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The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2B on Soviet-Style Arms for Syrian Rebels

293 points by rapeofthelocke 9y ago

r721 9y ago
The better link is the whole project page: https://www.occrp.org/en/makingakilling/ https://www.occrp.org/en/makingakilling/ >Since the outbreak of war in Syria, weapons from Central and Eastern Europe have flooded the conflict zone through two distinct pipelines – one sponsored by Saudi Arabia and coordinated by the CIA, and the other funded and directed by the Pentagon. >A series of investigations by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) have brought to light these multi-billion-dollar weapons deliveries -- exposing the misleading and potentially illegal documents on which they rely, the shady dealers at its heart of the trade, and the governments that have profited from the war.
- skrebbel 9y ago
  Anyone got a tl;dr about the motive behind all this? What does the US government gain by flooding the middle East with weapons?
  - stefantalpalaru 9y ago
    > What does the US government gain by flooding the middle East with weapons? A bigger market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military–industrial_complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military–industrial_complex
  - misja111 9y ago
    The war in Syria is a proxy for a battle between two countries: Iran on the one side, which supports Assad's regime, and Saudi Arabia on the other side, which supports the Sunnite rebel groups ISIS and Al Qaida. Saudi Arabia is an ally of the US and Iran an enemy, so therefore the US supports the rebel groups that fight Assad's regime. What's more, US's close ally Israel is right at the border of Syria and Israel is a long time enemy of Iran as well.
    - Quarrelsome 9y ago
      Assad is also Russia, that's a pretty big deal. Its worth noting how this conflict also draws in people linked to Hamas and Hezbollah. Its suspected that part of ISIS's emergence was due to Turkey as they expanded towards the Kurds (a key demographic that Turkey is keen on subduing) so it really is a clusterfuck before we even start to consider US/Russian involvement.
      - travmatt 9y ago
        Syria is also home to a large Russian airbase and contains strategically/economically important warm water ports - Syria is a very valuable Russian ally, probably why the prospect destroying that relationship is so enticing.
  - vermontdevil 9y ago
    Proxy war against Russia and Iran.
  - mfukar 9y ago
    The answers to the question "what is there to gain?" are fairly obvious, don't you think?
    - skrebbel 9y ago
      No, otherwise I wouldn't ask.
  - banned1 9y ago
    Funds?
  - phyller 9y ago
    The article says they are theoretically only arming groups that are fighting against ISIS. I'm pretty sure if they can defeat them on the ground without committing American troops (airstrikes can only do so much) and only spending $1 billion dollars they are going to consider that a big win. The sentiment of this question explains why even further. ISIS does very bad stuff and is a major problem, and we can all wonder why the west doesn't do more to stop them because they clearly have the ability to do so. But then the moment the US gets really involved, everyone is going to shift blame to them for everything. I don't condone secretive actions like this myself, but considering the US's global influence and capability, if they weren't doing something about ISIS the question could easily be restated "What does the US government gain by allowing extremists to rape and pillage the middle east?"
    - raverbashing 9y ago
      "only arming groups that are fighting against ISIS" Yeah, a lot of "moderate rebels" (that are slightly less theocratic than ISIS)
      - phyller 9y ago
        Yea. I think every employee of a 3 letter agency should be required to write a scholarly paper on the term "blowback" and have it peer reviewed before they get to spend any money.
      - tboyd47 9y ago
        Unfortunately, the US military has transferred the Cold War strategy of "an enemy of my enemy is my friend" to radical pseudo-Islamic militant groups. That's not going to work so well because you might have two groups that have exactly the same beliefs except they gave allegiance to a different imam so they consider each other to be kuffar.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      The US already has troops on the ground, at least a few members of the special forces are working with the SDF/YPG on the front lines.
  - cfv 9y ago
    Shitting on Russia's projection of power?
  - travmatt 9y ago
    Broadly, America has traditionally supported Sunni leaning states, most notably Saudi Arabia. Russia has traditionally supported Shia Iran, and both the powers are competing for influence within the region. In the course of the Arab Spring, the legitimacy of many ME leaders/dictators was questioned, among the most notable of these was the rule of Bashar al-Assad of Syria. A popular local outpouring of resentment against his regime was coopted and inflamed by hardline Sunni extremists, many of these being veterans of the Iraq War or younger generations of recuits. This escalated into a full civil war, which quickly turned into a proxy battle for control over Syria, which heretofore had been a Russian proxy state, with a large air base. While the United States has been arming anti-Assad (who also are notably anti-American) forces, Russia has been targeting civilian population centers (with both conventional and chemical weapons) to first create then inflame the Syrian refugee crisis, driving political instability first throughout Turkey then the EU - both sides seeking to ratchet up the pressure on terms favorable to them. The tl;dr is a civil war turned proxy war is creating some of the most acute human suffering present in our world today.
    - liopleurodon 9y ago
      "Russia has been targeting civilian population centers (with both conventional and chemical weapons)" citation needed
      - tudorw 9y ago
        http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/27/499578650/dozens-dead-in-what-unicef-calls-one-of-the-worst-school-bombings-in-syrias-war http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/27/499578650/... "This year, UNICEF "said it has verified at least 38 attacks on schools around Syria, whether in government-held areas or rebel-controlled territory. Before Wednesday's attack, 32 children were killed in 2016 in attacks on schools," as the group's regional chief of communication, Juliette Touma, told The Associated Press. "A total of 60 attacks were recorded on schools in 2015," she told the AP, adding that 1 in 3 schools in the country have been rendered unusable by the conflict." "At least 96 children have been killed and 223 injured in eastern Aleppo in the past week, UNICEF said Thursday, with some left to die on the floor of hospitals due to lack of medical supplies. Syrian and Russian forces have been bombarding rebel-held areas of the city for five straight days in what has been described as the most intense bombing campaign to hit the city since the war in Syria started six years ago." https://news.vice.com/article/un-slams-russia-syria-for-killing-children-in-aleppo https://news.vice.com/article/un-slams-russia-syria-for-kill...
  - notfromhere 9y ago
    It's western policy to prevent any unified arab state to emerge from the middle east. ...not that the middle east needs the help dividing itself, but a pan-arab superstate would probably be bad news bears for the Med region
  - X86BSD 9y ago
    This is the reason Syria was destabilized by the US. Natural gas to Europe. Period. This is not about Assad, the US is simply demonizing him to justify their destruction of another secular soverign country. Russia supplies Europe with almost all of its natural gas. This is unacceptable to the west. What the west wants is to drag nat gas up from Qatar through Syria to the med and north into Europe breaking Russia's strangle hold on their nat gas. The problem? Assad wouldn't play ball. He refused to allow the pipeline to go through Syria. That made him a target the US had to demonize with fictitious stories of savagery he committed against his people just like with every other leader in the Middle East the US murdered. So the US government declared him a savage animal and wanted to overthrow him. The problem? Russia was Assad's ally. And they refused to allow that to happen. They have deep ties with Assad. As well as naval bases in Syria. So that resulted in a proxy war. The US aiding, arming, and training savage barbaric monsters aka Isis, aka Islamic barbarians to fight for them to take over Syria. And the Russians, who actually are on the right side, who are supporting Assad and fighting these monsters. This is all about energy folks. Natural gas and Russia's strangle hold on europes nat gas supply. When you understand this, the level of barbarism the US is engaging in puts the fedgov in a whole new level of depravity in most people's eyes.
    - alexandercrohde 9y ago
      do you have any sources for these claims?
      - pehtis 9y ago
        http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-10/competing-gas-pipelines-are-fueling-syrian-war-migrant-crisis http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-10/competing-gas-pipel...
        knowaveragejoe 9y ago
        Any better sources? ZH is notoriously sensationalist and often completely wrong.
      - zacurry 9y ago
hammock 9y ago
The same documents confirm the CIA has been arming Al Qaeda in Syria. Scroll down to the last map[1] which shows CIA weapons went directly to Idlib province (northwest section in green) and the Golan border region (south). Both of these areas were and continue to be occupied by Al Qaeda. Idlib specifically is where genocidal cleansing of religious minorities was confirmed to be conducted by Al Qaeda "rebels" directly assisted by CIA weapons.[2] [1]https://www.occrp.org/assets/makingakilling/MapOfSyriaIraq.png https://www.occrp.org/assets/makingakilling/MapOfSyriaIraq.p... [2]https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2016-01-19/assad-has-it-his-way https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2016-01-19/ass...
- jdhn 9y ago
  At this point, is anybody surprised by this? It's quite clear that when it comes to sponsoring groups in the Middle East, we just throw money/weapons at anyone, no matter who they are.
  - wavefunction 9y ago
    When you have someone like Senator John McCain claim that "we can tell the bad guys from the good guys" while being photographed on his photo op tour of Syria with known mass murderers of civilians, you had to know these folks don't know what they're talking about.
    - mixmastamyk 9y ago
      We understand that bureaucrats and their institutions are quite inept when tasked with delivering the mail, for example. But they often get a pass with international relations. Might be the bikeshed effect in action.
  - djsumdog 9y ago
    I've been saying this for years. "The CIA created ISIS. Not just funded, but created the situation where such organizations could come up." I constantly get criticized for this. "No, of course America isn't funding ISIS. We're fighting them." I then talk about The Bay of Pigs, the 1973 Coupe in Chile, Iranian Contras, The School of the Americas ... a criminal rap sheet that shows a pattern of sociopathhy by the US government -- and Syria fits that pattern: arm ISIS, bomb Assad and then bomb ISIS too .. we're creating and fighting all the wars. I'm not surprised, but the majority of Americas would be .. if this appeared on CNN, NPR or a major media outlet. Otherwise it's "fake news." When sales for 1984 went up after the Trump election, I was greatly disheartened. It meant the current administration had commandeered the minds of people to think that now was the age of Orwell, when in reality, we've been in 1984 long before I was born and long before my parents were born.
baursak 9y ago
The US is literally sponsoring Al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Syria to fuel the proxy war against Russia and Iran and to hinder their fight against ISIS and other jihadi groups. It's 1980s all over again and a 16th anniversary of 9/11. No lessons learned.
- travmatt 9y ago
  So all Russia and Iran are doing is just trying to defend against ISIS? That's certainly one interpretation I suppose.
  - baursak 9y ago
    At this point, they are trying to support a secular and a relatively liberal (relative to an alternative) regime against ISIS and other jihadis, yes. To see an alternative, take a look at Libya after Gaddafi where there are literally slave markets in 2017.
    - Cyph0n 9y ago
      "At this point" being the key phrase here. That wasn't their goal when they came in to back Syria: the goal was to clamp down on the uprising and its armed resistance. Of course, things are more complicated now. Oh definitely, Assad is liberal and secular, to the point where he operates countless secret torture prisons and has forcibly disappeared tens of thousands of his citizens. Use the term "lesser of evils" if you must. But relatively liberal? Absolutely not.
      - toyg 9y ago
        "Relatively" implies "to something ", in this case (I would assume) either to middle-age-style religious warlords (Daesh et al) or absolutist monarchies built around religious rule (Iran, Saudi). So yeah, I'd say Assad is "relatively liberal" by Middle-Eastern standards - a place where almost every state has some secret police, an absolutist ruler, and no separation of church and state.
hLHEDuYtSh 9y ago
This article makes it sound like the program is ongoing, but I am not sure how to reconcile this with stories like this, which claim that the program has been cancelled: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-ends-covert-cia-program-to-arm-anti-assad-rebels-in-syria-a-move-sought-by-moscow/2017/07/19/b6821a62-6beb-11e7-96ab-5f38140b38cc_story.html?utm_term=.6759fb36cb24 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump... Does anyone have insight here?
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago
  See Iran Contra. Congress made it illegal to use tax payer $ to fund Nicaraguan terrorists, so the MIC created a clandestine workaround. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Contra_affair https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Contra_affair
- PeachPlum 9y ago
  The WaPo is not an independent reporting body, its parent group Amazon, has juicy contracts from the CIA, you can trust nothing it prints.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    Amazon is not WaPo’s parent; Bezos owns it independently of Amazon.
    - jaxytee 9y ago
      Still a conflict of interest.
      - knowaveragejoe 9y ago
        If you're a conspiracy theorist, sure. Why would WaPo write negatively about the CIA if that were the case?
        anotherbrownguy 9y ago
flachsechs 9y ago
if anyone hasn't seen the movie "lord of war" with nic cage, i highly recommend it. it deals with these kinds of issues.
throw2016 9y ago
There is no way for a group like ISIS to exist in the modern world without support from a major power. The dichotomy of arming and supporting extremists and those who support global extremism like SA on one side while accelerating surveillance programs at home to protect yourself from the same extremists is diabolical, something a truly despotic state can pull off. They would have to have near complete control or a pliant media, civil institutions, academia and a passive citizenry to pull it off.
gras 9y ago
I guess it makes sense, seeing how Israel is known to have supported Al-Qaeda by taking care of wounded soldiers in the border zone. I thought it was strange that Israel supported a group that the US was officially fighting, but I wrote it off as part of Israel's policy of destabilizing its neighbors. Could someone explain to me why Al Qaeda and ISIS are aligned with Israel's interests? I don't understand why they like these groups, they are very anti-Zionist, anti-American and anti-Semitic. Is it because they fuel the global arms trade? Because they destabilize the region? Because they scare Jews into moving to Israel? Is it because they are useful idiots, like the Nazi's and Antifa are? Or is there another way to see this?
- Top19 9y ago
  So you actually hit on the correct answer in your response. According to George Friedman, the futurist, it is "to destabilize the region". That might not be the original goal of any mission the US does, but the fact remains, if the US goes into an area and really help a population, we win. If the region is destabilized such as crazy infighting occurs that prevents people coming together and such, the US also wins. A good example is the often observed fact that "Napoleon was the best thing to have ever happened to the British". Europe was very close to aligning against Britain, and dragging them into a revolutionary war ala the US, but at the last minute a new bad guy appeared, the French, whose energy the other European powers poured themselves into.
  - gras 9y ago
    How would Israel benefit from a stable Middle-East? I'm of the impression that Israel would want perpetual instability in order to prevent the Arabs from uniting and destroying the Jewish ethnostate, and that's why they orchestrated the war on terror. Funny that you mention Napoleon, he was allegedly funded by the Rothschild banker family as were the British; they funded both sides. It seems to me that Israel is doing the same thing now. One barricade to discussing this seems to be the word "antisemitism". Right now antisemitism is a very broad term which includes anti-Zionism, being critical of Israel, disliking people for being Jewish of race, culture, ethnicity or religion, and goes up all the way to "gas the kikes". It even includes things like talking about "blood libel", which is a misleading term in itself because there have been proven cases of Jews killing goyim for ritual sacrifices. I'm personally against discriminating on the basis of race or ethnicity, but I deplore the idea of any culture or religion being above critique. If a culture or religion tries to tell me I can't talk about them because they are so oppressed, while they are themselves disproportionately wealthy, influential and perhaps also intelligent... that's not being oppressed, that's a manipulation tactic only afforded by those already in power. Lately I've been trying to understand the relation between Israel, US foreign policy, Zionism, Marxism, feminism, the concept of "isms", and the Jewish faith, especially the Talmudic branch. It's a... noisy thing to research, lots of angles, ill-defined terms, lots of misinformation going around. Forgive me if I got something obviously wrong. If you think my beliefs are inaccurate on any of this stuff, please help me develop them by helping me to some better sources of information (or perhaps techniques on better historic research). It's hard researching this and my time is limited.
brndnmtthws 9y ago
So does paying taxes in the US qualify as funding terrorism?
meri_dian 9y ago
This is a damned if we do damned if we don't sort of situation. People are horrified by Assad's regime, so the US is called to take action. Arming rebels is one way it has taken action. Unfortunately in a situation as complex as Syria some of those weapons inevitably fall into the hands of rebels groups we do not want to be associating with. On the other hand if the US were to do nothing, people would decry the injustice of such a powerful nation ignoring - tacitly accepting - the mass murder of civilians. There are no good answers here. Edit: Any country, not just the US, that tried to get involved in foreign affairs to the degree that the US has would inevitably have negative outcomes. Involving oneself in messy situations usually leads to messy conclusions.
- david927 9y ago
  Rubbish. The US needs to curb its military, worldwide.
  - meri_dian 9y ago
    The US is a major reason for the lasting peace among developed nations. A multi-polar world means war.
    - mengibar10 9y ago
      How do you explain fabricating evidence to invade a sovereign country within that context?
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > The US is a major reason for the lasting peace among developed nations. The Soviet Union was a bigger reason, with Russia (with an assist from al-Qaeda/ISIS) stepping in to take their place not long after the USSR fell. There's been peace among the First World countries because they are united in an alliance with common enemies. The US has been important in forming the alliance, sure, but the enemies were the real key.
- mythrwy 9y ago
  It's not people are horrified by Assad's regime at all. That's just a line to sell a war in newspapers. There are much much worse governments than Assad in the world. Some are nominally our friends. Some we just ignore because they aren't in strategically important locations or don't have resources of interest. I thought it was commonly understood at this point that "spreading democracy and human liberty" translated to "strategic significance". Which I'd feel a lot better about if they just came out and said. I might even support the campaigns if a good argument were made. But being deceived leaves a bad taste in the mouth and you start not trusting.
danso 9y ago
I doubt I would have read this article (through HN) if the submitter hadn't added "Falsifies End User Documents" to the submission title (actual title of the article is "Revealed: The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2 Billion on Soviet-Style Arms for Syrian Rebels"). So I'm glad that technical detail was emphasized, because a lot of this story deals with technicalities. It's not a secret that the Pentagon spends hundreds of millions to fund rebel groups -- as the article points out, they put out press releases and official PowerPoints about it. But what is interesting is the obfuscation of details, such as the special ops "end-user certificate" which is so vaguely worded that it basically implies the Pentagon could transfer weapons to anyone it feels like. "NATO allies and partners" instead of "Republic of Iraq", for instance. I loved the example of one of the publicly-available arms contracts being altered after reporters sent questions; even in something as big as arms deals and proxy wars, someone in the bureaucracy will fuck up the paperwork: https://www.occrp.org/assets/makingakilling/pentagon-procurement-database.png https://www.occrp.org/assets/makingakilling/pentagon-procure...
- rapeofthelocke 9y ago
  Thank you. That was the point of my submission. The importance of the article is not so much that the US is funding weapons to Syria (as many commenters have said, that's unsurprising); the key point here is that they are using nefarious means to do it, and thereby undermining international law and control mechanisms such as the UN Arms Trade Treaty.
ssijak 9y ago
Saddest thing is that most Americans are brainwashed by one sided mass media to think that USA is doing good and righteous deeds. Sad truth is that USA is for a century producing countless wars for its own interest, in which millions of inosent people died and left many regions in ruin and in bad relationships to its neighbors. Btw, i witnessed two of those pointless wars. Last time when as a kid in a capitol of Europe, Belgrade, bombs and tomahawks were falling on my city. Painfully pointless and sad.
- brndnmtthws 9y ago
  The winners will always have the privilege of rewriting history to make themselves look righteous. If Germany had won WWII, it would be the same thing except with a different set of ruling elites. Perhaps we need to consider that governments as they exist today do not work, especially when power is held in the hands of so few people. The US congress (which has the power to kill people) is only made up of 100 senators, which is supposed to represent the views of ~325 million people. Doesn't that seem a little fishy? In the age of the internet, why can't everyone with a computer or cell phone participate in policy making?
Asdfbla 9y ago
It always surprises me that those intelligence agencies obviously think this is worth it, considering they certainly must be aware of all the potential drawbacks that occur when you fuel war and instability like that. They must operate with totally different views of what constitute "good" and "bad" outcomes of the whole conflict. I guess you can justify all of that by just being cynical enough, but I'd like it if the military (at least in democratic countries) had to make their rationale for heating up conflicts transparent to the civilian world.
- anotherbrownguy 9y ago
  It's not very surprising. It's very simple. They serve people who benefit as long as there is conflict. If there is conflict: - there will be multiple groups who want to defeat each other - you can sell weapons to the richest of those groups - you can sell weapons to third party governments (who use money collected forcefully from the public) to "fix the problems" caused by the conflict
forapurpose 9y ago
It's a valuable story to tell, but I wouldn't leap to any conclusions: Why shouldn't the Pentagon be arming allies in the Syrian civil war? Speaking very generally, I hope they do support those resisting Assad, Iran, and Russia. There is nothing necessarily nefarious in arming allies, and it's better than sending your own people to fight and die. However, I'm surprised it's going on: First, the Obama administration was accused of being too cautious in arming anyone, not only in Syria but in Ukraine. (I read that they studied the issue, and concluded that the tactic of arming insurgents rarely worked out well, and often resulted in the arms falling into the wrong hands. I don't know how much that study influenced their decisions, however.) Obama was in office until January, so Trump would only have had a few months to setup and execute this multi-billion dollar program, including procurement, international logistics, and more. Second, the Trump administration has announced they are abandoning the rebels, except when they are fighting ISIL, and accommodating Assad and the Russians (and as a result, their ally the Iranians). So under what and whose policy are the Syrian rebels being armed?
VMG 9y ago
Aaaand the story is pushed down: https://i.imgur.com/TTTvpPy.png https://i.imgur.com/TTTvpPy.png
FrojoS 9y ago
Several comments here blame profits of the military-industrial complex as motivation for these arm exports, yet these weapons are produced in former USSR countries not in the US. I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned here yet, since it's even in the title of the article. Of course, there are still profits for the US military-industrial complex. For instance the article states that "US-based Alliant Techsystems Operations" has a contract for buying these weapons from countries like Bulgaria. In addition, one can cynically assume that heating up the conflict will increase demand for US involvement and subsequent increase demand for US weapons. Still, I find it interesting, that after initially arming rebels with US weapons, the US switched to soviet-style weapons. According to the article, the rebels "were already using and familiar with" the soviet-style weapons. I would say that makes sense, but would hardly be a deal breaker if your main motivation was selling US weapons. This is not meant to defend US policies, but I think their geopolitical motivations are much more important than mere profit seeking and corruption. By the way, this seems to be a very well researched article, thanks for the submission @rapeofthelocke.
- rapeofthelocke 9y ago
  Pleasure. Keep following OCCRP: they are the world's best kept secret in investigative reporting.
throwawayscw 9y ago
One of the stipulations for supplying these militas with BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missile launchers is to upload a video of them shooting their target to youtube. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-71_TOW#2011:_Syrian_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-71_TOW#2011:_Syrian_Civil_... https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/search?q=syria+tow&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/search?q=syria+tow&re...

r721 9y ago

The better link is the whole project page: https://www.occrp.org/en/makingakilling/ https://www.occrp.org/en/makingakilling/ >Since the outbreak of war in Syria, weapons from Central and Eastern Europe have flooded the conflict zone through two distinct pipelines – one sponsored by Saudi Arabia and coordinated by the CIA, and the other funded and directed by the Pentagon. >A series of investigations by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) have brought to light these multi-billion-dollar weapons deliveries -- exposing the misleading and potentially illegal documents on which they rely, the shady dealers at its heart of the trade, and the governments that have profited from the war.

skrebbel 9y ago
Anyone got a tl;dr about the motive behind all this? What does the US government gain by flooding the middle East with weapons?
- stefantalpalaru 9y ago
  > What does the US government gain by flooding the middle East with weapons? A bigger market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military–industrial_complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military–industrial_complex
- misja111 9y ago
  The war in Syria is a proxy for a battle between two countries: Iran on the one side, which supports Assad's regime, and Saudi Arabia on the other side, which supports the Sunnite rebel groups ISIS and Al Qaida. Saudi Arabia is an ally of the US and Iran an enemy, so therefore the US supports the rebel groups that fight Assad's regime. What's more, US's close ally Israel is right at the border of Syria and Israel is a long time enemy of Iran as well.
  - Quarrelsome 9y ago
    Assad is also Russia, that's a pretty big deal. Its worth noting how this conflict also draws in people linked to Hamas and Hezbollah. Its suspected that part of ISIS's emergence was due to Turkey as they expanded towards the Kurds (a key demographic that Turkey is keen on subduing) so it really is a clusterfuck before we even start to consider US/Russian involvement.
    - travmatt 9y ago
      Syria is also home to a large Russian airbase and contains strategically/economically important warm water ports - Syria is a very valuable Russian ally, probably why the prospect destroying that relationship is so enticing.
- vermontdevil 9y ago
  Proxy war against Russia and Iran.
- mfukar 9y ago
  The answers to the question "what is there to gain?" are fairly obvious, don't you think?
  - skrebbel 9y ago
    No, otherwise I wouldn't ask.
- banned1 9y ago
  Funds?
- phyller 9y ago
  The article says they are theoretically only arming groups that are fighting against ISIS. I'm pretty sure if they can defeat them on the ground without committing American troops (airstrikes can only do so much) and only spending $1 billion dollars they are going to consider that a big win. The sentiment of this question explains why even further. ISIS does very bad stuff and is a major problem, and we can all wonder why the west doesn't do more to stop them because they clearly have the ability to do so. But then the moment the US gets really involved, everyone is going to shift blame to them for everything. I don't condone secretive actions like this myself, but considering the US's global influence and capability, if they weren't doing something about ISIS the question could easily be restated "What does the US government gain by allowing extremists to rape and pillage the middle east?"
  - raverbashing 9y ago
    "only arming groups that are fighting against ISIS" Yeah, a lot of "moderate rebels" (that are slightly less theocratic than ISIS)
    - phyller 9y ago
      Yea. I think every employee of a 3 letter agency should be required to write a scholarly paper on the term "blowback" and have it peer reviewed before they get to spend any money.
    - tboyd47 9y ago
      Unfortunately, the US military has transferred the Cold War strategy of "an enemy of my enemy is my friend" to radical pseudo-Islamic militant groups. That's not going to work so well because you might have two groups that have exactly the same beliefs except they gave allegiance to a different imam so they consider each other to be kuffar.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    The US already has troops on the ground, at least a few members of the special forces are working with the SDF/YPG on the front lines.
- cfv 9y ago
  Shitting on Russia's projection of power?
- travmatt 9y ago
  Broadly, America has traditionally supported Sunni leaning states, most notably Saudi Arabia. Russia has traditionally supported Shia Iran, and both the powers are competing for influence within the region. In the course of the Arab Spring, the legitimacy of many ME leaders/dictators was questioned, among the most notable of these was the rule of Bashar al-Assad of Syria. A popular local outpouring of resentment against his regime was coopted and inflamed by hardline Sunni extremists, many of these being veterans of the Iraq War or younger generations of recuits. This escalated into a full civil war, which quickly turned into a proxy battle for control over Syria, which heretofore had been a Russian proxy state, with a large air base. While the United States has been arming anti-Assad (who also are notably anti-American) forces, Russia has been targeting civilian population centers (with both conventional and chemical weapons) to first create then inflame the Syrian refugee crisis, driving political instability first throughout Turkey then the EU - both sides seeking to ratchet up the pressure on terms favorable to them. The tl;dr is a civil war turned proxy war is creating some of the most acute human suffering present in our world today.
  - liopleurodon 9y ago
    "Russia has been targeting civilian population centers (with both conventional and chemical weapons)" citation needed
    - tudorw 9y ago
      http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/27/499578650/dozens-dead-in-what-unicef-calls-one-of-the-worst-school-bombings-in-syrias-war http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/27/499578650/... "This year, UNICEF "said it has verified at least 38 attacks on schools around Syria, whether in government-held areas or rebel-controlled territory. Before Wednesday's attack, 32 children were killed in 2016 in attacks on schools," as the group's regional chief of communication, Juliette Touma, told The Associated Press. "A total of 60 attacks were recorded on schools in 2015," she told the AP, adding that 1 in 3 schools in the country have been rendered unusable by the conflict." "At least 96 children have been killed and 223 injured in eastern Aleppo in the past week, UNICEF said Thursday, with some left to die on the floor of hospitals due to lack of medical supplies. Syrian and Russian forces have been bombarding rebel-held areas of the city for five straight days in what has been described as the most intense bombing campaign to hit the city since the war in Syria started six years ago." https://news.vice.com/article/un-slams-russia-syria-for-killing-children-in-aleppo https://news.vice.com/article/un-slams-russia-syria-for-kill...
- notfromhere 9y ago
  It's western policy to prevent any unified arab state to emerge from the middle east. ...not that the middle east needs the help dividing itself, but a pan-arab superstate would probably be bad news bears for the Med region
- X86BSD 9y ago
  This is the reason Syria was destabilized by the US. Natural gas to Europe. Period. This is not about Assad, the US is simply demonizing him to justify their destruction of another secular soverign country. Russia supplies Europe with almost all of its natural gas. This is unacceptable to the west. What the west wants is to drag nat gas up from Qatar through Syria to the med and north into Europe breaking Russia's strangle hold on their nat gas. The problem? Assad wouldn't play ball. He refused to allow the pipeline to go through Syria. That made him a target the US had to demonize with fictitious stories of savagery he committed against his people just like with every other leader in the Middle East the US murdered. So the US government declared him a savage animal and wanted to overthrow him. The problem? Russia was Assad's ally. And they refused to allow that to happen. They have deep ties with Assad. As well as naval bases in Syria. So that resulted in a proxy war. The US aiding, arming, and training savage barbaric monsters aka Isis, aka Islamic barbarians to fight for them to take over Syria. And the Russians, who actually are on the right side, who are supporting Assad and fighting these monsters. This is all about energy folks. Natural gas and Russia's strangle hold on europes nat gas supply. When you understand this, the level of barbarism the US is engaging in puts the fedgov in a whole new level of depravity in most people's eyes.
  - alexandercrohde 9y ago
    do you have any sources for these claims?
    - pehtis 9y ago
      http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-10/competing-gas-pipelines-are-fueling-syrian-war-migrant-crisis http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-10/competing-gas-pipel...
      - knowaveragejoe 9y ago
        Any better sources? ZH is notoriously sensationalist and often completely wrong.
    - zacurry 9y ago

hammock 9y ago

The same documents confirm the CIA has been arming Al Qaeda in Syria. Scroll down to the last map[1] which shows CIA weapons went directly to Idlib province (northwest section in green) and the Golan border region (south). Both of these areas were and continue to be occupied by Al Qaeda. Idlib specifically is where genocidal cleansing of religious minorities was confirmed to be conducted by Al Qaeda "rebels" directly assisted by CIA weapons.[2] [1]https://www.occrp.org/assets/makingakilling/MapOfSyriaIraq.png https://www.occrp.org/assets/makingakilling/MapOfSyriaIraq.p... [2]https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2016-01-19/assad-has-it-his-way https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2016-01-19/ass...

jdhn 9y ago
At this point, is anybody surprised by this? It's quite clear that when it comes to sponsoring groups in the Middle East, we just throw money/weapons at anyone, no matter who they are.
- wavefunction 9y ago
  When you have someone like Senator John McCain claim that "we can tell the bad guys from the good guys" while being photographed on his photo op tour of Syria with known mass murderers of civilians, you had to know these folks don't know what they're talking about.
  - mixmastamyk 9y ago
    We understand that bureaucrats and their institutions are quite inept when tasked with delivering the mail, for example. But they often get a pass with international relations. Might be the bikeshed effect in action.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  I've been saying this for years. "The CIA created ISIS. Not just funded, but created the situation where such organizations could come up." I constantly get criticized for this. "No, of course America isn't funding ISIS. We're fighting them." I then talk about The Bay of Pigs, the 1973 Coupe in Chile, Iranian Contras, The School of the Americas ... a criminal rap sheet that shows a pattern of sociopathhy by the US government -- and Syria fits that pattern: arm ISIS, bomb Assad and then bomb ISIS too .. we're creating and fighting all the wars. I'm not surprised, but the majority of Americas would be .. if this appeared on CNN, NPR or a major media outlet. Otherwise it's "fake news." When sales for 1984 went up after the Trump election, I was greatly disheartened. It meant the current administration had commandeered the minds of people to think that now was the age of Orwell, when in reality, we've been in 1984 long before I was born and long before my parents were born.

baursak 9y ago

The US is literally sponsoring Al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Syria to fuel the proxy war against Russia and Iran and to hinder their fight against ISIS and other jihadi groups. It's 1980s all over again and a 16th anniversary of 9/11. No lessons learned.

travmatt 9y ago
So all Russia and Iran are doing is just trying to defend against ISIS? That's certainly one interpretation I suppose.
- baursak 9y ago
  At this point, they are trying to support a secular and a relatively liberal (relative to an alternative) regime against ISIS and other jihadis, yes. To see an alternative, take a look at Libya after Gaddafi where there are literally slave markets in 2017.
  - Cyph0n 9y ago
    "At this point" being the key phrase here. That wasn't their goal when they came in to back Syria: the goal was to clamp down on the uprising and its armed resistance. Of course, things are more complicated now. Oh definitely, Assad is liberal and secular, to the point where he operates countless secret torture prisons and has forcibly disappeared tens of thousands of his citizens. Use the term "lesser of evils" if you must. But relatively liberal? Absolutely not.
    - toyg 9y ago
      "Relatively" implies "to something ", in this case (I would assume) either to middle-age-style religious warlords (Daesh et al) or absolutist monarchies built around religious rule (Iran, Saudi). So yeah, I'd say Assad is "relatively liberal" by Middle-Eastern standards - a place where almost every state has some secret police, an absolutist ruler, and no separation of church and state.

hLHEDuYtSh 9y ago

This article makes it sound like the program is ongoing, but I am not sure how to reconcile this with stories like this, which claim that the program has been cancelled: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-ends-covert-cia-program-to-arm-anti-assad-rebels-in-syria-a-move-sought-by-moscow/2017/07/19/b6821a62-6beb-11e7-96ab-5f38140b38cc_story.html?utm_term=.6759fb36cb24 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump... Does anyone have insight here?

wu-ikkyu 9y ago
See Iran Contra. Congress made it illegal to use tax payer $ to fund Nicaraguan terrorists, so the MIC created a clandestine workaround. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Contra_affair https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Contra_affair
PeachPlum 9y ago
The WaPo is not an independent reporting body, its parent group Amazon, has juicy contracts from the CIA, you can trust nothing it prints.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  Amazon is not WaPo’s parent; Bezos owns it independently of Amazon.
  - jaxytee 9y ago
    Still a conflict of interest.
    - knowaveragejoe 9y ago
      If you're a conspiracy theorist, sure. Why would WaPo write negatively about the CIA if that were the case?
      - anotherbrownguy 9y ago

flachsechs 9y ago

if anyone hasn't seen the movie "lord of war" with nic cage, i highly recommend it. it deals with these kinds of issues.

throw2016 9y ago

There is no way for a group like ISIS to exist in the modern world without support from a major power. The dichotomy of arming and supporting extremists and those who support global extremism like SA on one side while accelerating surveillance programs at home to protect yourself from the same extremists is diabolical, something a truly despotic state can pull off. They would have to have near complete control or a pliant media, civil institutions, academia and a passive citizenry to pull it off.

gras 9y ago

I guess it makes sense, seeing how Israel is known to have supported Al-Qaeda by taking care of wounded soldiers in the border zone. I thought it was strange that Israel supported a group that the US was officially fighting, but I wrote it off as part of Israel's policy of destabilizing its neighbors. Could someone explain to me why Al Qaeda and ISIS are aligned with Israel's interests? I don't understand why they like these groups, they are very anti-Zionist, anti-American and anti-Semitic. Is it because they fuel the global arms trade? Because they destabilize the region? Because they scare Jews into moving to Israel? Is it because they are useful idiots, like the Nazi's and Antifa are? Or is there another way to see this?

Top19 9y ago
So you actually hit on the correct answer in your response. According to George Friedman, the futurist, it is "to destabilize the region". That might not be the original goal of any mission the US does, but the fact remains, if the US goes into an area and really help a population, we win. If the region is destabilized such as crazy infighting occurs that prevents people coming together and such, the US also wins. A good example is the often observed fact that "Napoleon was the best thing to have ever happened to the British". Europe was very close to aligning against Britain, and dragging them into a revolutionary war ala the US, but at the last minute a new bad guy appeared, the French, whose energy the other European powers poured themselves into.
- gras 9y ago
  How would Israel benefit from a stable Middle-East? I'm of the impression that Israel would want perpetual instability in order to prevent the Arabs from uniting and destroying the Jewish ethnostate, and that's why they orchestrated the war on terror. Funny that you mention Napoleon, he was allegedly funded by the Rothschild banker family as were the British; they funded both sides. It seems to me that Israel is doing the same thing now. One barricade to discussing this seems to be the word "antisemitism". Right now antisemitism is a very broad term which includes anti-Zionism, being critical of Israel, disliking people for being Jewish of race, culture, ethnicity or religion, and goes up all the way to "gas the kikes". It even includes things like talking about "blood libel", which is a misleading term in itself because there have been proven cases of Jews killing goyim for ritual sacrifices. I'm personally against discriminating on the basis of race or ethnicity, but I deplore the idea of any culture or religion being above critique. If a culture or religion tries to tell me I can't talk about them because they are so oppressed, while they are themselves disproportionately wealthy, influential and perhaps also intelligent... that's not being oppressed, that's a manipulation tactic only afforded by those already in power. Lately I've been trying to understand the relation between Israel, US foreign policy, Zionism, Marxism, feminism, the concept of "isms", and the Jewish faith, especially the Talmudic branch. It's a... noisy thing to research, lots of angles, ill-defined terms, lots of misinformation going around. Forgive me if I got something obviously wrong. If you think my beliefs are inaccurate on any of this stuff, please help me develop them by helping me to some better sources of information (or perhaps techniques on better historic research). It's hard researching this and my time is limited.

brndnmtthws 9y ago

So does paying taxes in the US qualify as funding terrorism?

meri_dian 9y ago

This is a damned if we do damned if we don't sort of situation. People are horrified by Assad's regime, so the US is called to take action. Arming rebels is one way it has taken action. Unfortunately in a situation as complex as Syria some of those weapons inevitably fall into the hands of rebels groups we do not want to be associating with. On the other hand if the US were to do nothing, people would decry the injustice of such a powerful nation ignoring - tacitly accepting - the mass murder of civilians. There are no good answers here. Edit: Any country, not just the US, that tried to get involved in foreign affairs to the degree that the US has would inevitably have negative outcomes. Involving oneself in messy situations usually leads to messy conclusions.

david927 9y ago
Rubbish. The US needs to curb its military, worldwide.
- meri_dian 9y ago
  The US is a major reason for the lasting peace among developed nations. A multi-polar world means war.
  - mengibar10 9y ago
    How do you explain fabricating evidence to invade a sovereign country within that context?
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > The US is a major reason for the lasting peace among developed nations. The Soviet Union was a bigger reason, with Russia (with an assist from al-Qaeda/ISIS) stepping in to take their place not long after the USSR fell. There's been peace among the First World countries because they are united in an alliance with common enemies. The US has been important in forming the alliance, sure, but the enemies were the real key.
mythrwy 9y ago
It's not people are horrified by Assad's regime at all. That's just a line to sell a war in newspapers. There are much much worse governments than Assad in the world. Some are nominally our friends. Some we just ignore because they aren't in strategically important locations or don't have resources of interest. I thought it was commonly understood at this point that "spreading democracy and human liberty" translated to "strategic significance". Which I'd feel a lot better about if they just came out and said. I might even support the campaigns if a good argument were made. But being deceived leaves a bad taste in the mouth and you start not trusting.

danso 9y ago

I doubt I would have read this article (through HN) if the submitter hadn't added "Falsifies End User Documents" to the submission title (actual title of the article is "Revealed: The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2 Billion on Soviet-Style Arms for Syrian Rebels"). So I'm glad that technical detail was emphasized, because a lot of this story deals with technicalities. It's not a secret that the Pentagon spends hundreds of millions to fund rebel groups -- as the article points out, they put out press releases and official PowerPoints about it. But what is interesting is the obfuscation of details, such as the special ops "end-user certificate" which is so vaguely worded that it basically implies the Pentagon could transfer weapons to anyone it feels like. "NATO allies and partners" instead of "Republic of Iraq", for instance. I loved the example of one of the publicly-available arms contracts being altered after reporters sent questions; even in something as big as arms deals and proxy wars, someone in the bureaucracy will fuck up the paperwork: https://www.occrp.org/assets/makingakilling/pentagon-procurement-database.png https://www.occrp.org/assets/makingakilling/pentagon-procure...

rapeofthelocke 9y ago
Thank you. That was the point of my submission. The importance of the article is not so much that the US is funding weapons to Syria (as many commenters have said, that's unsurprising); the key point here is that they are using nefarious means to do it, and thereby undermining international law and control mechanisms such as the UN Arms Trade Treaty.

ssijak 9y ago

Saddest thing is that most Americans are brainwashed by one sided mass media to think that USA is doing good and righteous deeds. Sad truth is that USA is for a century producing countless wars for its own interest, in which millions of inosent people died and left many regions in ruin and in bad relationships to its neighbors. Btw, i witnessed two of those pointless wars. Last time when as a kid in a capitol of Europe, Belgrade, bombs and tomahawks were falling on my city. Painfully pointless and sad.

brndnmtthws 9y ago
The winners will always have the privilege of rewriting history to make themselves look righteous. If Germany had won WWII, it would be the same thing except with a different set of ruling elites. Perhaps we need to consider that governments as they exist today do not work, especially when power is held in the hands of so few people. The US congress (which has the power to kill people) is only made up of 100 senators, which is supposed to represent the views of ~325 million people. Doesn't that seem a little fishy? In the age of the internet, why can't everyone with a computer or cell phone participate in policy making?

Asdfbla 9y ago

It always surprises me that those intelligence agencies obviously think this is worth it, considering they certainly must be aware of all the potential drawbacks that occur when you fuel war and instability like that. They must operate with totally different views of what constitute "good" and "bad" outcomes of the whole conflict. I guess you can justify all of that by just being cynical enough, but I'd like it if the military (at least in democratic countries) had to make their rationale for heating up conflicts transparent to the civilian world.

anotherbrownguy 9y ago
It's not very surprising. It's very simple. They serve people who benefit as long as there is conflict. If there is conflict: - there will be multiple groups who want to defeat each other - you can sell weapons to the richest of those groups - you can sell weapons to third party governments (who use money collected forcefully from the public) to "fix the problems" caused by the conflict

forapurpose 9y ago

It's a valuable story to tell, but I wouldn't leap to any conclusions: Why shouldn't the Pentagon be arming allies in the Syrian civil war? Speaking very generally, I hope they do support those resisting Assad, Iran, and Russia. There is nothing necessarily nefarious in arming allies, and it's better than sending your own people to fight and die. However, I'm surprised it's going on: First, the Obama administration was accused of being too cautious in arming anyone, not only in Syria but in Ukraine. (I read that they studied the issue, and concluded that the tactic of arming insurgents rarely worked out well, and often resulted in the arms falling into the wrong hands. I don't know how much that study influenced their decisions, however.) Obama was in office until January, so Trump would only have had a few months to setup and execute this multi-billion dollar program, including procurement, international logistics, and more. Second, the Trump administration has announced they are abandoning the rebels, except when they are fighting ISIL, and accommodating Assad and the Russians (and as a result, their ally the Iranians). So under what and whose policy are the Syrian rebels being armed?

VMG 9y ago

Aaaand the story is pushed down: https://i.imgur.com/TTTvpPy.png https://i.imgur.com/TTTvpPy.png

FrojoS 9y ago

Several comments here blame profits of the military-industrial complex as motivation for these arm exports, yet these weapons are produced in former USSR countries not in the US. I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned here yet, since it's even in the title of the article. Of course, there are still profits for the US military-industrial complex. For instance the article states that "US-based Alliant Techsystems Operations" has a contract for buying these weapons from countries like Bulgaria. In addition, one can cynically assume that heating up the conflict will increase demand for US involvement and subsequent increase demand for US weapons. Still, I find it interesting, that after initially arming rebels with US weapons, the US switched to soviet-style weapons. According to the article, the rebels "were already using and familiar with" the soviet-style weapons. I would say that makes sense, but would hardly be a deal breaker if your main motivation was selling US weapons. This is not meant to defend US policies, but I think their geopolitical motivations are much more important than mere profit seeking and corruption. By the way, this seems to be a very well researched article, thanks for the submission @rapeofthelocke.

rapeofthelocke 9y ago
Pleasure. Keep following OCCRP: they are the world's best kept secret in investigative reporting.

throwawayscw 9y ago

One of the stipulations for supplying these militas with BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missile launchers is to upload a video of them shooting their target to youtube. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-71_TOW#2011:_Syrian_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-71_TOW#2011:_Syrian_Civil_... https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/search?q=syria+tow&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/search?q=syria+tow&re...