C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition
WASHINGTON — A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers.
The weapons, including automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons, are being funneled mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the officials said.
The C.I.A. officers have been in southern Turkey for several weeks, in part to help keep weapons out of the hands of fighters allied with Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, one senior American official said. The Obama administration has said it is not providing arms to the rebels, but it has also acknowledged that Syria’s neighbors would do so.
The clandestine intelligence-gathering effort is the most detailed known instance of the limited American support for the military campaign against the Syrian government. It is also part of Washington’s attempt to increase the pressure on President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who has recently escalated his government’s deadly crackdown on civilians and the militias battling his rule. With Russia blocking more aggressive steps against the Assad government, the United States and its allies have instead turned to diplomacy and aiding allied efforts to arm the rebels to force Mr. Assad from power.
By helping to vet rebel groups, American intelligence operatives in Turkey hope to learn more about a growing, changing opposition network inside of Syria and to establish new ties. “C.I.A. officers are there and they are trying to make new sources and recruit people,” said one Arab intelligence official who is briefed regularly by American counterparts.
American officials and retired C.I.A. officials said the administration was also weighing additional assistance to rebels, like providing satellite imagery and other detailed intelligence on Syrian troop locations and movements. The administration is also considering whether to help the opposition set up a rudimentary intelligence service. But no decisions have been made on those measures or even more aggressive steps, like sending C.I.A. officers into Syria itself, they said.
The struggle inside Syria has the potential to intensify significantly in coming months as powerful new weapons are flowing to both the Syrian government and opposition fighters. President Obama and his top aides are seeking to pressure Russia to curb arms shipments like attack helicopters to Syria, its main ally in the Middle East.
“We’d like to see arms sales to the Assad regime come to an end, because we believe they’ve demonstrated that they will only use their military against their own civilian population,” Benjamin J. Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said after Mr. Obama and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin, met in Mexico on Monday.
Spokesmen for the White House, State Department and C.I.A. would not comment on any intelligence operations supporting the Syrian rebels, some details of which were reported last week by The Wall Street Journal.
Until now, the public face of the administration’s Syria policy has largely been diplomacy and humanitarian aid.
The State Department said Wednesday that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton would meet with her Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, on the sidelines of a meeting of Asia-Pacific foreign ministers in St. Petersburg, Russia, next Thursday. The private talks are likely to focus, at least in part, on the crisis in Syria.
The State Department has authorized $15 million in nonlethal aid, like medical supplies and communications equipment, to civilian opposition groups in Syria.
The Pentagon continues to fine-tune a range of military options, after a request from Mr. Obama in early March for such contingency planning. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told senators at that time that the options under review included humanitarian airlifts, aerial surveillance of the Syrian military, and the establishment of a no-fly zone.
The military has also drawn up plans for how coalition troops would secure Syria’s sizable stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons if an all-out civil war threatened their security.
But senior administration officials have underscored in recent days that they are not actively considering military options. “Anything at this point vis-à-vis Syria would be hypothetical in the extreme,” General Dempsey told reporters this month.
What has changed since March is an influx of weapons and ammunition to the rebels. The increasingly fierce air and artillery assaults by the government are intended to counter improved coordination, tactics and weaponry among the opposition forces, according to members of the Syrian National Council and other activists.
Last month, these activists said, Turkish Army vehicles delivered antitank weaponry to the border, where it was then smuggled into Syria. Turkey has repeatedly denied it was extending anything other than humanitarian aid to the opposition, mostly via refugee camps near the border. The United States, these activists said, was consulted about these weapons transfers.
American military analysts offered mixed opinions on whether these arms have offset the advantages held by the militarily superior Syrian Army. “The rebels are starting to crack the code on how to take out tanks,” said Joseph Holliday, a former United States Army intelligence officer in Afghanistan who is now a researcher tracking the Free Syrian Army for the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.
But a senior American officer who receives classified intelligence reports from the region, compared the rebels’ arms to “peashooters” against the government’s heavy weaponry and attack helicopters.
The Syrian National Council, the main opposition group in exile, has recently begun trying to organize the scattered, localized units that all fight under the name of the Free Syrian Army into a more cohesive force.
About 10 military coordinating councils in provinces across the country are now sharing tactics and other information. The city of Homs is the notable exception. It lacks such a council because the three main military groups in the city do not get along, national council officials said.
Jeffrey White, a defense analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who tracks videos and announcements from self-described rebel battalions, said there were now about 100 rebel formations, up from roughly 70 two months ago, ranging in size from a handful of fighters to a couple of hundred combatants.
“When the regime wants to go someplace and puts the right package of forces together, it can do it,” Mr. White said. “But the opposition is raising the cost of those kinds of operations.”
Neil MacFarquhar contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon. Souad Mekhennet also contributed reporting.
Recent Developments
Nov. 28 Syrian state media said that 34 people and possibly many more had died in twin car bombings in a suburb populated by minorities only a few miles from the center of Damascus. One estimate by the government’s opponents put the death toll at 47.
Nov. 27 Syrian rebels accused the authorities of launching an airstrike outside the northern city of Idlib, killing at least 20 people as they waited to have their olives turned into oil.
Nov. 26 After declaring that they had seized an important military airport and an air defense base outside Damascus, Syrian rebels said they overran a hydroelectric dam in the north of the country, adding to a monthlong string of tactical successes that demonstrate their ability to erode the government’s dominance in the face of withering aerial attacks.
Nov. 24 Hundreds of thousands of Syrians displaced by the war now face the onslaught of winter with inadequate shelter, senior government officials and aid organizations say. With temperatures already plunging, the humanitarian crisis is deepening.
Nov. 20 Making diplomatic and military advances, the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces gained official recognition from Britain and showed off one of its largest hauls of heavy weapons from a captured government base inside Syria. The developments came against a backdrop of steadily increasing violence in Damascus.
Nov. 19 The European Union offered crucial support for the new Syrian political opposition, the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, calling the group legitimate representatives for the Syrian people. The union stopped short of conferring full diplomatic recognition, as France, Turkey and several Gulf Arab countries have done. Meanwhile, several extremist Islamist groups fighting in Syria have said they reject the new opposition coalition.
Nov. 17 Days after recognizing the newly formed Syrian opposition council as the “sole representative” of the Syrian people, President François Hollande of France met with its leaders in Paris and agreed to install a new Syrian ambassador in France.
Nov. 15 Turkey recognized the newly formed Syrian rebel coalition, known as the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, as the legitimate leader of Syria. It was a powerful boost to the group’s effort to attract legitimacy in its goal of ending the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.
Overview
The wave of Arab unrest that began with the Tunisian revolution reached Syria on March 15, 2011, when residents of a small southern city took to the streets to protest the torture of students who had put up anti-government graffiti. The government responded with heavy-handed force, and demonstrations quickly spread across much of the country.
President Bashar al-Assad, a British-trained doctor who inherited Syria’s harsh dictatorship from his father, Hafez al-Assad, had at first wavered between force and hints of reform. But in April 2011, just days after lifting the country’s decades-old state of emergency, he set off the first of what became a series of withering crackdowns, sending tanks into restive cities as security forces opened fire on demonstrators. In retrospect, the attacks appeared calculated to turn peaceful protests violent, to justify an escalation of force.
In the summer of 2011, as the crackdown dragged on, thousands of soldiers defected and began launching attacks against the government, bringing the country to what the United Nations in December called the verge of civil war. An opposition government in exile was formed, the Syrian National Council, but the council’s internal divisions kept Western and Arab governments from recognizing it as such. The opposition was a fractious collection of political groups, longtime exiles, grass-roots organizers and armed militants, divided along ideological, ethnic or sectarian lines.
Syrian opposition factions signed an agreement in November 2012 to create a unified umbrella organization with the hope of attracting international diplomatic recognition as well as more financing and improved military aid from foreign capitals. The coalition, known as the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, was recognized by Britain, France, Turkey and several Gulf Arab countries. However, several extremist Islamist groups fighting in Syria said they reject the coalition.
By November 2012, the country was many months into a full-blown civil war. Nearly 40,000 people, mostly civilians, were thought to have died and tens of thousands of others had been arrested. More than 400,000 Syrian refugees had registered in neighboring countries, with tens of thousands not registered. In addition, about 2.5 million Syrians needed aid inside the country, with more than 1.2 million displaced domestically, according to the United Nations.
Control of towns and cities seesawed between rebel forces that were poorly organized but increasingly well-armed and confident, and a government that was too weak to stamp out the rebellion but strong enough to prevent it from holding large chunks of territory.
Tactics have often shifted throughout the conflict, which is approaching the two-year mark. In the summer of 2012, the government withdrew to strong points, increasingly relying on air power and artillery to smash areas that rebels had seized.
The rebels have changed their tactics, too. They have focused on challenging air power, their deadliest foe, by harassing some air bases, ransacking others and seizing antiaircraft weapons. Fighters have overrun a half-dozen bases around Damascus, Syria’s capital; two in the country’s eastern oil-producing area; and the largest military installation near the country’s largest city, Aleppo.
Yet the tactical gains appear unlikely to lead to a sudden shift that collapses the government, analysts say. Rather, they say, a de facto split of Syria is hardening with the government slowly shrinking the area it tries to fully control, a swath that runs from Damascus north along the more-populated western half of the country to Latakia, the ancestral province of President Assad.
The government is still strong in core areas, analysts say, and even when it cedes control of the ground to rebels, as in parts of northern Syria and growing areas of the thinly populated east, it retains the power to strike from the air. And, analysts warn, even if the army abandons some areas, that could simply open the way to fighting among sectarian and political factions.
The conflict is complicated by Syria’s ethnic divisions. The Assads and much of the nation’s elite, especially the military, belong to the Alawite sect, a minority in a mostly Sunni country. While the Assad government has the advantage of crushing firepower and units of loyal, elite troops, the insurgents should not be underestimated. They are highly motivated and, over time, demographics should tip in their favor. Alawites constitute about 12 percent of the 23 million Syrians. Sunni Muslims, the opposition’s backbone, make up about 75 percent of the population.
Neither the government’s violence nor Mr. Assad’s offers of political reform — rejected as shams by protest leaders — have brought an end to the unrest. Similarly, the protesters have not been able to overcome direct assault by the military’s armed forces or to seize and hold significant chunks of territory.
The danger of the fighting setting off regional conflict appeared to rise every month, with destabilizing effects seen in Lebanon and Iraq. But it was the possibility of a clash between Syria and its former ally Turkey that drew the most worry, particularly after Turkey shelled targets across the border in October 2012 after a Syrian mortar attack killed five of its civilians. Since Turkey is a NATO member, the fighting there could deepen international involvement.
Petraeus Resigns as Director
On Nov. 9, 2012, David H. Petraeus resigned director of the Central Intelligence Agency after evidence of an extramarital affair was uncovered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Mr. Petraeus issued a statement acknowledging the affair after President Obama accepted his resignation and it was announced by the C.I.A.
“After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair,” Mr. Petraeus said in his statement. “Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours.”
The disclosure ended a triumphant re-election week for the president with an unfolding scandal.
Administration and Congressional officials identified the woman with whom he was having the affair as Paula Broadwell, the author of a biography of Mr. Petraeus. Her book, “All In: The Education of General David Petraeus,” was published in 2012.
The F.B.I. investigation that led to Mr. Petraeus’s sudden resignation began with a complaint several months ago about “harassing” e-mails sent by Ms. Broadwell to another woman who knows both of them, two government officials briefed on the case said on Nov. 10.
When F.B.I. agents following up on the complaint began to examine Ms. Broadwell’s e-mails, they discovered exchanges between her and Mr. Petraeus that revealed they were having an affair, said several officials who spoke of the investigation on the condition of anonymity. They also discovered that Ms. Broadwell possessed certain classified information, one official said, but apparently concluded that it was probably not Mr. Petraeus who had given it to her and that there had been no major breach of security. No leak charges are expected to be filed as a result of the investigation.
The identity of the woman who complained about the harassing messages from Ms. Broadwell has not been disclosed. She was not a family member or in the government, the officials said, and the nature of her relationship with Mr. Petraeus was not immediately known. But they said the two women seemed to be competing for Mr. Petraeus’s loyalty, if not his affection.
The circumstances surrounding the collapse of Mr. Petraeus’s career remain murky. It is not clear when Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. or Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I., became aware that the F.B.I.’s investigation into Ms. Broadwell’s e-mails had brought to light compromising information about Mr. Petraeus.
The revelation of a secret inquiry into the head of the nation’s premier spy agency raised urgent questions about Mr. Petraeus’s 14-month tenure at the C.I.A. and the decision by Mr. Obama to elevate him to head the agency after leading the country’s war effort in Afghanistan.
On Nov. 12, lawmakers with authority over intelligence and national security expressed consternation that the F.B.I. investigation of Mr. Petraeus could have been conducted without the knowledge of officials in the White House or Congress. They also voiced puzzlement that it came to a head within hours of President Obama’s re-election.
Overview
The Central Intelligence Agency was created in 1947 to continue the intelligence work carried out during World War II by the Office of Strategic Services. For the next 57 years, it was preeminent among the many intelligence-related services that sprung up and flourished across the government.
After a string of intelligence failures that included the run-ups to the Sept. 11 attacks and the invasion of Iraq, the C.I.A. tracked down Osama bin Laden, to a sprawling compound in an affluent Pakistani suburb. The Qaeda leader was killed there on May 2, 2011, during a raid by Navy Seals. For an intelligence community that had endured searing criticism, Bin Laden’s killing brought a measure of redemption.
Syria
Goran Tomasevic/Reuters
Recent Developments
Nov. 28 Syrian state media said that 34 people and possibly many more had died in twin car bombings in a suburb populated by minorities only a few miles from the center of Damascus. One estimate by the government’s opponents put the death toll at 47.
Nov. 27 Syrian rebels accused the authorities of launching an airstrike outside the northern city of Idlib, killing at least 20 people as they waited to have their olives turned into oil.
Nov. 26 After declaring that they had seized an important military airport and an air defense base outside Damascus, Syrian rebels said they overran a hydroelectric dam in the north of the country, adding to a monthlong string of tactical successes that demonstrate their ability to erode the government’s dominance in the face of withering aerial attacks.
Nov. 24 Hundreds of thousands of Syrians displaced by the war now face the onslaught of winter with inadequate shelter, senior government officials and aid organizations say. With temperatures already plunging, the humanitarian crisis is deepening.
Nov. 20 Making diplomatic and military advances, the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces gained official recognition from Britain and showed off one of its largest hauls of heavy weapons from a captured government base inside Syria. The developments came against a backdrop of steadily increasing violence in Damascus.
Nov. 19 The European Union offered crucial support for the new Syrian political opposition, the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, calling the group legitimate representatives for the Syrian people. The union stopped short of conferring full diplomatic recognition, as France, Turkey and several Gulf Arab countries have done. Meanwhile, several extremist Islamist groups fighting in Syria have said they reject the new opposition coalition.
Nov. 17 Days after recognizing the newly formed Syrian opposition council as the “sole representative” of the Syrian people, President François Hollande of France met with its leaders in Paris and agreed to install a new Syrian ambassador in France.
Nov. 15 Turkey recognized the newly formed Syrian rebel coalition, known as the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, as the legitimate leader of Syria. It was a powerful boost to the group’s effort to attract legitimacy in its goal of ending the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.
Overview
The wave of Arab unrest that began with the Tunisian revolution reached Syria on March 15, 2011, when residents of a small southern city took to the streets to protest the torture of students who had put up anti-government graffiti. The government responded with heavy-handed force, and demonstrations quickly spread across much of the country.
President Bashar al-Assad, a British-trained doctor who inherited Syria’s harsh dictatorship from his father, Hafez al-Assad, had at first wavered between force and hints of reform. But in April 2011, just days after lifting the country’s decades-old state of emergency, he set off the first of what became a series of withering crackdowns, sending tanks into restive cities as security forces opened fire on demonstrators. In retrospect, the attacks appeared calculated to turn peaceful protests violent, to justify an escalation of force.
In the summer of 2011, as the crackdown dragged on, thousands of soldiers defected and began launching attacks against the government, bringing the country to what the United Nations in December called the verge of civil war. An opposition government in exile was formed, the Syrian National Council, but the council’s internal divisions kept Western and Arab governments from recognizing it as such. The opposition was a fractious collection of political groups, longtime exiles, grass-roots organizers and armed militants, divided along ideological, ethnic or sectarian lines.
Syrian opposition factions signed an agreement in November 2012 to create a unified umbrella organization with the hope of attracting international diplomatic recognition as well as more financing and improved military aid from foreign capitals. The coalition, known as the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, was recognized by Britain, France, Turkey and several Gulf Arab countries. However, several extremist Islamist groups fighting in Syria said they reject the coalition.
By November 2012, the country was many months into a full-blown civil war. Nearly 40,000 people, mostly civilians, were thought to have died and tens of thousands of others had been arrested. More than 400,000 Syrian refugees had registered in neighboring countries, with tens of thousands not registered. In addition, about 2.5 million Syrians needed aid inside the country, with more than 1.2 million displaced domestically, according to the United Nations.
Control of towns and cities seesawed between rebel forces that were poorly organized but increasingly well-armed and confident, and a government that was too weak to stamp out the rebellion but strong enough to prevent it from holding large chunks of territory.
Tactics have often shifted throughout the conflict, which is approaching the two-year mark. In the summer of 2012, the government withdrew to strong points, increasingly relying on air power and artillery to smash areas that rebels had seized.
The rebels have changed their tactics, too. They have focused on challenging air power, their deadliest foe, by harassing some air bases, ransacking others and seizing antiaircraft weapons. Fighters have overrun a half-dozen bases around Damascus, Syria’s capital; two in the country’s eastern oil-producing area; and the largest military installation near the country’s largest city, Aleppo.
Yet the tactical gains appear unlikely to lead to a sudden shift that collapses the government, analysts say. Rather, they say, a de facto split of Syria is hardening with the government slowly shrinking the area it tries to fully control, a swath that runs from Damascus north along the more-populated western half of the country to Latakia, the ancestral province of President Assad.
The government is still strong in core areas, analysts say, and even when it cedes control of the ground to rebels, as in parts of northern Syria and growing areas of the thinly populated east, it retains the power to strike from the air. And, analysts warn, even if the army abandons some areas, that could simply open the way to fighting among sectarian and political factions.
The conflict is complicated by Syria’s ethnic divisions. The Assads and much of the nation’s elite, especially the military, belong to the Alawite sect, a minority in a mostly Sunni country. While the Assad government has the advantage of crushing firepower and units of loyal, elite troops, the insurgents should not be underestimated. They are highly motivated and, over time, demographics should tip in their favor. Alawites constitute about 12 percent of the 23 million Syrians. Sunni Muslims, the opposition’s backbone, make up about 75 percent of the population.
Neither the government’s violence nor Mr. Assad’s offers of political reform — rejected as shams by protest leaders — have brought an end to the unrest. Similarly, the protesters have not been able to overcome direct assault by the military’s armed forces or to seize and hold significant chunks of territory.
The danger of the fighting setting off regional conflict appeared to rise every month, with destabilizing effects seen in Lebanon and Iraq. But it was the possibility of a clash between Syria and its former ally Turkey that drew the most worry, particularly after Turkey shelled targets across the border in October 2012 after a Syrian mortar attack killed five of its civilians. Since Turkey is a NATO member, the fighting there could deepen international involvement.
Central Intelligence Agency
Saul Loeb/Getty Images
Petraeus Resigns as Director
On Nov. 9, 2012, David H. Petraeus resigned director of the Central Intelligence Agency after evidence of an extramarital affair was uncovered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Mr. Petraeus issued a statement acknowledging the affair after President Obama accepted his resignation and it was announced by the C.I.A.
“After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair,” Mr. Petraeus said in his statement. “Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours.”
The disclosure ended a triumphant re-election week for the president with an unfolding scandal.
Administration and Congressional officials identified the woman with whom he was having the affair as Paula Broadwell, the author of a biography of Mr. Petraeus. Her book, “All In: The Education of General David Petraeus,” was published in 2012.
The F.B.I. investigation that led to Mr. Petraeus’s sudden resignation began with a complaint several months ago about “harassing” e-mails sent by Ms. Broadwell to another woman who knows both of them, two government officials briefed on the case said on Nov. 10.
When F.B.I. agents following up on the complaint began to examine Ms. Broadwell’s e-mails, they discovered exchanges between her and Mr. Petraeus that revealed they were having an affair, said several officials who spoke of the investigation on the condition of anonymity. They also discovered that Ms. Broadwell possessed certain classified information, one official said, but apparently concluded that it was probably not Mr. Petraeus who had given it to her and that there had been no major breach of security. No leak charges are expected to be filed as a result of the investigation.
The identity of the woman who complained about the harassing messages from Ms. Broadwell has not been disclosed. She was not a family member or in the government, the officials said, and the nature of her relationship with Mr. Petraeus was not immediately known. But they said the two women seemed to be competing for Mr. Petraeus’s loyalty, if not his affection.
The circumstances surrounding the collapse of Mr. Petraeus’s career remain murky. It is not clear when Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. or Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I., became aware that the F.B.I.’s investigation into Ms. Broadwell’s e-mails had brought to light compromising information about Mr. Petraeus.
The revelation of a secret inquiry into the head of the nation’s premier spy agency raised urgent questions about Mr. Petraeus’s 14-month tenure at the C.I.A. and the decision by Mr. Obama to elevate him to head the agency after leading the country’s war effort in Afghanistan.
On Nov. 12, lawmakers with authority over intelligence and national security expressed consternation that the F.B.I. investigation of Mr. Petraeus could have been conducted without the knowledge of officials in the White House or Congress. They also voiced puzzlement that it came to a head within hours of President Obama’s re-election.
Overview
The Central Intelligence Agency was created in 1947 to continue the intelligence work carried out during World War II by the Office of Strategic Services. For the next 57 years, it was preeminent among the many intelligence-related services that sprung up and flourished across the government.
After a string of intelligence failures that included the run-ups to the Sept. 11 attacks and the invasion of Iraq, the C.I.A. tracked down Osama bin Laden, to a sprawling compound in an affluent Pakistani suburb. The Qaeda leader was killed there on May 2, 2011, during a raid by Navy Seals. For an intelligence community that had endured searing criticism, Bin Laden’s killing brought a measure of redemption.
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