USA military commanders called their Russian counterparts on a special hotline set up to ensure the two countries’ pilots will not mistakenly run into – or fire upon – one another as they conduct daily bombing runs in the skies above Syria. Assad said this month that he would take back “every inch” of Syria from opposition forces.
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Pentagon chief Ashton Carter on Friday hit out at Russian Federation for bombing US-backed forces in southern Syria who he said were fighting the Islamic State group, calling their actions “problematic”.
However, his possible successor, presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, has argued for a more assertive policy in Syria, including stronger support for non-Islamist rebels.
Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests – which erupted as part of the “Arab Spring” uprisings – with unexpected ferocity.
An unnamed USA official familiar with the document said the internal cable may be an attempt to shape the foreign policy outlook of the next U.S. administration. The State Department has 30 to 60 days to respond.
“It is not a secret to us that there are political forces in the U.S. who favor a military solution”.
The document was reportedly signed by 51 mid- and high-level State Department officers involved in formulating US policy in Syria.
“Even President Obama’s own State Department believes the administration’s Syria policy is failing”, said Ed Royce, Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs committee.
According to “The New York Times”, which alongside the “Wall Street Journal” reported it had seen a draft of the memo, the diplomats in question called for the United States military to directly target Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Described as the “dissent channel cable”, the document appears to mirror the CIA’s own narrative, which is that in attacking ISIS the U.S. is fighting the wrong war in Syria, and instead demands that the United States shift focus entirely to militarily imposing regime change on the Syrian government. The US government still has major policies to overthrow other people’s governments.
“This was an attack on forces … that were fighting ISIL”, Carter said to reporters at the Pentagon, using the Administration’s chosen acronym for ISIS.
Humanitarian aid organization Mercy Corps said there has been “a significant decrease in violence, although there have been minor infringements” since the cease-fire went into effect.
Sources familiar with the memo said the officials had been discussing sending it for some time, but they finally made a decision to move forward because negotiations with Russian Federation over a political transition in Syria have all but collapsed and the fragile ceasefire continues to disintegrate.
The memo has sought a credible military threat against Assad’s government, failing which, it feels his regime would never negotiate with the rebels.
“It exacts a price on the regime for noncompliance”, Tabler said.
Secretary of State John Kerry, visiting Copenhagen, told Reuters: “It’s an important statement and I respect the process, very, very much”.
The memo also illustrates the depth of discord within the Obama administration over Syria, said Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.
Obama, though, may have a better feel for popular opinion.
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He said that creating a new government that will have the trust of most of Syria’s population is key to ending the five-year conflict. “The U.S. has spent trillions of dollars and has little to show for it but perpetual wars, failing infrastructure and bad schools”.
