Syria's 'moderate' rebels say they need weapons, not training

As President Barack Obama knits together an international coalition to take its campaign against Islamic State from Iraq into Syria, fighters like Ammar al-Wawi could make the difference.  If he had the chance, he says.

He fears that restrictions on the kind of weapons he'll receive and the training he'll get under a US$ 500 million White House proposal to arm moderate Syrian rebels will make his job impossible.

"We don't really need more training. And we have enough soldiers. What we need are quality weapons," said Wawi, a commander in the Free Syrian Army, a loose collection of moderate rebels fighting both the Islamic State and Syrian government forces.

"We need anti-aircraft weapons. We need anti-tank weapons. If we don't get those, we can't win, no matter what the United States does."

Under the current legislation in Congress, Wawi is unlikely to get what he wants, highlighting a dilemma for Obama after he authorized last week U.S. air strikes for the first time in Syria and more attacks in Iraq in a broad escalation of a campaign against the Islamic State militants who have seized a third of both countries.

A significant part of Obama's plan hinges on congressional approval of $500 million to train and equip Free Syrian Army rebels to "strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to the extremists," as Obama put it on Wednesday, and to prevent US troops from "being dragged into another ground war".

But the administration has resisted providing powerful weapons requested by the rebels such as surface-to-air missiles due to fears they could be captured or used against America or its allies. Those concerns have been amplified since the downing of the Malaysia Airlines passenger jet over restive, rebel-held eastern Ukraine in July. 

The US$ 500 million plan, announced in June a month after Obama said he would work with Congress to ramp up support to the moderate Syrian opposition, was initially limited to training about a 3,000-man force over an 18-month period and then slowly expanding those numbers.

It reflected the priorities of a president reluctant to get entrenched in another Middle East conflict. It was intended to build on a covert CIA-led effort that was based mostly out of
Jordan and would be run by the Department of Defense. Each rebel would need to be vetted by U.S. officials to screen out hardline Islamists, a time-consuming process that would further limit how many fighters could go through the training. 

The goal, say officials and former officials briefed on the original proposal, was not to empower the rebels to prevail in their two-pronged battle against Syrian President Bashar al Assad's forces on one side and Islamic State militants on the other, but to enable them to hold ground they already have.

"From what we know, that was all just about keeping the war going, giving us just enough to keep the fighting going, but not enough to win," said Wawi.

In Washington, some say it's not just a matter of weapons. They contend that while rebels could provide crucial intelligence for any US air assault, they are too undisciplined a force to be taken seriously, a rag-tag army of disconnected militias responsible for too many neighborhoods.

Some say it could be difficult, if not impossible, to build the fledgling FSA into credible ground force.

"I simply don't think there is much raw material there," said Richard Haass, a former senior State Department official involved in preparations for the US led invasion of Iraq in
2003.

"It is divided. It is weak. Any effort to build it up would take years, and I don't think we'd have much to show for it," said Haass, currently president of the Council on Foreign
Relations.

EXPANDING REBEL TRAINING

The "train-and-equip" program, however, is supposed to change that.

A senior US official traveling with Kerry said it was raised in talks with Gulf Arab foreign ministers at a meeting in the Saudi Arabian summer capital of Jeddah on Sept. 11, though it was not "the focus of the conversation".

"It's also been the subject of ongoing discussions between US officials and their counterparts in various countries in the region over a period of weeks and even months," said the official, requesting anonymity. "We see this as a facet, as a component of the overall holistic anti-ISIL campaign," the official added, using another of Islamic State's acronyms.

Saudi Arabia has offered to host a US run training facility for the rebels, say US officials. Lisa Monaco, Obama's White House counter terrorism adviser, clinched the agreement on a visit to the desert kingdom last week, a US official told reporters in Washington, calling it a crucial omponent of the president's new strategy.

The facility is expected to be able to handle as many as 10,000 fighters, but details are still being worked out, including how long it would take to vet so many fighters and how much that would cost, say US officials. More than 5,000 Syrian fighters are expected to be trained in Saudi Arabia in the first year, according the Pentagon. 

A senior State Department official said on Sunday countries other than Saudi Arabia agreed to host training but declined to identify which ones.

Jordan has been considered a top choice due its close security relationship with Washington, proximity to neighboring Syria and pool of more than 600,000 Syrian refugees. But Jordan, like other Gulf Arab countries, has expressed fears of violent retaliation if its territory is used for overt training.