World

Officials: Pentagon weighs protections for US-trained rebels

Lolita C. Baldor and Robert Burns - Associated Press

October 2, 2015 | 3:17pm

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is grappling with whether the US should use military force to protect US trained and equipped Syrian rebels now that they may be the targets of Russian airstrikes.

Senior military leaders and defense officials are working through the thorny legal and foreign policy issues and are weighing the risks of using force in response to a Russian attack, US officials said Thursday.

Pentagon leaders have consistently said that the US must take steps to protect the American-trained rebels because it would be far more difficult to recruit fighters without those assurances. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told reporters in March that the US has an obligation to support them, "And we're working through what kinds of support and under what conditions we would do so."

US officials later made it clear that rebels trained by the US would receive air support in the event they are attacked by either Islamic State militants or Syrian government troops. Currently, that protection would apply only to about 80 US-trained Syrian rebels who are back in Syria fighting with their units.

The US policy so far is very specific. It doesn't address a potential attack by Russian planes and does not include Syrian rebels who have not been through the US military training, even though they may be aligned with the US or IS.

Carter declined to discuss the problem when asked about it this week. But US officials acknowledged that this is one of the questions being asked as they debate the administration's response to what White House press secretary Josh Earnest described as Russia's "indiscriminate military operations against the Syrian opposition."

A key concern is the prospect of US getting drawn into a proxy war with Russia in the event that Russian warplanes hit moderate Syrian rebels who have been trained and equipped by the US military.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss ongoing deliberations publicly.

Tensions between the US and Russia are escalating over Russian airstrikes that apparently are serving to strengthen Syrian President Bashar Assad by targeting rebels — perhaps including some aligned with the US — rather than hitting Islamic State fighters it promised to attack.

The US and its allies have been calling on Russia to immediately cease attacks on the Syrian opposition and to focus on fighting Islamic State militants, saying Moscow's actions will "only fuel more extremism and radicalization."

The Pentagon on Thursday had its first conversation with Russian officials in an effort to avoid any unintended US-Russian confrontations as the airstrikes continue in the skies over Syria. During the video call, Elissa Slotkin, who represented the US, expressed America's concerns that Russia is targeting areas where there are few if any Islamic State forces operating. Slotkin is the acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs.

The US side proposed using specific international radio frequencies for distress calls by military pilots flying in Syrian airspace, but he was not more specific about that or other proposals.