{"id":6254,"date":"2015-02-19T16:57:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-19T16:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/?p=6254"},"modified":"2025-09-05T13:13:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T13:13:08","slug":"ribal-al-assad-welcomes-remarks-of-ex-us-envoy-to-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/es\/ribal-al-assad-welcomes-remarks-of-ex-us-envoy-to-syria\/","title":{"rendered":"Ribal Al-Assad welcomes remarks of ex-US Envoy to Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once a top booster, ex-U.S. envoy no longer backs arming Syrian rebels<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ENQUIRER HERALD<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robert Ford was always one of the Syrian rebels\u2019 loudest cheerleaders in Washington, agitating from within a reluctant administration to arm vetted moderates to fight Bashar Assad\u2019s brutal regime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent weeks, however, Ford, the former U.S. ambassador to Syria who made news when he left government service a year ago with an angry critique of Obama administration policy, has dropped his call to provide weapons to the rebels. Instead, he\u2019s become increasingly critical of them as disjointed and untrustworthy because they collaborate with jihadists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The about-face, which is drawing murmurs among foreign policy analysts and Syrian opposition figures in Washington, is another sign that the so-called moderate rebel option is gone and the choices in Syria have narrowed to regime vs. extremists in a war that\u2019s killed more than 200,000 people and displaced millions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the heels of meetings with rebel leaders in Turkey, Ford explained in an interview this week why his position has evolved: Without a strong central command or even agreement among regional players that al Qaida\u2019s Nusra Front is an enemy, he said, the moderates stand little chance of becoming a viable force, whether against Assad or the extremists. He estimated that the remnants of the moderate rebels now number fewer than 20,000. They\u2019re unable to attack and at this point are \u201cvery much fighting defensive battles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short: It makes no sense to keep sending help to a losing side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have to deal with reality as it is,\u201d said Ford, who\u2019s now with the Middle East Institute in Washington. \u201cThe people we have backed have not been strong enough to hold their ground against the Nusra Front.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ford today sounds like a different person from the optimist who only six months ago wrote an essay in Foreign Policy that began: \u201cDon\u2019t believe everything you read in the media: The moderate rebels of Syria are not finished. They have gained ground in different parts of the country and have broken publicly with both the al Qaida affiliate operating there and the jihadists of the Islamic State.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, however, on panels and in speeches, Ford has accused the rebels of collaborating with the Nusra Front, the al Qaida affiliate in Syria that the U.S. declared a terrorist organization more than two years ago. He says opposition infighting has worsened and he laments the fact that extremist groups now rule in most territories outside the Syrian regime\u2019s control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ford said part of the problem was that too many rebels \u2013 and their patrons in Turkey and Qatar \u2013 insisted that Nusra was a homegrown, anti-Assad force when in fact it was an al Qaida affiliate whose ideology was virtually indistinguishable from the Islamic State\u2019s. The Obama administration already has suffered a string of embarrassments involving supplies it\u2019s donated to the rebels ending up in the hands of U.S.-designated terrorist groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNusra Front is just as dangerous, and yet they keep pretending they\u2019re nice guys, they\u2019re Syrians,\u201d Ford said. \u201cThe second problem is, some of our stuff has leaked to them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As his calls to arm the rebels have become more muted, Ford has grown more vocal about the relationship between the rebels and Nusra, something U.S. officials have preferred to ignore, at least in public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a seminar last month where the audience included prominent Syrian dissidents he\u2019d worked with for years, Ford began with a disclaimer that what he was about to say was \u201cnot going to be popular\u201d among the opposition crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He then launched into an indictment of the moderate rebels, pulling no punches as he told them they could forget about outside help as long as they kept collaborating with Nusra. He suggested that supportive U.S. officials had grown tired of covering for them before an administration and an American public that are skeptical of deeper U.S. involvement in Syria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor a long time, we have looked the other way while the Nusra Front and armed groups on the ground, some of whom are getting help from us, have coordinated in military operations against the regime,\u201d Ford said. \u201cI think the days of us looking the other way are finished.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most audience members were familiar with Ford\u2019s record, and they were visibly surprised at the tongue lashing; they knew him as a relentless defender of the rebels, someone who\u2019d ended a long diplomatic career a year ago this month with scathing words about the Obama administration\u2019s refusal to arm them. Ford is often described as the first senior official to come out so vocally against U.S. policy toward Syria; the White House is still furious with his decision to go off-message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ford hasn\u2019t softened his stance against the U.S. role in the Syrian catastrophe \u2013 he still describes American policy as \u201ca huge failure\u201d and \u201csingularly unsuccessful\u201d \u2013 but now he doesn\u2019t spare the rebels their share of the blame. He has little patience for the argument that they were forced to work with Nusra and other unpalatable partners because of broken Western promises of assistance. There needs to be agreement, he said, that an al Qaida affiliate is off-limits as a partner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt becomes impossible to field an effective opposition when no one even agrees who or what is the enemy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ford said the latest U.S. approach of ditching the old rebel model to build a new, handpicked paramilitary to focus on the Islamic State was doomed; Syrian rebels are more concerned with bringing down Assad than with fighting extremists for the West, and there are far too few fighters to take the project seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe size of the assistance is still too small,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat are they going to do with 5,000 guys? Or even 10,000 in a year? What\u2019s that going to do?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Assad regime is eager to present itself as an alternative, but Ford said the Syrian military had been severely weakened and that it was doubtful the regime could pull off a successful campaign against the extremists. Then there\u2019s the political and moral fallout that would come from a U.S. d\u00e9tente with a man American officials have described since 2011 as a butcher who\u2019s lost the legitimacy to rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ford said the time had come for U.S. officials and their allies to have a serious talk about \u201cboots on the ground,\u201d though he was quick to add that the fighters didn\u2019t need to be American. He said a professional ground force was the only way to wrest Syria from the jihadists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And any parallel effort to build up a local rebel movement would have to be streamlined through a central, Syrian chain of command, he said. International partners, Ford said, have to ditch the current \u201cnonsensical\u201d framework in which regional powerhouses each fund client groups in an uncoordinated tangle that he said would be comical if the results weren\u2019t so tragic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if those steps can\u2019t be achieved, said the man known for advocating greater U.S. involvement, \u201cthen we have to just walk away and say there\u2019s nothing we can do about Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Responding to the news, ODFS Director, Ribal Al-Assad said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I welcome these remarks and am pleased that Ambassador Ford has come around to the realities of the situation in Syria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ODFS has however been saying this line since the start of the conflict, we have consistently warned against the dangers of arming the rebels and stressed that the weapons would undoubtably be used by militant Islamists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I have said many times before, the only solution to the conflict in Syria is through a dialogue driven approach with all those who have a genuine belief in freedom and democracy and are willing to commit to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More arms entering Syria will only lead to further bloodshed and a greater loss of life, the international community must understand this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Islamist rebels will not stop fighting until they have established an Islamic Caliphate under Sharia law and we simply cannot allow this to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I urge the international community to head the words of Ambassador Ford and immediately act on them. How many more people have to die before the right course of action is taken?”<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once a top booster, ex-U.S. envoy no longer backs arming Syrian rebels ENQUIRER HERALD Robert Ford was always one of the Syrian rebels\u2019 loudest cheerleaders in Washington, agitating from within a reluctant administration to arm vetted moderates to fight Bashar Assad\u2019s brutal regime. In recent weeks, however, Ford, the former U.S. ambassador to Syria who […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1569,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-releases"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6254"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6264,"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6254\/revisions\/6264"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/odf-syria.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}