Who is funding syrian rebels

Speaking recently at the White House, Obama looked frustrated as he described "failures" in the US train-and-equip programme. On Friday US officials told reporters the programme was being modified. Rebel leaders will now receive basic equipment packages, she explained, but training for the fighters has been stopped. The story of this disastrous programme dates back to the early days of the uprising in the Middle East. Robert Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria, had a front-row seat to the drama.

In early he met with Assad. Governments were being overthrown in Tunisia and Egypt, but things were still quiet in Syria. They discussed diplomacy in a polite manner. Then Ford asked about human rights. Assad "hit red real quick," Ford said. After serving as ambassador to Algeria and working as a diplomat in the Middle East, Ford was the State Department's go-to Syria expert for years.

He was faced with the challenges of managing the department's portfolio for Syria, a lovely country with olive groves and rolling plains that's "not of any particular strategic interest to anybody who doesn't live there," as Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said.

Even worse, Ford had taken on a seemingly hopeless task - arming the opposition in Syria with US weapons. Because of the uprising, Syria was in the news. But despite the changes within the country, Syria still wasn't vital to the strategic interests of the US. For that reason it remained a low priority for administration officials. When the Assad regime started to falter in , Ford believed the US should get involved in the conflict by supporting the rebels.

Virtually everyone in the US, including Obama, wanted to support the opposition in Syria. But the question was whether the US should send Stinger missiles and rocket-propelled grenades, or offer moral support and humanitarian aid and stay out of the conflict.

Ford told administration officials years ago they should arm the rebels. If the US doesn't help, he said at the time, extremists will give them money and lure them into their organisations.

On the other side of this issue at the time were Obama, top members of the national security staff and most of America. The White House officials were wary of military involvement in overseas conflicts, and they saw the Arms for Rebels idea as a step towards a full-scale, decades-long intervention in Syria.

Most of the rebels, he said, weren't "ideologically pure", not in the way US officials wanted. Rather than providing weapons, US officials provided food, medical kits and non-lethal military gear. Obama's national-security advisors argued that Syria was at least relatively stable with Assad in power. These advisors, as US officials who supported the programme told me, were presenting a false choice: Either Assad stays or Syria will be overrun with terrorists.

In the end, said those who supported the programme, Syria got the worst of both outcomes. They believe Obama's advisors should shoulder the blame for the failure of the programme and also for the failure of the US to help in Syria. With more than , dead and four million refugees, the Syria crisis has unfolded over a period of several years while Ford and his colleagues watched in horror.

Ford's career as a diplomat is now over. I spoke with him at the Middle East Institute in Washington, where he was working in a borrowed office. The desk was empty except for a black ballpoint pen. While serving as ambassador to Syria from to , he became familiar with the opposition in a way few Americans were. Michael Posner, a former assistant secretary of state, said Ford made an important contribution to the White House debate about Syria.

He was a very principled, courageous diplomat who did a lot of good. People in the Syrian-American community admired Ford's efforts and looked at Obama in disbelief. People in the intelligence community said the time to arm the rebels was Providing support of any kind to one side in a conflict at the expense of another will have consequences for post-conflict stabilisation and reconstruction.

This presents challenges for policymakers seeking a Syria sufficiently stable to enable the return of refugees, and who have made the provision of reconstruction funds contingent on a meaningful political transition firmly on track, in the language of the European Commission.

A video of Joost Hiltermann's oral presentation and following discussion can be downloaded here skip to The Syrian war grinds lethally on, as regime forces move to recapture rebel-held areas. In our first-ever illustrated commentary, Crisis Group explores one holdout, Idlib, where three million Syrians — many already displaced — chafe at jihadist rule but dread the coming onslaught. This site uses cookies.

By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Review our privacy policy for more details. Andes Central America. Overkill: Reforming the Legal Basis for the U. War on Terror. They initially received funding from private sources, particularly in the Gulf, but later seemed to sustain themselves through local, war economy-related revenue generation and by tapping into external flows of military and civilian support for the opposition.

They also were able to move through Turkey and transport goods cross-border with relatively few restrictions for some time. A downside of the CIA program, one of the officials said, is that some armed and trained rebels defected to Islamic State and other radical groups, and some members of the previous administration favored abandoning the program.

Before assuming office in January, Trump suggested he could end support for Free Syrian Army groups and give priority to the fight against Islamic State. A separate effort by the U. However, aside from air strikes after the Syrian military launched a chemical weapons attack, the Trump administration has not increased military support from the limits set by the Obama administration.