In Jordan, Syrian and Iraqi exiles say they are key to crushing the Islamic State
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Version 0 of 1. AMMAN, Jordan — Iraqis and Syrians who have sought refuge in this country are watching the U.S.-led air campaign against the Islamic State with a mixture of hope and dread — hope that the extremists will be ousted from their homelands and dread that the bombing will create further chaos. Almost 1.7 million Syrians and Iraqis are encamped in Jordan, host to one of the largest refugee populations on Earth, spread out between posh villas in Amman and refugee camps in the north. Among the multitude are thousands of former soldiers and current insurgents — including some senior commanders who know the Islamic State intimately, and former Iraqi officers who understand the limits of air power, having themselves experienced intense U.S. bombardment in 1991 and 2003. The military leaders who use Jordan as a de facto base of operations include top commanders in the Free Syrian Army, who have fought a rebellion alongside the Islamic State, and former Iraqi generals who have both battled against and cooperated with the Americans in the past two decades. While the exiles have deep self-interest in the outcome of the current U.S. campaign, they also express deep reservations that echo a chorus of skepticism in Europe and the region. “I am telling the West — dropping bombs from the air will not provide a solution,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Syrian refugees Tuesday. The Iraqis and Syrians in Jordan complain that the United States has launched an undeclared war in their countries without clear objectives and without consultation with what they call the forces most valuable for success — themselves. They voice fear that instead of destroying the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the air campaign may fan sectarian flames. Syrians interviewed this month in Jordan say that bombing the Islamic State is aiding Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, giving his troops breathing room to recoup and redeploy. Iraqis here warned of possible civil war in their country if the demands of the Sunni minority in Iraq are not met. The Iraqi and Syrian leaders here say they want the bombing to uproot the extremists. But their own goals are more ambitious, and complex, than the limited aims announced so far by the White House. What the Syrian moderates really want is help from the Americans to topple Assad, their true enemy. As they have been requesting for more than two years, they want no-fly zones, artillery cannons and sophisticated shoulder-fired missiles so they can fight Assad’s national forces, not religious militants. “There’s talk that support is on the way. We haven’t seen it,” said Assad Al Zuobi, a former brigadier general in the regular Syrian army who is a leader of the Free Syrian Army, or FSA, the loosely affiliated non-Islamist rebel factions. The Obama administration has said it will arm the moderate rebels; instead they have received nonlethal aid, such as night-vision goggles and communications equipment. “Everything is much worse than it was 18 months ago, when the United States began promising to help,” he said. FSA commanders here say plans being floated to take their fighters out of the battle and train them — not in Jordan or Syria, as the commanders would like, but in Saudi Arabia — is another delaying tactic. The Americans are only doing so, they argue, because they do not trust the FSA. The White House and the Pentagon have expressed fear that any sophisticated weaponry given to moderate Syrian rebel forces could quickly fall into the hands of the Islamic State — either because they are lost in battle or sold. “Our troops do not require training,” said Abulhadi Sari, a former brigadier general in the Syrian air force who is now an FSA commander. “What we require are weapons, weapons, weapons.” Sari complained that Syria’s Assad and the Americans are collaborating against the Islamic State — a view widely held in Jordan. “We assume the Assad regime and the coalition are quietly working together,” said Samih al-Maaytah, Jordan’s former top government spokesman and now editor of the state-sponsored Al Rai newspaper. Sari warned that the U.S.-led bombing was already pushing once-rival jihadist militias, such as Jabhat al-Nusra, toward an alliance with the Islamic State. “Our fear is that the Syrian people will think the West is fighting Islam and that our revolution could become a civil war,” he said. The Iraqi exiles in Jordan, most of them Sunni Muslims, have different demands. They say they want the Islamic State ousted from their homeland, too, but even more deeply want the Americans to help them reassert the power of Iraq’s Sunni minority. Sunnis and Sunni tribes in central and western Iraq have spent more than a decade in opposition to the Shiite-dominated central government. “If the Americans want to act quickly, they will allow us to come back, to reconstruct our forces. We have tens of thousands of men we could place under arms, and hundreds and hundreds of officers ready to go,” said a former general in Saddam Hussein’s disbanded army who shuttles between Iraq and Jordan and now goes by the name Abu Mazen al- Baghdadi. Baghdadi and his fellow officers were stripped of pensions and power when the United States disbanded Hussein’s forces in 2003 and purged the Iraqi government of Hussein’s Baath Party. Today, Baghdadi is a top commander in a kind of underground force-in-waiting in Sunni Iraq. A decade ago, many of same fighters were part of an insurgency fighting the U.S. occupation in Iraq. In 2007, they became U.S. allies, forming the Pentagon-funded “Sunni Awakening” militias to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq. Now the aging generals want back in the game. “I will put my life on the line, but what am I going to get in return?” Baghdadi said. One idea floated by President Obama and Secretary of State John F. Kerry is the creation of “national guard” units to bolster the Iraqi armed forces, which have been routed by the Islamic State. They would answer to regional governors, but under the auspices of the central government. Some Sunni military leaders support the idea; other tribal sheiks worry that it could lead to more sectarian violence. In July, more than 150 Iraqi opposition figures attended a two-day conference in Amman that sought to unify Sunni tribes and factions. They agreed that Iraq should remain one nation, despite its Sunni-Shiite divide. Exiled Sunni opposition leader and conference organizer Abdul Hakim al-Abed said only the former Baathist generals and Sunni tribes in Iraq can provide the men and arms needed to push the Islamic State out of Iraq and hold territory. “If Jordan gave us the room, we would need only 60 days to prepare an army to take on Islamic State,” Abed said. “Just give us a chance.” |