Timber Sycamore
Timber Sycamore was a classified weapons supply and training program run by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and supported by some Arab intelligence services, including Saudi intelligence. The aim of the programme was to remove Syrian president Bashar al-Assad from power. Launched in 2012 or 2013, it supplied money, weaponry and training to Syrian opposition militias fighting al-Assad's forces in the Syrian civil war. According to US officials, the program was run by the CIA's Special Activities Division[6] and has trained thousands of rebels.[7] President Barack Obama secretly authorized the CIA to begin arming Syria's embattled rebels in 2013.[8] The program became public knowledge in mid-2016.
Timber Sycamore
Weapons sales, training of Syrian rebel forces
2012–2017
- Thousands of Syrian rebel fighters trained and equipped by US, UK and Arab governments in an effort to overthrow the Syrian government.[1][2]
- Delivery of thousands of tons of weaponry worth billions of US dollars.
- Arms diverted to the Middle East black market; many sold to ISIS.[3][4]
- Criticism of Obama administration for insufficient support to rebel groups.[5]
- US led- Syria Train and Equip program continues to arm, train, and support the SDF with airstrikes.
One consequence of the program has been a flood of US weapons including assault rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades into the Middle East's black market. Critics of the program within the Obama administration viewed it as ineffective and expensive, and raised concerns about seizure of weaponry by Islamist groups and about Timber Sycamore-backed rebels fighting alongside the al-Nusra Front and its allies.[9]
In July 2017, US officials stated that Timber Sycamore would be phased out, with funds possibly redirected to fighting the Islamic State (IS), or to offering rebel forces defensive capabilities.[10][11][12]
Phasing out[edit]
In July 2017, anonymous officials stated that President Donald Trump, in consultation with National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, had decided to phase out support for anti-Assad Syrian rebel forces, possibly redirecting resources to fighting ISIL, to offering rebel forces defensive capabilities, or to other operations in the region.[10]
The officials said that the decision was made prior to Trump's participation in the G-20 summit and 7 July meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Several officials characterized the decision as a "major concession" to Russia, with one remarking: "Putin won in Syria."[10] However, another official stated that ending the program was not a major concession due to Assad's recent victories in the Syrian Civil War, but rather "a signal to Putin that the administration wants to improve ties to Russia."[32] Some members of the Obama administration reportedly had wished to scrap the program because some rebels armed and trained by the program had joined ISIL and related groups.[32]
A related US military program to arm, train, and support the SDF fighting ISIL with airstrikes continued in 2017[10] through the years 2018–2021 and into the present.[33]
Commentary[edit]
Press[edit]
Andrea Barrile wrote in 2016 in International Business Times of Italy that corrupt Jordanian intelligence officials facilitated weapons trafficking that supported the Iraqi insurgency after the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. For this reason, according to the paper, the Obama administration was reluctant to approve Timber Sycamore and debated a year before doing so.[34]
In Il Giornale, Fausto Biloslavo has reported that despite the program's secrecy, US Vice President Joe Biden was photographed at the center of Zarqa in March 2015.[30]
In April 2014, Seymour Hersh wrote an essay published in the London Review of Books which does not mention Timber Sycamore but which describes an anonymous former senior US intelligence official's claims that the U.S. diplomatic post in Libya's Benghazi "had no real political role" and existed solely to provide cover for a secret arms pipeline supporting Syrian rebels fighting in the Syrian Civil War in early 2012.[35] According to Hersh's source, the "rat line" was a means for channeling military weapons from Gaddafi's arsenals into Syria and into the hands of Syrian rebels. According to Hersh, an agreement in early 2012 between Obama and Erdoğan proposed an operation funded by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and conducted by the CIA in collaboration with MI6, although a spokesperson for then CIA director David Petraeus said the operation never happened.[35][36]
Politicians[edit]
In 2016, US Senator Ron Wyden's office questioned the program, releasing a statement that "the US is trying to build up the battlefield capabilities of the anti-Assad opposition, but they haven't provided the public with details about how this is being done, which US agencies are involved, or which foreign partners those agencies are working with."[8]
Analysts[edit]
Thomas Joscelyn of The Weekly Standard defended Trump administration's decision to cancel the program, arguing "there is no evidence that any truly moderate force is effectively fighting Assad."[37] In December 2017, Max Abrahms of the Council on Foreign Relations and John Glaser of the Cato Institute observed in the Los Angeles Times that "[ISIL] imploded right after external support for the 'moderate' rebels dried up," which is consistent with studies demonstrating that "external support for the opposition tends to exacerbate and extend civil wars, which usually peter out not through power-sharing agreements among fighting equals, but when one side—typically, the incumbent—achieves dominance."[38] Political scientist Federico Manfredi Firmian called Timber Sycamore “one of the United States’ most ill-conceived and deadly covert-action programmes,” noting that it failed to unseat Assad, fuelled the war, and inflicted untold misery on the Syrian people. [39]
Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, criticized the Obama administration for not providing adequate funding and "necessary resources" to FSA units. He argued that this indecision resulted in the program's failure to decisively shift the strategic dynamics of the war in favour of the Free Syrian Army. According to Lister, the Tymber Sycamore program was "drip-feeding opposition groups just enough to survive but never enough to become dominant actors".[40]
Columnists[edit]
In 2016, Canadian right-wing political commentator Rachel Marsden, in a column in The Baltimore Sun, provided her interpretation of the New York Times reporting on Timber Sycamore. She suggested that the Tymber Sycamore program involved the arming and funding of independent military contractors by the Saudi intelligence, along with the CIA's training of pro-American militias in Syria, and that these operations aimed at overthrowing the Assad regime, installing a new Syrian government friendly to U.S., Saudi and Qatari interests, and weaken Russia's influence in the Middle East.[41] In 2016, Australian columnist Paul Malone wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald that weapons delivered to various Free Syrian militias might have been captured by the Al-Nusra Front, outlining a parallel with the seizure of American weaponry by the Islamic State organization after its capture of Mosul in 2014.[26]