Photos of abandoned vehicles at Turkish border near Kobani.
Think twice or more about UW
To clarify my position, I am an advocate of UW when it is part of an effective strategy; however, too many, especially UW fans outside of the military, over estimate the efficacy of UW to achieve strategic ends regardless of the context. This is little different than the advocates for strategic bombing prior to WWII who thought they could win the war by themselves with their deeply flawed theories on air power. It is refreshing to see that most airmen no longer accept that myth, but of course there remains some who hang on to flawed theories like Warden. The CIA and SOF also need to relook their theories regarding the efficacy of UW through an honest study of history to determine what works, what doesn't, what conditions determined success or failure, etc.
The following Congressional Research Study points to the fact that a Free Syrian Army does not actually exist. If our civilian leaders (I'm confident our military planners understand this) are proposing strategies based on supporting a mythical army, we're off to bad start. We need to be leery about the high volume of misinformation on blogs, twitter, etc. (that often intended to be little more than propaganda to garner support for a particular group or individual in Syria) that attempt to paint another picture. At a minimum trust but verify, but better yet marginalize the talking heads in our media who insist on accepting myths as facts. Plans based on myths will fail when they confront reality.
http://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33487.pdf
Quote:
As of September 2014, the term “Free Syrian Army” does not correspond to an organized command and control structure with national reach and unified procurement, intelligence, logistics, or sustainment capabilities. Since 2011 uprising, there has been and continues to be no single military leader of the movement. At first, a number of Syrian military defectors identifying themselves as leaders of the “Free Syrian Army” attempted to provide unified leadership and build these types of capabilities for emergent opposition forces across Syria but were unable to exert control over the actions of individual brigades. Regional and personal rivalries, the ascendance of Islamist armed groups, and competing foreign patrons continue to undermine these efforts. A Supreme Military Council (see below) formed in an attempt to overcome these challenges has proven incapable of overcoming them to date.
This doesn't mean that an external power can't eventually integrate and more effectively organize these resistance forces. This must be one of the first steps, and until that is accomplished little will be accomplished by providing arms without U.S. or other foreign advisors on the ground to direct operations based on a coherent plan. This casts doubt on the logic of those who advocated support for the "FSA" when the conflict first emerged. It explains why Sen McCain posed with al-Nusra fighters, based on a lack of understanding (a continuing thorn in our side when it comes to developing strategy). Even if one of the many resistance groups, or one of the fleeting coalition of groups, got lucky (chance is a key element in war) and removed Assad, the different groups would quickly turn on one another, which is hardly the better peace and regional stability I suspect we desire.
The next report is an article on a classified CIA report that states "their" efforts to arm rebels in the past has failed in most instances. Hopefully the actual report provides more than statistics and analyzes why many efforts failed and some succeeded. They did identify in the article, that the presence of U.S. (or other foreign) advisors were helpful.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/15/us...orks.html?_r=0
C.I.A. Study of Covert Aid Fueled Skepticism About Helping Syrian Rebels
Quote:
The C.I.A. review, according to several former American officials familiar with its conclusions, found that the agency’s aid to insurgencies had generally failed in instances when no Americans worked on the ground with the foreign forces in the conflict zones, as is the administration’s plan for training Syrian rebels.
Noted exception in Afghanistan when we supported the Muj against the USSR,
Quote:
That covert war was successful without C.I.A. officers in Afghanistan, the report found, largely because there were Pakistani intelligence officers working with the rebels in Afghanistan.
Quote:
“It’s a very mixed history,” said Loch K. Johnson, a professor of public and international affairs at the University of Georgia and an intelligence expert. “You need some really good, loyal people on the ground ready to fight.”
In my opinion, the CIA has proven over the years to be astrategic when it comes to supporting resistance movements, insurgencies, etc., they tend to throw money and arms at a problem without thinking it through. While the military has a reduced capability in developing strategists and good operational planners compared to WWII, it still retains the majority of those trained to develop strategy, and it has an education system that be adapted to support developing strategists for this type of conflict. Perhaps there is a need to develop a "joint" command for special warfare that develops this expertise at the strategic and operational levels. SF already has the doctrine for the tactical level, of course that must continuously evolve based on changes in political and social systems, technology advances, etc.
Bottom line we need to do this better.
