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“A Significant Intelligence Failure”
Well, this story has finally hit the front page of The New York Times. Rivals of ISIS Attack U.S.-Backed Syrian Rebel Group, says the headline. “Rivals.” Any old rivals? No, Nusra — al Qaeda, in other words. As we were discussing on this thread. But here’s the thing I don’t get:
In Washington, several current and former senior administration officials acknowledged that the attack and the abductions by the Nusra Front took American officials by surprise and amounted to a significant intelligence failure.
While American military trainers had gone to great lengths to protect the initial group of trainees from attacks by Islamic State or Syrian Army forces, they did not anticipate an assault from the Nusra Front. In fact, officials said on Friday, they expected the Nusra Front to welcome Division 30 as an ally in its fight against the Islamic State.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” said one former senior American official, who was working closely on Syria issues until recently, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential intelligence assessments.
I skimmed through the comments — I shouldn’t have, I’m down enough about all of this already — and saw a number of them to the effect of “This is why we shouldn’t be in the Middle East! It’s all too complicated to sort out!”
All too complicated.
Yes, there are many aspects of the politics of this region that are labyrinthine and confusing. But what would be your instinct about how likely al Qaeda is to welcome US-backed fighters?
What if you knew that Nusra has this track record? Not too much to expect that “senior administration officials” had been briefed about this, is it?
For months, the US-backed Hazzm rebel movement held key areas of the Aleppo countryside, boasted thousands of fighters and scores of tanks, and was led by the former commander of the Free Syrian Army, Salim Idris.Yet over just one weekend, it was defeated by the local al-Qaeda affiliate, the Nusra Front, which began an assault on Hazzm to end the influence of its “criminal and corrupt” leadership. …
Nusra has considered all US-backed factions inevitable future enemies, and has set about eliminating them before they become a large well-trained force in the region.
What else does al Qaeda have to do to alert the US that it’s hostile to the United States?
Michael Weiss wrote a good piece about it:
This latest setback to the train-and-equip program has only realized the quiet fears percolating throughout the Pentagon for months that the U.S. was essentially creating cannon fodder—rebels it was not prepared to defend in the likely event they needed defending. The raison d’être of all Syrian rebels, after all, is to overthrow at the regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad, not fight jihadists. And any inductees of the program were bound to have targets painted on their backs from all other comers in a complicated and gruesome four-year-old civil war with many attendant sideshow conflicts. Pro-Assad forces including Lebanese Hezbollah and Iranian-built militias, Nusra, ISIS and even other independent rebels—all were bound to try to kill or capture Sunni Arab proxies of Washington.
“If you wanted to sabotage your strategy, this is a pretty good way to do it,” said one official advising on the process. “None of this is about achieving the objective. It is about going through the motions.
This is not an “intelligence failure.” This is a moral failure.
Published in Foreign Policy, General
Pakistan fell predictably – and so now we have a borderline jihadi unstable state with a nuclear bomb [next to India] – but okay, I take your points.
Re “get rid of ISIS but don’t do what you’d really have to do to achieve that, because that’s unpleasant” – an accurate description, but what drives this demand?
The most straightforward way to contain ISIS is to support Assad in Syria and Iran in Iraq (and perhaps the Kurds in both Iraq and Syria). I’d be surprised if the West doesn’t end up doing some version of this in the next six months – I can’t see a real alternative – but why do politicians fear to tell us that these are probably our best options? Or to put it another way, have we trained them to lie to us?
Claire, I hate to break it to you, but Mr. Miller is absolutely correct. Our intelligence community, particularly the CIA, is full of people who, while very smart and very bright, have a level of hatred for Israel I have not seen before. They have a woeful understanding of the mindset of the jihadist. And have a great mistrust for anything that whiffs of Republicanism. They are, in a sense, a perfect reflection of the administration they voted for. Unless the IC tells the administration the truth about what is going on with these groups, nothing will change. And if a new, Republican administration comes in, they will assume that they are being manipulated again to get into another war. We live in a sick time Claire, very sick time.
I don’t know if we have trained them to lie to us, but I can try to answer your question. Politicians are so wedded to maintaining power that any hint that they made a mistake on any policy jeopardizes their ability to hold that power. President Obama, after having made his boisterous comments about degrading and destroying ISIL, fears that he would suffer greatly if he all of a sudden announced that there will be some sort of aid going to Assad, that is to say nothing of how our Arab allies in the Gulf states would take it.
Because of the ineptitude of the Obama administration–part of why I didn’t want him getting involved in Syria in the first place–the West no longer has any control over events in the Middle East. This is their situation now, and they will be the ones to sort it out. This will not go well for them.
Not sure I understand why ISIS is worse than “support Assad in Syria and Iran in Iraq “. Can you explain?
Also wonder why you are so unenthusiastic about “[support] perhaps the Kurds in both Iraq”? The latter sure is most consonant with American values.
This is an interesting statement and it gets to the heart of the matter. They are better at playing this game because the jihadists believe in the religiosity of their mission. Obama and the Democrats are out and out atheists who think religion to be an outdated superstition and thus cannot comprehend that anyone would seriously be killing and destroying out of some true religious belief. A great speaker on this topic is a gentleman named Sebastian Gorka, and he was recently in town at Heritage I believe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d34NHVEyeu0
This was my first exposure to him and I must say he was pretty much spot on.
Oh my God Mike, this is one of my all-time favorite bits he does.
When would you say things became predictable in Pakistan? 1980? 1981? 1985? 1989? When? What was so predictable about the Taliban victory? If you’re serious about this, do you wish to bet something serious about very specific predictions for 20 years from now?
Okay – imho it was predictable that if we empowered non-state actors in Afghanistan (the Mujahideen, some of whom morphed into the Taliban) we would have an impact on linked (by religion, ethnicity and I guess ideology) non-state actors in neighbouring countries like Pakistan – and parts of the multipolar power structure in that country (Parliament, Army, ISI, tribal forces, political/religious militias/gangs). That’s what happened with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
What happens 20 years from now in Pakistan depends on which of its competing power centres dominates. If (as unfortunately seems likely) it’s the Army and ISI then not only will there still be a confrontation with India, but Afghanistan (because of the ISI connection with the Taliban) will still be a mess. Not least because chaos in Afghanistan is one of the Pakistani Army’s sources of income (from military aid) – they aren’t above making sure they’re seen as necessary.
Caveats:
If the Army’s business arm, the Fauji Foundation, discovers that there is a greater profit to it in peace with India, then there will be peace with India.
If Iran comes in from the cold then the power balance within Afghanistan will change with Pathans less dominant and Hazaras and Western Afghanistan more dominant. This will reduce ISI’s influence in Afghanistan.
jmho
‘We would have an impact’ is not making any kind of specific prediction, although it seems a reasonable assumption at the time. I don’t think I’m any better able to predict what’ll happen in Pakistan 20 years from now, but that’s why I don’t say that what was done decades ago had really predictable consequences. Then there’s another thing: What do you think would have been the consequences of inaction in Afghanistan?
Imho ISIS is a far more destabilising and dangerous entity than Iran and Assad. The latter are violent, grubby (to varying degrees) polities, but they do not pose a challenge to every single existing national border in the ME because of their basic ideology. ISIS does. By its very nature ISIS means inevitable war, Iran and Assad do not.
Supporting the Kurds (or at least the military organisations like the PKK and YPG) can bring existing borders into question – and that is a bloody business – existing states will not go down without a fight and ethnically defined nation states in ethnically mixed areas (and religiously defined states in religious mixed areas) seem to inevitably result in displaced people and refugees – and more fighting and suffering.
I’ll tip my hand: I have little sympathy for religious or ethnic nationalism. The best outcome for Syria would be for Sunnis, Shias, Alawis, Christians, Kurds, Arabs, whatever to live as equal citizens under the rule of law. (Ditto for Turkey and Iraq.) A religiously or ethnically defined state does nothing, in and of itself, to promote justice. The people in Syria suffer from injustice and violence – their religion or ethnicity is incidental to this, and also (jmho) to resolving this.
Perhaps we’re using the terms differently?
I assume that arming Afghanistani Pathans, and funding Wahabi style madrassas in Afghanistan, would empower similar (in fact related) Pathans and (linked) madrasas on the other side of the porous border with Pakistan – and that this would undermine the relatively weak Pakistani state’s authority (and notional monopoly on force). That seems the equivalent of a prediction to me, but ?
Inaction in Afghanistan would have meant that country moved towards beings something like Uzbekistan or Tajikistan when they were being sequentially swallowed by the Russian Empire and Soviet Union – so lots of suffering and bloodshed there as well.
But the two options aren’t: “do just what was done” or “do nothing”.
What the West did had (imho) predictable consequences – and these grew to be severe. Hindsight is 20:20, but they could have been better managed with some additional responses.
What’s done is done, but surely there’s a lesson for the next time?
I’m not sure there is any lesson: Next time, things will be pretty unpredictable, too. Of course, it wasn’t just do what was actually done or do nothing. The question about do nothing is, are the risks of action worth taking. If so, then you indeed have to start considering actions & consequences. Yes, it was predictable that the influence on Pakistan would not be good, but whether it would really matter, whether the damned state would collapse while being infiltrated–that was not predictable.
But that is the ideal, and may in no way be attainable, at least not for many decades. You were strong in your exegesis on US shortsidedness for not realizing the natural dynamics of Pakistan and environs as we used the mujahedin as weapon against the SU, leading to modern day undesirable, but unintended consequences. I wonder if you are similarly ignoring the facts on the ground in pining for your “best outcome”. What is the basis for the “sympathy” you report above for integrated societies? Why not set boundaries that allow like folk to live side-by-side more homogeneously? If Sunnis and Shia congenitally cannot get along, why resist their segregation?
The Kurds in Iraq, for example, seem to have demonstrated an exemplary society – rooted in ethnic nationalism – though being very tolerant of non-muslims in their midst (excepting Arabs who they despise (for good reasons Michael Totten reports – as they alone disrupt the harmony of that society)).
Would I be correct in inferring that you have little interest in a divided Iraq, which makes sense to a lot of other folks. Shia, Sunni and Kurd in their own separate countries, and not the one that the British mapped out a century ago. What’s wrong with that?
But in an imperfect world, displacing people may be preferable to all the tensions existing when they are left intermixed, no? Had the Germans “displaced” the Jews ten years earlier, we might have avoided the Holocaust. European pioneers (Americans) settling the West displaced the Indians (Americans). It was brutal at times, but it made for better conditions for the development of the US of A. The sectarian violence in Iraq this last decade should give pause to the integrationist advocates, I would think.
Finally, if you think the US should defer to Turkey rather than support Kurdish independence, it would be nice if you said so explicitly (“can bring existing borders into question”). But it has your followers on Ricochet a bit confused. You seem, on occasion in the past in these pages, to regret that we, the US, doesn’t support the self-determinism of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (generally hostile to US), but are now leery about agitating for the same for the Kurds in Iraq (lest we offend Erdogan). Very confusing to us, your fans.
There’s an old saw that the best way to understand the actions of a bureaucratic organization is to assume that it has been taken over by a cabal of its enemies. How sad that in the case of this administration, we no longer laugh at the idea.
Manfred – I don’t see any evidence that religiously or ethnically homogenous societies are intrinsically more just. (Raqqa is probably close to 100% Sunni Arab, but it’s a lot less just than the US, or even India.) If the issue for people is injustice (and I think it is) then I don’t see the benefit of not addressing that directly rather than by some unproved proxy.
As you point out Iraq seems to have divided itself along religious/ethnic lines – but it’s worth acknowledging that the people didn’t self segregate – ethnic cleansing was carried out by criminals, thugs and warlords. It was accompanied by immense suffering, violence, loss of property and livelihood – it was an excuse for theft. It might be notionally neat but in real life it’s messy – what’s the clear benefit of doing this to Kurds in Turkey and Iran as well? (Not to mention Turks and Persians.)
Turkey’s largest Kurdish city (going by number of Kurds) is Istanbul – how do you deal with that if you decide that ethnicity should define citizenship? Do you kick them all out (all one million of them) and send them to Diyarbakir? How many Kurds live in Tehran? What happens to them? What about mixed families? Being wary of changing the borders is due to more than catering to Erdogan – it would profoundly effect many many actual people, and most of them negatively. It shouldn’t be suggested lightly.
I don’t think that is the issue, is it? Homogeneous societies tend to be ones favored by the inhabitants thereof. Ask a Kurd, ask a Sunni, ask a Shia. Ask an Israeli, ask a Palestinian (no Israelis in Gaza), etc…
.
Robert,
They’d better listen to Gorka and listen good.
Thanks for this.
Regards,
Jim
Well some negative outcomes will certainly be unpredictable, but some won’t.
Coming back to Turkey and Syria and the Kurds – Claire Berlinski (among, I am sure, others) has written a number of articles predicting what this Incirlik agreement coupled with Turkey attacking the PKK means for Turkey. Specifically which parts of Turkey’s polity it will empower, which institutions it will undermine, what the likely outcomes might include.
It’s worth thinking about and trying to head some of these negative consequences off if we can, don’t you think? Not claiming that everything is completely known, but some stuff can certainly be predicted and therefore responded to.
Would you rather live in a homogenous society or a just society? They seem to be separate issues.
(And are all those refugees from Syria or Iraq trying to go live in a homogenous country or in a just, safe country? What about immigrants from relatively homogenous societies that want to move to the heterogenous, rich, orderly, safe West? [I know that I did!!] It really seems like a universal urge for ordinary people, though not for self appointed spokespersons or power brokers.)
See now you are building a straw man argument, I think. No one advocates the level of displacement you are talking about. The Kurds want autonomy where they greatly predominate in numbers, that’s it. Why the gross extrapolation?
The Kurds have worked hard to get Arabs out of their Iraqi area. Was this dislocation unpleasant to the Arabs affected? Yes of course (though Saddam Hussein had previously tried to eradicate the Kurds in the same area – so the Kurds are only rectifying his prior punitive actions, such as forcibly installing Arabs in the border cities). But Iraqi Kurdistan is a much safer haven now than is any other non-Kurdish part of Iraq. This is what Michael Totten avows and seems like something you could warm to:
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/kurdistan-thrives-despite-war-isis-0
Incidentally, the following is a wonderful survey of Kurdish circumstances through the years:
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/no-friends-mountains-fate-kurds
No, I’m good with autonomy – it’s less hard edged than independence, and gives individuals more freedom – I think it would be a good idea for Turkey as well. I’m not a fan of ethnic cleansing, even if it’s ‘corrective’ – it’s not an abstract, real people suffer.
Sure, I’m not one to favor negative consequences. Heading them off would be great. How?
Do we, however, have any kind of agreement–leaving aside meanwhile the question, is the consensus correct?–as to whether we want Turkey in the hands of President Erdogan or out? Whether we think likely he will dominate Turkey for the next decade absent American intervention?
“real people suffer”. Sure. But that can’t be the end of it. ‘Real people suffered’ when the American colonists separated from England…
And I don’t know why you can’t advocate for Kurdish independence, rather than just autonomy. Why don’t the Kurds (in Iraq) deserve their own country? Why should the Sunnis and Shia dictate to them in any way? What happened to the principle of self-determination? I think that the Sunnis owe it to them just on the basis of what Saddam Hussein did to them (e.g., “the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein later viciously punished the Kurds, slaughtering tens of thousands in his Anfal campaign, most notoriously in his nerve-gas bombing of Halabja.”), how about you?
Personally, I’d like to know whether the history of the world offers up a clearer case for a territory’s independence than one could make for Iraqi Kurdistan.
Well, “liking” that comment seemed inappropriate.
“I appreciated the sharing of your views.” That might be a better way to say it. Because I’m increasingly feeling that the big mystery at the heart of this is what the hell is really going on in the parts of our government we can’t see. What the Turks would call our Deep State. It’s not really hard to understand the mindset of a group like Nusra. They tell us. They have a press bureau. They even Tweet in English. And in case we don’t read English, they kill everyone with any connection to us, to make it as clear as possible.
What would prevent people in these agencies from talking to them (prudently from a distance, online, or when in our custody) and reading what they say? I mean — I can chat with Nusra right now. They’re on Twitter. They’re not fake accounts, although the information on them may be fake: It makes no sense that this many people would pretend to be al Nusra as for fun or as some kind of psy-op — this is how they recruit people. One look through that and you get it. And if you have questions, they’ll answer, especially if you ask politely. Try it — ask them if why they killed the Division 30 guys, and why they didn’t realize that we were just trying to help them defeat ISIS?
What is the mental obstacle? They travel in these countries — they’ve seen the same things I have, I’m sure. Surely they can’t be insensate monsters who feel nothing at the thought of sending people who trust us to their deaths.
What are they afraid of? Of telling the President something he doesn’t want to hear?
Well, among the problems is that the world’s biggest Kurdish city — by far — is Istanbul, where many Kurds have gone on to thrive, intermarry, have children, get wealthy, join politics (many are in the AKP), start huge business empires. And there are likewise many non-Kurds in areas that are majority Kurd — Turks, Laz, Turkmen, Circassian, Armenians, Greeks, Bosniaks, Jews, Crimean Tatars, Karbaday, Kazachs, Kyrgyz, Zazas — what happens to them? They’ve lived there are long as the Kurds. What of Alevis and Bektasis — there’s no guarantee a Kurdish state , if it’s some kind of Sunni majoritarian state like Turkey, will be any more tolerant of them than Turkey is. What abut the hatred Barzani feels for the PKK? It would be much better for Turksh Kurds, certainly, if they could live peacefully and democratically in Turkey as equal citizens — which is what they just voted for, overwhelmingly. But between Erdogan and the US, they’re being taught never to put their faith in non-violence, parliamentary democracy, or anything the US says about democracy and human rights.
The Times article (very good if you ask me) says:
“The Nusra Front’s statement offered its view of the American role in Syria. Referring to the C.I.A. program, the group said that when the United States tried to “plant its hands inside Syria,” the Nusra Front “cut those hands off,” and that Division 30 was merely another proxy “aiming to advance the projects and interests of America.”…
The group’s statement said Sunnis would not hand the sacrifices of four years of war “on a plate of gold” to the United States “for it to establish its feet in the region over the graves of hundreds of thousands of the people of Syria.”
Yeah, I detect a bit of hostility there.
“full of people…”? Meaning ‘mostly’?
And how is this possible: “They have a woeful understanding of the mindset of the jihadist”, while at the same time being: “ … very smart and very bright”?
Yikes, I guess I need to clarify, I am only talking about supporting Iraqi Kurdistan. It’s homogeneous, already essentially autonomous from the rest of Iraq. Freedom loving and tolerant mostly, very pro-American, despite Obama’s best efforts to diss them…
I would concur with the timeline, not necessarily with the reasoning. Vietnam, “hollow Army” and “zero defects” were all Cold War phenomena. But, we pretty much had a single, coherent threat to focus on.
The rise of Reagan ushered in the era of Air-Land battle doctrine, which was custom built to spank the Soviets and can best be summarized: Move fast. Strike hard. Finish quickly.
When we failed to “finish” the first Gulf War, we demonstrated to young, ambitious officers that their ability to orchestrate the catastrophic defeat of America’s opponents would not be the criterion by which they’d be judged before promotion and command selection boards.