PHOTO: A Syrian rebel with a US-made TOW anti-tank missile
It has not been a good week for the $500 million US program to train and equip Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State. The head of CENTCOM, General Lloyd Austin, admitted in a Senate hearing that “only four or five” fighters remained in the field from the first group of 54 troops put into Syria in late July. The commander of a second group of 50 to 75 men handed over the unit’s weapons to the Islamist faction Jabhat al-Nusra and declared that he would not cooperate with the US.
The setbacks have been so great that individual stories of mismanagement have been overshadowed, even when they have had deadly consequences.
Aram Roston of Buzzfeed explains how the US Government’s multimillion-dollar deal with a small arms manufacturer ended in purchases from Belarus, a regime under European Union sanctions; delays in arming the fighters; and the death of an American contractor in Bulgaria.
At the heart of the high-stakes U.S. program to train and equip Syrian rebels to fight ISIS is a multimillion-dollar arms deal that the Pentagon farmed out to a tiny, little-known private company called Purple Shovel LLC. A BuzzFeed News investigation, based on inside documents and confidential sources familiar with the Syria operation, has found:
▸ Purple Shovel, through the subcontractors it selected and oversaw, tried to sell the U.S. thousands of Russian-style rocket-propelled grenades that were considered unreliable because they were manufactured three decades ago, before Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union.
▸ The U.S. government rejected them, and that delayed the effort to stand up the Syrian rebel force.
▸ An American contractor, 41-year-old Francis Norwillo, was killed in a weapons explosion in Bulgaria while training with such outdated grenades.
▸ The U.S. violated its own policy and gave Purple Shovel approval to acquire millions of dollars’ worth of high-tech missiles for the rebels from Belarus, a dictatorship that is under sanctions by the European Union. Belarus, which has supplied weapons to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and is accused of human rights violations, is normally off-limits to U.S. arms dealers. But the U.S. military and State Department agreed to make an exception, allowing 700 powerful anti-tank missiles to be purchased, with U.S. taxpayer funds, for the rebels.
A Pentagon spokesperson defended its Train and Equip program in a statement to BuzzFeed News, saying, “We remain committed to expanding the New Syrian Forces and will continue to support those who we have trained.” She said the arms “delivery issues” identified in this story did not “prevent” training, though she said she would “not comment on delivery schedules.” A U.S. Special Operations Command spokesperson, Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Allen, acknowledged that the U.S. had acquired missiles from Belarus for the program.
A lawyer for Purple Shovel wrote that many of BuzzFeed News’ findings are incorrect. She declined to provide details because she said the firm is barred by federal law from discussing its Defense Department contracts. Purple Shovel’s CEO and founder, Benjamin Worrell, said in a brief telephone conversation, “I have absolutely no comment for you. I’m sorry.”
Purple Shovel’s arms contract is at the core of one of America’s top international priorities: thwarting ISIS, the extremist group that has seized large regions of Syria and Iraq, beheaded many of its captives, and helped fuel the ongoing exodus of refugees from Syria. Last year, President Barack Obama gave a primetime televised speech from the White House, calling on Congress to approve his $500 million program to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels. The program was to recruit moderate Syrians, vet them to ensure they weren’t infiltrators sent by ISIS or other groups, train them overtly using the U.S. military, and arm them. In December, Congress appropriated the funds.
Yet this July, eight months later, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter testified that only 60 Syrians had been trained. Later, in a devastating blow, the Syrian commander trained by the Americans was captured along with some of his soldiers by Islamist rebels from the Jabhat al-Nusra group. And this week, the commander of Central Command, General Lloyd Austin, testified that only four or five of the U.S.-trained rebels were actually deployed and fighting ISIS.
While those fiascoes are known, the problems with Purple Shovel’s multimillion-dollar arms contract have not been reported until now, and they show that troubles with the high-profile effort run deeper than previously realized.
They also illuminate the murky world of arms-dealing contractors behind many of America’s efforts to prop up friendly fighting forces. The United States government is one of the biggest buyers of AK-47s and other Russian-designed weapons, pouring them into Iraq, Afghanistan, and other war-torn countries. The U.S. provides foreign weapons to groups it trains because fighters sometimes prefer them, because they can conceal U.S. links to an operation, and because they are inexpensive. As BuzzFeed News has reported, the Pentagon and the CIA sometimes use small, untested arms dealers to purchase the weapons.
