city of Fallujah. In June 2014, ISIS, along with Sunni allies, took over the city of Mosul and several crossing points near the Syrian and Jordanian borders. ISIS changed its name yet again, this
time to the Islamic State (IS), and declared the existence of an Islamic caliphate that stretched from Syria to Iraq. The IS continued its sectarian attacks on other rebels in Syria, insisting that they join IS as the only legitimate revolutionary group. Syria's internecine fighting and extreme right-wing ideology was hurting the rebel cause. But nothing would impact the rebel movement like the chemical-weapons controversy, as we'll see in the
next chapter
.

The videos shocked the world. Hundreds of bodies lay on the floor of makeshift morgues in and around the town of Al Ghouta on the southeastern outskirts of Damascus. Early in the morning of August 21, 2013, sarin gas killed hundreds of men, women, and children. Survivors reported seeing rockets hitting the ground and then spewing out a strange, green mist. Victims suffered horrible deaths, going into spasms and gasping for air. The videos, produced by the rebels, blamed the Syrian army.

The world reacted with anger and indignation. The Obama administration strongly condemned the Assad regime and over the next few weeks prepared to bomb Syria in retaliation. The Syrians had crossed the “red line” created by the administration on the use of weapons of mass destruction. The rebels hoped the American bombing raids would destroy Assad's air force and lead to an opposition victory.
¹

But not everyone accepted the administration's claims. The Assad regime argued that the rebels, not the government, had fired the chemical weapons in order to provoke a US assault on Damascus. UN weapons inspectors eventually issued two reports on the use of chemical weapons. Investigative reporters cast doubts on some of the Obama administration's claims. The controversy deepened over time.

So the question remained: Who used chemical weapons and why? First, the official US government version.

On August 30, the White House issued a “government assessment” about the Al Ghouta attack. It stated that the sarin gas killed
1,429 people, including 426 children. The White House stated that the Syrian military had used chemical weapons previously. “This assessment is based on multiple streams of information including reporting of Syrian officials planning and executing chemical weapons attacks and laboratory analysis of physiological samples obtained from a number of individuals, which revealed exposure to sarin.”
²
The statement went on to say, “We assess that the opposition has not used chemical weapons. We assess that the regime's frustration with its inability to secure large portions of Damascus may have contributed to its decision to use chemical weapons on August 21.”

As part of a coordinated effort to sway public opinion, Secretary of State John Kerry gave a series of talks and press conferences. He left no doubt that US intelligence had revealed who was responsible for the sarin attack. “We know where the rockets were launched from and at what time,” Kerry said. “We know where they landed and when. We know rockets came only from regime-controlled areas and went only to opposition-controlled or contested neighborhoods.”
³

The US position seemed to gather strength when Human Rights Watch and the
New York Times
indicated they had independently analyzed information that calculated the trajectory of the rockets that landed in the Al Ghouta area. Rick Gladstone and C. J. Chivers of the
Times
wrote, “When plotted and marked independently on maps by analysts from Human Rights Watch and by the
New York Times
, the United Nations data from two widely scattered impact sites pointed directly to a Syrian military complex.”
⁴

The next day, the
Times
ran an even more detailed analysis showing the rockets were fired from a military complex solidly under government control, some nine kilometers from the Al Ghouta sites. Chivers wrote that the rockets were fired from Mount Qasioun, which he described as “Damascus's most prominent military position…. It is also a complex inseparably linked to the Assad family's rule.” The article held the top forces of the regime responsible for the attack and discounted the possibility that a rogue officer or a rebel mole carried it out.
⁵

Within weeks, the US version of events began to fall apart. First
was the matter of civilian deaths. The White House figure of 1,429, a strangely precise number for estimating mass deaths, was nearly three times the size of the highest estimates of other reliable sources. Doctors Without Borders, which had medical personnel on the ground in Al Ghouta, estimated 355 deaths.
⁶
British intelligence indicated 350, and the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights counted 502.
⁷
Only the Syrian National Coalition, the opposition group backed by Western powers, agreed with the US estimate. But when pressed by the Associated Press for a list of names, it could come up with only 395.
⁸

Ake Sellstrom, head of the UN chemical-weapons inspection team, said the rebels significantly exaggerated the number of dead and injured treated in Al Ghouta hospitals. “We saw the capability of those hospitals, and it is impossible that they could have turned over the amount of people that they claim they did.”
⁹
The discrepancy was explained when the
Wall Street Journal
revealed that US intelligence had scanned the rebel videos with face recognition software to count the number of dead.
¹⁰
They made no on-scene investigation.

Second, the White House statement was a “government assessment,” not an intelligence assessment or National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). The difference is significant. An NIE, for example, would contain dissenting opinions. And, according to several investigative reports, there
was
dissent. Some intelligence officers thought the report was an effort to help the administration save face for having failed to act sooner. One former intelligence officer told longtime
New Yorker
writer and famed investigative reporter Seymour Hersh that the Obama administration altered intelligence to make it look as if it was collected in real time. In fact, it was retrieved days later. In the
London Review of Books
, Hersh quoted the intelligence officer:

The distortion, he said, reminded him of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, when the Johnson administration reversed the sequence of National Security Agency intercepts to justify one of the early bombings of North Vietnam. The same official said there was immense frustration inside the military and intelligence bureaucracy: “The guys are throwing their hands in the air and saying, ‘How can we help
this guy'—Obama—‘when he and his cronies in the White House make up the intelligence as they go along?'”
¹¹

Third, serious questions arose about the White House and Kerry statements that the sarin rockets were fired from the heart of Assad-controlled Damascus. The
New York Times
and Human Rights Watch analyses assumed that the rockets were fired from over nine kilometers away. But a report published by missile experts showed otherwise. Richard Lloyd is a former UN weapons inspector and currently works at Tesla Labs in Arlington, Virginia. Theodore A. Postol is a professor of science, technology, and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. They analyzed the data presented by the UN inspectors concerning the sarin-laden rockets. They concluded that the rockets would have a maximum range of two kilometers. When asked about this issue at a press conference, Chief UN chemical-weapons inspector Ake Sellstrom concurred that the two-kilometer range would be a “fair guess.”
¹²
He later indicated the rockets could have been fired as close as one kilometer.
¹³

Lloyd and Postol superimposed the two kilometer rocket range onto the White House maps. Their report said, “These munitions could not possibly have been fired at east Ghouta from the ‘heart,' or from the eastern edge, of the Syrian government-controlled area shown in the intelligence map published by the White House on August 30, 2013.”
¹⁴

The report noted that these “improvised artillery rockets” could have been constructed by the army or the rebels. “The indigenous chemical munition could be manufactured by anyone who has access to a machine shop with modest capabilities, that is, the claim is incorrect that only the Syrian government could manufacture the munition.” The
New York Times
wrote about the report and noted the much shorter range but never retracted its erroneous reports that the rockets must have been fired from the Mount Qasioun military complex.
¹⁵

Meanwhile, other investigative reporters were tracking down the origins of the
Grads
, the two guided rockets used in the chemical attack. Robert Fisk, veteran Middle East correspondent for the London
Independent
,
discovered that the Grads were apparently made in the Soviet Union in 1967. According to Fisk's Russian sources, the Soviets sold this batch of Grads to Yemen, Egypt, and Libya—but not Syria. The Russians didn't provide documentation, however.
¹⁶
Right-wing Islamist groups in Libya have actively supported al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in Syria. So it is possible that al-Nusra or ISIS received the rockets and chemicals from Libya.

Poking holes in the US government's case doesn't automatically mean the rebels were responsible, however. Eliot Higgins, a self-taught, British weapons expert who writes the
Brown Moses Blog
, said the Al Ghouta massacre was beyond the capability of a group like al-Nusra. Producing over fifty gallons of liquid sarin and loading it into rockets in the midst of a war zone is a massive undertaking. It requires huge amounts of specialized precursor chemicals and produces a toxic acid runoff. “Where is this factory?” he wrote. “Where is the waste stream? Where are the dozens of skilled people—not just one al-Qaeda member—needed to produce this amount of material?”
¹⁷

Were the rebels militarily capable and politically willing to carry out a massive war crime against their own supporters? To find out, we must first take a look at sarin itself.

Sarin is a nerve agent first developed in 1938 Germany as a pesticide. The Nazis soon realized it was also a potent chemical weapon. In liquid or gaseous form, it can be deadly on contact. Sarin is a “clear, colorless, and tasteless liquid that has no odor in its pure form,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But when mixed in battlefield conditions, in which the chemical precursors become contaminated, sarin may produce an odor and a color. The CDC goes on to explain, “because it evaporates so quickly, Sarin presents an immediate but short-lived threat.”
¹⁸

Iraq deployed sarin as a chemical weapon during the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War. A right-wing Japanese religious cult used sarin in the infamous Tokyo subway attacks of 1994–1995.
¹⁹
Sarin is quite volatile and can't be stored for very long because it can corrode storage
containers and warheads. So, sarin precursor chemicals are stored separately and then mixed prior to use. They can be mixed in a lab by trained technicians. Mixing in the battlefield can be very dangerous to both the technician and anyone nearby.
²⁰
The Syrian army has admitted having sarin precursors in large quantities. Some extremist rebel groups may have had some as well.

I spent some time in Damascus interviewing government officials and experts about the chemical-weapons issue. The Syrians presented a version of events sharply at odds with the US government narrative. On March 19, 2013, rebels used sarin against a progovernment neighborhood in the village of Khan Al Asal near Aleppo, according to Dr. Bassam Barakat, a medical doctor and progovernment political consultant. He told me that blood samples and other physical evidence were sent to Russia for analysis. Officials there wrote a one-hundred-page report indicating rebel use of sarin and delivered it to the United Nations, but neither party ever made it public. According to Barakat, the Russians confirmed that the sarin had originally come from the chemical stockpiles of Libyan dictator Muammar Kaddafi, who had been supplied by the old Soviet Union. Extremists in Libya shipped the sarin chemical precursors to Turkey, where they were then smuggled across the border into Syria, according to Barakat.
²¹
Assad officials were so confident that they could prove the rebels had used the poison gas, they allowed UN chemical-weapons inspectors into Syria to investigate, but only after months of delay.

The final UN chemical-weapons report confirmed a number of points in the Syrian government version. Rebels were shelling Khan Al Asal prior to the chemical attack. At about 7:00 a.m., a munition hit the area some three hundred meters from a government checkpoint. The UN report indicated, “The air stood still and witnesses described a yellowish-green mist in the air and a pungent and strong sulfur-like smell…. The witnesses reported seeing people scratching their faces and bodies. They also observed people lying in the streets, some unconscious, some having convulsions and foaming from the mouth.”
²²

The UN inspectors concluded that Khan Al Asal had been attacked
with sarin. The UN inspection team was unable to visit the town due to security concerns but was able to interview eyewitnesses and take medical samples of residents who had come to Damascus. A Syrian government report indicated that twenty people died from the sarin attack and 124 were injured. The UN report noted that some witnesses said the gas was from a helicopter while others said it was a munition explosion. The UN report did not indicate who was responsible for this or any other chemical attack.