CHAPTER 39

A Proxy War

WES BRYANT

Fall 2015

By now, a new special operations task force had been stood up to run operations against ISIS in north and southeast Syria. The mission of the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Syria (CJSOTF-S) was to select, train, and employ an all-Syrian surrogate force in combat operations against ISIS—called the New Syrian Forces (NSF). Special Forces teams dispatched throughout Turkey and other Arab nations were tasked with recruiting, vetting, training, and advising the NSF.1

Because of my experience a year prior helping to initiate the airstrike campaign against ISIS in Iraq, I was hand-chosen to be among the first assigned to the new task force as the lead Special Tactics JTAC to run the strike cell in support of the NSF mission.

There were several entities conducting strikes against ISIS throughout Iraq and Syria by then. The two strike cells in Iraq—in Baghdad and Erbil respectively—were now being run by conventional Army commands with TACP JTACs controlling the strikes. The Combined Joint Forces Air Component Command (CJFACC) had a team down in Qatar that prosecuted “deep” strikes against ISIS targets—targets outside the proximity of our partner or allied units. Another special operations task force executed strikes both in support of the Kurds in northeast Syria and against high-value targets throughout Syria and Iraq.

Almost serendipitously, my best friend and neighbor in the States, Marshall, was attached to our brother special operations task force. While I hunted ISIS targets in north and southeast Syria, he was tracking down the senior leadership of al-Qaeda’s infamous Khorasan Group.

The primary objective we’d given our NSF was to hold and take ground in a key region in northern Syria. About thirty kilometers northwest of the major city of Aleppo, in the far reaches of northern Syria near the Turkish border, sat the major city of Mar’a. Mar’a was the largest city in the region and housed the strongholds of our NSF. Because of that, our task force had aptly named our primary area of operations the Mar’a Line.

At the Mar’a Line, our NSF held an east-facing front about fifty kilometers north-to-south, from the Turk border all the way down to the northern outskirts of Aleppo. East of the Mar’a Line, ISIS held every city edging the Turk border all the way to Jarabulus at the banks of the Euphrates River. Further east of the Euphrates, Kurdish forces battled ISIS with support from our brother special operations task force.

For ISIS, the Mar’a region was key for two reasons: First, it was the location of the holy city of Dabiq. Dabiq sat only a few kilometers northeast of Mar’a and was believed by ISIS to be destined as the location for the final battle of the “Great Holy War” against the West. Such was written in the ancient Islamic texts that ISIS subscribed to. ISIS had even named its major propaganda magazine, Dabiq, after the city. Second, ISIS’ control of key border crossings to and from Turkey was vital in order to continue their unimpeded flow of foreign fighters, equipment, weapons, and logistical aid to support the front lines in both Syria and Iraq.

Because of those reasons, the Mar’a Line was of strategic significance to our task force and needed to be secured. To accomplish that mission we employed our NSF to take back the ground east of the Mar’a line and keep the ground west from falling further under ISIS control. But running a surrogate force on the ground in Syria came with a host of problems. Syria was, to put it simply, a mess.

Dozens of militia groups were simultaneously fighting against the Syrian regime, ISIS, and each other. And the opposition forces we recruited consisted of a hodgepodge of tribal militias with so many conflicting loyalties that they often had as much hostility toward one another as they did against ISIS.

A host of anti-ISIS militias that we did not actively advise or coordinate with were also on the battlefield. As a group we called these militia units moderate Syrian opposition (MSO) forces. Once any of the MSO forces earned our trust—proving themselves loyal to our interests by fighting ISIS and not being associated with a terrorist organization or the Syrian regime—they would earn the label vetted Syrian opposition (VSO) forces. Under our ROE, that would enable us to support them with airstrikes a lot easier. Even so, we could not always count on their intelligence reporting or their allegiance to our cause.

Then there was the presence of our long-time enemy, the al-Nusra Front. They held the far northwest pocket of Syria, and they were actively fighting against ISIS and the Syrian regime. Strangely, as the “enemy of our enemy” we were directed to leave al-Nusra fighters alone.

Last, who could forget the active civil war going on in Syria? Syrian Regime forces were off limits for us—a “neutral player” if you will. We had strict orders not to intervene inadvertently in the civil war. At the same time, we knew that our opposition forces were pushing at least semi-regularly down to Aleppo to combat the regime.

In the course of their civil war against “rebel” forces, the Syrian regime had been pounding Aleppo with artillery and airstrikes for some time. Anti-regime rebels had been putting up heavy resistance. We would often watch our NSF gun trucks push south from the Mar’a Line toward the regime-contested city of Aleppo when they were in-between offensives against ISIS. We’d see their vehicles go right into areas known to be held by the Syrian regime.

Within a day or two, reports of major battles between the Syrian regime and rebel forces in the same area we’d seen our NSF gun trucks would confirm our suspicions. When we asked our NSF commanders about it, they insisted that they’d occasionally go down to Aleppo only to “refit” or “take care of family members in the area.” We couldn’t outright confirm that they were fighting the regime, but they were probably doing all of the above. Everyone knew our NSF recruits were also anti-regime, and so it only followed that they’d be using the weapons and training we provided not just to fight ISIS but to fight Assad’s forces as well.

Our silence was consent.

Such was the American-backed proxy war against Bashar al-Assad’s regime. To be clear, his regime was and is brutal and inhumane—and that’s the plain truth. It really should have been ended long ago. Still, I felt that if we wanted the regime taken out then we should have been more upfront about it. But perhaps that was just my naiveté.

1 Nick Paton Walsh, “Syrian rebels: This is what almost $1m of U.S. training looks like,” CNN, August 18, 2015, accessed April 24, 2018, http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/18/middleeast/new-syria-force-fighter-abu-iskander/index.html.