Obama directs Pentagon to target al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, one of the most formidable forces fighting Assad

This
2015 file photo posted on the Twitter page of Jabhat al-Nusra, an
al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, shows al-Nusra fighters in Idlib province
where the United States has begun to strike the group’s leadership. (AP)

President
Obama has ordered the Pentagon to find and kill the leaders of an
al-Qaeda-linked group in Syria that the administration had largely
ignored until now and that has been at the vanguard of the fight against
the Syrian government, U.S. officials said.
The decision to
deploy more drones and intelligence assets against the militant group
formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra reflects Obama’s concern that it is
turning parts of Syria into a new base of operations for al-Qaeda on
Europe’s southern doorstep, the officials said.
The move
underlines the extent to which Obama has come to prioritize the
counter­terrorism mission in Syria over efforts to pressure President
Bashar al-Assad to step aside, as al-Nusra is among the most effective
forces­­ battling the Syrian government.

That
shift is likely to accelerate once President-elect Donald Trump takes
office. Trump has said he will be even more aggressive in going after
militants than Obama, a stance that could lead to the expansion of the
campaign against al-Nusra, possibly in direct cooperation with Moscow.
The group now calls itself Jabhat Fatah al-Sham — or Front for the
Conquest of Syria — and says it has broken with al-Qaeda, an assertion
discounted by U.S. officials.

President Obama arrives at the 71st annual U.N. General Assembly in New York, on Sept. 20, 2016. (Peter Foley/Via Bloomberg)

The
United States has conducted sporadic strikes in the past against
veteran al-Qaeda members who migrated to northwestern Syria from
Afghanistan and Pakistan to join al-Nusra and whom U.S. officials
suspected of plotting against the United States and its allies.
Obama’s
new order gives the U.S. military’s Joint Special ­Operations Command,
or JSOC, wider authority and additional intelligence-collection
re­sources to go after al-Nusra’s broader leadership, not just al-Qaeda
veterans or those directly involved in external plotting.
The
White House and State Department led the charge within the Obama
administration for prioritizing action against the group. Pentagon
leaders were reluctant at first to pull resources away from the fight
against the Islamic State.

But
aides say Obama grew frustrated that more wasn’t being done by the
Pentagon and the intelligence community to kill al-Nusra leaders given
the warnings he had received from top counter­terrorism officials about
the gathering threat they posed.
In the president’s Daily Brief,
the most highly classified intelligence report produced by U.S. spy
agencies, Obama was repeatedly told over the summer that the group was
allowing al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan to create in
northwest Syria the largest haven for the network since it was scattered
after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Officials also warned Obama that
al-Nusra could try to fill the void as its rival, the Islamic State,
lost ground.
Lisa Monaco, Obama’s White House homeland security
and counter­terrorism adviser, said Obama’s decision “prioritized our
fight against al-Qaeda in Syria, including through targeting their
leaders and operatives, some of whom are legacy al-Qaeda members.”
“We
have made clear to all parties in Syria that we will not allow al-Qaeda
to grow its capacity to attack the U.S., our allies, and our
interests,” she said in a statement. “We will continue to take action to
deny these terrorists any safe haven in Syria.”

In
this 2013 photo, which has been authenticated based on its contents and
other AP reporting, rebels from al-Qaida affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra sit
on a truck full of ammunition at Taftanaz air base, that was captured
by the rebels, in Idlib province, northern Syria. (Edlib News
Network/AP)

To support the expanded push against
al-Nusra, the White House pressed the Pentagon to deploy additional
armed drones and intelligence-collection assets in the airspace over
northwestern Syria, an area that had been sparsely covered by the United
States until now because of its proximity to advanced Russian
air-defense systems and aircraft.

A
bitterly divided Obama administration had tried over the summer to cut a
deal with Moscow on a joint U.S.-Russian air campaign against al-Nusra,
in exchange for a Russian commitment to ground Syrian government
warplanes and to allow more humanitarian supplies into besieged areas.
But the negotiations broke down in acrimony, with Moscow accusing the
United States of failing to separate al-Nusra from more moderate rebel
groups and Washington accusing the Russians of war crimes in Aleppo.
Armed drones controlled by JSOC stepped up operations in September, according to military officials.
Drone
strikes by the U.S. military under the program began in October and
have so far killed at least four high-value targets, including
al-Nusra’s senior external planner. The Pentagon has disclosed two of
the strikes so far. One of the most significant strikes — targeting a
gathering of al-Nusra leaders on Nov. 2 — has yet to be disclosed,
officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss
operations.
So far, Russian air-defense systems and aircraft
haven’t interfered with stepped-up U.S. operations against al-Nusra.
Officials attributed Moscow’s acquiescence to the limited number of U.S.
aircraft involved in the missions and to Russia’s interest in letting
Washington combat one of the Assad regime’s most potent enemies within
the insurgency. U.S. officials said they provided notifications to the
Russians before the al-Nusra strikes to avoid misunderstandings.
Officials
said the expanded al-Nusra campaign was similar to those that Obama has
directed against al-Qaeda affiliates in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.
While
al-Qaeda’s central leadership in Pakistan has been decimated, the
United States now faces more threats involving more extremists from more
places than at any time since 9/11, Nicholas J. Rasmussen, director of
the National Counterterrorism Center, told a Senate committee in
September.
The push into the province of Idlib and other parts of
northwestern Syria coincides with ­Pentagon-backed offensives in and
around Islamic State strongholds in eastern Syria and in Iraq, which
have attracted the majority of U.S. military resources and public attention.

White
House officials had considered launching a more systematic campaign to
destroy al-Nusra from top to bottom, much like the Pentagon’s approach
to the Islamic State. But that option was rejected as too
resource-intensive. Many of al-Nusra’s fighters are Syrians who joined
the group because of its ample supply of weapons and cash, and its
commitment to defeating Assad, not to plot against the West.

Officials
said the strikes on leadership targets were meant to send a message to
more-moderate rebel units, including those backed by the CIA, to
distance themselves from the al-Qaeda affiliate. At critical moments
during the five-year-old civil war, moderate rebel units have fought
alongside al-Nusra in ground operations against Assad’s forces. In fact,
U.S. officials credit those rebel campaigns in the spring of 2015 with
putting so much pressure on the Syrian government that Russia and Iran
decided to double down militarily in support of Assad.
U.S.
officials who opposed the decision to go after al-Nusra’s wider
leadership warned that the United States would effectively be doing the
Assad government’s bidding by weakening a group on the front line of the
counter- Assad fight. The strikes, these officials
warned, could backfire on the United States by bolstering the group’s
standing, helping it attract more recruits and resources.
Officials
who supported the shift said the Obama administration could no longer
tolerate what one of them described as “a deal with the devil,” whereby
the United States largely held its fire against al-Nusra because the
group was popular with Syrians in rebel-controlled areas and furthered
the U.S. goal of putting military pressure on Assad. Russia had accused
the United States of sheltering al-Nusra, a charge repeated Thursday in
Moscow by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
“The president
doesn’t want this group to be what inherits the country if Assad ever
does fall,” a senior U.S. official said. “This cannot be the viable
Syrian opposition. It’s al-Qaeda.”
Officials said the
administration’s hope is that more-moderate rebel factions will be able
to gain ground as both the Islamic State and al-Nusra come under
increased military pressure.
A growing number of White House and
State Department officials, however, have privately voiced doubts about
the wisdom of applying U.S. military power, even covertly, to pressure
Assad to step aside, particularly since Russia’s military intervention
in Syria last year.
U.S.
intelligence officials say they aren’t sure what Trump’s approach to
U.S.-backed rebel units will be once he gets briefed on the extent of
the covert CIA program. Trump has voiced strong skepticism about arming
Syrian rebels in the past, suggesting that U.S. intelligence agencies
don’t have enough knowledge about rebel intentions to pick reliable
allies.

Defense
Secretary Ashton B. Carter and other Pentagon leaders initially
resisted the idea of devoting more Pentagon surveillance aircraft and
armed drones against al-Nusra. In White House Situation Room meetings,
Carter and other top Pentagon officials argued that the military’s
resources were needed to combat the Islamic State and that it would be
difficult to operate in the airspace given Russia’s military presence,
officials said.
While Obama, White House national security
adviser Susan E. Rice, Secretary of State John F. Kerry and special
presidential envoy Brett McGurk agreed with Carter on the need to keep
the focus on the Islamic State, they favored shifting resources to try
to prevent al-Nusra from becoming a bigger threat down the road.

A
senior defense official said additional drone assets were assigned to
the JSOC mission. Carter also made clear that the Pentagon’s goal would
be to hit al-Nusra leadership targets, not take strikes to try to
separate the moderate rebels from al-Nusra, officials said.
“If
we wake up in five years from now, and Islamic State is dead but
al-Qaeda in Syria has the equivalent of [the tribal areas of Pakistan]
in northwest Syria, then we’ve got a problem,” a second senior U.S.
official said.