The Free Syrian Army is a non-existent force

I have linked the video and the transcript of an interview with Robert Fisk, an independent analyst on the war in Syria, which I have followed closely now for the last two years (keeping correspondance with a number of Syrians over Facebook). I feel it's important to preface this by saying no, Robert Fisk is not an Assad mouthpiece or one of those anti-imperialists who hate the US no matter what it does. He is an independent journalist; he's done a lot of reporting in the past that leaned more pro-rebel and anti-Assad. The situation in Syria has changed, though, and he's changed with it.

What's important to get from this piece?

1) Everything you hear from our newspapers and the White House about "moderate rebels" or "mainstream rebels" or "the moderate opposition" is blather. Says Fisk, asked about the Free Syrian Army: "The Free Syrian Army I think drinks a lot of coffee in Istanbul. I have never come across - except in the first months of the fighting, I've never come across even prisoners from the Free Syrian Army...You know, the FSA, in the eyes of the Syrians, doesn't really exist...I think that the Free Syrian Army is a complete myth and I don't believe it exists nor do the Syrians."

2) There are no "moderate forces." The rebels who actually have forces are not moderates. The moderates opposing the government have no forces. All the funding the US government is putting into training and supporting these moderate forces is either A) Being thrown down the toilet on groups that can't fight worth a damn no matter well paid and equipped they are, just like the Iraqi Army which can't fight worth a damn after billions of dollars and years of training, or B) Money spent training and equipping jihadist forces posing as moderates.

3) If the Syrian war was ever a popular war of well-intentioned rebels against an oppressive government (perhaps in the first few months but arguable even back then), it sure isn't now. The Assad government IS the moderate force in Syria, along with the Kurds. US media pretends the war has simply turned from Regime (bad) vs. Rebels (good) to Regime (bad) vs. ISIS (worse) vs. Rebels (still good). 'Good' rebels are no longer a factor in the equation, if indeed they ever were.

4) So who are these other rebels that are fighting both ISIS and the Syrian government, the ones we're meant to believe are the Free Syrian Army? They are jihadist groups. "Mainstream jihadists" or "moderate jihadists" by comparison with ISIS, but still jihadists. Still looking to establish Islamist rule and government-enforced sharia in Syria, to impose Sunni dominance upon Syria's Alawites, Christians, and Druze, to make the country look more like Saudi Arabia.

5) If you're looking for a group in the Syrian civil war that can and will defend women's rights, religious minorities, and so on, the Assad government is that group. It has a forty year track record of governing Syria as a secular state, of safeguarding Syrian minorities, of suppressing Islamist radicalism, and of providing probably the highest level of women's rights to be found in the Arab world.

6) Obama and the Pentagon's entire strategy for defeating ISIS, which depends on creating from scratch a moderate force in Syria that will somehow defeat both ISIS and Assad, is ludicrous. The Pentagon spent years and billions training, equipping, and funding the Iraqi Army, which disintegrated the minute a serious enemy showed its face. The Pentagon has spent years funding, equipping, and training any Syrian rebel group that even called itself "moderate" or "free," an investment which has only enriched ISIS and other jihadists as these units of the Free Syrian Army defected or surrendered their weapons.

7) Obama's strategy is ludicrous and bound to fail, but what his biggest Republican critics like McCain and Lindsay Graham are arguing for is the exact same plan but on a larger and a therefore stupider scale: even MORE money to the Iraqi Army and the FSA! Even MORE opposition to the Assad regime! Let's actually attack Assad too at the same time as ISIS!

8) The Syrian civil war will go on until one of these two things happens: the Assad government wins, or the jihadists win, whether ISIS or not. The Assad government is the only sane choice for the United States. There are no other outcomes possible. There are no moderate rebel forces, and no moderate rebels will ever win the war. The Assad government is capable of reform and has issued reforms in the past. ISIS and the jihadists cannot reform: the whole reason people join this group is because they want to enforce fundamentalist Islam. If ISIS or any jihadist group deviates from this goal and starts compromising, jihadists will desert and find a more "pure" group to go join.


Conclusion, in a sentence: the moderate rebels in Syria that you hear about all the time are a joke at best and an illusion at worst, and the United States is both making both a fool of itself and delusional foreign policy choices based on their supposed existence, choices that are keeping the civil war in Syria going on and on, contributing to jihadist forces and causes, crippling the anti-ISIS campaign, and setting us up on opposing sides to Russia, China, and Iran, other major players the US would be far better off with in detente than at war.


Tim Mulhair

http://handsoffsyria.blogspot.com/2014/11/robert-fisk-saa-strongest-institution.html