
The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2B on Soviet-Style Arms for Syrian Rebels - rapeofthelocke
https://www.occrp.org/en/makingakilling/the-pentagon-is-spending-2-billion-on-soviet-style-arms-for-syrian-rebels
======
hammock
The same documents confirm the CIA has been arming Al Qaeda in Syria. Scroll
down to the last map[1] which shows CIA weapons went directly to Idlib
province (northwest section in green) and the Golan border region (south).
Both of these areas were and continue to be occupied by Al Qaeda. Idlib
specifically is where genocidal cleansing of religious minorities was
confirmed to be conducted by Al Qaeda "rebels" directly assisted by CIA
weapons.[2]

[1][https://www.occrp.org/assets/makingakilling/MapOfSyriaIraq.p...](https://www.occrp.org/assets/makingakilling/MapOfSyriaIraq.png)
[2][https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2016-01-19/ass...](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2016-01-19/assad-
has-it-his-way)

~~~
jdhn
At this point, is anybody surprised by this? It's quite clear that when it
comes to sponsoring groups in the Middle East, we just throw money/weapons at
anyone, no matter who they are.

~~~
djsumdog
I've been saying this for years. "The CIA created ISIS. Not just funded, but
created the situation where such organizations could come up."

I constantly get criticized for this. "No, of course America isn't funding
ISIS. We're fighting them." I then talk about The Bay of Pigs, the 1973 Coupe
in Chile, Iranian Contras, The School of the Americas ... a criminal rap sheet
that shows a pattern of sociopathhy by the US government -- and Syria fits
that pattern: arm ISIS, bomb Assad and then bomb ISIS too .. we're creating
and fighting all the wars.

I'm not surprised, but the majority of Americas would be .. if this appeared
on CNN, NPR or a major media outlet. Otherwise it's "fake news."

When sales for 1984 went up after the Trump election, I was greatly
disheartened. It meant the current administration had commandeered the minds
of people to think that now was the age of Orwell, when in reality, we've been
in 1984 long before I was born and long before my parents were born.

~~~
totalZero
Setting aside every other part of this discussion:

I don't think a state actor can be accurately described as sociopathic. The
expectations and interactions among nations are fundamentally different from
those among people.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
Then why is it so many other countries don't act as we do? USSR under Joe did;
that's hardly a ringing endorsement. Any Scandinavian country would be a good
counter argument. Finland has withstood Soviet/Russian intimidation for more
than seven decades without running around instigating insane, right-wing
police states across the Globe.

~~~
keldaris
> Then why is it so many other countries don't act as we do?

That's simple: they're weak and can't get away with it. The baseline conduct
of nation states is basically that of fairly rational psychopaths, capable of
evaluating what they can get away with. Deviations from that norm are mostly
reminiscent of irrational psychopaths. Anyone who expects "moral", "just" or
"trustworthy" behavior from a nation state is just out of their mind.

------
baursak
The US is literally sponsoring Al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Syria to fuel
the proxy war against Russia and Iran and to hinder their fight against ISIS
and other jihadi groups. It's 1980s all over again and a 16th anniversary of
9/11\. No lessons learned.

~~~
travmatt
So all Russia and Iran are doing is just trying to defend against ISIS? That's
certainly one interpretation I suppose.

~~~
baursak
At this point, they are trying to support a secular and a relatively liberal
(relative to an alternative) regime against ISIS and other jihadis, yes. To
see an alternative, take a look at Libya after Gaddafi where there are
literally slave markets in 2017.

~~~
djsumdog
Fun fact, Gaddafi didn't run the country. No media outlets reported on the
democratically elected head of state in Libya. They also didn't report on the
free electricity, subsidized housing, subsidized fuel, free education and the
fact that Libya was stable and in no debt to the WMF.

Now they are in debt to the WMF, are a totally non-stable state ravaged with
crime and their slowly progressively moving government has reverted decades in
terms of democracy and human rights. It's a mini-Iraq with less than 1/8 of
the news coverage.

~~~
wil421
Free is only free until your money runs out. Look at Venezuela, the government
gave the things you listed as free until they couldn't.

~~~
pm90
You could say that about almost any Petro State, including Saudi Arabia.
Libya's tremendous energy reserves plus small urban population made it that
much more easy to offer freebies to all the citizens who asked for it.

------
r721
The better link is the whole project page:

[https://www.occrp.org/en/makingakilling/](https://www.occrp.org/en/makingakilling/)

>Since the outbreak of war in Syria, weapons from Central and Eastern Europe
have flooded the conflict zone through two distinct pipelines – one sponsored
by Saudi Arabia and coordinated by the CIA, and the other funded and directed
by the Pentagon.

>A series of investigations by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network
(BIRN) and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) have
brought to light these multi-billion-dollar weapons deliveries -- exposing the
misleading and potentially illegal documents on which they rely, the shady
dealers at its heart of the trade, and the governments that have profited from
the war.

~~~
skrebbel
Anyone got a tl;dr about the motive behind all this? What does the US
government gain by flooding the middle East with weapons?

~~~
travmatt
Broadly, America has traditionally supported Sunni leaning states, most
notably Saudi Arabia. Russia has traditionally supported Shia Iran, and both
the powers are competing for influence within the region.

In the course of the Arab Spring, the legitimacy of many ME leaders/dictators
was questioned, among the most notable of these was the rule of Bashar al-
Assad of Syria. A popular local outpouring of resentment against his regime
was coopted and inflamed by hardline Sunni extremists, many of these being
veterans of the Iraq War or younger generations of recuits. This escalated
into a full civil war, which quickly turned into a proxy battle for control
over Syria, which heretofore had been a Russian proxy state, with a large air
base.

While the United States has been arming anti-Assad (who also are notably anti-
American) forces, Russia has been targeting civilian population centers (with
both conventional and chemical weapons) to first create then inflame the
Syrian refugee crisis, driving political instability first throughout Turkey
then the EU - both sides seeking to ratchet up the pressure on terms favorable
to them.

The tl;dr is a civil war turned proxy war is creating some of the most acute
human suffering present in our world today.

~~~
_nx010_
Oh wow.

The refugee crisis unfolded years before Russia even entered the conflict.
Accusing them of creating it now is silly. Nor did Russia have a large air
base in Syria until last year. Nor did the Russians supply or use chemical
weapons. In fact, they earnestly tried to do the opposite - take Assad's chem
weapons away (though they obviously failed).

The thing about Russia targeting civilians is curious to me. Is Russia killing
civilians in Syria? Sure. Are Russians doing it on purpose, as part of their
strategy? That I am not so sure about. I suspect it has more to do with urban
nature of the conflict, low-precision bombs, bad intel, and yes - I have to
admit - the traditionally lower value Russians place on human life (including
their own). But as a part of some grand genocidal strategy that Western press
attributes to the Russians? Probably not.

Case in point, when US aviators were bombing Mosul, they were also killing
hundreds of civilians in the process (see links below). Despite the fact, no
one has accused the US of specifically targeting civilians. All civilian
deaths were chalked up to mistakes, rather than evil intent.

But in Russia's case, it's a strategy. Beats me why.

[1] [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-
syr...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-syria-iraq-
air-strikes-civilians-killed-injured-casualties-children-mosul-offensive-
latest-war-a7771146.html)

[2] [https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-07-13/were-high-civilian-
ca...](https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-07-13/were-high-civilian-casualties-
mosul-unavoidable)

~~~
travmatt
>The refugee crisis unfolded years before Russia even entered the conflict.
Accusing them of creating it now is silly. Nor did Russia have a large air
base in Syria until last year. Nor did the Russians supply or use chemical
weapons. In fact, they earnestly tried to do the opposite - take Assad's chem
weapons away (though they obviously failed).

Correct, I misspoke earlier - the Russians did not create the refugee
situation - but they have certainly inflamed and weaponised it. In addition to
targeting civilian population centers with indiscriminate munitions, they have
also shut down legal asylum from Syria into Russia, claiming that Syria is
safe for its residents. Again, it does this so the refugees are forced to flow
eastward into turkey then Greece, despite Syria being a proxy state and Russia
owing some form of assistance. They've compounded these issues by spreading
disinformation in Europe, planting stories of fake rapes and murders by Syrian
refugees in European media, again to sow distrust and create political
instability. And I'm thoroughly unconvinced about the efforts of Russians to
find and confiscate chemical weapons - they only agreed to the deal in the
first place to mitigate the chance of Americans opening direct military
operations after the red line violation, and as you've alluded to, there have
been plenty of chemical weapon attacks since then.

And to fend of further misrepresentations of my words, I never said Russia's
goal is to kill civilians - again their goal is to destroy their homes and
communities, so that they are forced to become refugees. By closing its own
borders it's making sure other countries have to bare the burden of its
operations - this is what the NATO commander meant when he said Putin is
trying to use Syrian refugees to break NATO.

------
danso
I doubt I would have read this article (through HN) if the submitter hadn't
added "Falsifies End User Documents" to the submission title (actual title of
the article is "Revealed: The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2 Billion on
Soviet-Style Arms for Syrian Rebels"). So I'm glad that technical detail was
emphasized, because a lot of this story deals with technicalities. It's not a
secret that the Pentagon spends hundreds of millions to fund rebel groups --
as the article points out, they put out press releases and official
PowerPoints about it. But what is interesting is the obfuscation of details,
such as the special ops "end-user certificate" which is so vaguely worded that
it basically implies the Pentagon could transfer weapons to anyone it feels
like. "NATO allies and partners" instead of "Republic of Iraq", for instance.

I loved the example of one of the publicly-available arms contracts being
altered after reporters sent questions; even in something as big as arms deals
and proxy wars, someone in the bureaucracy will fuck up the paperwork:
[https://www.occrp.org/assets/makingakilling/pentagon-
procure...](https://www.occrp.org/assets/makingakilling/pentagon-procurement-
database.png)

~~~
rapeofthelocke
Thank you. That was the point of my submission. The importance of the article
is not so much that the US is funding weapons to Syria (as many commenters
have said, that's unsurprising); the key point here is that they are using
nefarious means to do it, and thereby undermining international law and
control mechanisms such as the UN Arms Trade Treaty.

------
hLHEDuYtSh
This article makes it sound like the program is ongoing, but I am not sure how
to reconcile this with stories like this, which claim that the program has
been cancelled: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/trump...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/trump-ends-covert-cia-program-to-arm-anti-assad-rebels-in-syria-a-
move-sought-by-
moscow/2017/07/19/b6821a62-6beb-11e7-96ab-5f38140b38cc_story.html?utm_term=.6759fb36cb24)

Does anyone have insight here?

~~~
PeachPlum
The WaPo is not an independent reporting body, its parent group Amazon, has
juicy contracts from the CIA, you can trust nothing it prints.

~~~
dragonwriter
Amazon is not WaPo’s parent; Bezos owns it independently of Amazon.

~~~
jaxytee
Still a conflict of interest.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
If you're a conspiracy theorist, sure. Why would WaPo write negatively about
the CIA if that were the case?

~~~
anotherbrownguy
>Why would WaPo write negatively about the CIA if that were the case?

To distract from something else or to downplay their ill deeds or to explain
what they did in completely different context so that the real intent can be
hidden.

------
throw2016
There is no way for a group like ISIS to exist in the modern world without
support from a major power.

The dichotomy of arming and supporting extremists and those who support global
extremism like SA on one side while accelerating surveillance programs at home
to protect yourself from the same extremists is diabolical, something a truly
despotic state can pull off.

They would have to have near complete control or a pliant media, civil
institutions, academia and a passive citizenry to pull it off.

------
forapurpose
It's a valuable story to tell, but I wouldn't leap to any conclusions:

Why shouldn't the Pentagon be arming allies in the Syrian civil war? Speaking
very generally, I hope they do support those resisting Assad, Iran, and
Russia. There is nothing necessarily nefarious in arming allies, and it's
better than sending your own people to fight and die.

However, I'm surprised it's going on:

First, the Obama administration was accused of being too cautious in arming
anyone, not only in Syria but in Ukraine. (I read that they studied the issue,
and concluded that the tactic of arming insurgents rarely worked out well, and
often resulted in the arms falling into the wrong hands. I don't know how much
that study influenced their decisions, however.) Obama was in office until
January, so Trump would only have had a few months to setup and execute this
multi-billion dollar program, including procurement, international logistics,
and more.

Second, the Trump administration has announced they are abandoning the rebels,
except when they are fighting ISIL, and accommodating Assad and the Russians
(and as a result, their ally the Iranians).

So under what and whose policy are the Syrian rebels being armed?

------
brndnmtthws
So does paying taxes in the US qualify as funding terrorism?

------
throwawayscw
One of the stipulations for supplying these militas with BGM-71 TOW anti-tank
missile launchers is to upload a video of them shooting their target to
youtube.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-71_TOW#2011:_Syrian_Civil_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-71_TOW#2011:_Syrian_Civil_War)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/search?q=syria+tow&re...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/search?q=syria+tow&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all)

------
Asdfbla
It always surprises me that those intelligence agencies obviously think this
is worth it, considering they certainly must be aware of all the potential
drawbacks that occur when you fuel war and instability like that.

They must operate with totally different views of what constitute "good" and
"bad" outcomes of the whole conflict. I guess you can justify all of that by
just being cynical enough, but I'd like it if the military (at least in
democratic countries) had to make their rationale for heating up conflicts
transparent to the civilian world.

~~~
anotherbrownguy
It's not very surprising. It's very simple. They serve people who benefit as
long as there is conflict.

If there is conflict:

\- there will be multiple groups who want to defeat each other

\- you can sell weapons to the richest of those groups

\- you can sell weapons to third party governments (who use money collected
forcefully from the public) to "fix the problems" caused by the conflict

------
FrojoS
Several comments here blame profits of the military-industrial complex as
motivation for these arm exports, yet these weapons are produced in former
USSR countries not in the US.

I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned here yet, since it's even in the
title of the article. Of course, there are still profits for the US military-
industrial complex. For instance the article states that "US-based Alliant
Techsystems Operations" has a contract for buying these weapons from countries
like Bulgaria. In addition, one can cynically assume that heating up the
conflict will increase demand for US involvement and subsequent increase
demand for US weapons. Still, I find it interesting, that after initially
arming rebels with US weapons, the US switched to soviet-style weapons.
According to the article, the rebels "were already using and familiar with"
the soviet-style weapons. I would say that makes sense, but would hardly be a
deal breaker if your main motivation was selling US weapons. This is not meant
to defend US policies, but I think their geopolitical motivations are much
more important than mere profit seeking and corruption.

By the way, this seems to be a very well researched article, thanks for the
submission @rapeofthelocke.

~~~
rapeofthelocke
Pleasure. Keep following OCCRP: they are the world's best kept secret in
investigative reporting.

------
ssijak
Saddest thing is that most Americans are brainwashed by one sided mass media
to think that USA is doing good and righteous deeds. Sad truth is that USA is
for a century producing countless wars for its own interest, in which millions
of inosent people died and left many regions in ruin and in bad relationships
to its neighbors. Btw, i witnessed two of those pointless wars. Last time when
as a kid in a capitol of Europe, Belgrade, bombs and tomahawks were falling on
my city. Painfully pointless and sad.

~~~
brndnmtthws
The winners will always have the privilege of rewriting history to make
themselves look righteous. If Germany had won WWII, it would be the same thing
except with a different set of ruling elites.

Perhaps we need to consider that governments as they exist today do not work,
especially when power is held in the hands of so few people. The US congress
(which has the power to kill people) is only made up of 100 senators, which is
supposed to represent the views of ~325 million people. Doesn't that seem a
little fishy? In the age of the internet, why can't everyone with a computer
or cell phone participate in policy making?

------
flachsechs
if anyone hasn't seen the movie "lord of war" with nic cage, i highly
recommend it. it deals with these kinds of issues.

------
VMG
Aaaand the story is pushed down:
[https://i.imgur.com/TTTvpPy.png](https://i.imgur.com/TTTvpPy.png)

------
meri_dian
This is a damned if we do damned if we don't sort of situation. People are
horrified by Assad's regime, so the US is called to take action. Arming rebels
is one way it has taken action. Unfortunately in a situation as complex as
Syria some of those weapons inevitably fall into the hands of rebels groups we
do not want to be associating with.

On the other hand if the US were to do nothing, people would decry the
injustice of such a powerful nation ignoring - tacitly accepting - the mass
murder of civilians.

There are no good answers here.

Edit: Any country, not just the US, that tried to get involved in foreign
affairs to the degree that the US has would inevitably have negative outcomes.
Involving oneself in messy situations usually leads to messy conclusions.

~~~
mythrwy
It's not people are horrified by Assad's regime at all. That's just a line to
sell a war in newspapers. There are much much worse governments than Assad in
the world. Some are nominally our friends. Some we just ignore because they
aren't in strategically important locations or don't have resources of
interest.

I thought it was commonly understood at this point that "spreading democracy
and human liberty" translated to "strategic significance". Which I'd feel a
lot better about if they just came out and said. I might even support the
campaigns if a good argument were made. But being deceived leaves a bad taste
in the mouth and you start not trusting.

~~~
meri_dian
You're much too cynical. We support democratic nations and try to set up
democracy and liberal institutions when situations present themselves. We
don't completely shut out nations like Saudi Arabia because there is more to
be gained by working with them than against them. What would you want the US
to do, invade Saudi Arabia because we disagree with it?

~~~
ssijak
who gave you the right to invade anyone on that matter? people will disagree
all the time. if iran or somalia or kuba or whomever disagree how USA is
governed, does it give them right to invade you? and will you have the same
opinion if USA were to be weak and they had the power to do it?

