CIA: Syria’s Assad ‘sort of standing back’ while warring Sunni militia lose war

Special to WorldTribune.com

WASHINGTON — The U.S. intelligence community has determined that President Bashar Assad would maintain his regime in Syria.

The intelligence community concluded that Assad was winning the war against Sunni rebels. Officials said Assad was exploiting rebel infighting to capture large areas of the country over the last year.

CIA director John Brennan.  /Reuters/Yuri Gripa
CIA director John Brennan. /Reuters/Yuri Gripa

“I believe that Assad probably feels more confident as a result of some developments on the battlefield over the last year,” CIA director John Brennan said.

In an address to the Council of Foreign Relations on March 11, Brennan acknowledged the growing power of the Syrian military. Brennan said Assad’s
military and security forces rebounded after three years of the Sunni revolt.

“You know, Syria is a real army,” Brennan said. “I mean, this is a large conventional military force with tremendous firepower. And I think the opposition deserves a fair amount of credit for staying in the game and bloodying the Assad military machine as much as it has.”

Officials said Brennan’s address reflected the U.S. intelligence
assessment that Assad, with massive help from Iran and Russia, was steadily
gaining in the war against the Sunnis. They said both the CIA and the
Defense Intelligence Agency agreed that Sunni rebels, attacked by the Al
Qaida’s Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, reduced operations.

“The fighting within the opposition has certainly not helped those
forces that are trying to unseat Assad,” Brennan, regarded as the closest
security official to President Barack Obama, said. “They [ISIL] engage in a
lot of suicide bombings. Assad has been able to sort of stand back and sort
of watch that fighting.”

In briefings to Congress in March 2014, the intelligence community said
the revolt was not expected to collapse over the next four months. Officials
said the intelligence community was working with its counterparts in NATO to
track the flow of foreign fighters from Syria to the West.

“Assad has become magnet for a lot of those extremists and terrorists
who have migrated into Syria to use Syria not just as a place to carry out
their version of their violent jihad, but also, potentially, to use it as a
springboard outside of Syria, which is very, very concerning, and which has
been the focus of a lot of my engagements with my foreign counterparts over
the last year,” Brennan said.

You must be logged in to post a comment Login