The Wall Street Journal reports on the regime’s military officers who defected, only to sit idle in a Turkish camp:


When Syrian Col. Malik al-Kurdi fled to Turkey early in the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad, he joined an exodus of officers expecting to be equipped by the U.S. and sent back to fight the Assad regime.

Three years later, he and more than 1,000 other Syrian military defectors sit in a barbed-wire-ringed camp just inside Turkey, spending their days trading gossip and playing cards.

Rather than forming the vanguard of a Western-backed fighting force, they follow the war next door on TV and a Wi-Fi network funded by the Turkish government.

Camp Apaydin is a monument to missed opportunities in the Syrian civil war. The U.S. and its allies, stymied for years by the complexity of the conflict, and differing over how seriously to take the extremist threat, couldn’t agree on what to do with the officers of Apaydin.

Their defections were hailed at the time as a sign Mr. Assad’s days were numbered. Today, many of the military men have grown overweight, out of shape and embittered.

“Two years ago, we had enough territory under our control and the morale needed to build an army,” Col. Kurdi said. “Today—no.”

America’s need for ground forces to twin with its air power against Islamic State now looms large. A recent move by Turkey to let the U.S. train moderate Syrian rebels on its soil might open the door for some of the defectors housed at Camp Apaydin. But after years of disappointment, it isn’t clear they could play the role the U.S. has in mind, or would want to, interviews with residents show. If they have any fight left in them, they want to direct it against the Assad regime rather than Islamic State, which they don’t see as the main enemy.

“Psychologically, we have deteriorated. Physically, we’re not in shape,” said Col. Muhammed el-Ali, a helicopter pilot and 28-year veteran of the Syrian army who lives in the Turkish camp. “What a waste.”

Obama administration officials disputed the idea that the defectors in Camp Apaydin represented a “huge opportunity” missed, citing divisions among them. The men sparred over who should take the lead and sent mixed messages about their willingness to return to Syria, according to the officials, who said they wouldn’t have been a perfect solution even if mobilized.

“That said,” an administration official added, “there probably were people that we could have done more with earlier and faster.”

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