All over the summer of 2011, and especially after the ouster of Gaddafi in Libya, the mainstream media had nothing better to do than feed us videos and accounts of anonymous rebel groups, with exotic names and less structure than the Mexican army of 1910, fighting against Evil. The supporters of covert regime change – whether they were in the Gulf, in Turkey, in Western Europe or in the US – quickly realized the need for a unified command, both from a military and from a PR point of view.

The blue-print for these "Arab Spring" revolutions should have worked in Syria as well, according to the Beltway experts. Bashar al-Assad, the ex-ophtalmologist turned "butcher of Damascus", wouldn't last much longer than the Ben Ali's and Mubarak's of this world. From the first semi-peaceful demonstrations in a small city on the border to Jordan, to the first fire-fights against a rag-tag army of allegedly secularist freedom fighters, it took only a couple of weeks.

Tunisia and Egypt showed the way. Others followed. In some cases, like in Libya, we had to give them a hand. It took a little longer, as well as some serious NATO airstrikes, but it worked out fine in the end. Once Gaddafi was gone, most of us looked away ... Another "Mission Accomplished" feeling. Libya was free and that was the end of the story as far as the West was concerned. The gates were wide open for a new dawn from Tripoli to Benghazi. One year later though, Benghazi was in the headlines again, for an alltogether different matter. But that is another story.

Everything had started with the tidal wave of supposedly democratic revolutions that came along with the "Arab Spring" of 2011. Sweeping across North-Africa and the Middle-East, a grassroots movement of young people craving for democracy, modernization, economic opportunity and basically Western style freedom proved to be unstoppable, or so we were told.

This is not just a question of focusing on ISIS first and taking care of Syria second. You can't solve one without considering the implications on the other. But in Syria in particular, the policy of supporting so-called "moderates" is one more reason why US influence on the outcome of the war is dwindling. Yet, all of this could have been foreseen and avoided. Chances are however, US failure in those areas is going to continue.

It has been more than four years now since the start of Syrian civil war. Some 200 000 dead and 4 000 000 refugees later, you might think the US could have come up with a comprehensive and reasonable strategy for putting an end to the bloodbath. You would be wrong though. The war is not over and various factors play a role in its continuation. On the one hand, these factors are linked to local, regional and international interests and players. But what also plays into the hands of those who want to avoid a peaceful settlement, is the failure of US strategies with regard to the conflict.

Acting mostly out of Turkey in the North, and Jordan in the South, the exiles, defectors and turn-coats that had already been a familiar picture in Iraq in 2003, established the "Syrian National Council" as the top civilian body representing the rebels. Its military wing became known as the "Free Syrian Army". Both councils were not much more than empty vessels however, just gift-wrapping that the opposition could use as they saw fit ... An abstract construct basically, open to interpretation and fantasies of all sorts.



Remember the "Free Syrian Army" ?

The truth is, the FSA wasn't an army and it certainly wasn't free. Its first leader, Col. Riad al-Asaad, a former Syrian air force officer who defected in July 2011, was firmly kept under control by Turkish intelligence, which screened and monitored any contact he had and any decision he took. His stint as the fake head of a fake spontaneous uprising didn't last long though. About a year after he took charge, he was replaced by another defector, Gen. Salim Idriss, who had run over to the rebels in July 2012 and already made it as their "Chief of staff" by December of the same year. The backers of the FSA had probably realized that new blood was required to give the organisation a much needed second wind.



On the ground, news were alarming and by the end of 2012, the FSA appeared for what it had always been: a spent force, lacking anything but the genuine enthusiasm of its foot-soldiers. The PR-representatives and salesmen of the FSA in the West kept blaming us for our lack of military support and involvement, but they always forgot to mention the never ending turf wars, protracted conflicts of ego and disproportionate ambitions displayed by a number of FSA leaders, many of whom had neither military skills nor previous experience with armed insurrection.



There was no way the FSA narrative to which the armchair strategists in D.C. clung on for so long could ever have worked. That they still managed to sell it to the US administration and its foreign policy establishment bears testimony to the traction some interest groups have inside the Beltway. However, events on the frontline were telling a story much different from the one displayed on our TV screens.



Getting the basics right

Unlike other Arab countries, Syria was a secular multi-confessional State (and dictatorship), governed by a religious minority (the Alawis) that had been subjected to centuries of persecution and humiliation at the hands of the Sunni majority. Once they had finally risen to power, they were determined never to let go of it, as they were probably aware of what was in store for them should they fail to quell internal dissent.

Years of terrorism, guerrilla attacks and urban warfare, ending with the total annihilation of the "Muslim Brotherhood" in Hama in 1982 had given them a taste for what was possibly coming. However, Bashar al-Assad and his military, but also ordinary Alawis in their heartland on the Mediterranean coastal strip, underestimated the level of dissatisfaction that existed in large areas of the country. They also underestimated the determination of the foreign players who were intent on breaking up the "Shia Crescent" and putting a dent into Iran's ambitions as new regional hegemon.



Syria was and still is a country with a 70% Sunni majority. Take away the Sunni Kurds in the North, and you still get a 60 % to 30 % absolute majority for the Sunnis, who first spearheaded the few peaceful demonstrations of March 2011 and then definitely took over once the unrest turned into a military conflict. That sectarian rift was apparent right from the start.

As early as November 2011, the governing body of the FSA was composed solely of Sunni officers and leaders. There wasn't a single Alawi, Shia, Christian or even Druze among them. And ever since then, that rift has deepened. While first demands were social and economic in nature, the violence of the clashes, the extent of destruction and the many dead and wounded gave the struggle an ideological foundation on which more and more extremist views gained ground.



A first split in the rebel camp

Confronted with the incompetence of the FSA, and combined with the endless blabbering of the exiles allegedly representing the rebellion in the West, more and more groups turned their back on the "Free Syrian Army" and created a new alliance, the "Syrian Liberation Front", that did not hide its Islamic and sometimes openly Salafi agenda. Most definitely pushed and helped by regional powers sensing the need to turn on the screw on the regime, these groups received better funding, better equipment and better advice.



A first division within the Syrian rebels had thus been created. On the one hand, there was the fading and floundering FSA, on the other, there was the embryo of a larger movement, made up not just of locals but also foreigners, who came to fight the "Jihad" against those who were slaughtering their Sunni brethren. The US was not in the driving seat of this first strategy change, but it definitely endorsed it, just as it approved the many cargo flights carrying weapons and equipment from various places all over the Mediterranean to Amman in Jordan or Ankara in Turkey.



The year 2012 looked promising for the Islamic rebels. Encouraged by their sponsors, these groups refused any peaceful settlement. Why negotiate for half the country, when you might get it all by force ? Overlooked by most though, another actor had already entered the scene. It wasn't just the Syrian Salafis, nor the foreign fighters who had joined them in the attempt to oust a despicable and hated regime, it was "Jihad" incorporated that had arrived. By the summer of 2011 already, a small group of 7 people had entered Eastern Syria, sent by future "Caliph" Abubakr al-Baghdadi and led by a faithful supporter of Al Qaeda central, going by the name of Abu Muhammad al-Golani (also known as Aws al-Mosuli to his former captors at Camp Bucca).



Enter a new player ...

Al-Golani and his team soon went to work, but chose to stick to the background, setting up-recruitment stations, activating dormant Al Qaeda cells, funnelling money to groups they deemed reliable and basically enlisting whatever domestic and foreign Jihadi they could. They operated in the shadow for most of 2011, but finally staged their first bombing in Damascus by the end of that year and officially announced their presence and name early in 2012. "Jabhat al-Nusra", at that point a new player not openly identified as the AQ franchise in Syria, had joined the fray.



Its arrival coincided with the uptake in Salafi and Jihadi rebel groups. At that point, two types of rebel organisations were basically at a cross-roads. And the more the "Islamic" rebels showed their skills in combat, while the FSA drifted into criminal and smuggling activities of all kinds (sometimes just to fund their military operations), the more it made sense to hedge one's bets: if the FSA couldn't fix the problem, maybe the "moderates" among the Islamic rebels could.



On the ground, in Syria, it wasn't that straightforward of course. There was still a wealth of organisations with sometimes conflicting allegiances, with leaders changing from one group to the other, or even whole groups announcing their merger with one another. Basically, a thick smoke-screen clouded the West's view and made it extremely difficult for intelligence agencies to make sense of what was happening, especially with very few eyes and ears on the ground.



Dirty tricks and a chemical attack

What was happening though was a change in the war's dynamic. The Syrian army stepped up its operations after a string of defeats in 2012. Things had almost gotten to the point where hysteric Western media predicted the imminent downfall of the regime. But Bashar al-Assad's allies in Tehran, Beirut and Moscow wouldn't let him down. The counter-offensives of the "Syrian Arab Army" proved devastating to the fragmented and deeply divided rebel groups.

However, what 2013 will go down in history books for is not the changing fortunes in the war. It is the events of August 21st, when an alleged chemical attack took place in the Eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus. The attack should have been the starting point to Western military involvement, a another possible game changer that never materialized, due to unforeseen resistance to a well orchestrated PR-campaign. But even without Ghouta being a "slam dunk", there was still enough that could be said about the regime to cause for a mood swing in Western public opinion.

Opponents to the regime pointed to the fact that Bashar al-Assad had released a number of dangerous Islamists and Jihadis who had been kept in Sednaya Prison until 2011, so they could infiltrate the opposition and try and foster an extremist agenda the West would not be sympathetic to. Quite ironically, Bashar al-Assad was also accused of active collusion with the Salafi/Jihadi groups that had fought the Americans in Iraq during the early 2000s. The implication being obviously that this was a terrorist enabler, who had contributed to the death of US servicemen and should be treated accordingly.

Now, it is undeniable that Al Qaeda and other Jihadi networks had used Syria to funnel fighters into Iraq. They would have and could have done so with or without the support of Bashar al-Assad's. But the Syrians chose to penetrate these groups rather than going after them. Once they knew enough about them, they pulled the plug in 2005 and delivered the personal files and even the GPS coordinates of a number of AQ leaders to the US, thus getting into the good books of American military commanders in Baghdad. Funny enough, nobody seemed to complain about the dirty tricks the Syrians used against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's cronies at the time.



The rise of the "Jihadis"

Be that as it may, 2013 was a decisive year, for it showed that even with an increased financial and material help to the rebellion, Bashar al-Assad was still gaining the upper hand and the chances for military victory of the opposition vanished. One reason for the string of rebel defeats was probably the struggle for power and influence that had started between those Jihadis close to Al Qaeda central and those more willing to follow the rising star of Jihad in the Middle-East, Abubakr al-Baghdadi and his "Islamic State in Iraq".



What had started as a traditional government versus armed rebellion conflict was turning into a three-way or even four-way war, with the Syrian Army on the one hand (supported by its own foreign fighters, like Lebanese Hezbollah or various Shia militias from Iraq) versus the splintered "moderate" Sunni rebels and the core of Salafi or sometimes "Jihadi" fighters rallying around the banner of Zawahiri's "Al Qaeda" (the most prominent among these groups being of course "Jabhat al-Nusra"). And then there was the fringe of "Jabhat" fighters who were inclined to go for al-Baghdadi's "ISI", many of them foreigners from Jordan, Saudi-Arabia, but also North-Africans and a number "Chechens" and other nationalities from the Caucasus.

By the end of 2013, prospects for the opposition looked grim. The time had come for another reshuffling of the cards. The FSA still existed on paper only and the Islamic groups that various regional players had tried to empower had failed. At the same time, the distinctly sectarian groups, whether influenced by the "Muslim Brotherhood", by more radical Salafi preachers or openly Takfiri/Jihadi beliefs were gaining the upper hand in the rebel camp, despite the rising tensions between the two most prominent Jihadi franchises.



Lessons not learnt

It would all play out in 2014, another decisive year not just in Syria but also in Iraq, where ISIS achieved a spectacular breakthrough. With all eyes set on Anbar and Mosul though, US intelligence failed to identify the shift that had occurred, yet again, within the Syrian opposition. Failure to recognize this, or maybe acceptance of all too reassuring explanations by local allies, was the reason behind a major crisis in US policy towards rebel groups.



What had painstakingly begun in the spring of 2014, as an exercise in vetting groups most suitable for increased American help, ended in a fiasco of epic proportions, when sophisticated weapons' systems earmarked for "moderate" rebels ended up at the hands of Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham,Liwa al-Umma and other groups the USA didn't want anything to do with. At the time, these catastrophic failures went relatively unnoticed, and they could have been averted.



We'll get into that story and how it played out in the second part of this piece, which will deal with the reasons why US military help was provided to these groups in the first place. Worse even, developments further down the road proved that there had been no "lessons learnt" from the 2014 "clusterf*ck". Again, events in Iraq - with the launching of airstrikes by the anti-ISIS coalition - mostly overshadowed what happened in the North-Western and Southern Syria. The people involved did their best to sweep their errors of judgement under the carpet, but the kind mistake they had made usually has the potential to come back with a vengeance. And so it did.