The Daily Beast:
In a private meeting with Syrian opposition leaders, Secretary of State John Kerry said he believed the international community “wasted a year” by not working together to help topple strongman Bashar al-Assad.
The various countries trying to help the Free Syrian Army had failed to coordinate their efforts effectively for a long time, Kerry said inside the private meeting last Thursday with Syrian Opposition Coalition president Ahmad Jarba, according to three participants in the meeting. And that lack of coordination had dramatically set back the drive to stop Assad’s rampage and counter the growing terrorism threat.
All three participants in the meeting requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the gathering, which was held at the State Department in Washington, D.C. Several State Department officials, at least one National Security Council staffer, and several representatives of the Syrian Opposition Coalition and the Supreme Military Council were in attendance.
The participants said Kerry made the remark in the context of a discussion about renewed efforts to coordinate the flow of both aid and weapons to the Syrian rebels. Earlier this year, the intelligence chiefs of several Arab countries came to Washington to work on concentrating the flow of aid away from more extremist elements—and toward moderate rebels such as the FSA. The group is fighting hard-liners such as the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS) all over northern Syria.
Days after that meeting, the FSA’s Supreme Military Council appointed a new leader, Brig. Gen. Abdul-Ilah al-Bashir. And in recent weeks, the rebels have begun to receive and use American-made anti-tank missiles, part of a “pilot program” to test the Supreme Military Council’s ability to handle advanced weapons responsibly and prevent their proliferation to extremist groups.
Bashir sat down for an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast on Sunday. The main purpose of the Syrian Opposition Coalition delegation’s trip to Washington, he said, was to ask for anti-aircraft weapons to protect Syrian civilians from regime air strikes, which lately have included barrel bombs and chlorine gas attacks on civilian targets. Bashir also asked the United States to take the lead on the international effort to provide aid and arms to the Syrian Opposition Civilian and military leadership.
