page_title: CIA activities in Syria
section_title: War, 2011–2017
hierarchical_section_title: CIA activities in Syria / War, 2011–2017
caption_attribution_description: English: A rebel fighter from the Army of Glory launch a BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missile at Syrian government positions in the countryside north of Hama
context_page_description: CIA activities in Syria since the agency's inception in 1947 have included coup attempts and assassination plots, and in more recent years, extraordinary renditions, a paramilitary strike, and funding and military training of forces opposed to the current government.
context_section_description: In 2011, a civil war broke out in Syria. WikiLeaks reported that the U.S. government had been covertly funding Syrian opposition groups since 2006, mainly the London-based Movement for Justice and Development in Syria and an associated satellite TV channel Barada TV. Special Activities Division teams were said to have been deployed to Syria during the uprising to ascertain rebel groups, leadership and potential supply routes.
  Under the aegis of operation Timber Sycamore and other clandestine activities, CIA operatives and U.S. special operations troops have trained and armed nearly 10,000 rebel fighters at a cost of $1 billion a year. In early September 2013, President Barack Obama told U.S. Senators that the CIA had trained the first 50-man insurgent element and that they had been inserted into Syria. The deployment of this unit and the supplying of weapons may be the first tangible measure of support since the U.S. stated they would begin providing assistance to the opposition. However, the CIA had been facilitating the flow of arms from Libya to Syria "for more than a year" beforehand in collaboration with "the UK, Saudi Arabia and Qatar"; "the operation was largely run out of a covert CIA annex in Benghazi." U.S. military intelligence predicted "the fall of the Assad regime would lead to chaos and, potentially, to Syria's takeover by jihadi extremists, much as was then happening in Libya."
  Obama's refusal to directly arm or train Syrian rebels prior to 2013, and his rejection of a 2012 outline for "CIA intervention in Syria" suggested by then-CIA Director David Petraeus was motivated by his own belief that past instances of the CIA supporting insurgencies rarely "worked out well." The program he ultimately approved was designed not to give the rebels enough support to achieve victory, but rather to engineer a stalemate that would encourage a negotiated resolution of the Syrian Civil War—which U.S. officials envisioned as including the resignation of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The CIA trained 10,000 rebels "in Jordan and Turkey" at facilities run with the cooperation of the Jordanian and Turkish governments, but strict prohibitions were placed on the U.S. or its allies introducing "certain classes of weapons" (such as MANPADs) into the conflict due to fears they could be captured by terrorists—this despite the fact that all CIA-supported rebels are "vetted" for possible extremist ties. Assad was in danger of being overthrown until the 2015 Russian military intervention in Syria changed the course of the war, causing a split within the Obama administration between officials like CIA Director John O. Brennan and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter—who advocated "doubling down" on the program—and opponents including White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and Secretary of State John Kerry—who expressed doubts that escalating the CIA's role could achieve meaningful results without forcing "an asymmetric response by Russia." Against the backdrop of the siege of "rebel-held sections" of the city of Aleppo by Russian and Syrian aircraft, on 14 October 2016 Obama was presented by his National Security Council with a "Plan B" to "deliver truck-mounted antiaircraft weapons that could help rebel units but would be difficult for a terrorist group to conceal and use against civilian aircraft"; Obama declined to make a decision on the matter, raising the prospect "that tens of thousands of CIA-backed fighters will search for more-reliable allies, and that the United States will lose leverage over regional partners that until now have refrained from delivering more-dangerous arms to Assad's opponents." Following Russia's intervention, top U.S. officials began emphasizing "the fight against the Islamic State [ISIL], rather than against the Assad government," but supporters of the CIA program "disagree with this rationale, saying that the Islamic State can't be eradicated until a new government emerges capable of controlling the terrorist group's territory in Raqqa and elsewhere," and that "the [Free Syrian Army] remains the 
caption: Rebels of the Army of Glory launch a US-made BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missile at government forces during the 2017 Hama offensive.
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