How Will the U.S. Decide Which Syrian Rebels to Arm?
September 15, 2014 Congress is expected to vote this week on giving the Obama administration the authority to combat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria by providing arms and training—to someone. But whom?
Even assuming President Obama gets the authority he wants, experts say deciding who exactly should get American aid is an exceedingly difficult task. There are vast differences among Syrian rebel fighters—a conglomerate of varying ideologies, social backgrounds, and loyalties. And the questions of who exactly is a Syrian moderate, and whether these weapons will fall into the wrong hands, loom large on Capitol Hill.
"As you know, in the Middle East, it's very difficult to predict what's going to happen," Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia said after emerging from a closed-door House GOP conference meeting Thursday. "And that's why everybody wants to be very careful about this because we do have concerns about that."
There isn't a formal definition of a Syrian moderate, said Leila Hilal of the New America Foundation. But implicit in the word, she says, are a few criteria: a Syrian who is a nationalist and is fighting for a secular, democratic, and inclusive state.
That definition leaves a lot of room, Hilal said, and there are ample rebel fighters on the ground. Previously, the Syrian National Coalition could have used its Supreme Military Council to help determine who is a moderate, she said. But that group has essentially been disbanded, and now determining who exactly fits the "moderate" bill is done on an ad hoc basis.
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http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/how-will-the-u-s-decide-which-syrian-rebels-to-arm-20140915
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