Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Did the A-Team Return?

It seems the Western special forces in Jordan must be doing their most basic pre-9/11 function--training friendly forces to take on Assad.

This story says our intelligence people are doing the training:

The United States is training secular Syrian fighters in Jordan in a bid to bolster forces battling President Bashar Assad's regime and stem the influence of Islamist radicals among the country's persistently splintered opposition, American and foreign officials said.

The training has been conducted for several months now in an unspecified location, concentrating largely on Sunnis and tribal Bedouins who formerly served as members of the Syrian army, officials told The Associated Press.

But given that Jordan has been the focus of Western special forces activity, it seems likely that our special forces are involved.

Since 9/11, our special forces have been far more involved in direct action. Which is why the regular Army has been picking up some of the slack in training friendly forces. But without an Iraq front and the Afghan front receding, perhaps the special forces are picking up some of their old jobs in Jordan.

Making sure non-jihadi rebels have the edge in Syria would be high enough priority to re-engage the special forces in this more traditional training task.