The bases are expected to begin conveying limited shipments of weapons and ammunition within weeks, officials said, serving as critical nodes for an escalation of U.S. involvement in a civil war that has lately seen a shift in momentum toward the forces of President Bashar al-Assad. Syria experts cautioned that the opposition to Assad remains a chaotic mix of secular and Islamist elements, highlighting the risk that some American-provided munitions may be diverted from their intended recipients.
But U.S. officials involved in the planning of the new arms shipments announced by the Obama administration this Thursday said that the CIA has developed a clearer understanding of the composition of rebel forces, which have begun to coalesce in recent months. Within the past year, the CIA also created a new office at its headquarters in Langley to oversee its expanding operational role in Syria. "We have relationships today in Syria that we didn't have six months ago," Benjamin Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser, said during a White House briefing on Friday. The United States is capable of delivering material "not only into the country," Rhodes said, but "into the right hands."
Members of Battalion Landing Team 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, and Combat Logistics Battalion 24 construct a base camp near Petra Jordan on May 5, 2012, in preparation for Exercise Eager Lion 12, a recurring, multinational exercise designed to strengthen military-to-military relationships.
The confidence conveyed by Rhodes' statement is in contrast to the concerns expressed by U.S. intelligence officials last year that the CIA and other U.S. spy agencies were still struggling to gain a firm understanding of opposition elements — a factor cited at the time as a reason the Obama administration was unwilling to consider providing arms. "The Syrian puzzle has come into sharper focus in the past year, especially the make-up of various anti-regime groups," said a U.S. official familiar with CIA assessments of the conflict. "And while the opposition remains far from monolithic, its military structures and coordination processes have improved." The official, like most others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence assessments and planning.
The increased certainty is one of several factors that led to the reversal of a U.S. policy against providing lethal aid that had been in place since the civil war erupted in Syria more than two years ago. Rhodes said the change was driven by a new determination by U.S. intelligence agencies that Assad's regime had used chemical weapons, including sarin gas, on at least four separate occasions. Obama also faced mounting pressure to intervene more aggressively as members of Congress and overseas allies became increasingly alarmed that Assad's forces were gaining strength with expanded assistance from Russia and Iran. For the CIA, the shift on Syria marks a return to a covert action role that was familiar to the agency during Cold War-era conflicts, but gave way to increasingly direct lethal operations as the agency's drone campaign surged in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The agency's mission in Syria carries substantial risks, including a longstanding fear that arms could fall into the hands of extremists who may seek to impose Salafist rule in Syria or turn those weapons against targets in Israel and other Western countries. That concern accounts for initial limits imposed by Obama that will allow the delivery of rifles and other munitions, but not — at least for now — antitank or anti-aircraft weapons that rebels have desperately sought. Obama's decision to approve CIA weapons shipments, spelled out in an updated covert action finding recently signed by the president, may also signal that the administration is now prepared to endorse the delivery of heavier arms by regional allies.
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