After days of consideration by the White House of intervention in the Syrian conflict, President Obama has again hesitated to take action.
The US deliberations were spurred by the advances by the Islamic State since June in both Iraq and Syria, followed by the start of US bombing earlier this month — in support of Kurdish forces — against the jihadists in northern Iraq. They had a specific catalyst in the high-profile Islamic State beheading of American journalist James Foley in northern Syria on August 19 and the threat to kill other US hostages.
Obama went as far as to authorize US surveillance flights of Islamic State positions in northern and eastern Syria. His officials conferred by conference call with some insurgent commanders based in Turkey.
However, on Thursday — moments after a meeting with his National Security Council — the President signalled that there would be no substantial US military action in Syria, at least in public: ““We don’t have a strategy yet….Our core priority right now is just to make sure our folks are safe (in Syria).”
Unnamed Administration officials said two options were considered. The broader of the two was airstrikes and some coordination with “moderate” Syrian insurgents. As in Iraq, aerial attacks would try to check the frontline of the jihadist advance, in this case in northern Aleppo Province. They would break up Islamic State infrastructure, command-and-control facilities, and their network for revenue and resource control, including oil pipelines.
The more directed option was for airstrikes only, without cooperation with the “moderates” such as the Free Syrian Army, to cut off Islamic State supply lines to Iraq.
The process and Obama’s decision revived the deep divisions in the US Administration that surrounded the consideration and then rejection of operations in 2012 and in August 2013, after the Assad regime’s chemical weapons attacks near Damascus. The State Department, which has led the push for intervention, was joined by some members of the intelligence community and even the military — the largest block to action — on this occasion.
However, others from the intelligence services and the armed forces maintained their resistance to any cooperation with those fighting the Assad regime. A “senior US official” said:
“The intelligence community assessment has no serious consideration to work with the Free Syrian Army to date….The folks sitting around the table today do not think we can work with them.
The Obama decision does not necessarily rule out all American assistance to the insurgency, which is fighting both the Islamic State and the Assad regime. Importantly, the Administration officials who leaked information to the media did not say if the US would now remove restrictions on the supply of vital arms and ammunition — provided either directly or through other countries.
The insurgency has said the priority — even greater than the US airstrikes — is for the weapons to hold back the better-armed Islamic State and to counter the aerial advantage of Syrian forces. They argue that the supply would not only prevent their defeat but also bolster their own offensives from the northwest to the south against the Assad regime.
For now, Obama is not offering any detail beyond his general dismissal of intervention. Instead — as in September 2013, when he finally rejected US military action over the chemical weapons attacks, days after Secretary of State John Kerry compared Assad to Hitler — he invokes caution, even as he speaks graphically about the evil of the foe:
The issue with respect to Syria is not simply a military issue, it’s also a political issue.
It’s also an issue that involves all the Sunni states in the region and Sunni leadership recognizing that this cancer that has developed is one that they have to be just as invested in defeating as we are.