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TERRORIST GROUPS IN SYRIA

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TERRORISM, 

NONPROLIFERATION, AND TRADE

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

NOVEMBER 20, 2013

Serial No. 113–95

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/ or

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

MATT SALMON, Arizona 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

TOM COTTON, Arkansas 

PAUL COOK, California 

GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina 

RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas 

RON DESANTIS, Florida 

TREY RADEL, Florida 

DOUG COLLINS, Georgia 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

TED S. YOHO, Florida 

LUKE MESSER, Indiana 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

KAREN BASS, California 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

JUAN VARGAS, California 

BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois 

JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III, Massachusetts 

AMI BERA, California 

ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California 

GRACE MENG, New York 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas

AMY PORTER, Chief of Staff THOMAS SHEEHY, Staff Director

JASON STEINBAUM, Democratic Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TERRORISM, NONPROLIFERATION, AND TRADE

TED POE, Texas, Chairman 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

TOM COTTON, Arkansas 

PAUL COOK, California 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

TED S. YOHO, Florida 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas 

JUAN VARGAS, California 

BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois 

JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III, Massachusetts 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

Mr. Brian Michael Jenkins, senior adviser to the president, RAND Corporation ........................................................................................................................ 5

Mr. Phillip Smyth, Middle East research analyst, University of Maryland ....... 17

Mr. Barak Barfi, research fellow, The New America Foundation ....................... 25

Mr. Andrew J. Tabler, senior fellow, The Washington Institute for Near 

East Policy ............................................................................................................ 31

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

Mr. Brian Michael Jenkins: Prepared statement .................................................. 7

Mr. Phillip Smyth: Prepared statement ................................................................ 18

Mr. Barak Barfi: Prepared statement .................................................................... 27

Mr. Andrew J. Tabler: Prepared statement .......................................................... 33

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 48

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 49

(1)

TERRORIST GROUPS IN SYRIA 

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2013

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TERRORISM, NONPROLIFERATION, AND TRADE,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 o’clock p.m., in room 

2200 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ted Poe (chairman of 

the subcommittee) presiding. 

Mr. POE. The subcommittee will come to order. Without objection, all members may have 5 days to submit statements, questions 

and extraneous materials for the record subject to the length limitation and the rules. Ranking Member Sherman is momentarily delayed. He will be here and he will be recognized for his opening 

statement as soon as he arrives. I do want to thank everyone, especially the panelists, for waiting during the last series of votes. I appreciate your diligence and also appreciate you being here. 

The crisis in Syria is a complicated mess. The poster in front 

here and once again on the screen, outlines to some extent the situation. At the very top of the poster, in yellow, is the Kurdish intrusion into what is Syria. The red portions are where the opposition, 

the rebels, all the rebel groups, different groups in different areas, 

but the red is the opposition controlling certain areas of Syria. The 

green is controlled by Assad. The vast majority of the land that is 

in white, that is uninhabited areas of Syria. 

The butcher Assad has slaughtered countless innocent civilians 

and has used chemical weapons on his own people. Every day Syrians flee the country in thousands to escape the horror. Assad is 

supported by the Iranian regime and their Shia killers Hezbollah. 

Hezbollah is the main reason why Assad has remained in power. 

Without thousands of highly trained Hezbollah killers it is possible 

that the regime would have been toppled by now. The IRGC and 

Quds Force are actively propping up Assad to maintain Shia control of Syria and allow Iran to project its power across the region. 

Aside from Hezbollah and Assad’s armed forces, there are irregular militias called Shabihas that are loyal death squads for the regime. On the other side you have the Sunni fighters who range 

from so-called moderates to hard core extremists with ties to alQaeda. The worst of the lot is the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, 

ISIS, which is al-Qaeda. ISIS works closely with al-Qaeda in Iraq 

to create a safe haven from which they can conduct their reign of 

terror. ISIS numbers well into the thousands, and most of the forVerDate 0ct 09 2002 17:09 Jan 29, 2014 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_TNT\112013\85643 HFA PsN: SHIRL
2

eign fighters who have come to Syria fight with ISIS. I will repeat 

that. The foreign fighters that come are those that fight with ISIS. 

It isn’t just the numbers that are important, it is what they are 

fighting for and how effective they are. ISIS sits at the top of the 

pyramid and then you have Jabhat al-Nusra, or JN, which is another jihadist group that shares al-Qaeda’s ideas and objectives. 

Neither of these groups, in my opinion, are moderates. Both fund 

their operations from Gulf country donations, kidnappings, protection rackets, muscling in on the oil trade and other illegal means. 

Then there is another major Sunni group is Ahrar al-Sham, which 

many consider to be the strongest and most effective fighting force 

in several key cities. They may not be exactly al-Qaeda, but they 

are not exactly good folks either. 

So the so-called moderates fight for the Supreme Military Command Council, or SMC. General Salim Idris is the leader of this 

group. If you recall, this is the same group that the State Department was saying that we should arm to topple Assad. These fighters were billed as moderates who would keep al-Qaeda from taking 

over, but over the last several months a large faction of the SMC 

has actually defected to the radical extremist. It is not even clear 

if the SMC actually has any control over its fighters on the ground. 

It has been said that these groups were never true secular nationalists but Islamics from varying degrees. 

With so-called moderates fleeing into the arms of al-Qaeda, it 

seems that conflict has become a war between radical al-Qaeda affiliated extremists and a brutal dictator. It is hard for me to see 

a clear winner and one that the United States can support. We 

don’t want the Iranians to dominate in Syria with their now puppet 

Assad, we also don’t want al-Qaeda taking over the country and 

linking Syria with al-Qaeda presence in Iraq. Left with this impossible choice, it is hard to see how further U.S. involvement can 

change the situation for the better. 

The regional implications of this conflict are important to understand and that is why we are here today. It is a possibility that 

Assad could be removed and then the rebel forces commit civil war 

against each other to see who is going to control the country. That 

is yet to be determined. Massive refugee flows are destabilizing our 

allies in the region and threaten to overwhelm large portions of 

their countries. I was recently in Turkey, and on the Syrian border 

with Turkey visited a refugee camp with over 150,000 Syrians who 

had fled the war and now are in Turkey. Refugees are in numerous 

countries around the area. 

The fear of chemical weapons proliferation to terrorist groups is 

a possibility despite weapons inspectors trying to secure as many 

as they can. Radical foreign fighters who come to Syria to fight will 

eventually return home and may be motivated to launch attacks at 

the urging of al-Qaeda. We also know there are U.S. citizens who 

have traveled to Syria for jihad. We need to be on top of their travels and intentions so they don’t come back and attack the United 

States. It is important for us to understand these groups that are 

active in Syria so we know not only who we are dealing with but 

what they plan to do and achieve in their objectives. I look forward 

to hearing from our witnesses. 

3

I now turn over to my ranking member, Mr. Sherman from California, for 5 minutes for his opening statement. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding these hearings. The scale of violence in Syria is well known to all of us, 

120,000 people have died. Iran and Hezbollah are providing money, 

men and munitions to the brutal Assad regime. Two explosions 

near the Iranian Embassy in Beirut appear to have killed 23 people including the Iranian cultural attache to Lebanon. A Sunni 

jihadist group said it was behind the attack, and this of course is 

not the first time that Sunni jihadists have carried out deadly attacks inside Hezbollah controlled areas in Lebanon. The bombing 

serves as an indicator of a major spillover from the Syrian conflict 

into Lebanon, and we don’t have to be reminded what an ethnic 

and religious tinderbox Lebanon was from 1975 to 1990. 

There are no excellent options involving Syria. Only the weaker 

part of the opposition shares with us a dedication to democracy, 

human rights or even a pale imitation thereof. But as reprehensible as some of the Sunni jihadists are, it is the Assad/Hezbollah/

Tehran axis which is a greater threat to the United States and our 

interests than even the worst elements, I would say even the alQaeda elements of the opposition, though trying to choose from between very bad actors is certainly not something we prefer to do. 

In March 2013 I joined with the ranking member of the full committee, Eliot Engel, and with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence chairman, Mike Rogers, in introducing the 

Free Syria Act which would authorize and direct the President to 

provide appropriate assistance including limited lethal equipment 

to carefully vetted Syrian opposition members. Clearly, the number 

and organization and power of the good forces in Syria has declined 

vis-a`-vis both the Assad regime and the Sunni jihadists, yet I still 

think that working with the reasonable elements of the opposition 

is the best of the bad choices available to us. 

We see Jabhat al-Nusra, the ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and 

the Levant, and the rapidly growing Ahrar al-Sham, or free men 

of the Levant, growing in power in Syria. We know that at least 

two of those groups have pledged their allegiance to al-Qaeda central, or perhaps we should call it al-Qaeda the franchisor, and the 

moderate rebel group, the Free Syrian Army, has been losing fighters and capacities to the hard core extremists. If we have to reflect 

on how brutal those extremists are, we can see a video that apparently they posted on YouTube showing themselves killing truck 

drivers in Iraq simply because these gentlemen were Alawites and 

were unable to successfully pretend to be Sunnis. 

The al-Qaeda affiliated groups have brought bomb making and 

other war fighting capacities to the Syrian civil war. They have recruited young men into their ranks, and they are instilling extremist views. The Saudis and others of our friends in the Gulf are 

deeply frustrated of the administration’s lack of ample lethal aid, 

even nonlethal aid to the Syrian rebels, but our friends in the Gulf 

are a little less concerned about dedication to human rights or even 

to peace between nations when they decide which groups in Syria 

to support. 

Tens of thousands of Hezbollah members fight along Assad, all 

with the support of an Iranian Government, and all with the Iraqi 

4

Government that we created allowing planes to go over its territory 

carrying IRGC to Damascus. I could go on, but I should yield back 

and I do. 

Mr. POE. I thank the ranking member. Are there other members 

that wish to be recognized for opening statements? The chair will 

recognize the vice chair of this committee, Mr. Kinzinger, for 1 

minute. 

Mr. KINZINGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the 

witnesses who have come in today. The ongoing conflict in Syria 

has rapidly evolved into a historic holy war between Sunnis and 

Shiites. This has left us with an atrocity of well over 115,000 dead, 

and a conservative estimate of 2.24 million refugees and IDPs. 

I supported President Obama earlier this year in limited U.S. 

military strikes as a punishment for chemical weapons use, but in 

solving a larger crisis the simple fact is we waited too long. We 

waited too long to exert U.S. influence in the region, thus creating 

a power vacuum and leaving open the door for al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, 

Iran and Russia to fill this void. All groups that I certainly do not 

want to exert more influence in the Middle East. 

I am not fully sure what the answer is and I look forward to 

hearing what the panel suggests. But what I do know is if the U.S. 

continues to sit on the sidelines and present ourselves as an unreliable partner in the Middle East, we will lose significant influence 

in the region and the world. I look forward to the testimonies of 

the witnesses, and I yield back. 

Mr. POE. Thank you, gentlemen. I will introduce the witnesses 

at this time. We have several good witnesses for us today. Mr. 

Brian Michael Jenkins is a senior advisor to the president of the 

RAND Corporation, author of numerous books, reports and articles 

on terrorism related topics. He formerly served as chair of the political science department at RAND. Phillip Smyth is a Middle East 

analyst at the University of Maryland’s Laboratory for Cultural 

Dynamics where he focuses on Lebanese, Hezbollah and other regional Iranian Shia proxies. He was formerly an American based 

research fellow at the GLORIA Center. 

Mr. Barfi is a research fellow at the New America Foundation 

where he specializes in Arab and Islamic affairs. Previously, Barak 

was a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. Mr. Andrew 

Tabler is a senior fellow in the program on Arab Politics at the 

Washington Institute, where he focuses on Syria and U.S. policy in 

the Levant. During 14 years of residence in the Middle East, Mr. 

Tabler served most recently as a consultant on U.S.-Syria relations 

for the International Crisis Group, and a fellow at the Institute of 

Current World Affairs. 

Without objection, all the witnesses’ prepared statements will be 

made a part of the record. I ask that each witness keep your presentation to no more than 5 minutes. There is a clock in front of you 

somewhere. When you see the yellow light come on that tells you 

you have 1 minute, and the red means your 5 minutes are up. I 

will start with Mr. Jenkins. 

5

STATEMENT OF MR. BRIAN MICHAEL JENKINS, SENIOR 

ADVISER TO THE PRESIDENT, RAND CORPORATION 

Mr. JENKINS. Chairman Poe, Ranking Member Sherman, members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify. Let me 

start with the assertion that other than as a scrap of color on a 

map, Syria has ceased to exist. For the foreseeable future, no government will be able to rule the entire country. With support from 

Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, Syrian Government forces appear to 

have stalemated a fragmented rebel movement. Rebel forces do 

control large areas of the country where government forces have 

withdrawn, but even if Assad falls, they too will be unable to impose their authority throughout Syria. Moreover, as you pointed 

out in your opening statements, the growing role of jihadist elements has divided the rebel movement and discouraged Western 

governments from providing the rebels with significant military 

support. 

It is against this background that the committee has asked me 

to address the role of Sunni and Shia terrorism. On the Sunni side, 

Syria represents al-Qaeda’s best chance of establishing a new base 

in the Middle East from which to continue its terrorist campaign 

against the West. Two groups are directly linked to al-Qaeda—the 

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ISIL—or ISIS, using the term 

Sham instead of the Levant—and Jabhat al-Nusra. Through its ferocity on the battlefield and dramatic suicide bombings, al-Nusra 

has attracted financial support and recruits to become what many 

regard as the most effective rebel force. ISIS, or ISIL, is simply the 

latest incarnation of the al-Qaeda in Iraq that emerged after the 

American invasion. 

Since the American withdrawal, the group has continued its terrorist campaign in Iraq while expanding its area of operations to 

include Syria. I should point out here just briefly that Sham, the 

last word in the title, implies something much broader than modern-day Syria. It is something that encompasses Syria, Lebanon, 

Jordan, Palestine, and of course Israel. So this is a much broader 

assertion of a theater. The rebel forces have attracted between 

6,000 and 8,000 foreign fighters. Most of them come from Arab 

countries, but an estimated 500 or so come from Western countries. 

These numbers will increase as the fighting continues. Europe, 

especially, is worried about what may happen when these fighters 

return home, possibly to engage in terrorist activities. It is not an 

immediate problem, as the flow of recruits right now is toward 

Syria, not the other way. However, arriving volunteers could be recruited by al-Qaeda operatives to carry out terrorist operations in 

the West. We have to recall that Muhammad Atta originally came 

to fight in Afghanistan but was then recruited by al-Qaeda and 

turned around to lead the 9/11 operation. Insofar as we know, comparatively few of these foreign fighters have come from the United 

States. Some have, but the chatter on the social media certainly indicates aspirations for others to go. 

Hezbollah represents the Shia side of terrorism, although 

Hezbollah’s forces in Syria are fighting a more conventional war, 

bolstering a regime that is worried about the loyalty of its Sunni 

troops. Hezbollah is also training the militias that will bear an increasing portion of the fighting. In my view, terrorism certainly 

6

will be a growing feature of the Syrian conflict. The rebels are able 

to take smaller towns, infiltrate larger cities, and carry out spectacular terrorist attacks. But as these enclaves are consolidated—as 

what we might refer to as the front lines become harder—terrorism 

will become the rebels’ principal weapon. 

On the other side, the Syrian Government’s approach to counterinsurgency is essentially a strategy of terror. It is marked by intensive aerial and artillery bombardment, razing entire neighborhoods 

and towns, deliberately targeting the civilian population in the 

rebel zones. This style of fighting serves the dual purpose of terrorizing supporters of the rebels while binding Assad’s forces to the 

regime. Local militias are now probably Syria’s best weapons of 

mass destruction. Backed by the conventional forces of the Syrian 

armed forces, they root out rebel fighters and they carry out ethnic 

cleansing. 

As national institutions are warned away by the continuing conflict, the militias are going to become the primary protectors of the 

regime’s enclaves. This has implications for any future foreign military intervention. You mentioned the refugees. About a third of 

Syria’s population has either fled the country or been displaced internally. According to U.N. estimates, by the end of 2014, more 

than half of Syria’s population will be living as refugees, a situation conducive to future terrorism. So what began as a rebellion 

against the regime of Bashar al-Assad has become a sectarian war 

that has exacerbated the sectarian tensions in Iraq and Lebanon, 

as well as in Syria, and increases the likelihood of a wider regional 

conflict that will affect diaspora communities as well. One way or 

another, we will be dealing with the effluent of Syria’s conflict for 

decades. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Jenkins follows:]

7


85643a-1.eps

Testimony 

The Role of Terrorism and Terror in Syria's 

Civil War 

Brian Michael Jenkins 

RAND Office of External Affairs 

CT-402 

November 2013 

Testimony presented before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade on 

November 20,2013 

This product IS part of the RAND Corporation testimony series. RAND testimonies record testimony presented by RAND associates 

to federal, state, or local legislative committees; government-appointed commissions and panels; and private review and oversight 

bodies. The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address 

the challenges facing the publiC and private sectors around the world. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of 

its research clients and sponsors. RAN D@ is a registered trademark. 
8


85643a-2.eps

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To order RAND documents or to obtain additional information, contact 

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85643a-3.eps

Brian Michael Jenkins 1 

The RAND Corporation 

The Role of Terrorism and Terror in Syria's Civil Wa; 

Before the Committee on Foreign Affairs 

Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade 

United States House of Representatives 

November 20, 2013 

Chairman Poe, Ranking Member Sherman, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for 

inviting me to testify at this hearing, "Terrorist Groups in Syria". 

Other than as a scrap of color on a map, Syria has ceased to exist-no government will be able 

to rule all of modern Syria in the foreseeable future. 

Syria's civil war is about whether Bashar ai-Assad will continue to lead Syria's 

government, but the war also reflects broader sectarian undercurrents that divide the 

country and the region. 

After 35 months of fighting, of a population of approximately 22 million, more than 

100,000 people have died in the conflict; an estimated 2.2 million have fled abroad, while 

another 4.5 million have been displaced internally. The United Nations anticipates that, 

with continued fighting, by the end of 2014, more than half of Syria's population could be 

living as refugees.' These are circumstances conducive to future terrorism. 

With the support of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah. Syrian government forces appear to 

have stalemated a fragmented rebel movement. But Assad is unlikely to be able to 

restore his authority throughout the country. 

1 The opinions and conclusions expressed in this testimony are the authors alone and should not be 

interpreted as representing those of RAND or any of the sponsors of its research. This product is part of the 

RAND Corporation testimony series. RAND testimonies record testimony presented by RAND associates to 

federal, state, or local legislative committees; government-appointed commiSSions and panels; and private 

review and oversight bodies. The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective 

analysis and effective solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the 

world. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. 

2 This testimony is available for free download at http://www.rand.org/pubs/testimonies/CT402.html. 

3 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Syn·a Regional Refugee Response, November 17, 2013, 

http://data.unhcr.orgfsynanrefugeesfreglonal.php, and United Nations, Office for the Coordination of 

Humanitarian Affairs, No Country for Syria's lOPs, July 19, 2013, http://www.wfp.org/contentlno-countrysyrias-idps. 
10


85643a-4.eps

Rebel forces nominally control large areas of the country where government forces have 

withdrawn, but even if Assad falls, they too will be unable to impose their authority 

throughout Syria. 

While the rebellion has grown to a force of more than 100,000, it mirrors many of the 

divisions ofthe broader Muslim world. 

Moreover, the growing role of jihadist elements, with their numbers increasing through 

the recruitment of foreign fighters and defections from other rebel groups, has divided the 

rebel movement and discouraged anti-Assad governments in the West from providing 

significant military support. 

It is against this background that the committee has asked me to address the role of Sunni and 

Shia terrorism in Syria. We will first look at al Qaeda's affiliates in Syria, then we will examine the 

role played by Hezbollah. This will be followed by a broader discussion of how terror has become 

a dominant feature of Syria's civil war, which will deepen sectarian tensions throughout the 

region. 

AL OAEDA'S AFFILIATES 

In the Sunni camp are the groups linked to al Qaeda-the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant 

(ISIL) and Jabhat al-Nusrah, both of which are regarded by the United States and others as 

Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs)4 

Jabhat al-Nusrah took the field in January 2012, a year after the first protests against the regime 

began. Through its ferocity on the battlefield and dramatic suicide bombings, the group has 

attracted support and recruits to become what many regard as the most effective rebel force. 

ISIL is the latest incarnation of al Qaeda in Iraq or the Islamic State of Iraq (lSI), which emerged 

after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Since the American withdrawal, lSI has continued its terrorist 

campaign against the Iraqi government while expanding its area of operations to include Syria. 

This led to the adoption of its current name. ISIL's use of the term "Levant," or "Sham" in Arabic, 

encompasses not only the modern state of Syria but also Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and, of 

course, Israel. 

4 Earlier comments on the terrorist threat from Syria can be found in Seth G. Jones, The Terrorist Threat 

from Syria,"Testimony before the Committee on Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Counterterrorism 

and Intelligence, May 22, 2013, Santa Monica, Calif .. RAND Corporation, 2013. 

2 
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In April 2013, Abu Bakr ai-Baghdadi, the leader of lSI, asserted that the adoption of lSI's new 

name refiected the merger of lSI and Jabhat al-Nusrah, which he claimed had been created and 

financed by lSI. AI-Nusrah's leader Abu Mohammad al-Jawlani, while affirming his loyalty to al 

Qaeda and acknowledging lSI's past assistance, responded that there was no such merger. AI 

Qaeda's leader Ayman al-Zawahiri supported al-Nusrah's independence, but ai-Baghdadi 

rejected Zawahiri's decision. The dispute refiects a divisive tendency in al Qaeda, especially as it 

creates new affiliates. 

AI Qaeda affiliates and hardline Salafists not linked to al Qaeda comprise anywhere from 25 to 

nearly 50 percent of the rebel forces-there is disagreement about the numbers. One must be 

cautious here. The rebel "army" comprises more than a thousand independent units. These are 

grouped into larger entities on the basis of beliefs and nominal loyalty to one or another of the 

major factions of the rebellion, but their numbers and loyalties are fluid. Groups coalesce and 

divide. Individual leaders split 011 to form new groups. Rebel fighters transfer their loyalty from one 

group to another. Given the dynamic situation, assessments have short lives. An order of battle 

for the rebels would last a day. 

Similarly, parsing terrorist attacks from the high volume of violence generated by Syria's civil war 

is nearly impossible. Major car bombings and the assassinations of important officials can be 

discerned, but much of the violence that one could objectively qualify as terrorism is lost in the din 

of war. The University of Maryland's START database counts 175 terrorist attacks in Syria in 

2012 with 889 deaths, admittedly a conservative number" The percentage of the 100,000 people 

who have died in the war who were killed in terrorist attacks, or by whom, we cannot say. 

For now, it appears that the jihadists have become the cutting edge ofthe rebellion. Some 

attribute this to the considerable foreign support they are receiving, in contrast to the cautious 

support the more secular rebels are receiving from the West. Others attribute the jihadists' 

ferocity to their ideological fervor, while there are those who assert that the Western news media, 

eager for gruesome stories of jihadist atrocities but unable to check facts, are exaggerating the 

importance of the jihadists. It is hard to make an overall judgment. 

Right now, Syria represents al Qaeda's best chance of proving its continuing relevance and 

establishing a new base in the Middle East. The longer the fighting continues, the greater the fear 

in surrounding countries and the West that al Qaeda-inspired elements will be able to consolidate 

5 Data for 2012 proVided to the author by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Response 

to Terrorism (START), University of Maryland. 

3 
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their position, giving them a new stronghold from which to continue terrorist operations against 

the West 

Terrorist tactics are clearly part of the rebels' repertoire in Syria, but both ISIL and Jabhat alNusra are also behaving a lot like classic guerrillas. They are reportedly running schools and 

providing social assistance to people in areas under their control-these are the embryos of 

governance. Indoctrination is part ofthe program, but civic action can also be a response to the 

Syrian government tactics of deliberately destroying food supplies, medical services, and all 

economic activity in rebel-held areas. 

Although al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula adopted a similar role in Yemen, this is new territory 

for al Qaeda, whose fanaticism usually has managed to alienate populations under its temporary 

rule. AI Qaeda's central leadership and its affiliates in Syria may share the long-term objective of 

implementing Sharia worldwide, but there is an inherent tension between a religiously inspired 

revolutionary vanguard of a global terrorist enterprise and a local insurgency that must try hold 

the loyalty of the local population. 

It is possible that future al Qaeda fronts will follow the path of Hamas and Hezbollah, becoming 

complex political enterprises rather than purely terrorist organizations. In some ways, that could 

make them more difficult to counter; however, it also opens up new possibilities. Might local 

jihadists be weaned from al Qaeda's global terrorist campaign? History suggests otherwise. 

Almost none of al Qaeda's affiliates have remained local. The organization's central leadership 

demands adherence to its strategic line. Local affiliates attract foreign fighters who have little 

interest beyond fighting, and hardliners come to dominate the leadership. Attacks on the 

leadership and setbacks in the field caused by foreign military intervention provoke retaliation. 

Foreign jihadists are causing concern. The rebel forces have attracted between 6,000 and 8,000 

foreign fighters, most of them from Arab countries. There are reportedly a large number of 

Chechens, and volunteers from Pakistan are also said to be showing up. An estimated 500 come 

from Western countries, mainly the United Kingdom and France. These numbers will no doubt 

increase as the fighting continues. 

Some of the jihadists are determined to fight, but others seem to be little more than jihadi tourists 

who stay out of harm's way while taking photos of themselves and boasting to their friends back 

home on social media. Many of the foreign fighters join Jabhat al-Nusrah, but with ISIL in the 

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ascendance in the eyes of jihadists internationally, they now rnay be rnoving toward that 

organization, 

Europe is worried about what may happen when these fighters, some with military skills and 

combat experience, return home and possibly engage in terrorist activities. Because of their 

proximity and volume, Syria's foreign fighters are viewed as posing a much larger problem than 

that posed by the previous generation of veterans returning from Afghanistan. 

Right now, some in Europe may not view the lure of Syria's civil war for jihadists as a bad thing, 

as it may be drawing off some of the hotheads who otherwise would cause trouble at home. 

Moreover, Syria's jihadist groups may not be looking for a fight with Western countries, which are 

also opposed to Assad. This attitude could change if the West or Western-backed rebels move 

against the jihadists during a post-Assad civil war. 

This is not an immediate problem, as the flow of recruits is toward Syria, not the other way. 

However, al Qaeda operatives may recruit individuals from the pool of arriving volunteers to carry 

out terrorist operations in the West. Recall that Muhammad Atta originally came to fight in 

Afghanistan but was recruited by al Qaeda to lead the 9/11 operation. 

Insofar as we know, relatively few ofthese foreign fighters have come from the United States, but 

the chatter on social media indicates aspirations. 

HEZBOLLAH 

Hezbollah, also designated as an FTO, represents the Shia side. Hezbollah is a hybrid 

organization. It operates profitable criminal enterprises, while it also runs schools and provides 

Lebanon's Shia community with various forms of social assistance. Elected officials from its 

political arm participate in Lebanon's government. Hezbollah fields its own large paramilitary 

force, which is considered more powerful than the armed forces of Lebanon, and has engaged in 

open battle against Israeli forces. It is a state within a state. 

Hezbollah also continues to conduct terrorist operations. In 2012, its operatives were responsible 

for terrorist plots and attacks on Israeli targets in Europe. These attacks coincided with an 

Iranian-orchestrated campaign of terrorist attacks on Israeli targets worldwide. Hezboliah was a 

creation of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, and Iran remains its major source of funds and supplier of 

weapons. 

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Supporting its alliance with Iran and Syria and protecting its supply routes through Syria was what 

led Hezbollah to openly intervene in Syria's civil war. Hezbollah's fighters came to Syria not to 

carry out terrorist operations but to fight as conventional forces. 

Several thousand Hezbollah troops fight alongside Syrian government forces. The organization 

provides experienced veterans to a regime that is worried about the loyalty of its Sunni troops. 

Utilizing their experience in urban warfare, Hezbollah veterans played a critical role in wresting 

the important town of Qusayr from the rebels. Hezbollah, along with Iran, also appears to be 

playing an important role in training the militias that will bear an increasing portion ofthe fighting. 

Hezbollah's involvement has come at a cost. Once widely admired by Sunnis and Shias alike for 

its resistance to Israel, Hezbollah's intervention in Syria makes it a strictly Shia force. Its 

involvement in Syria has provoked increasingly bellicose rhetoric from al Qaeda, which considers 

all Shia to be heretics.6 Recent bombings of Shia targets in Lebanon, most likely the work of 

Sunni extremists, have increased tensions. 

According to some public reports, Hezbollah is currently withdrawing some of its forces from 

Syria, but whether this is true and, if so, why, is unclear. 

THE ROLE OF TERROR IN THE SYRIAN CONFLICT 

The discussion of terrorism in Syria ought not to be confined to an administratively ordained order 

of battle. The emergence of contemporary international terrorism in the late 1960s prompted an 

international effort aimed at preventing terrorist tactics from becoming a mode of political 

expression or a legitimate component of armed confiict. This effort achieved a measure of 

success in reducing some terrorist tactics, but the fact is that terrorism has become a component 

of contemporary warfare, and I suspect that terrorism will be a growing feature of the Syrian 

confiict. 

The rebels cannot seem to make the transition from a resistance movement to a field force 

capable of challenging the government's forces on the battlefield. For the time being, the rebels 

are able to take and hold smaller towns. They can infiltrate the periphery of larger cities, forcing 

the government to use its airpower and heavy weapons to drive them out, thereby causing heavy 

civilian casualties and collateral damage. The rebels can carry out spectacular terrorist attacks, 

principally large-scale bombings, to gain attention and demonstrate that the government cannot 

6 1n a message posted on July 31,2013, Zawahiri denounced Hezbollah as a tool of Iranian Shi'ite 

expansionism. 

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guarantee security, hoping that these actions will create an untenable situation that eventually 

brings about a change of regime from within or provokes intervention from abroad, VVith less 

concern about tactics that offend Western sensitivities, jihadists thrive in this kind of warfare. 

On the other side, the Syrian government's approach to counterinsurgency is informed by its own 

historical experience in suppressing Muslim revolts and by Soviet/Russian doctrine as displayed 

in the wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya. It is a strategy ofterror characterized by the static 

defense of major population centers and strategic lines of communication in Syria; this will 

translate into the defense of Damascus, Aleppo, and other large cities, ethnically friendly 

enclaves, and the major highways that connect them. 

Offensive operations are marked by intensive aerial and artillery bombardment, razing entire 

neighborhoods and towns, the deliberate targeting of bakeries (an important component of food 

production) and hospitals, and the destruction of commerce in rebel-held zones. These brutal 

tactics serve the dual purpose ofterrorizing supporters of the rebels and binding Assad's forces 

to the regime by making them accomplices in actions that foreclose any other future for them. 

Local militias, backed by airpower and armored units, root out rebel fighters and carry out ethnic 

cleansing. They are the now Syria's "weapons of mass destruction." These tactics generate 

civilian casualties and vast numbers of refugees. Over time, the Syrian army will cease to be a 

national institution, while militias will become the primary protectors and enforcers ofthe regime. 

This has implications for any future foreign military intervention. Neutralizing Syria's armed forces 

will not end the fighting. Nor will there be any national army to subsequently maintain order-war 

crimes will make what remnants survive undesirable allies. Instead, the occupying forces will 

have to confront a host of autonomous military formations and criminal groups, defeating and 

disarming them piecemeal while providing protection to local communities until new security 

institutions are created. 

AN INCREASINGLY SECTARIAN WAR 

What began as a rebellion against the regime of Bashar ai-Assad has become a sectarian civil 

war. The same underlying tensions were on display during the war in Iraq, but Syria represents a 

much more complex mosaic of Sunnis, Shias, Alawites (a Shia sect), Christians, Druze, Kurds, 

and others. As national institutions are worn away, self-defense and survival are increasingly 

based on ethnic and sectarian identities. 

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These fault lines cut across the lines in the sand drawn by colonial powers nearly a century ago. 

Syria's civil war already has exacerbated sectarian tensions in Iraq and Lebanon, and it increases 

the likelihood of a wider regional conflict, with growing sectarianism affecting diaspora 

communities as well. As in Syria, a wider regional conflict will have many layers-Sunni versus 

Shia; Jihadists versus existing regimes, whether secular, Shia, or conservative monarchies; Iran 

versus Jordan, Turkey, the Gulf kingdoms; even a renewal of Cold War competition. In one way 

or another, we will be dealing with the effluent of Syria's conflict for years to come 

8 
17

Mr. POE. Thank you. Mr. Smyth, the chair recognizes you for 5 

minutes. 

STATEMENT OF MR. PHILLIP SMYTH, MIDDLE EAST 

RESEARCH ANALYST, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND 

Mr. SMYTH. Chairman Poe and Ranking Minority Member Sherman, thank you for the opportunity to be able to speak to the subcommittee. As Syria continues to burn and the United States attempts to both assess its interests and protect our existing interests, there is a major player in its proxies which are often misunderstood and also receive less attention. 

In early March 2013, British Foreign Minister William Hague 

said and I quote, ‘‘Syria today has become the top destination for 

jihadists.’’ The jihadists he was referring to are Sunni Islamists 

fighting as part of a number of Syrian rebel groups. However, an 

often overlooked, growing, well organized and highly militarily capable jihadist element within Syria is not only pro-Assad, but it is 

also Shia Islamist in nature, in addition to being backed and run 

by Iran. Shia jihadis, their movements and the narratives they utilize are highly developed and form part of a larger Iranian regional 

strategy. 

Tehran’s main regional proxies which believe in, promote, and 

project Iran’s ‘‘Islamic Revolutionary’’ ideology are the main contributors of Shia fighters through Syria. The proxy groups sending 

combatants include Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraq’s Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, 

the Badr Organization, Kata’ib Hezbollah, and smaller Iranian 

backed splinters from Iraqi Shia radical leader, Muqtada al-Sadr. 

Announcing its existence in May, Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada—this 

is another Iraq-based Iranian client organization—claims to have 

sent some 500 fighters to Syria, and they are quite brutal. 

Starting in mid-October, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq publicly called for 

Iraqi Shia volunteers to join the organization’s fight in Syria. For 

months prior there have also been reports of trained volunteer 

fighters who had joined Kata’ib Hezbollah and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq 

and they were then trained in Iran or Lebanon in Hezbollah’s 

training camps and were then flown to Syria. Some of the combatants have included the Shia from as far afield as Saudi Arabia, 

Cote d’Ivoire and even Afghanistan. 

These Shia elements have constituted a key element which has 

secured and provided a powerful kinetic force to keep the Assad regime in power. According to one Lebanese Hezbollah fighter who 

was interviewed by Time magazine, and this is a great quote, ‘‘If 

we don’t defend the Syrian regime it would fall within 2 hours.’’

Without the initial push by Iran and the utilization of its proxy 

network, Shia armed involvement via the deployment of volunteer 

fighters and trained assets would have likely constituted a very 

limited effect on the battlefield. It is also probable that without 

Iran’s regional network of Shia Islamist fighters, the Assad regime 

would have been unable to mount any of its most recent offensives. 

Now all these factors are contributing to a hypersectarianization of 

the conflict. To quote an Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq singer—yes, they have 

propaganda singers. His name is Ali al-Delfi. ‘‘We are not simply 

fighting for Bashar, we fight for Shiism.’’ Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Smyth follows:]

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Testimony of Mr. Phillip Smyth, Research Analyst at the University of Maryland - Laboratory for 

Computational Cultural Dynamics, House Committee Foreign Affairs Committee - Subcommittee Dn 

Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, November 20, 2013, Hearing: Terrorist Groups in Syria 

Chairman Royce and Ranking Minority Member Sherman, thank you for trle opportunity to appear 

before the Subcommittee. As Syria continues to burn and the United Slates attempts to both assess its 

interests and protect our existing interests, there is a major player and its proxies which are often 

mi.::;undprstood <lnd receive le'is attpnt!on. 

In early March 2013, British Foreign Minister William Hague said, "Syria today has become the top 

destination for jihadists". The jihadists he was referring to were Sunni Islamists fighting as part of a 

number of Syrian rebel units. However, an often overlooked, growing, well-organized, and highly 

militarily capable jihadist element within Syria is not only pro-Assad, but is also Shi'a Islamist in nature, 

in addition to being backed and run by Iran. Shi'a jihadis, their movements, and the narratives they 

utilize are highly developed and form part of a larger Iranian regional strategy. 

Tehran's main regional proxies which believe in, promote, and project Iran's "Islamic Revolutionary" 

ideology are the main contributors of Shi'a fighters to Syria. The proxy groups sending combatants 

include Lebanese Hizballah, Iraq's Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, the Badr Organization, Kata'ib Hizballah, and other 

smaller splinters from Iraqi Shi'a radical leader, Muqtada al-Sadr. Announcing its existence in May, 

Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada, another Iraq-based Iranian-proxy organization, claims to have sent 500 

fighters to Syria. Starting in mid-October, Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq publicly called for Iraqi Shi'a volunteers to 

join the organization's fight in Syria. For months prior there had been have also been reports of trained 

volunteer fighters who had joined Kata'ib Hizballah or Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, were trained in Iran or 

Lebanon, and were then flown to Syria. Some of the combatants have included Shi'a from as far afield as 

Saudi Arabia, Cote d'ivoire, and reportedly Afghanistan. 

These Shi'a elements have constituted a key element which has secured and has provided a powerful 

kinetic force to keep the Assad regime in power. According to one Lebanese Hizballah fighter 

interviewed by Time Magazine, "If we don't defend the Syrian regime, it would fall within two hours". 

Without the initial push by Iran and the utilization of its proxy-network, Shi'a armed involvement via the 

deployment of volunteer fighters and trained assets would likely had miniscule role in the fighting. It is 

also probable that without Iran's regional network of Shi'a Islamist fighters, the Assad regime would 

have been unable to mount most of its successful recent offensives. 

What Motivates the Shi'a Jihadist? 

Iran's overarching influence and control of Shia militia activity in Syria is undeniable and pervasive. The 

numerous Shi'a groups fighting in Syria rarely hide their loyalty to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali 

Khamenei. The majority of these fighters adhere to the Iranian political and religious ideology of Wi lay at 

al-Faqih, or the Absolute Guardianship of the Jurisprudent (in this case, the jurist is Iranian Supreme 

Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei). Despite the fact that Khamenei is the head of state of Iran, he wields 

incredible influence over a multitude of organizations and individuals in different geographic zones due 

to his religious title and connected ideology. In fact, the revolutionary ideology of Iran was not simply 

created for just that state, but is global and pan-Islamic. When Khamenei gives an order to a loyal 

follower, they act. 
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According to one Lebanese Hizballah fighter, the group's order to fight in the May-June 2013 battle of 

Qusayr and in other parts of Syria came from a direct religious command called a taklif shar'i. A taklif 

shar'i, comes from Iran's Supreme Leader and is a religious obligation which must be followed. If this 

obligation is not followed, it is tantamount to disobeying the will of God. The fact that a taklif shar'i was 

issued was also uncovered when a video leaked of Hizballah and possibly other allied Iraqi Shia Islamist 

militants executing captured Syrians. One of the fighters said, "We are performing our taklif and we are 

not seeking personal vengeance." Thus far, a publically accessible copy of the taklif shar'i is unavailable. 

Nevertheless, this follows a general trend, since many religious edicts are not published. Instead, at 

times, they are conveyed via networks of loyal clerics and military leaders which adhere to the concepts 

of Wilayat al-Faqih. 

The war has also not been marketed to Shi'a in the Middle East and worldwide as one to defend the 

Assad regime. Instead, the narrative has been one of "defending shrines", namely the Sayyida Zaynab 

Shrine in southern Damascus. Lebanese Hizballah and Iran's other Iraqi Shi'a Islamist proxies have also 

claimed their roles in Syria are to protect their host countries from Sunni Islamist radicals they have 

branded as, "Takfiris". Starting in August, their war-narratives took on a far more sectarian tone and the 

collective of Iranian-backed Shi'a Islamist organizations have now started to openly refer to themselves 

as a "Shi'a Resistance". This stands in stark contrast when juxtaposed to the more normative and 

ideologically sound (in terms of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary ideology), "Islamic Resistance". Widely 

shared musical propaganda for Iran's Iraqi-Shi'a proxies and for Lebanese Hizballah has also adopted a 

more sectarian tone. 

A World of Front Militias 

Iranian-backed Shi'a Islamist organizations operating in Syria continue to be announced. During the 

summer, 3 separate Syrian-based militias were announced in a 3-week period. Militia organizations 

announced as operating in Syria should generally be considered as front organizations for other Iranianbacked groups based in Iran, Iraq, or Lebanon. The creation of a multitude of front groups resembles 

earlier efforts by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps when they created proxy forces to project 

their power in the region. In the 1980s the early Lebanese Hizballah often utilized many different front 

names when it carried out operations. During the Iraq War (2003), "Special Groups" created by Iran 

would also go by many different names depending on their areas of operation. This is not simply done to 

create plausible deniability, but to make the force sizes appear larger (to their enemies and potential 

supporters) and to confuse enemy forces. In Syria, there has been a lot of overlap in terms of 

membership for Syria-based front groups and the forces which have supplied them with fighters. 

The majority of Shi'a jihadist combatants primarily originate from Iraq and Lebanon. However, there 

have been Shi'a from around the world which have fought and died in Syria. In June, Saudi Shi'a Ahmed 

Adnan al-Qar'oush, was reported to have been killed fighting in Syria. Extensive Lebanese Hizballah and 

Iranian presences in West Africa has also supplied sub-Saharan African fighters. On July 26, 2013, the 

"First African martyr", Muhammed Suleiman al-Kuwni was reported in Iranian media. 

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF): The IRGC-QF has been 

instrumental in every major overseas operation executed by Iran. Answering directly to Iranian 

Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, IRGC-QF's commander, Qassem Suleimani has gone 

about reforming and retraining Iraqi and Lebanese Shi'a fighting units in order to make them 
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more unified bodies. Overall, the IRGC-QF along with Lebanese Hizballah maintain key 

leadership roles in relation to the Shi'a Islamist forces on the ground in Syria. There have been 

many estimates of the IRGC's presence in Syria and it is likely their number runs into the 

thousands. 

Lebanese Hizballah: According to French intelligence, Lebanese Hizballah has anywhere from 

3,000-4000 fighters inside Lebanon. Many of these fighters serve in Syria through different 

rotational periods. Often, they function as "core-forces", which means they provide a welltrained, motivated, and equipped core for the Syrian army and the primarily Iraqi Shi'a staffed 

militias in Syria. Hizballah has launched its own major operations in cooperation with elements 

from the Syrian Army. The most prominent was during the May-June Battle of Qusayr and in the 

developing Battle for Qalamoun. Lebanese Hizballah has also worked many joint operations with 

front-militias staffed primarily by Iraqi Shi'a fighters within Syria. One operation in December 

2012-February 2013 took control of the road and areas leading to Damascus Airport. Lebanese 

Hizballah generally operates under its own name while fighting in Syria. Nevertheless, the group 

has supplied fighters to other Shi'a Islamist front militias. In part, Lebanese Hizballah had 

developed a good rapport with its allied Iraqi Shi'a Islamist organizations due to combat 

experience during the Iraq War (2003) and because Iranian leadership and trainers often lacked 

Arabic language skills. Thus, the IRGC-QF has used Lebanese Hizballah as an important 

middleman and chief conduit to command other loyal elements. 

Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq (AAH): Created by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in cooperation 

with Lebanese Hizballah, Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq began life as a splinter from Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi 

Army. The group claimed responsibility. In September, the group threatened to attack u.S. 

interests if the u.S. struck Syria. It is claimed via social media sites and through their funeral 

ceremonies that their units in Syria operate under the name of Liwa' Kafeel Zaynab (Sponsors of 

Zaynab Brigade). In October, the group moved from recruiting Shi'a volunteers via word of 

mouth and local recruiters to a phone and social network-based approach. It is unknown how 

many fighters AHH has contributed. Though, it has been reported that its combatants are well 

trained and exhibit superior command skills when compared to their Syrian allies. 

Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada (KSS or The Master of the Martyrs Brigades): This Iraqi group claims 

its reason for being is to protect "shrines across the globe". KSS has also mentioned that Israel 

is "Cancerous", the u.S. occupation of Iraq was a symbol of "Arrogance" (a regularly-used 

Iranian Revolutionary term to describe actions of Western states), and called for Jerusalem to be 

liberated. Though, it is clear from the group's symbolism (which features the dome to the 

Sayyida Zaynab shrine) and that they have not been deployed outside of Syria, that their main 

purpose may be to function as a Syria-centric fighting group. Unlike fighters from other Iranianbacked organizations, KSS fighters do not appear to operate as part of other Syrian front militias 

and openly fight under the KSS banner. KSS does not hide its affinity for the Iranian 

Revolutionary ideology or for Ayatollah Khamenei. Most of the group's martyrdom posters 

include Khamenei and fighters killed fighting for the group are flown to Iran before burial in Iraq. 

Some of the group's fighters were killed in East Ghouta by rebel elements and a large quantity 

of material praising Lebanese Hizballah leader, Imad Mughniyeh and the Iranian Supreme 
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Leader was found on their bodies. KSS's fighters were also part of an October-November 

offensive which took sections of southern Damascus. 

Kata'ib Hizballah (KH or the Hizballah Brigades): Considered one of the more elite Iraq, "Special 

Groups" created by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Lebanese Hizballah, Kata'ib 

Hizballah is one of the most openly pro-Iranian organizations in Iraq. The group made a name 

for itself through the use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), particularly the deadly 

Explosively Formed Penetrator (EFP) against U.S. and Coalition forces. KH claimed its first loss in 

Syria in March, 2013. The group has funneled many fighters to Syria, though the numbers it has 

contributed are unknown. 

The Badr Organization: The Badr Organization, while initially claiming that they were dropping 

their armed capability, Badr has become a key Iraqi Shi'a Islamist militia in Syria. Through their 

"Armed Wing", Badr has claimed to have sent some 1,500 members to Syria as part of their 

expeditionary unit called Quwet al-Shahid Muhammed Baqir al-Sadr (The Martyr Muhammed 

Baqir al-Sadr Forces). 

Harakat Hizballah al-Nujaba' (The Hizballah Movement of the Outstanding. It is also known as 

Harakat Nujaba'): Harakat Hizballah al-Nujaba' was formed as a front group comprised of 

fighters primarily from Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, Kata'ib Hizballah, and there are claims it also includes 

members of the Promised Day Brigades (the successor militia to Muqtada al-Sadr's Jaysh 01-

Mahdi). This front sends fighters to Syria who fight under the banner of three militias formed 

from their fighters. Little is known about the first Syria-based militia, Liwa' ai-Hamad. However, 

Liwa' 'Am mar Ibn Yasir (The 'Ammar Ibn Yasir Brigade) has reportedly been active in Aleppo, 

especially in rural areas. Sheikh Akram al-Ka'bi, a founder of Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq leads the group. 

Liwa'a 'Am mar Ibn Yasir's fighters openly describe themselves as "Jnood al-Wilaya" or "Soldiers 

of the Wali", a reference to Khamenei's political-religious title (Wali al-Faqih). Though social 

media, Liwa' 'Am mar Ibn Yasir claimed they would, "fulfil the mandates of Wali". The group has 

also described Khamenei as the "Lion of Shi'ism". Banners of Khamenei and the late Iranian 

Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Khomeini often accompany the caskets of fallen members of 

Liwa' 'Am mar Ibn Yasir. Another militia, Liwa' ai-Imam ai-Hasan al-Mujtaba (The Imam HasanThe Chosen Brigade), which claims to operate along the main road leading to Damascus Airport 

and in the rural sections of East Ghouta, acts as another Syria-based front militia for Harakat 

Hizballah al-Nujaba'. 

Liwa' Abu Fadl ai-Abbas (The Abu Fadl ai-Abbas Brigade): Liwa' Abu Fadl ai-Abbas was the first 

Shi'a militia to be announced in Syria. Reportedly, this militia was formed out of local Shi'a 

(many of whom are Iraqi) living in the area around the Sayyida Zaynab Shrine in southern 

Damascus. However, based on the group's own imagery, statements, and interviews which have 

been conducted with the organization's fighters, it is clear the group's core fighting force was 

comprised of a mix of Iranian-backed organizations, such as Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard 

Corps, Lebanese Hizballah, Kata'ib Hizballah, and Asa'ib Ahl al·Haq. Liwa' Abu Fadl al-Abbas's 

current commander goes by the nom de guerre of Abu Ajeeb. 
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Liwa' Zuljiqar (The Zulfiqar Brigade): Liwa' Zulfiqar's fighters have included members of 

Lebanese Hizballah and other Iranian-backed Shi'a Islamist organizations. Its commander was 

Fadel Subhi, an Iraqi more commonly known as Abu Hajar. Subhi was also a commander in Liwa' 

Abu Fadl ai-Abbas. He was killed in Dara'a on September 16, 2013. Iranian media had reported 

that prior to his deployment to Syria, he spent time in Iran. Following his death, his body was 

shipped from Syria to Iran and then onto Najaf, Iraq. The group is now led by another Iraqi Shi'a 

named Abu Shahed who was also a leader within Liwa' Abu Fadl ai-Abbas. 

Sariyya al-Tali'a al-Khurasani (The Vanguards of Khurasani Unit): Claiming to be based in Arbil, 

Iraq (which is unlikely), this group of Iraqi Shi'a fighters primarily operates in East Ghouta. 

Commanded by Iraqi Shi'a Ali Yasiri, the organization uses Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard 

Corps' logo on its flag and identification patches. It is unknown which groups have contributed 

fighters to it. 

Liwa' ai-Imam al-Husayn (The Imam Husayn Brigade): Liwa' ai-Imam al-Husayn purports to be 

an organization loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr. While the group appears to be real, its messaging does 

not fit reality. Iraqi Shi'a radical leader, Muqtada al-Sadr has been extremely vocal about 

opposing efforts to send Shi'a fighters to Syria. Additionally, he has been involved in many 

disputes with Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, which appears to share members with Liwa' ai-Imam al-Husayn. 

Thus, it's likely this group actually utilizes Sadrist splinters and may be an Iranian-backed 

attempt to sway Shi'a followers of Muqtada al-Sadr to join their efforts in Syria. 

Areas of Operation & Impact 

When Iranian-backed Shi'a Islamist armed elements initiated their presence in Syria, they were often 

small forces with specialized tasks. Fighters, predominantly from Iraq, were flown into Damascus's and 

other major airports. As their deployments increased, they have been instrumental in forming so-called 

"core-forces" of elite and well-equipped fighters who help rally less experienced, equipped, and/or 

motivated fighters. As Iranian-backed Shi'a armed-presence grew, these units, particularly those 

belonging to Lebanese Hizballah expanded beyond advisory, intelligence, and more specialized roles. 

The importance of securing Damascus Airport was neither lost on the Assad regime nor on Lebanese 

Hizballah. Specialized Iraqi Shi'a and Lebanese Hizballah units secured the airport as early as January 

2013. In the spring of 2013, Shi'a militias were the main force used to take and secure Aleppo Airport. 

Presently, Iranian-backed Shi'a Islamist organizations now comprise significant regular infantry units. At 

times these units have utilized artillery, rockets, mortars and armored vehicles, including tanks and 

infantry fighting vehicles. 

Following Lebanese Hizballah's victory in Qusayr, Shi'a Islamist armed elements have engaged in heavy 

fighting in Homs and East Ghouta. These engagements increased throughout the summer, from late 

June-early September. Some Shi'a Islamist forces were reported to be guarding roadways and other 

communications links between Damascus and the southern Syrian city of Suweida. By late-August, 

primarily Iraqi Shi'a manned militias with assistance from Lebanese Hizballah began more extensive 
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combat operations in the southern Syrian city of Dara'a. These operations continued through 

September. 

Starting in late October, organizations such as Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq began calling for volunteers to 

participate in what was deemed the, "Ashura Husayn Campaign". The campaign, as the name implies, 

was meant to coincide with the Shia religious holiday which commemorates the martyrdom of Husayn 

ibn Ali, the third Imam of Shia Islam. The offensive began in mid-October in Damascus and led to Shia 

militias taking key neighborhoods in southern suburbs of Damascus and some rural areas to the south, 

east, and west of the city. Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada reported via its social media apparatus that it was 

involved in fighting in Hajar al-Aswad. Other districts such as Husaynia and Sbeneh were also taken by a 

mixture of Shia militia organizations and the Syrian army. 

Around the same time, Lebanese Hizballah was reported to take the lead in an offensive in the 

mountainous area, known as Qalamoun, which is around 40 miles north of Damascus and is close to 

Lebanon. Syrian rebel elements have also reported a rise in the number of clashes their forces have 

been involved with Shi'a militia elements in areas around Aleppo. 

A Khomeinist Style of Shi'a Revival 

Iranian·backed Shi'a Islamist groups in Syria are not seeking to impose a Khomeinist form of government 

on Syria, but their goals are multifold. IRGC-QF's Qassem Suleimani has been working tirelessly to build a 

more unified and cohesive network of ideologically· loyal proxy forces. Syria has provided that 

opportunity. While the conflict Syria, presents a serious challenge to Iran's regional interests, there are 

positive components for Iranian regional policy. 

Militarily, the Syrian War is providing on-the-ground training for thousands of loyal forces and assisting 

with the construction of more unified proxies willing to fight for Iran's ideological causes. Due to the fact 

that training regimens were changed (from 2007-2010) to focus more on traditional forms of urban and 

rural combat, Iran has a foreign legion of sorts which it can use as a rapid reaction force. 

This does not mean that these groups have "evolved" out of their abilities to execute asymmetric 

operations or terrorist attacks. If anything, it has made them far more deadly. Instead, their increased 

training, better equipment, leadership, and organization has made them into an extremely potent 

element in future Iranian armed projections around the Middle East. 

The threat these organizations pose is not simply limited to direct u.S. interests which can be targeted 

with conventional munitions. In the long-term, Iran is being viewed by the region's Shi'a masses as their 

protector. As traditional Shi'a Islamic leaders lose relevance in an increasingly violent and sectarian 

region, more Shi'a will turn to Iran and its proxies for a sense of empowerment and ideology. This has 

not been lost on Tehran, which has been actively encouraging its proxies to market Iran and Iranian 

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei as Shi'ism's protector and leader. 

If the IRGC·QF trained and equipped Lebanese Hizballah was particularly deadly against U.S. interests in 

the 1980s, and then Hizballah and IRGC-QF trained Iraqi "Special Groups" (such as Kata'ib Hizballah and 

Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq) proved their deadliness by killing hundreds of u.s. and Coalition personnel during the 

Iraq War (2003), it is likely these groups will continue to pose a threat to American interests and forces 

in the region. Ideologically, they still view the u.S. as their main enemy and if a command comes from 
24


85643b-7.eps

the Wali al-Faqih, these forces will follow orders. In Syria, despite continued losses of their fighters, their 

power has not appeared to ebb. 
25

Mr. POE. Mr. Barfi for 5 minutes please. 

STATEMENT OF MR. BARAK BARFI, RESEARCH FELLOW, THE 

NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION 

Mr. BARFI. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you 

for inviting me to testify today about the various jihadist groups 

operating in Syria. Before I begin, I just want to give a quick shout 

out to my advisor/professor Richard Bulliet at Columbia who 

taught me all the nuances of Islam that Phillip has just reviewed 

with me. 

Syria has emerged as the number one destination of foreign 

jihadists. Pipelines from the Arabian Peninsula, Europe and North 

Africa funnel fighters to Syria. Some of these fighters have allied 

with homegrown extremists to create the Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate 

known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. Today, ISIS 

is the strongest brigade in Syria with a robust presence in many 

of country’s provinces. However, although media attention is largely focused on ISIS, there are a number of other Salafist and 

jihadist brigades organizations that espouse an anti-modern and 

anti-Western message that are active in Syria. 

ISIS’ roots date back to the January 2012 creation of Jabhat alNusra, or JN, when al-Qaeda’s Iraqi affiliate, the Islamic State in 

Iraq, or ISI, sought to exploit the Syrian revolution to establish a 

regional branch there. On April 8th, 2013, ISI’s leader Abu Bakr 

al-Baghdadi announced that JN had been absorbed into ISI to become ISIS. JN’s leader rebuffed the merger and received the support of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Nevertheless, within 

days many JN fighters defected to ISIS. ISIS also took over a number of JN’s compounds. Moderate members deserted for the rebelled Free Syrian Army or FSA. It appeared that JN was on the 

brink of disintegration. 

But shedding outliers who enflamed internal dissent lead to a 

more unified membership and a more cohesive ideology. The issue 

of takfirism, or declaring a Muslim an infidel, was bitterly contested within JN. The leadership was never comfortable with the 

extremists who advocated it and were pleased that they jumped 

ship to ISIS. In addition, most of the radicals who left were foreign 

fighters, allowing JN to present itself as authentically Syrian. Tensions between ISIS and JN are illustrated by the events in the city 

of Raqqa. 

After the April merger, JN’s leader Abu Sa’d decided not to join 

ISIS. Instead, he abandoned JN’s compound that is now under ISIS 

control with about 30 fighters. After keeping a low profile for several months as it reorganized, JN reemerged in September. In the 

interim, it absorbs units from the rebel-led Free Syrian Army who 

felt threatened by ISIS’ consolidation of power. A number of units 

from the 11th Division such as Thuwar Raqqa and Muntasir Billah 

joined JN. But JN’s comeback vexed ISIS, which responded by incarcerating the former leader Abu Sa’d. In other areas such as 

Aleppo, ISIS members have defected back to JN. 

Other factors have brought the intra-al-Qaeda conflict to the fore. 

On November 8th, al-Zawahiri announced the disbanding of ISIS, 

restricting al-Baghdadi’s theater to Iraq and appointing JN as alQaeda’s Syrian affiliate. Given ISIS’ independence from al-Qaeda’s 

26

Pakistan based leadership, and its autonomous financial resources, 

al-Baghdadi has no need to accept al-Zawahiri’s diktats. He has 

previously rebuffed al-Zawahiri’s Syrian directives and is likely to 

do so again. As smaller brigades such as Asifa al-Shamal and 

Ghuraba al-Sham are squeezed out of the revolution by their larger 

counterparts, it is likely that rebel groups will consolidate into proISIS and anti-ISIS groups. The anti-ISIS block will probably in the 

future be led by organizations such as JN. Such mergers portend 

a future battle where JN will play an important role as the bulwark against ISIS expansion. 

ISIS is able to act with impunity because of its predominance in 

the Syrian arena. It has a qualitative superiority over FSA units. 

Foreign jihadists brought with them skills learned in other conflicts. In addition, its ideological dedication to the revolution, often 

lacking in other FSA brigades, reflects a commitment that is admired by Syrians of all stripes. It is not only the organization’s 

martial prowess that assures its popularity. In a war that has devastated state institutions, Syrians have few options for judicial arbitration. Because ISIS’ leaders are mainly foreign they can portray 

themselves as neutral mediators. 

The organization also provides municipal and social services such 

as supplying grain to bakeries and establishing schools and summer camps. Local circumstances often dictate its relationship with 

the civilian community. In the areas where corrupt FSA units or 

inefficient administrators operated prior to its arrival, ISIS has 

been welcomed. But in regions where local officials have created a 

modicum of government, ISIS has received poor grades. ISIS seeks 

to create an Islamic state guided by the harshest interpretation of 

Islamic law that have little grounding in Islamic history. 

The organization has declared that its struggle will not end with 

the toppling of the Syrian regime. It plans to take the fight to other 

Arab countries in its quest to create a nebulous caliphate. ISIS cooperates with many FSA and Islamist brigades. They sponsor joint 

operations and divide the spoils between them. But the organization has also clashed with other rebel groups. When ISIS sought 

to consolidate its control over Raqqa, it dispatched a suicide bomber to destroy a compound of FSA unit Ahfad al-Rasul. In July, ISIS 

killed Kamal Hamami, a senior FSA leader in Ltakia. His death 

sparked FSA promises of a military riposte that never materialized. Indeed, various FSA units often boast it will take on ISIS only 

to back down later. 

In some provinces such as Raqqa, the FSA in no longer in a position to challenge it. In others such as Aleppo——

[The prepared statement of Mr. Barfi follows:]

27


85643c-1.eps

JIHAD 1ST ORGANIZATIONS IN SYRIA 

Barak Barfi 

Research Fellow 

New America Foundation 

House Committee on Foreign Affairs 

Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade 

November 20, 2013 
28


85643c-2.eps

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify today about the 

various jihadist groups operating in Syria. Before I begin, I want to give a quick shout out to my 

advisor, Columbia University Professor Richard Bulliet who schooled me in the nuances of 

Islam. Syria has emerged as the number one destination offoreignjihadists Pipelines from the 

Arabian Peninsula, Europe and North Africa funnel fighters to Syria 

Some of these fighters have allied with homegrown extremists to create the Syrian al-Qaeda 

affiliate, known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Today, ISIS is the strongest brigade 

in Syria with a robust presence in many of the country's provinces. However, although media 

attention has largely focused on ISIS, there are a number of other Salalist and jihadist 

organizations that also espouse anti-modern and anti-Western ideologies 

ISIS' roots date back to the January 2012 creation of Jabhat al-Nusra ON) when al-Qaeda's Iraqi 

affiliate, the Islamic State in Iraq (lSI), sought to exploit the Syrian revolution to establish a 

regional branch there. On April 8, 2013, lSI's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced that IN 

had been absorbed into lSI to create the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). IN's leader 

rebuffed the merger and received the support ofal-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri 

Nevertheless, within days many IN fighters defected to ISIS. ISIS also took over a number of 

IN's compounds. Moderate members deserted for the rebel-led Free Syrian Army (FSA) units 

It appeared that IN was on the brink of disintegration 

But shedding outliers who enflamed internal dissent lead to a more unified membership and a 

more cohesive ideology. The issue oftaklirism, or declaring other Muslims to be non-believers, 

was bitterly contested within IN. The leadership was never comfortable with the extremists who 

advocated it, and were pleased when they jumped ship for ISIS. In addition, most of the radicals 

who left were foreigners, allowing IN to present itself as authentically Syrian 

Tensions between ISIS and IN are illustrated by events in the city of Raqqa. After the April 

merger, IN's leader, Abu Sa'd, chose not to join ISIS. Instead, he abandoned IN's compound, 

now under ISIS' control, with about thirty fighters. After keeping a low profile for several 

months as it reorganized, IN reemerged in September. In the interim, it absorbed units from the 

rebel-led Free Syrian Army (FSA), who felt threatened by ISIS' consolidation of power A 

number of units Irom the 11'h Division such as Thuwar Raqqa and Muntasir Billah joined IN 

But IN's comeback vexed ISIS, which responded by incarcerating Abu Sa'd In other areas, such 

as Aleppo, ISIS members have defected back to IN 

Other factors have brought the intra-al-Qaeda conflict to the fore. On November 8, al-Zawahiri 

announced the disbanding of ISIS, restricting al-Baghdadi's theater to Iraq and appointing IN as 

al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate. Given ISIS' independence from al-Qaeda's Pakistan-based 

leadership, and its autonomous financial resources, aI-Baghdadi has no need to accept alZawahiri's diktats. He has previously rebuffed al-Zawahiri's Syrian directives and will do so 

again 

As smaller brigades such as Asifa al-Shamal and Ghuraba aI-Sham are squeezed out of the 

revolution by their larger counterparts, it is likely that rebel groups will consolidate into pro-ISIS 

and anti-ISIS blocks led by IN Such mergers portend a future battle where IN will play an 
29


85643c-3.eps

important role as the bulwark against ISIS expansion 

ISIS is able to act with impunity because of its predominance in the Syrian arena It has a 

qualitative superiority over other FSA units. Foreign jihadists brought with them combat skills 

learned in other conflicts. Tn addition, its ideological dedication to the revolution, often lacking 

in other FSA brigades, reflects a commitment that is admired by Syrians of all stripes 

It is not only the organization's martial prowess that assures its popularity. In a war that has 

devastated state institutions, Syrians have few options for judicial arbitration. Because ISIS' 

leaders are mainly foreign, they are neutral mediators. The organization also provides municipal 

and social services, such as supplying grain to bakeries and establishing schools and summer 

camps for youth 

Local circumstances often dictate its relationship with the civilian community. Tn areas where 

corrupt FSA units or inefficient administrators operated prior to its arrival, ISIS has been 

welcomed. But in regions where local officials had created a modicum of government, ISIS has 

recei ved poor grades 

ISIS seeks to create an Islamic state guided by the harshest interpretations of Islamic law that 

have little grounding in Islamic history. The organization has declared that its struggle will not 

end with the toppling of the Syrian regime. It plans to take the fight to other Arab countries in its 

quest to create a nebulous caliphate 

ISIS cooperates with many FSA and Islamist brigades They sponsor joint operations and divide 

the spoils. But the organization has also clashed with other rebel groups. When ISIS sought to 

consolidate its control over Raqqa, it dispatched a suicide bomber to destroy the compound of 

the FSA unit Ahfad al-Rasul. In July, ISIS killed Kamal Hamami, a senior FSA leader in 

Latakia. His death sparked FSA promises of a military riposte that never materialized. Indeed, 

various FSA units often boast that they will take on ISIS only to back down later. In some 

provinces such as Raqqa, the FSA is no longer in a position to challenge it Tn others such as 

Aleppo, the most powerful brigade, Tawhid, has no desire to do so 

Last week, ISIS decapitated a fighter from the Islamist brigade Ahrar ai-Sham The latter has 

demanded that the killers be tried. ISIS will likely seek to reach an accord Because it knows 

that if it does not, Ahrar, unlike the fainthearted FSA, will respond in kind 

Ahrar ai-Sham is one of the most powerful brigades in Syria. It has a presence across several 

regions. Like ISIS, it advocates a puritanical Islamist creed known as Salafism. But unlike ISIS, 

it does not espouse radical doctrines such as takfirism and the indiscriminate killing of 

minorities. Ahrar advocates the creation of an Islamic state with limited citizen rights. It 

cooperates with Western j ournalists. It has often stated that its struggle will end with the 

revolution. Most of its members are Syrian, but there are some foreigners in its ranks. Like 

other brigades, Ahrar cooperates with ISIS, with some commanders enjoying strong ties with 

their al-Qaeda counterparts. But its main allies are in the Syrian Islamic Front which joins 

together eleven Salafi brigades. 

2 
30


85643c-4.eps

Jaysh al-Muhajrin wa al-Ansar (JMA) is another jihadist organization active in Syria. Led by 

Chechans, its rank and file is largely foreign. JMA has pledged allegiance to ISIS, but 

nevertheless differs with ISIS on a number of ideological points. Its leadership has sometimes 

stated that the organization does not seek to use Syria as a launching pad for other regional 

campaigns, but merely seeks the overthrow of the Syrian regime. And whereas ISIS leader alBaghdadi has obscured his real identity and lives in anonymity, JMA believes a caliph must 

reveal himself and openly interact with the masses JMA is particularly active in the northern 

provinces of Aleppo and Idlib. 

The FSA has never been - as some of its American backers claim - a secular organization whose 

units fight for democratic freedoms and a chance to emulate Western society. Most brigades are 

Islamists. But as the Syrian conflict descends into a maelstrom of daily massacres and mass 

carnage, fighters are increasingly drawn to the most extreme ideologies As a result, jihadist 

organizations will only get stronger as the fighting drags on. 

The United States' primary objective in Syria should be to deny al-Qaeda the establishment of a 

new safe haven. Though Washington has successfully disrupted the organization's activities in 

the Arabian Peninsula and Pakistan, it is neglecting the emergence of its newest theater of 

operations. AI-Qaeda has proved in the past that such inattention will only result in a lethal 

blowback with wide-ranging repercussions. The chaos in Syria has magnitied this threat. AIQaeda has exploited the political and security instability to take control oflarge cities. It has 

established everything from schools to social welfare bureaus. As the Syrian civil war inches 

endlessly on, al-Qaeda is able to indoctrinate a generation of youth in its extremist ideology It 

will be difficult to reverse these trends as they become further entrenched. 

The collapse of the Syrian state and the proliferation of heavy weapons such as tanks and 

surface-to-air missiles have transformed the country into a jihadist Elysian tields. They have 

poured into the country from three continents. Hundreds of Europeans, if not a thousand, have 

flowed into Syria. These fighters can return to their homelands and easily move around other 

European countries to plot attacks. New transnational networks have emerged to funnel fighters 

and funds to ISIS 

These factors make combatting ISIS a chief priority It remains to be seen whether Washington 

will confront the challenge 
31

Mr. POE. The gentleman’s time has expired. We do have your entire statement. Thank you, Mr. Barfi. And Mr. Tabler, you have 5 

minutes. 

STATEMENT OF MR. ANDREW J. TABLER, SENIOR FELLOW, 

THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY 

Mr. TABLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Sherman, and to my fellow panelists, thanks for this opportunity to testify before the subcommittee today. I have been asked to focus my 

testimony on U.S. national security interests in the region affected 

by the Syria conflict, what it means for Syria’s neighbors, and regional implications. I will be as brief as I can on three very important questions. 

I have been working on Syria for about 13 years, including living 

in the country for about seven. To put the current situation in perspective, historically Syria’s primary importance to the United 

States is based on its role as the keystone in the post-Ottoman 

Middle East state architecture. Many, if not most of you, remember 

the 15-year Lebanon war, where civil strife spawned civil war, terrorism, and the destruction of the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut, whose 241 killed marked the single largest day 

death toll for the Marine Corps since the battle of Iwo Jima. 

The Lebanon war was horrible, but strategically and metaphorically, and I don’t mean to belittle it, Lebanon was just the small 

row house on the end of a block of states carved out of the Ottoman 

Empire by the Sykes-Picot Agreement. It was hard for the fighting 

and sectarianism to spread, most notably because the forces of the 

two neighboring row houses, Israel and a demographically different 

and more stable Syria under Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez, that 

intervened to stop and contain the sectarian nature of the conflict. 

Syria, in comparison, is the big row house in the middle of the 

block. 

And while the United States does not have historic interests in 

Syria and spent many years on opposite sides during the Cold War 

and the War on Terrorism, almost all of Syria’s neighbors are strategic U.S. allies—Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Lebanon, which 

is not allied with the United States, but where Washington has 

considerable interests and challenges. What that effectively means 

is that what happens in Syria is not going to stay there, and it is 

difficult to contain. 

What happened in Lebanon during the ’70s and ’80s is also occurring in Syria. A similar conflict, but it is happening much faster 

and on different levels. Regional sectarian rivalries are competing 

in Syria’s bloody fight with the vanguard forces coming from the 

laundry list of U.S. designated foreign terrorist organizations. 

Today Hezbollah, IRGC-Quds Force and other Iranian backed Shia 

militias fight alongside the Assad regime in the west. Salafists and 

jihadists, some of whom are al-Qaeda affiliates fight alongside and 

often against, these days at least, the Syrian Sunni dominated opposition. And in Kurdish areas, the Democratic Union Party, the 

PYD, an organization closely affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers 

Party otherwise known as the PKK, is now dominant. 

In a policy sense, the Syrian Arab Republic, which was a founding member of the 1979 list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, has deVerDate 0ct 09 2002 17:09 Jan 29, 2014 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00035 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_TNT\112013\85643 HFA PsN: SHIRL
32

volved into three Syrias in which U.S. designated terrorist organizations are not only present, but ascendant. As a result, U.S. national security interests affected by the Syria conflict are growing 

in number and in scale. This is not going to go away any time soon 

and is going to be an issue for U.S. foreign policy makers and could 

also be an issue on the domestic scene depending on which way the 

Syrian conflict goes and the threats that come out of it. 

Those that I can identify, and I don’t claim to speak absolutely 

the truth on this, but I have identified five general areas. One, 

first, concerns stability of key U.S. Middle East allies. Thus far, 

Syrian refugees and cross border fighting have been the primary 

security threats to Israel, Jordan, Turkey as well as Lebanon. With 

up to half the Syrian population on the move, or a third, estimates 

here depend, those who are taking shelter either inside of Syria or 

in neighboring countries, these areas become breeding grounds for 

terrorist groups that oppose not only their host countries, but the 

United States as well. 

Counter terrorism, both sides in the Syria conflict have moved to 

the extremes over the last year as my fellow panelists have outlined. There is now what I call a convergence of threats in Syria 

with direct Iranian influence via terrorist groups at an all-time 

high in the Levant as a whole, and al-Qaeda affiliates also spreading among the opposition. It seems likely that Syria will devolve 

into a number of what are increasingly described as ungoverned 

spaces from which U.S. designated terrorist organizations could 

launch operations in Syria, but across the globe. 

There is also energy security as well. The nature of the Syrian 

conflict is increasingly sectarian fueled by both sides, and with the 

generally Shia forces supported by Iran and the Sunni forces supported by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. As this conflict gets 

more sectarian, it eats down in the sectarian nature of Syrian society in the region. That would also have a knock-on effect concerning the price of oil. The price of oil is not set by source, ladies 

and gentlemen. It is a world commodity and it is set by overall risk 

in the world to the supplies. 

There is also a large step to non-proliferation concerning chemical weapons which have been addressed via the recent agreement 

between Russia and the United Nations and the United States on 

its destruction, and of course we have the humanitarian concerns 

and the health concerns with a major outbreak of polio occurring 

in the middle of the country. I will just conclude. There are a number of other recommendations in the written testimony. 

What I can say to you in brief is that while the Chemical Weapons Convention which is recently agreed seemed to have addressed 

that aspect of the threat emerging from Syria, on the other issues 

that I outlined it seems as if we are just kicking the can down the 

road. And as I think my fellow panelists have outlined, the threats 

emerging out of Syria will continue for the foreseeable future with 

no easy solutions for the United States or our allies. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Tabler follows:]

33


85643d-1.eps

November 20, 2013 

Cnited State~ Hou~e of Representatives 

Cornmittcc on Foreign Affairs 

SUbCOll11TIittee on Terrorisn~, ~onproliferation. (U~d Trade 

\"X/ritten TestuTIony for Hearing "Terrorist Groups in Syria" 

",,"1drew J . ·lahlcr 

Sell10r flellow 

\"\lashint,rton Tnstitute for Near Fast Policy 

Chainnan Poe ,Uld Ranking ~\klnbcr Shennan: 

J'hank you for this opportunity to testify bcf()rc the Committee on J--'orcign Affairs, Subcommittee on 

Terrorisl11, Nonproliferation, and Trade on "Terrorist Groups in Syria." The C0IT11111ttee's hearings investigate 

key challenges to l.S. national security, which sadly no\\: corne to include the mctastasi/:ing Syria crisis . 

. As stated by multiple officials since the outbreak of the Syrian uprising in l'\.''1arch 2011, the United States 

remains deeply concerned with the deteriorating humanitarian situation inside of Syria that has been a direct 

result of the efforts of President Bashar al-_Assad to shoot his way out of the country's largest-ever uprising, 

which has set offa grinding civil \var. T have been asked to focus my testimony on U.S. national security 

interests in thc rcgion affectcd by the Syria conflict, what is 111eans for Syria's neighbors, and regional 

uTIplications. 

Historically, Syria's prUl1ary u11ponance to the United States is based on its role as perhaps the keystone Ul the 

post-Ottoman ~/fiddk Fast state architecture. ~{any, if not most of you, remember the 15-year r ,ebanon \1/ar, 

"\vhere civil strife spa\vned civil \-yar, terrorisl11, and the destmction of the C.S. Emhassy and l\,hrule Barrack.;; 

Ul Beirut, \vhose 241 killed lTIarked the largest single day death toll for dle M:arme Corps suxe the batde of 

I \Vo J ima. 'I 'he I -ebancse \Var \vas horrible, but strategically and metapllorically, I -cbanon \vas Just the small 

ro\-v house on the end of block of states carved out of the OttOlnan Etnpire by the Sykes-Picot _Agreetnent. It 

was hard for dle fighting and sectari::U1isnl to spread, lTIOst notably because dle forces of the t\vo neighboring 

row houscs -Israel and a dcmograpillcally different and Inore stable Syria wlder Bashar al-Assad's hther, 

Hafez - 111tervened to stop and contain the sectarian nature of the conflict. 

Syria,111 conlparison, is the big ro\v house UI dIe nlidlUe of dIe block. j\nd while dIe United States does not 

have historic interests in Syria, and spent many ycars on opposite sides of thc Cold \\,'ar and the \\:-ar on 

'1'crroris111, almost all of Syria's ncighbors arc strategic l.S. allies: Israel, Jordan, 'l'urkey, Iraq and Lebanon, 

"\vhich is not allied \-vidl dle United States but where \"\,'ashington has considerable ulterests ;md challenges. 

\Vhat that effectively means is that what happens in Syria is not gomg to stay there, as it's difficult to contain 

\X/hat happencd UI Lehanon is also occurring 1n Syria nluch fastcr and on diHcrent lcycls. Regional sectarian 

rivalries are cOn1pet111g 111 Syria's bloody fight, "'lith dle v,ul):,ruard of forces com111g fronl a laundry Itst of U.S.-

dcsignated Foreign'1'crrorist Organizations. '1'oday, llczbollall, lRC~-C:-Quds Force, and other Iranian-backed 

Shia nlilitias fight alongside the Assad regime Ul the \vest, Salafists and Jihadists, sonle of \vh0111 are _Al-Qaeda 

affiltates, ttght alongside (and often against) the Syrian Sunni-dominated opposition. Tn Kurdish areas, the 

Democratic Union Party (PYD), an organizatIon closely at11liated with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), is 

no\v domimU1t. In a policy sense, the Syrian j\rab Republic, \vhich \-vas it foundinglTIelTIber of the 1979 list of 
34


85643d-2.eps

State Sponsors of Terronsln, has devolved 111to three Synas 111 \vhlch U.S. de~agnated terronst bTfOUPS are not 

only present, but ascendant. 

As a result, U.S. national security interests affected by the Syna contlict arc growing in number. rhey include, 

but are not lunited to: 

1. Stability of key U.S. Middle East allies. Thus far. Syrian refugees and cross horder 6ghting haye 

been dle prinlary security tilfeats to allies such as Israel, JonhUl, Turkey as \vell as to Lebanon. \\lith 

up to half the Syrian population no\\: on the move, up to five million in neighbormg countries as 

unofficial and official refugees, and \'lith no end Ul sight to tile Syria cont1ict, areas \vhere Synans 

take shelter in neighboring countries increasmgly become breeding grounds for terrorist groups that 

oppose not only their host countries, but the United States as well 

2. Counterterrorism. Both sides in the Syria contlict have mo\·ed to the extremes over the last year, 

\.vith U.S.-designated terronst org;1nizations makulg up sizeahle forces of those under anns. The 

United States and its allies are no\\' facing a "convergc~nce of threats" in Syria, \vith direct T ranian 

ulfluence via terrorist groups at an all-titne high 111 Syria ,md the Levant as a \.vhole, and al Qaeda 

aftlliates also spreadulg (Ullong the opposition. \\ihlle the l\ssad regitne has recently been able to 

retake a number of lost areas, it is unclear if and hO\l,i the regime and allied groups can hold these 

areas. It seenlS likely that Syria \vill be devolve UltO a nunlber of "ungoverned spaces" fr01n \.vhich 

U.S.-designated terrorist groups could launch operations not only in Syria, but across the globe. 

3. Energy Security: The nature of the Syrian conflict is increasingly sectarian, fuelled by each sides' 

ITgional sponsors (roughly, Shia-associated forces backed by Tran and Sunni opposition forces 

backed by Sunni states and societies such as Saudi ,\rabia. Qatar. Turkey and others). Should d,is 

fight spread from Syria to neighboring countries, including Traq, Turkey, and Lebanon, U.S. energy 

and military interests would he increasingly affected Ul detrinlental \.vays. \\'hile the United States 

sources nlore (md lnore of its energy needs froln North lvnerica, dle price of oil, a'iyodd 

commodity, remains heavily exposed to political and military developments in the I\./Iiddlc ~:ast 

Sharp ulcreases Ul energy prices would have a catastrophic effect on U.S. economic gro\vth. 

4. Non-Proliferation: Syria has one of the region's largest stockpiles of chemical \'leapons, \vhich are 

currendy being addressed under an ultenlational accord struck \.vidl Russia and dle United ~ations 

last September. 'rhe destruction of these matenals is clearly in the interest of the lnited States and 

its allies, as their use by either the Assad regulle or non-state actors/terrorist groups dlreatens 

regional and U.S. security. \"'\,11ether President .Assad decides or is able to follo\\; through on his 

cornrnitlnents to eradicate all wcaponizcd agents and non-weaponiLed precursors remains to be 

seen. 

5. Humanitarian/health concerns: 1·fillions of Syrians are currently sufferulg under extretne 

conditions, with over 120,000 killed and tens of thousands or more missing. Disease, including 

Polio, is 1t1creasingly spreading in Syria, with imphcations for global health concerns 

Dealing ",,-.jth Syria's rebels and the extremist threat 

Reports arc grO\\Tulg of a sharp ulCreasc U1 the nLUnher of extremist groups operatulg Ul rehcl-donluuted areas 

of Syna. This has raised eyehrows Ul \\/ashington, where policyn1akers continue to grapple with the question 
35


85643d-3.eps

ofhm:v to ~upport the Oppos1tion "\v1dlout madvertendy helpmg ilhad1st~ expand theu: de~tal)1hz111g mlpact 

across the ~\'1iddle East. '1'hese concerns arc gro\\;ing among Syria's neigbbors as welL 

During a recent visit to Syrian border regions fronl southern Turkey, I spoke \vith an11ed and civilian 

opposition leaders about the e:'<.tent to which extremist groups like the Tslamic State ofTraq and aI-Sham 

(ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra O~) have penetrated their ranks. I also asked them what kinds of measures the 

opposition should take to prevent these group~ fr01TI g<tining a penTI;ment foothold or exploiting the current 

crisis over the regime's usc of chemical \veapons (e.g., by disrupting international efforts to destroy those 

weapons). As enLunerated below, their answers indicate that Imunstremn rebels ha\ e a nLunber of options for 

reining in extrenli~nl \vhue bolstering the overall effort to force Bashar al-As~ad'~ departure And nlany of 

these options otTer good opportLUlities for U.S. eng,lgcment 

Accept the extremist problem. Unlike in the past, opposition leaders now recogt1.ize that 

extrenlisnl is a gro\ving proble1TI in "liberated areas" under their controL Their main beef \vith group~ 

SUell as ISIS andJ~ lies in their increasingly fOITigt1. nature and their methods ofgo\crnance and 

operation; the only reason the rehels tolerate these factions is that they arc effective fighters. At the 

S,U1le tUTIe, oppos1t1on leaders pomt out that the 1TIajonty of rebels are not al-Qaeda, and that J~ 1S 

more nationalist in orientation than lSlS. Yet the groups arc better vie\ved as two heads of the smne 

threat. 

2. Develop a national political and military strategy. Both civiltans and anlled 6rroup~ are adamant 

that they need to fornlulate a political and military strategy to deal "\vith the g:t:ovling extrenlist threat. 

Planning has heen the l\.chilles' heel of the opposition (and the Assad regime) for decades, hut the 

rise in e:'<.tremis1l1 has convinced tnany rebels that TSTS and similar groups are a foreign threat that 

does nor have the Syriml people's hest interests at heart. The extremists counter that ISlS andJN are 

the countqr's best option given the \"'\/est's recent deClsion not to follo\v through on threats to punish 

the regime militarily for usmg chemical \veapons. Thus, if mainstream oppos1tion groups \vant to 

mILintILlll the uprising's lution%ist hent., they should develop a coherent 1utional phn for contlLining 

eAtremism among their ranks and drawing clearer lines bet\veen themselves and the jihadists. Tn 

return, the lnited States and its allies \vould be much more \villing to fund the rebellion 

3. Don't join lllultiple groups. The Syrian opposition historically ~ee~ no cont1ict of interest in joining 

multiple alliances at the same time. On September 24, for exarnple, a number of groups \vhose 

leaders arc in or linked to the \Xlestern-backcd Supreme 1'lililitary CounCil (S~\'1C) ml1loLulCed the 

fornlation of an "Islamic coalition," atop \vhich is al-Qaeda affiliate .IN, \vhich aims 1:0 establish an 

Islmnic state in Syria based on xharia. Opposition Illembersl tendency to join rnultiple alliances at 

once 1TIay perhaps be seen as a way 1:0 keep options open \v1th an array of patrons, but 1t also 

reinforces dle vie\v dlat the Syri:m oppo~ition has no foundation and i~ therefore not \v011:h inve~ting 

in .. All the saule, if these groups adopt principled stances, the U111ted States and its allies could he in a 

pOS1t10n to back them. 

4. Go local, hold elections. 7Vfan1', if not most, oppositi()ni~ts openly admit that their desperate 

situation makes the111 ripe for 111anipulation hy outside patrons \vith agendas too extre111e for nl0st 

Syrian~. The~e patron~ take advantage of ego-related and ideological rivalnes among ()PPo~ltl()n 

me111hers, creating a cycle that only leads to nl0re fragt11entation and suhnational agendas. '1'0 counter 

this trend, opposition leaders shO"Lud accept the criticisnl hy actu% fighters \vho argue that local 

leaders should have much more authority. To avoid tnanipulation in the choosing oflocalleadership, 

opposition 111enlhers should e111phasize the relative success of elections in selected areas of Syria as a 
36


85643d-4.eps

mech:m1~n~ for establishmg authontattve leader~h1p structure~. The~e votes \vould be held ill Syntu~ 

llahalPi (districts equivalent to townships), !1lanafiq (areas equivalent to counties), and !1luhqfazai 

(goven~orates equivalent to ~tates). Such a ~tep \vould help ~olidify Syri<Ul regional ;md national 

identities, tnaking opposition IneInbers less susceptible to foreign patronage. 

5. Stal't by peeling off extl'elnists. GiYen the relative ~trength of extren~i~t group~ in Syria today, 

cla~hing\vidl then~ openly only strengthens A~~ad'~ h:md. So \vhile nationalist/nonextremi~t groups 

shuuld ahvays defend themselves in the face of aggression hy extrenlists, the fonner prohahly shmlld 

\Va1t before gomg on the offens1ve, Instead, Oppos1tion n~en~bers should develop phUlS to peel off 

members of extremist groups \vith incentives, such as financial and other support. TVLillY civilian 

oppositionists helie\-e that dialogue programs het\\Teen lnenlhers of nationalist or lnoderate lslamist 

battabons and Salafist groups further right on the spectrum \vill help peel a\vay members and 

undermine the overall support of extremists. This approach to undermining eAtremists, of course, 

·would require progress on itenl nvo of this list: the development of a nationalnlilitary and political 

strategy. Still, for intenlational donors, such a program would likely be much more attractive than 

first prmTlding "\veapons . .:\nd increased support in other fonns -- including \veapons -- cULud foliow 

fr0111 the enited States and other \\/estern countries. 

6. Emphasize that extremists only benefit the regime. The opposition uses cui bono arguments to 

assess ...vho benefits froll1 dle fighting and who actually supports extrenlist groups. 1\.''1:3ny in dle 

oppo~ition thus believe that ISIS i~ actually supported by the Assad regin~e. In a strategic sen~e, ISIS 

act10ns to capture areas such as Azaz play into the regime's hands. 'rhe opposition should emphasize 

the cun~ulative negative effect of ISIS ::md other extren~ist group~ on both the opposition's 

effectiveness and its efforts to gather support from abroad 

7. Use clerics to undermine extremists' religious authority. Alany extretnist and al-Qaeda-linked 

groups folio"\y equally extremi~t clenc~ "\vho are not \videly followed inside Syria. As such, the 

mainline opposition should work with well-known national clerics to wldennine those followed by 

al-Qacda and other extremists, as part of an oyerall eHort to control the religious message \vith111 the 

oppo~1t10n 

H. Take a hard look at the SMC. },t present, the SMC: encompasses both nationalist and lslamist 

hrigades, \vith their ideological orientations oftenlnuch nlore divergent than the range \vithin Salatlst 

and jihadist/extretnist brigades on the far right. Therefi)re, opposition leaders need to look closely at 

the Sl\lC, \vith the goal of identif~Ting "\vhich groups renuin aligned \vith the national agenda and 

\vhich have lurched to\vard the extremi~ts. 

9. Think through the assassinations dilemma. Some opposition leaders maintain that extrcmist 

groups can he so ideological that only cb:atnatic steps, such as assassinations, "\vill "\vork to displace 

them from Syrian and nearby territory. \Xl1ile assassinations may be necessary in some cases, they can 

end up strengthening tllC lland of extremists if used at tlle \vrong time 

10. Accept that chemical \veapons make the situation much ·worse. One t11ight conclude dlat the 

;ssad regime's usc of chemical \veapons against civ11ians could justify their seizure by oppos1tion 

groups and usc at key times against the regime atld its supporters. A nwnber of extrcrnist groups 

operating in Syria even c1ain~ che1TIical weapons u~e is justifiable as tu1 act of revenge. But the re::uity 

is rnuch more difficult~ ultimately strengthening the regime's hand and possibly drawing puniti\'l' 

measures frOtTI the inten~ation(u cOtTInTllllity. Enhancen~ent of conventional \veapon~ capabilities 

represents a n~uch 1TIore producttve approach for dle oppo~1hon. 
37


85643d-5.eps

\\i1l1Ie llTIple1TIenttng these nleasures "\vtll take tuTIe, startmg no\v wtll help dle Synan opposttton1TIamtam 1tS 

nation·al character and create an enviro1lInent conduci\'e to containing the 11ltluence of e);.trernist groups. 

Dra\ving clear lmes benveen al-Qaeda affiliates and the nlainline nationalist opposition \vtll also nlake the 

latter much rIlore attractl\'e to the international c0l111Ilunity if and when a Inilttary or political settlclIlent to 

the cris1s elTIerges. Perhaps nlost urgent, ho"\ve\Ter, 1S dle need to renlove the Syri;m chenlical weapons 

stockpile from dle scene. This \vill help avoid dle killing of lTIore Syri<U1s and prevent the conflict from 

"\videnll1g any further than it already has. 

1 \vould be happy to expand upon this testimony and answer \\:hatever questions you IIlay have. 

ltcspectfully submitted, 

,~ndrcw J. Tabler 

Senior Fellow 

\\?ashington Institute for Near East Policy 
38

Mr. POE. Thank all the panelists for their statements. We will 

begin the questions. I will recognize myself for 5 minutes. 

Carve the scenario out hypothetically, if you can, and I know it 

is a hypothetical and it is based on your expertise. But down the 

road, as Mr. Tabler says, it is going to be eventually somebody is 

going to win and somebody is going to lose. You have got two terrorist groups on each side. The entire region is unstable because 

of what has taken place in Syria. So assume Assad wins and is 

able to run the rebels out. How does that play out? Assume he 

loses, the rebel groups take over. Is there civil war? Just kind of 

look into the future, if you can, for me. And I will ask that question 

to all four of you. 

Mr. Jenkins? 

Mr. JENKINS. It is a great question. I don’t see one side prevailing in this conflict. Even if Assad were to fall and the fighting 

were to continue, Assad’s growing power is not going to be able to, 

in the foreseeable future, reassert his authority throughout the 

country. So I think the premise has to be one of continuing conflict 

among a kaleidoscope of ethnic and sectarian groups in Syria that 

could go on for many, many years, and that is really the premise. 

In that kind of scenario, the United States, without significant 

investment, is really at the margin. So the question becomes not 

one of whether we can back Assad or back the rebels against him, 

but rather what can we do within that kind of environment to meet 

the objectives that Mr. Tabler has identified in the country? What 

can we do to best serve our interests in a continuing conflict? And 

to even raise the broader question, although it may sound cynical, 

I know we, naturally, as Americans want to get to postwar on this, 

but given the nature of the conflict, can we get there? And is it absolutely vital to U.S. interests that we try to end the fighting in 

Syria, or do we simply accept that it will continue and try to contain it, and, as I say, live with this thing as it is, as these jihadists 

and Hezbollah and others tear each other up inside of the country 

once known as Syria? 

Mr. POE. Thank you. I am going to change the question because 

you are running out of time. Try to make your answers shorter if 

you can. Terrorist groups and their influence in neighboring countries, whether it is the Assad regime or the rebel groups, their effect on neighbors—Jordan, Lebanon, and even Israel. 

So Mr. Smyth, I will just ask you that question. How do you see 

that what has taken place what is the direction of those groups? 

Mr. SMYTH. The direction in particular if you want to focus on 

the Iranian backed organizations, they are becoming an extremely 

professional force and they are very, very tough. We now have 

units that could directly attack Israeli interests, American interests, Saudi interests, and they are building their power up in Syria. 

This is kind of like their training ground in many ways. In fact, 

Lebanese Hezbollah was sending its reserve troops into Syria so 

that they could essentially train and gain combat skills. And where 

do you think they are going to send them afterwards? They are 

likely going to send them to South Lebanon. That is usually where 

they put more of their trained men. Often they send them other 

places to create new Iranian proxy organizations. 

39

In terms of these other groups, Salafi jihadi groups, Sunni organizations, they too are gaining valuable combat experience. And it 

is interesting kind of trying to outline this. Iran has its own Islamic revolutionary ideology and it is a global ideology. They really 

do believe in this kind of Messianic future. The same thing goes for 

these Sunni jihadists. And they are all trying to get to that end. 

You now have two radical forms of Islamism fighting each other 

and this doesn’t mean necessarily that they are going to stop fighting Western interests or any of their other enemies in the area. 

Mr. POE. All right. My time has expired. I will recognize the 

ranking member, Mr. Sherman from California, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Thank you, Judge. And for those who would take 

delight in the fact that Sunni extremists who hate America are 

killing Shiite extremists who hate America, we have to reflect on 

the fact that they are both learning how to kill. It used to be even 

a question whether the Alawites would really part to the Shiite 

movement. They are certainly not the Twelver Shiites that dominate Iran, and there are many different subgroups within the 

Sunni community. What we are seeing now is in effect a regionwide from Iran to Syria, a battle between Shiites and Sunnis. 

Have each group coalesced sufficiently so that the different flavors of Sunnis all cooperate notwithstanding theological differences, and Alawites and Twelver Shiites and other Shiite inspired but theologically different organizations coalesce, do we see 

a coming together of two sides? 

Mr. BARFI. So when we look at Alawis, Alawism starts in the 

10th century. It is basically an offshoot of the 11th Shia Imam, and 

they are what is known as Ghuluww, or they are very extreme in 

their dedication to Ahl is to the point where he becomes a god or 

a deity. They were outside the pale of Shiism for centuries. Both 

the Sunnis, the Sunnis considered them infidels. Into the 19th century they were seen as worse than the Jews and Christians. They 

couldn’t give testimony in courts in Syria. The Shia had no relationship with them historically. It starts to change in the early 

20th century under French and Turkish influence. That really 

doesn’t go anywhere because they tried to impose the Jafari or 

Twelver school of law. Later some Alawi scholars go to Iran and 

Iraq and they bring back books and some scholars. That made a 

little bit more progress. 

But the Alawis, they don’t pray in mosques. They are 

antinomian, which means they don’t abide by any of the precepts 

of Islam—fasting during Ramadan, five prayers, abstaining from 

drinking alcohol. So there is——

Mr. SHERMAN. Are you saying the Alawis drink alcohol and don’t 

fast during Ramadan? 

Mr. BARFI. Yes. 

Mr. SHERMAN. And don’t do all of the various things that some 

of us associate with Islam, and yet there seems to be a very solid 

bond. One of the other witnesses talks about how someone says I 

am not dying for Assad, I am dying for Shia. Yes, and I am sure 

that was an Alawite who is now ready to die for Shiitism. Have the 

Alawites and the Twelver and other Shiites come together? Mr. 

Smyth? 

40

Mr. SMYTH. Well, first of all, that singer is actually an Iraqi 

Shia. He sings for Asa’ib Ahl Al-Haq. So that is a special group 

that the Alliance created. However, you are hitting on something 

very, very important. Iran is trying to coalesce Shia as a whole, especially Twelver Shia, behind the Iranian mantle. We are your protectors. This is the message——

Mr. SHERMAN. Yes, they protect Twelver Shiites, they now seem 

to be protecting a group that generations ago they might not have 

accepted as even being Islam. But I do want to move on to another 

question. Who is financing the Sunni extremists in Syria? Does 

that money come from well connected people in Saudi Arabia, and 

do the Saudis happen to know that al-Qaeda likes blowing up 

things associated with the royal family? 

Mr. Jenkins? 

Mr. JENKINS. For the groups that are not the hard core al-Qaeda 

groups that we have identified, certainly Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and 

the other Gulf monarchies are providing support to those groups. 

For those that have been identified as al-Qaeda-linked, it appears 

to be that their funding is coming from private donations primarily 

in the Gulf monarchies. 

Mr. SHERMAN. And these private citizens, they are not the salt 

of the earth. They are very rich individuals who are well connected 

and allowed to do this? 

Mr. JENKINS. They are wealthy individuals, and there is a curious relationship in which a number of the rebel groups in a sense 

emerged during the rebellion and declared themselves on social 

media in order to seek foreign patrons. A little bit like football 

teams in a sense except you create the team first and you look for 

a wealthy backer, and then you brag about your numbers and your 

exploits in order to keep that flow of support coming. There is a 

lot of that taking place, and it involves extremely wealthy individuals. 

Mr. SHERMAN. So there are people in Syria who would want to 

kill us who are financed by well connected folks in the Gulf, and 

I yield back. 

Mr. POE. Sherman yields back. The chair recognizes the vice 

chair, Mr. Kinzinger, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. KINZINGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and again thank you 

all for being here. As I mentioned in my opening statement, there 

is no really good answer here. And I think it was well said that 

when the chairman asked to game out both options, rebels win or 

Assad wins, what does it look like, and the answer is, well, there 

is always going to be lawlessness in Syria. This is in essence Afghanistan pre-9/11 now. And so I think it is difficult. 

But with that said, I want to pose to each of you the question 

of—again, I have been critical of the administration in saying we 

should have been out there more. We should have been engaged 

early, when this was a handleable situation. But we are where we 

are today, and unfortunately I haven’t found the time machine yet. 

If I do you will know about it because I will go back and maybe 

we will never even talk about it then. 

But I will start with you, Mr. Tabler. If you want to just talk 

about, briefly, what is the U.S.’s option here and how should we 

be more involved in order to see an outcome? And again, whether 

41

it is Assad stays or Assad goes, how can we have a more peaceful 

outcome with U.S. involvement? I want to hear your thoughts on 

this. 

Mr. TABLER. A very good question. There are various methods. 

We have so many policy objectives running at the same time in 

Syria now it would very hard to achieve them all. Since the summer of 2011, August 2011 to be specific, the position of the United 

States is that Assad should step aside and lead to a transitional 

governing body which is outlined in the Geneva Accord of June 

2012. 

Mr. KINZINGER. I think it is safe to say too, that was before we 

had an intense amount of extremist groups. 

Mr. TABLER. That is right. And so what has happened over time 

is that the ability to pursue those ends via state means has gone 

down. It was one of the downsides of a hands-off, lead from behind 

policy, as has been described, or the light footprint. There are several definitions for this and I am not claiming to know which one 

it is. So what has happened over time is that as the conflict has 

morphed and grown in scale and the state has been destroyed, and 

I think Mr. Jenkins outlined that and the other panelists as well, 

the question is, how do you then confront this convergence of 

threats that are coming out of Syria, both on the Iranian side and 

on the overall Sunni side and the extremist nature of the fight? 

There are two primary areas. One is through direct intervention, 

and that was most recently debated concerning the Assad regime’s 

use, according to U.S. intelligence estimates, of sarin gas inside of 

Syria. The President did not go down that road, and that would 

have been a limited strike. Those kind of options are still on the 

table, and the White House continues to say that they are on the 

table. I don’t know anybody that really sees how that might play 

out anytime soon, but we simply don’t know. 

The other way to arrest this, in the case of the CW incident it 

was concerning the regime, going forward you could launch ground 

strikes or other kinds of direct strikes on various terrorist groups. 

It is possible. Usually not done without the permission of the state 

itself, and I don’t think the Assad regime would appreciate us 

bombing their associated forces. They might prefer if we bombed 

the rebels. 

Then there is indirect intervention. And indirect intervention involves essentially like in Iraq, the Sahwa. It involves working with 

politically and militarily with groups on the ground to peel them 

away from the extremists. It is a much more slower, much more 

intelligent and sometimes precise way of defeating terrorists. The 

problem with that is it is very difficult to have a hands-off, lead 

from behind light footprint policy and to do that covertly. 

Mr. KINZINGER. And I think just to tag on, it is basically the U.S. 

has to get more involved or the U.S. has to accept the chaos that 

is going to follow. 

Mr. TABLER. Right. It would be hard to see how the situation in 

Syria gets better toward our interest without more American involvement. The question is what is the degree of that involvement? 

And that is where, until now it is still hotly debated. But what we 

can definitely say is that what we are doing until now is not working in terms of pursuing our interests, whether they are getting 

42

Assad to step aside or to undermine extremism in the region or a 

lot of other issues that we pursue in the region as a whole. So the 

question is what to do next. 

Mr. KINZINGER. I don’t think anybody really knows what our policy is right now. 

Mr. TABLER. There is extreme confusion even among those of us 

that have followed this for a long time and even those that have 

contact with the administration about how the administration 

would pursue and achieve its conflicting goals. That is true. 

Mr. KINZINGER. And there is a lot of confusion among our allies 

as well, which is just as disheartening. 

Mr. TABLER. And anger. 

Mr. KINZINGER. Yes. With that, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back. 

Thank you. Right on time too. 

Mr. POE. Thank the gentleman for watching the clock. The chair 

recognizes the other gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Schneider. 

Mr. SCHNEIDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for 

calling this hearing. Mr. Barfi, I will start with you. Do you have 

a sense of how many organizations or groups are inside Syria fighting either on the side of the regime or against the regime? Ballpark 

number. 

Mr. BARFI. There is hundreds of units and brigades. Some of 

them such as Liwa al-Tawhid is a very big brigade composed of different units numbering in the thousands. They are based in a province such as Aleppo. Then you have a Salafist brigade like Ahrar 

al-Sham, they are in several provinces and we are talking 10,000, 

15,000, 20,000 fighters. Very strong. Then you have smaller groups 

like Amr ibn al-As which has a couple hundred fighters. But what 

is happening is it is a Pac-Man approach. Those larger brigades are 

slowly eating up the smaller brigades. 

Mr. SCHNEIDER. So this summer I read a report that there was 

as many as 1,200 different groups fighting inside Syria. Has that 

number decreased at this point, expanded or stayed fairly constant? 

Mr. BARFI. You would think that there is going to be a decrease 

as you have mergers and integrations. However, you are also seeing the emergence of new groups like Katibat al Nur in Aleppo. It 

is created by intellectuals and financed by businessmen because 

they thought that the FSA was giving the revolution a bad name. 

Mr. SCHNEIDER. Is a sense, I heard someone else use this context. The fighters coming in from the outside this gentleman described as fierce, and they are to fight to the death and even continue fighting after any negotiated agreement that might be possible, whereas, I would imagine businessmen coming together are 

not going to have the same fierceness of fight that some of these 

extremist groups have. Is that a fair characterization or am I jumping to a conclusion? 

Mr. BARFI. Well, I am sorry. Maybe I wasn’t so clear. The businessmen are funding the brigade. But what you see is the people 

that come from abroad they are much more ideological in the reasons that they fight for. Some of these other units, they were created by criminal gangs. They were just bored and had nothing to 

do. The revolution came, hey, let us get together and make our 

43

criminal gang a rebel brigade and we can show that we are defending society and then steal cars under that banner instead. 

Mr. SCHNEIDER. As I look at Syria, and other people have described this, that any military victory for either side would be a catastrophe for Syria. One side overtaking the other and the subsequent massacres and things you might expect. With all these 

groups fighting and fighting each other with the Pac-Man strategy 

taking, do any of you all, and I will leave this up to the entire 

panel, does anyone think there is a prospect for a political resolution to the civil war? 

Mr. JENKINS. I certainly don’t. I think the increasingly given nature of the tactics on both sides has now turned this into an existential contest for all concerned. That is, among the participants in 

the conflict none of them can clearly see a way in which they would 

survive under a regime that was dominated by another. And there 

is just an accumulation of too much bloodshed and too many calls 

for revenge to bring them together. I don’t think a political solution 

is on. That is my view. 

Mr. SCHNEIDER. Mr. Tabler, I saw you are looking to answer. 

Mr. TABLER. A political solution to put Syria, the Syrian Arab 

Republic as it is officially known, back together in the foreseeable 

future, I think it would be very difficult to achieve. The administration is determined to start that process in talks in Geneva. I think 

those are now going to take place in January. There was a rumor 

that they might take place on December 12th. It would be very difficult to achieve those objectives. What I think we will have for the 

foreseeable future is, well, we will have a du jour Syria on a map, 

which is the one that is in front of us here, and in a de facto sense 

it will be divided into those three general areas that I outlined in 

my presentation. The problem is that the lines of control, the contours of control will not be clear. It will be more like a mosaic. 

The other major problem is, especially in the opposition groups 

that in the face of such bloodshed we expected their elites to congeal, to come together more under a national banner. For a variety 

of reasons not just foreign sponsorship but also some, historically 

from my own work some historical proclivities within Syria that 

occur when people come out of an authoritarian system like that 

it gives way to grandiosity among leaders. It is not uncommon 

among politicians of course, but only if in the end—yes, present 

company excepted—but only in the end if it leads to the destruction 

of a nation. And I think what we are going to have to deal with 

is a divided Syria for the foreseeable future. 

Mr. SCHNEIDER. I am sorry. I see I am out of time. If you could 

subsequently maybe touch on the fact with that as a statement, as 

a policy guidance, should the United States lean in and try to affect 

what is happening on the ground in Syria or should we stand back 

and try to contain everything within Syria? And I will yield. 

Mr. TABLER. Would you like me, I can answer that? 

Mr. POE. Very quickly. 

Mr. TABLER. Sure. I think that containing it within Syria is not 

working. We have to deal with the disease itself. We have to just 

decide whether that involves the de facto partition of the country 

and how we deal with it. And then I think that will make it easier 

to deal with the different threats that I outlined. Trying to put the 

44

two sides back together at this point and have kind of a viable solution seems at the moment a pipe dream. 

Mr. POE. Thank you. The gentleman yields back. The chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Colonel Cook. 

Mr. COOK. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to go back to the issue 

of chemical weapons. And obviously there is still a number of them 

in the country and everything, and the danger posed by falling into 

one of the, I don’t know how many groups you have listed. I lost 

track. I didn’t update my scorecard. But the scenarios there are 

just intriguing and horrific because they would go to any means 

whatsoever in their employment of it, do you have any comment on 

the possibility that that could be a military target of not just the 

sarin gas, but even more of the VX agents? 

Mr. JENKINS. The chemical weapons are a potential target for all 

of the parties concerned simply because they are a prize that will 

give any of the units leverage and make them more important 

players than they are. In other words, when you get your hands on 

them, you are more important. But also, interestingly, Assad’s 

agreement to get rid of the chemical weapons in a certain sense is 

a strategy that helps the Assad regime survive, because it is a 

major logistics enterprise to both protect and move those weapons 

and to ultimately dismantle or disarm them. Doing that in the 

midst of a conflict is very, very difficult, and so there is going to 

be extreme pressure on the rebel forces to not interfere with the 

disarmament process. In other words, it is a way in which we are 

obliged to accept the legitimacy of the Assad regime and the primacy of it and to lean on the rebels to allow the disarmament process to take place, because if the conflict continues at its current intensity, it is very, very difficult to get those weapons out of there. 

Mr. COOK. Just to continue on that very quickly. You are talking 

about some extremist groups, obviously they kill people, take the 

hearts out and organs, and eat them, and obviously publicize that 

which, I think, was in the spring of this year—very, very shocking 

videos—that the ends achieve the means. And sooner or later they 

are going to look at that as a weapon of opportunity and that is 

why I mentioned that. But I don’t want to run out of time. The 

Chechen rebels and any connections to the groups there, would this 

explain partly the Russian role in there other than its traditional 

support of the Assad regime or the fear of training Sunni extremists that we go back to Chechnya and blow up parts of Russia? 

Mr. BARFI. Not at all. Putin sees this as a cold war. It is just 

a game in the cold war. He doesn’t want to let the United States 

have anymore assets in the region. Some people think that it is because of the naval base at Tartus. He doesn’t need that naval base. 

He can’t bring frigates in there. He can’t have long stays of the 

sailors in there. This is just a cold war mentality. He does not want 

the United States to win. 

Mr. COOK. So you are saying he is not worried about the 

Chechen rebels and perhaps this ecumenical tie to the ones in 

this—I had kind of gotten a different impression when I was in 

Russia that what was going on in Chechnya and North and South 

Ossetia and everything else, the tremendous fear, almost a purge 

of any of the extremists, and they would go to any means, including a former terrorist leader that is now in charge of Chechnya. 

45

Mr. BARFI. If he felt like that then he would support the rebels 

to try to end the war. Because the rebels, the Chechens of Jaish 

al-Muhajirin wal-Ansar are part of the radical opposition that came 

about just in the last 2 years. Early on you had more nationalist 

moderate means. 

Mr. COOK. Absolutely. Okay, thank you. I yield. 

Mr. POE. The gentleman yields back his time. I want to thank 

all of our panelists for being here. 

Did you have another question? 

Mr. SHERMAN. Only if you will indulge me. 

Mr. POE. I will recognize the ranking member. 

Mr. SHERMAN. We have seen Assad win some victories on the 

ground. Are you folks pretty convinced that Assad isn’t going to 

win this thing? Mr. Smyth? 

Mr. SMYTH. Well, these victories that you are actually watching, 

the recent ones, these are due to the Shia militias and the Iranian 

involvement. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Well, that is one way to win. 

Mr. SMYTH. But going back to will he win, we keep continuing 

this paradigm that one side is going to win over the other. And 

Syria is a multi-polar conflict. I am actually using——

Mr. SHERMAN. But the Assad family has been able to impose its 

will on all of Syria for a long time and they are making a little 

progress toward returning to that. Are you confident they can’t put 

this Humpty Dumpty back together again? 

Mr. SMYTH. Frankly, I don’t think that they can. A lot of these 

advancements that they have made, they haven’t been able to hold 

on to certain large tracts of territory. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Does anybody on the panel have a different view? 

Anybody betting on Assad? Okay. I feel like a croupier. 

Lebanon is an analogy here, but Lebanon went through a violent 

phase of its kaleidoscope. On a less violent stage now it is being 

affected by Syria. We saw some peace in Lebanon 5 years ago, 10 

years ago, in spite of the fact that you didn’t have one government 

in control equally of all the territory. You had different groups in 

control with their own militias. Sounds like a peaceable version of 

today’s Syria. But one difference is, in Lebanon, whatever group 

lived in an area had control of the area. There was a certain fairness to their allocation of the territory. 

In Syria, the Alawites are 15 percent and have traditionally had 

the whole country and today hold a big, big chunk of it. Can there 

be, what should I say, less violent status in Syria, some sort of acceptance of a militia controlled status quo in different regions, or 

does the fact that the Alawites own over half the pie and ‘‘deserve’’ 

only 15 percent mean that they have to keep fighting until it is 

over? Mr. Jenkins? 

Mr. JENKINS. First of all, in sorting things out in Lebanon, the 

civil war went on for 15 years. So if we get into two or three decades, different scenarios open up after people exhaust themselves. 

And second, the fighting in Lebanon, while it was intense, did not 

achieve the intensity that the fighting in Syria has, nor did it 

produce the kind of displacement in terms of refugees and so on. 

And so while it is possible, I think that we will see consolidation 

of these enclaves that could lead to some sort of a stasis, and there 

46

will continue to be pushing and shoving around the edges. But that 

may turn out to be, in the sense of a spectrum of poor outcomes, 

one of the least poor—that is, accepting the de facto partition of 

Syria into a kaleidoscope of enclaves and attempting to simply reduce both the internal violence and the potential spillover in terms 

of international terrorism that it would create. 

Mr. POE. All right. I have another question. One last question. 

While this is taking place, all these countries that surround Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, are we going to see an influx into those countries of the groups that are in Syria whether they are on Assad’s 

side or whether they are on the rebel side, are these militias going 

to move into these other countries? 

Mr. SMYTH. I will speak for the Assad side. The Shia militia organizations are already based in Iraq. They already have political 

influence there. Lebanese Hezbollah is a very, very big player in 

Lebanon and essentially run the show in most cases. 

Mr. POE. The Iranians want to take over the whole region. 

Mr. SMYTH. Well, of course they do. 

Mr. POE. And eliminate Israel in the process. 

Mr. SMYTH. Well, that is one of the cores of their ideological 

structure. 

Mr. POE. Okay. What about the other side? What about the folks 

fighting on the rebel side? Anybody want to weigh in on that? Mr. 

Barfi, I will let you answer that last question. 

Mr. BARFI. Let us just take a quick look at Jordan. We know 

hundreds of Jordanians have gone. Some get caught, some end up 

dead and some are still there. This is a Zarqawi network. These 

are the same Salafi leaders that piped people into Iraq. They are 

now coming back. Look at Lebanon. This is one of the biggest 

bombings we have seen in years in Lebanon of the Iranian Embassy. I mean, you are already seeing this blowback. And we know 

there is a lot of Salafis. We know there is jihadists in Lebanon. 

They were there before. But you are getting now the blowback, and 

what are they going to do? They are going to take the war to the 

infidel, Shia Hezbollah in there, and in Jordan they may try to destabilize the regime. It is very, very bad this blowback and spillover. 

Mr. POE. I want to thank all of you. Your testimony was excellent. Your written statements were excellent. So without objection, 

all members will have 5 days to submit statements, and there may 

be more questions that we would like for you to answer in writing, 

and extraneous materials for the record subject to the limitation in 

the rules. Thank you once again. 

[Whereupon, at 4:10 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

(47)

A P P E N D I X 

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING RECORD

48

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85643n.eps

SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING NOTICE 

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

WASHINGTON, DC 20515-6128 

Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade 

Ted Poe (R-TX), Chairman 

TO: MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

You are respectfully requested to attend an OPEN hearing of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, to be 

held by the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade in Room 2200 of the Raybum House 

Office Building (and available live via the Committee website at hlli'.-lffi~~J'or~ignAfilt.iITt."lillillL~Q.Y): 

DATE: 

TIME: 

SUBJECT: 

WITNESSES: 

Wednesday, November 20,2013 

2:00 p.m. 

Terrorist Groups in Syria 

Me. Brian Michael Jenkins 

Senior Adviser to the President 

RAND Corporation 

Mr Phillip Smyth 

Middle East Research Analyst 

University of Maryland 

Mr Barak Barti 

Research Fellow 

The New America Foundation 

Me. Andrew J. Tabler 

Senior Fellow 

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy 

By Direction of the Chairman 
49

Æ


85643m.eps

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AF}'AIRS 

MINUTES OF SUB COMMITTEE ON _____ ~_e_rr_o_rls_"_'_',_l\_'o__'"p_r-ol-"Ifi-er-tl-'lo-"-'-, _«I_"'_~_r_«,_'e _____ HEARING 

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Check all o/tfle/olloJ1'illg tlwt apply: 

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