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U.S.-Trained Anti-ISIS Commander Kidnapped in Syria Kidnapping of Pentagon-Trained Fighters in Syria Is New Hurdle for U.S. Effort
(about 4 hours later)
BAGHDAD — The commander of a group of Syrian fighters trained by the United States has been kidnapped by Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, his group said in a statement Thursday. ANTAKYA, Turkey — A Pentagon program to train moderate Syrian insurgents to fight the Islamic State has been vexed with problems of recruitment, screening, dismissals and desertions that have left only a tiny band of fighters ready to do battle.
The commander, Nadeem Hassan, and seven of his fighters were taken by the Nusra Front, a rival of the Islamic State in Syria, as they were returning from a meeting in Turkey. This tiny band, 54 in all, suffered perhaps the most destructive problem yet on Thursday: Its leader, deputy and at least five others were abducted in Syria, just inside the border with Turkey where they had been training. The abductions were carried out not by the Islamic State but by the Nusra Front, an affiliate of Al Qaeda that is another Islamist extremist byproduct of the four-year-old Syrian civil war.
A contingent of 54 fighters from Mr. Hassan’s group, known as Division 30, are the only ones who have graduated from a Pentagon program to train Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State in Syria. One the fighters taken with Mr. Hassan was his deputy, Farhan Al-Jasem, who commands the fighters who graduated from the American training program. The abductions starkly illustrate the challenges confronting the Obama administration as it seeks to marshal local insurgents to fight the Islamic State, which it views as the biggest threat in the region.
A number of other insurgents in Syria said that Mr. Hassan’s men had participated in the American program to train insurgents to fight the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Mr. Hassan’s description of details of the training program, including the timing, content, logistics and number of fighters who participated, matched what American officials have said publicly and privately about the Pentagon program. Despite a prolonged effort, the Pentagon has had little success recruiting fighters who are not themselves radical Islamists. It is also having trouble signing up groups to take on the Islamic State instead of the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. The moderates, at any rate, are bit players in a rebellion in which many of the most radical Islamist insurgents are better funded, better equipped and more motivated, participants said.
The reported kidnapping is likely to be a new blow to the troubled American program, which in its first year has trained only about 60 fighters, according to an American official — all of them apparently from Mr. Hassan’s group. If it turns out that all seven of Mr. Hassan’s kidnapped comrades were trainees, then there will be only 47 fighters left in Syria from the Pentagon’s training program. The setback for the American effort in Syria comes just as the United States and Turkey have undertaken a joint plan to create an “Islamic State free-zone” in northern Syria, helped by warplanes flown from Turkish air bases. It presumably would be guarded and defended on the ground in part by successful trainees of the Pentagon’s program.
The American trainees were expecting to take on a more central role in Syria, now that the United States and Turkey say they are planning to try to sweep Islamic State fighters from a northern segment of the country, with Syrian insurgents as their ground force. The biggest kidnapping prize on Thursday was the leader of the trainees, a Syrian Army defector who had been responsible for recruiting a pool of 1,200 rebels to the program.
The insurgents who would participate in the cooperative effort to rout ISIS from a slice of Syria near the Turkish border remains to be worked out, but they would be likely to include American-trained, American-vetted fighters from the Pentagon program, as well as a larger group of fighters trained covertly in a different C.I.A. effort. That program has a different goal: ousting President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. In an interview just two days before he was seized, the leader, Nadeem Hassan, spoke at length about the troubles he had faced.
The C.I.A. program suffered its own setback late last year, when the Nusra Front defeated the groups trained by the C.I.A., the Syrian Revolutionaries Front and Harakat Hazm. The Nusra Front also seized some of the sophisticated antitank missiles the United States had provided to the groups, which were effectively dismantled. After screening, just 125 of his recruits were invited to the first course. Of those, more than half were thrown out or quit.
A Pentagon spokeswoman, Commander Elissa Smith, would not say if any trainees of its program had been taken in Syria. The rest, he said, had yet to learn whether American warplanes would defend them if Syrian forces attacked.
“While we will not disclose the names of specific groups involved with the Syria Train and Equip program, I can confirm that there have been no New Syrian Force personnel captured or detained,” she said, referring to the Pentagon’s name for militias organized to fight the Islamic State in Syria. Mr. Hassan said the Americans, worried about the lack of recruits, were recalling men they had once rejected. Some, expelled on suspicion of embracing “Islamic State doctrine,” are unavailable: They have since died in Syria, he said — battling the Islamic State.
Working with the Americans can make insurgent fighters a target for hard-line jihadists. Insurgents have complained that the United States is asking them to take new risks to fight ISIS, diverting their attention from their battle against Mr. Assad’s government forces without offering corresponding benefits and protection. Pentagon training courses in Turkey and Jordan have so far graduated only about 60 fighters, American officials say, a reference to Mr. Hassan’s men.
In an interview shortly before he returned to Syria from Turkey this week, Mr. Hassan had fretted that the Pentagon had yet to provide night-vision goggles that he had requested. He said some fighters were threatening to quit because he could not pay for their expenses. He also said his fighters had received assurances that American warplanes would protect them if they were attacked by government forces, not just the Islamic State militants they were slated to fight. The training is often at cross-purposes with a longer-running, covert C.I.A. training program for fighters battling Mr. Assad. Toppling him was the original goal of the Syrian revolt, before the Islamic State sprang from its most extreme Islamist wing.
Mr. Hassan said he had asked American trainers “if they are going to protect us.” The reply, he said, fell short of expectations: “Our government still hasn’t announced anything that includes fighting the Assad regime.” Both programs have a common problem: Working with Americans makes recruits a target, not just of the Islamic State but also of the Nusra Front.
The new American and Turkish operation is an ambitious military plan that calls for insurgents to take over a 68-mile-long section of Syria along the Turkish border from entrenched Islamic State fighters. The Nusra Front dealt an even more serious blow to the C.I.A. program last year, attacking and dismantling its main groups, the Syrian Revolutionaries Front and Harakat Hazm, and seizing some of their American-supplied, sophisticated TOW antitank missiles.
But the abduction of Mr. Hassan underscored the vulnerability of the Syrian insurgents, and their American trainers’ inability to protect them even a relatively secure town just a few miles from the Turkish border. The Division 30 fighters were seized there on their way back from a meeting in Turkey. New details about the Pentagon training and its problems were revealed in interviews over several months with about two dozen fighters and commanders, and with several senior American officials involved or briefed, who requested anonymity to discuss military planning.
Abu Mahmoud, another insurgent commander, said in April that he had decided not to join the Pentagon program. He said he would happily fight ISIS after stopping Mr. Assad’s forces from bombarding insurgent areas. Reached in Idlib province on Thursday, he said Mr. Hassan’s abduction had been predictable. Mr. Hassan said the Pentagon program had not provided night vision goggles to counter the Islamic State’s expert night attacks. Yet, he said Tuesday, trainers had been pushing his skimpy band of men to quickly join front-line insurgent groups, “so they can get results to show their bosses.”
“I’m not blaming the Americans only, for choosing the wrong people and putting them in the wrong position,” said Abu Mahmoud, who uses a nom de guerre for safety. “I also blame these commanders.” Mr. Hassan’s trainees were mainly from villages within the 68-mile strip along the Turkish border that the moderate insurgents are supposed to seize, and had long been slated for deployment there. But, Mr. Hassan said, they are so few “they can barely cover 200 meters.”
He added: “Those people can’t even protect themselves — how can they operate inside Syria against the Islamic groups? How can you drive your car to a place where you know that you don’t have enough fuel?” Better-financed groups are luring recruits awaiting the next course; they make $225 a month, and with no budget, Mr. Hassan said, “I can’t buy them lunch.”
The Pentagon program has struggled to recruit Syrian insurgents, many who are reluctant because they don’t want to be diverted from their fight against the Syrian government, and because the American vetting process is so strict. A large number of those willing to join have been rejected. “The situation is bad,” he said.
Mr. Hassan, a Syrian army defector, said in an interview Tuesday that of the 1,200 volunteers he had gathered for the program, 125 started the training and only 54 completed it. The rest quit or were thrown out. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter has acknowledged the shortfalls, citing strict screening standards, which have created a backlog of 7,000 recruits waiting to be vetted.
Mr. Carter has insisted the numbers will increase.
From the start, the Pentagon program was saddled with what most potential recruits see as a fatal flaw: It aims only at the Islamic State, not Mr. Assad.
The border operation planned with Turkey has the same aim, American officials insist. But they have not explained how it will have more success than the Pentagon in rallying fighters for a mission against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh.
“We can’t start like that,” said Abu Mahmoud, who commands a group called Liwa al-Haq. “Let’s finish off the oppression we are facing now. You can’t ask me to fight ISIS when the regime is pounding us with explosive barrels every single day.”
He spoke in April in Gaziantep, Turkey, near the Syrian border, just after having heard American officials pitch the Pentagon program to 20 insurgent groups. Only four or five, he said, agreed to join. They were from Deir al-Zour and parts of eastern Aleppo Province, places where the Islamic State is the main threat. The government’s main presence there is aerial bombardment, while the front lines on the ground face the Islamic State.
Abu Mahmoud, who uses a nom de guerre for security, said he had considered sending 100 fighters, but changed his mind on hearing that trainees would not fight government forces or get advanced weapons.
“What do I need training for?” he said. “Four years we’re fighting.”
Many Syrian insurgents — including conservative Islamists — agree. They are happy to fight the Islamic State, but few are willing to forswear fighting Mr. Assad.
Several insurgent leaders said the Pentagon should market its program as “protecting civilians,” from both the Islamic State and government forces. “It would be more convincing,” said Tayseer Darwish, a defected officer who was drinking tea at the Hotel Narine, an insurgent hangout in the Turkish border town of Antakya.
Half a dozen Syrians came and went from the lobby bar, ordering Turkish coffee and snacking on pistachios. All were among the first to take up arms against Mr. Assad. Some had been wounded; one was missing a foot. Others seemed weary, aged by war. They lamented an early mistake: welcoming foreign fighters who promised to help their cause, but then, in their view, tainted and betrayed it.
One, Mustafa Seijari, who follows the Salafist strain of conservative Islam, had signed up for the Pentagon program, and awaited vetting.
“Fighting ISIS is like fighting the regime,” he said, calling the Islamic State “an arm” of Mr. Assad’s government, which fights the militant group in places but also benefits from its attacks on less extreme rivals.
Another commander, Mohammad Zaatar, showed a picture of a favorite fighter, Hani, with a gun and a tank. In a voice message to the commander, Hani asked eagerly when training started.
But if the Pentagon calls, Hani might be busy. He is rolling south, advancing against government forces with a new insurgent coalition, the Army of Conquest, that includes the Nusra Front.
At the hotel, Mr. Seijari, the Salafist, vowed to quit training if asked to avoid fighting pro-Assad forces — something insurgents widely believe is required.
Trainees must promise “to defend the Syrian people from Daesh” and to refrain from harming civilians and prisoners. An English translation of the pledge, circulated through American military channels, does not mention Mr. Assad or the government.
But the insurgents’ misperception is understandable, given official statements. Trainees will lose American support, Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III of the United States Central Command said recently, if they “vector off and do things that we haven’t designed them to do initially.”
A senior American official confirmed that “a small number” of recruits had quit over the Islamic State focus. Others left because they lacked skills or strength, or refused the pledge, or disliked the food or treatment. One group of fighters quit en masse to defend their villages from attack.
Just two main clusters have joined, according to many people involved, and they are marginal players acting on local considerations. One is from Deir al-Zour, an eastern desert province with little government presence where the Islamic State has massacred resistant tribes. Nawwaf al-Basheer, their leader, said 1,100 men were ready, but training has been postponed until September.
Then there is Mr. Hassan’s group, mainly Turkmen, an ethnic minority, from a small patch of Aleppo Province. For now, battlefield dynamics mean that driving the Islamic State from the area also hurts Mr. Assad. The Islamic State has been attacking insurgents from the east, interrupting a rebel assault on the government-held half of Aleppo city.
The Syrian military, which regularly bombards the zone, knows that too, and could react. Turkish officials insist the area will “naturally” become a “safe zone” from government attacks. But American officials deny such a commitment.
Mr. Hassan said he had asked his trainers “if they are going to protect us” and got a noncommittal reply.
Two days later, the kidnapping appeared to show just how vulnerable Mr. Hassan was.