CENTCOM under Investigation for “Cooking” ISIS Intelligence
Middle East Briefing/September 26/15
In July, a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst, assigned to the US Central Command, filed a complaint with the Pentagon’s Inspector General, John T. Rymer, charging that he was put under pressure to modify intelligence assessments of the ongoing war against the Islamic State (ISIL), to present a more optimistic picture of the conflict. That initial complaint has mushroomed into a full-scale investigation that could implicate two of President Barack Obama’s senior appointees, Centcom Commander Gen. Lloyd Austin and Director of National Intelligence Gen. James Clapper.
Investigators from the Pentagon IG’s office have been in Tampa, Florida for weeks, and have interviewed more than 50 analysts, some from DIA and others who are intelligence analysts of the Central Command. According to several of the analysts interviewed in the probe, there is compelling evidence that supervisors pressured the analysts to alter their intelligence reports and assessments, to paint a picture of progress, even when Iraqi forces retreated in the face of ISIL attacks. When analysts produced reports that showed progress in the fight against ISIL, they were not challenged to produce multi-source documentation. When they reported battle set-backs, they were ordered to rewrite the reports to include three to four qualified eyewitness accounts. In some instances, even when such documentation was provided, the reports were re-written by supervisors, before being sent on to policy-makers.
An Obama Administration narrative has emerged to blunt the investigation and make sure that the scandal never reaches the point of directly hitting at the President or his top national security advisors. Supervisors who altered the original analytical reports claim that, while the initial reports were “factually accurate,” the supervisors had access to “other source,” who provided contradictory or more in-depth intelligence, justifying the altered conclusions.
Off the record, Pentagon officials provided a different explanation. From the outset, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have opposed the re-deployment of combat troops back into Iraq, after the complete US withdrawal of combat forces in December 2011. The White House has shared this view, although the US has resumed combat bombing missions and has established a training program for the Iraqi Armed Forces, involving 3,400 American soldiers and airmen. If the full extent of the failure of these programs were to be acknowledged, there would be pressure from Congressional Republicans to send American combat forces back in to Iraq. Key Senate Republicans, like Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) have argued for months for the deployment of tens of thousands of American ground troops to Iraq.
As it was explained: “McCain controls the Pentagon budget and he can put tremendous pressure on the Pentagon. By altering the reporting on the war against ISIL, the Pentagon officials involved in the re-writing of the assessments were hoping to avoid the obvious conclusions: The US and the Iraqi forces are losing.”At the recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearings, Centcom Commander Gen. Austin tried to dodge questions from McCain and Democratic Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.), telling the Committee that “There is an ongoing DOD IG investigation looking into allegations concerning the processing of intelligence information by Centcom’s intelligence directorate. Because the allegations are currently under investigation… it would be premature and inappropriate for me to discuss this matter.”
However, when Gen. Austin went on to paint a positive picture of the US and Iraqi progress against the Islamic State, Sen. McCain uncorked, telling Gen. Austin “I must say I have been on this committee for 30 years and I have never heard testimony like this. Never.” McCain pointed out that outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey had testified before the committee one week earlier, and had candidly admitted that the war against ISIL in Iraq was at “a stalemate.”
While the individual who is directly on the hot seat over the intelligence “cooking” is Major General Steven R. Grove, the Centcom intelligence chief, analysts put the blame on Gen. Austin, an Obama appointee who has been a close White House ally since taking the job. Some of the testimony provided to the Pentagon IG’s investigators has also focused on Director of National Intelligence Gen. Clapper, another Obama appointee who has similarly toed the White House line that the war against ISIL is succeeding and on schedule.
At the bottom of the entire scandal is the fact that the Obama Administration has badly botched the entire war against the Islamic State, going all the way back to the President’s decision to totally withdraw US forces from Iraq, which created the vacuum in which the Islamic State emerged. That decision was made by the President and his top advisors, and the intelligence manipulation can be ultimately traced to the fact that the Obama Administration’s policy failures created the current fiasco in Iraq and in the region as a whole.
The Syria Russian Roulette
Samir Altaqi/Esam Aziz/Middle East Briefing/September 26/15
Syria’s current moment is very fluid indeed. But someone has yet to point out who is winning and what exactly is won or thought as a reward. Turkey is steadily sliding into civil war. Arab countries will later come to face a wild enlarged Jihadist movement that knows no borders. Russia is heading confidently into another Afghanistan. Iran will have to deal with a sea of sectarian hatred to which it responds with a campaign of sectarian hatred. The US and Europe will face a wave after another of both suffering refugees and suicidal terrorists. Israel, which sees ISIL as no imminent problem, seems to forget as always that time passes and what is not imminent today becomes imminent tomorrow. And Syrians may have already lost their country.
What is really maddening is that almost all players, apart from the simple Syrians in the killing fields or in boats or refugee camps, seem to enjoy this crazy Russian roulette which defies any definition of absurdity. However, we know that behind this fog there are only two choices-either the political solution or the military solution. If we define the political solutions through the existing balance, and not through the maximalist demands of both sides, we will see that it takes much more than what is being done. Yet, an almost paralyzed world is doing much less than needed. This creates a stalemate between both options and this stalemate in its turn leaves only the partition of Syria as the default alternative.
And what is going now points to this third default option. The deployment of Russian forces is shaping up along specific lines that demark the limits of what we previously called “Iran’s Plan B”, which is preserving certain Western regions and fortifying defenses around them, then hitting the opposition elsewhere when it amasses forces to march west, all obviously under the name of fighting terrorism.
While this appear to be a “new” development, in fact it is a continuation of what has been going on for some time. The only added factor is that the Russians bolstered the military lines of a faltering Assad, a fatigued IRGC and a bleeding Hezbollah. The question is: Will the Russian forces be added, after a while, to the line of exhausted military partners in the alliance of Bashar Al Assad? Putin’s gambit is based on the assumption that things will not develop to the point where his forces would be subjected to a long term attrition war like that of Afghanistan. Putin bets on the brakes of his adversaries rather than on the effectiveness of his forces. He believes that the fear of ISIL expansion will end up bringing everybody to his table in the Kremlin. The other players are not faring better. The record of the US administration in relation to the Syrian crisis should be taught in history books and schools as an example of utter failures in strategy and foreign policy. The moment the US chose to disengage is the moment when it left enough room for the Russians to engage and allowed different players to push the Syrian ball of fire in all four directions. And as it seems from right here in Washington, there is no hope that this administration could one day do anything meaningful in the current situation in Syria.
But the Arab and Turkish backers of the opposition are no less culprit in this tragic situation. The strategic impact of the worst case scenario (which we actually see right now) was not evaluated correctly early on. For the bottom line would be an Assad backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah in a certain part of Syria, while the opposition, warlords and worst brand of fanatics do whatever they please in the rest.
And whatever they please is not pretty. The distinctions between hardliners and relatively moderates in the opposition will be further blurred and all will merge in a big bowl that deserves to be called a regional time bomb. By reaching the worst case scenario, the Arabs and the Turks will be faced with a double edged sword. But the edge that is facing them would be sharper. The Russians will guarantee, at least for some time, to mitigate the effect of the other edge. The backers of the Syrian opposition have two ways to go-either accept less than what they wanted all along, or face the “regional time bomb” at one point down the road. Recklessness and shortsightedness are not a monopoly of the Obama administration, they are everywhere. This stark choice is exactly the product of any maximalist strategy.
Even Mr. Putin has his share. For if the backers of the opposition decide to go all the way on the road of this Russian roulette, they would force on Mr. Putin to play along. None will win at the end. As the Russians lost in Afghanistan, they will lose in Syria. What should be remembered in the Afghan lesson, however, is that it was not only the Russians who lost. We can see now that Afghanis lost as well. And we could see in 2001 that the Americans lost. And the Arabs had to deal with the moving bombs of the “returnees”-a term well known in the region for calling those who came back from Afghanistan to “Jihadize” the Middle East.
ISIL’s Mosques Sheikhs received Putin’s decisions with a loud welcome. A Sheikh in a Mosque in Raqqa told the worshipers that Putin’s decision is “a gift from heaven”. “Allah wants us to sharpen Jihad in Muslim land. And he sent us Putin to help us accomplish His mission and build an army that extends to the horizon”, he said. Even the Syrian opposition will lose its identity. It is not going to be a national opposition anymore. It will be a supranational Jihadist movement legalizing slavery markets, confiscation of properties, beheading and all the horrors which are not counter-propaganda any more-we see them every day.
Here, we learn that the some common assessments are not only stupid, they are also dangerous. One “advice”, given by some “experts” tells us to be happy and do nothing. The utter absurdity of imagining that a certain situation could remain “static” cannot be clearer. Those who assumed that the Syrian fire will consume its own wood must have been thinking of their backyard barbecue. They simply forgot the first feature of this war: It is regional. Now it is developing even beyond this limit.
A second stupid assumption is that ideological differences can prevent Jihadists from working together. Once upon a time, the elders of the Kremlin laughed at Dr. Kissinger’s attempt to form an alliance with Mao Zedong. Ideological differences are but one side, and only one, of a more complex dynamics. We are surprised at those who dismissed the possibility of a merger between ISIL and Nusra based on their ideological differences. They first do not know anything about the debate going on now among the Salafi Ulamas in Jordan and the Gulf. And they second did not follow how ISIL or Nusra emerged that powerful in Syria. In fact, the political solution in Syria is not only putting all the Jihadists closer to each other, the Russian intervention is pushing this process even faster. The change in Zawahiri discourse did not happen six months ago. We invite those self-assured talk heads to follow the contacts done with Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi , the Jordanian theoretician of the Salafi Jihadi trend and a staunch supporter of Al Qaeda and enemy of ISIL (We will cover that in a future issue). The artificial tranquility of subjective assertions is part of this mosaic that we see now. And one thing is clear, this mosaic draws a historic mural of total madness.
The situation within the opposition deserves to be examined a little further, as many opposition groups do not even see what is waiting down the road. Here, we will see clearly the dynamics which characterizes the whole game, the slow slide towards the lose-lose Russian roulette.
A political solution, whatever that means, is now rejected by the Jihadists on principles, while the relatively moderate wing of the opposition is opened to deal with it. What should be done now is to try to locate the two opposed centers, currently emerging more clearly in the camp of the opposition. Fanatics will express their affiliation to the abstract image of building an Islamic society. Moderates tend to have a synthesis between national state and Islamic rules. Fundamentalists have an image of the country they are fighting to build which is based bluntly on a rejection of the nation state, hence promises more wars. Their vision is that of the absolute rule of what they understand to be the Sharia.
The UN envoy Stafan de Mistura’s proposal is perceived by opposition groups in a specific way relative to the contents of their ideological stands. This proposal offers less than what any of the two camps want. For the fundamentalists, the UN avenue leads to a different country than that they are fighting to achieve. For the relatively moderate opposition, the proposal does not include a specific timeframe for the departure of Assad, even if they accept him to remain in power for some time (Which they did not accept until now). Theoretically, if it is announced that Assad agreed to leave the country tomorrow in return for an inclusive national state structure, some fundamentalists will continue their fight anyway as they strive to build a different state. Yet, they will be isolated to a large extent as most Syrians instinctively side with a more moderate view of Islam. In this hypothetical case of Assad departure, the relatively moderate groups will react positively, align with the Syrian army to fight ISIL and its allies.
This is said to draw a clear distinction between the “political” opposition and the hardliner Jihadists. And this will be the line that will mark the future split of the opposition if the world finds a political solution. We have seen, for example, a communique by a conference of a large number of opposition groups this month in Istanbul rejected by many leaders inside the groups that has signed the communique already. The communique was signed September 14. Sheikh Khaled Abu Anas of Ahrar Al Sham, Abu Mohamed Al Maqdisi, Abu Abdullah Teftenaz of “Lawa Aul Haq”, Saleh Al Hamawi, and even General Riyadh Al As’ad the former commander of the Free Syrian Army, all announced their rejection of the communique signed by their own groups. Some groups had to even deny they signed anything at all. But for this split to happen, the contours of a political solution and of the alternative solutions should become very clear.
So long as the line between the two is blurred, as is still the case, there will be no objective pressure calling for any group to distance itself from the other. The split, if happened, will lead to closer ties between the rejectionist Jihadists. It should not be simplified in the question of either ISIL will join Al Qaeda or it is Al Qaeda that will join ISIL. What counts is the number of fighters on the ground and the camps they side with. This logical frame gains its substance at the current moment on light of three developments: The Russian intervention-The consequences of the drive to reach a political solution-The actual debate within the opposition groups. Yet, ISIL and its allies will never be defeated without the rest of Syria’s Sunni fighting them. And the Sunnis will not fight them under Assad’s command. Furthermore, Iran, and now Russia, will not get rid of Assad without a deal that grants both their strategic stake in Syria. Therefore, this dance in hell game of Russian roulette will continue. The players are enjoying it. But Syria’s children are not.
