Syria: how far will Barack Obama go?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/12/syria-how-far-will-barack-obama-go

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For much of the past four years, United States policy on Syria has been defined by reluctance. Neither the deaths of an estimated 200,000 people nor Barack Obama’s unswerving belief in the illegitimacy of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, roused a sense of urgency at home.

Last summer, however, Islamic State (Isis) videos of the beheadings of US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff were met with public outrage and, for the first time, the White House gave authorisation for air strikes inside Syria. Now, after six months in which the US’s Syria stance has shifted markedly in the direction of deeper involvement, analysts say Obama’s basic reluctance to take the country into a new military action could yet flip.

The question now is: how far will he go? Without using the phrase “mission creep”, analysts point out that one of the latest US military initiatives – to screen, train and equip Syrian fighters to take on Isis – is unlikely to end there.

“You have to protect them, otherwise you end up with a Bay of Pigs situation where all these guys get killed, and that would be a catastrophe from the American perspective,” said Daniel Serwer, senior research professor of conflict management at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

The US under secretary of defense for policy, Christine Wormuth, told the Guardian on Wednesday the Pentagon recognised that “supporting” fighters trained by the United States once theywere reinserted in Syria would be important. “What exact forms that support will take is under consideration now at very senior levels,” said Wormuth. “We have not yet made final decisions.”

The government does not speak with one voice on the issue. Asked about plans to support the fighters the US trains, the defense secretary, Ash Carter, said on Wednesday that there was undetermined legal grounding for such an effort.

Related: US-led task force launches 20 air strikes in continued attacks on Isis

According to Pentagon figures, there have now been 1,224 US and coalition air strikes inside Syria. General Lloyd Austin, commander of US central command, estimated last week that 8,500 Isis fighters, out of an estimated 20,000-30,000, had been killed since the strikes began in September.

The US has still, though, not provided heavy weaponry to opposition fighters nor established a no-fly zone in Syria, let alone attacked Assad directly. Events likely to influence its policy could include a negative turn in the planned military operation this spring against Isis fighters in Mosul, Iraq; a new Isis propaganda coup; or another attack similar to the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris this year, with homegrown attackers wrapping themselves in the Isis flag.

The signs are that, for the first time in a long time, Americans may not be averse to their country becoming more involved. After a long post-Iraq distaste for military engagement in the Middle East, the public now appears to want more.

According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Tuesday, 52% of likely voters in the 2016 US presidential election said they would feel more favourable towards a candidate who backed sending combat troops to fight Isis. The reflection of that public support in the presidential primary campaign about to get under way could increase pressure on the White House to act.

Changes at the top of US leadership mean that that pressure might have more effect in the White House and Pentagon than it has in the past. Retired general John Allen, the special envoy on Isis appointed by Obama in September, has expressed openness to a no-fly zone or protected corridor in Syria. “All those things are under consideration,” he said this month, in remarks first reported by Al-Monitor.

Others who are perceived to be cautious on Syria, such as joint chiefs chairman Martin Dempsey, are approaching term limits, and others, such as former defense secretary Chuck Hagel, have left the administration.

There remain considerable doubts, however, over the US plan to enable Syrian fighters to take the fight to Isis. Multiple analysts and insiders express doubts about whether the US will train enough fighters, and whether the fighters will remain focused on Isis instead of going after Assad, whom many consider to be the primary enemy. The Pentagon projects training 5,000 fighters in the first year, and more after that.

“Congress has made it very clear that they are going to be scrutinising carefully and appropriately how we’re handling recruiting, screening, but also end-use monitoring of equipment,” Wormuth said. She said there were classified “mechanisms” in place to assist that scrutiny.

The United States was offering a “stipend” to recruits similar to payments that Isis and groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra offer fighters, and recruits were in healthy supply, Wormuth said. “There’s a good amount of interest, I think it’s fair to say,” she said.

But according to Murhaf Jouejati, of the Middle East Institute, the number of fighters being trained is “simply not enough”. “This training and equipping is really very, very little,” Jouejati said. “It’s meant to assuage the moderates in Syria and also some regional allies of the United States, like Turkey and Saudi Arabia. But it is not enough. It is simply not enough.”

The scope of tensions, enticements and conflicts that inform current US policy in Syria is large, extending from the nuclear negotiations with Iran to the conflict in Ukraine. The Americans have had to keep up constant diplomacy in the region and Europe to win coalition participation in air strikes, find host countries for the fighter training programme, and to establish the fight against Isis as an international effort with significant Arab participation. US humanitarian assistance since the start of the conflict amounts to more than $3bn, according to USAid.

But perhaps more than any other factor, America’s Syria policy in the past two years has been defined in silhouette, against the primary military objective in the region, which is to defeat Isis fighters in Iraq first. Former US diplomat Robert Ford, who was ambassador to Syria from 2010-2014 and is now also at the Middle East Institute, said the fight in Iraq, for which the president has authorised the deployment of up to 3,000 US military advisers, has diminished the focus on Syria – and risked continuing to do so.

“Absolutely it has,” Ford said. “There’s a much greater focus now on the Islamic State and the threat it presents. And people’s time is limited, and so time we spend on Iraq is time we can’t spend on Syria.”