Purposely leaked form the Obama administration to the Washington Post:
The United States and Jordan have stepped up training of Syrian opposition forces that may be used to establish a buffer zone along Syria’s southern border, according to U.S. and Jordanian officials.
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Jordanian security officials said a previous timetable to complete training of about 3,000 Free Syrian Army officers by the end of June has been moved up to the end of this month in light of the border victories.
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“Buffer zones on the Syrian side of the border is the only way to keep the conflict away from Jordan,” said Mahmoud Irdaisat, head of the Amman-based Center for Strategic Studies at the King Abdullah II Defense Studies Academy
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Rebel officials who say they have taken part in the U.S.-Jordanian training at a Jordanian military base say they are being prepared to maintain the zones using surface-to-air missiles and heavy artillery without military invention from outside forces.
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Several senior Israeli military officials have voiced support for buffer zones.
The leak to the Post is message to AIPAC and other hawks who are increasingly impatient with the progress in Syria. The U.S. is training its own gang for creating safe zones in Syria on behalf of Israel and Jordan who do not want the conflict to further cross their borders.
The U.S. hopes to have vetted those gang members enough to trust them with manpads. Good luck with that. How these troops are to handle heavy artillery without a very capable logistic chain is not yet clear. Heavy artillery is notorious for using very large amount of resources for often dubious military gain.
There are of course many other gangs in Syria and the Post’s David Ignatius is trying to sort them:
The biggest umbrella group is called the Jabhat al-Tahrir al-Souriya al-Islamiya. It has about 37,000 fighters …
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The second-largest rebel coalition is more extreme and is dominated by hard-core Salafist Muslims. Its official name — Jabhat al-Islamiya al-Tahrir al-Souriya — is almost identical to that of the Saudi-backed group […] Rebel sources estimate about 13,000 Salafist fighters are gathered under this second umbrella.
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A third rebel group, known as Ahfad al-Rasoul, is funded by Qatar. It has perhaps 15,000 fighters.
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The most dangerous group in the mix is the Jabhat al-Nusra, which is an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq. By one rebel estimate, it has grown to include perhaps 6,000 fighters.Idriss and his Free Syrian Army command about 50,000 more fighters, rebel sources say.
Realistically, the best hope for U.S. policy is to press the Saudi-backed coalition and its 37,000 fighters, to work under the command of Idriss and the Free Syrian Army.
If one adds those Ignatius numbers up there are 65,000 in three big Islamist groups, 50,000 under Idriss and 6,000 Jabhat al-Nusra Jihadists. In total an army of some 120,000 men.
That sounds impressive but, as Aron Lund points out, is completely wrong.
Idriss does not have any troops at all. The first and second group Ignatius mentions are nominally under his command, take the money and weapons he offers but otherwise do not care what he says. The third group Ignatius mentions does not really exits. If one adds the still dubious numbers after correcting for Ignatius (willful?) errors the total is 50,000 plus the 6,000 al-Nusra Jihadists, less than half the force size Ignatius claims.
My best guestimate for the real numbers is less than half of Ignatius’ corrected numbers. These are roving gangs that sometimes work together for a while to create a temporary Schwerpunkt and to attack and take this or that small military base. Another type of their action is to take some town or city block and fight from there until they get kicked out again. Rinse, repeat. There isn’t that much manpower needed do those two type of action and we have seen little else. All the insurgencies “brigades” are actual the size of small companies, some 100 to 120 men. Their “battalions” are little more than platoons. Then one has to account for the insurgency’s combat losses which are significant.
Without U.S. air support the new gang trained in Jordan will have problems to hold any larger area. The safe zones will be anything but safe. U.S air support will not be coming. The BRICS countries have taken a clear position and the U.S. is not willing to, again, piss off more than half of the world for little gain.
The numbers in play and movements under way still very much favor a positive outcome for the Syrian government under Bashar al-Assad.