Will Australian intelligence agencies or special forces troops find themselves operating in Syria?

By Rob Scott 15th August 2012.A report by US journalist Eric S Margolis indicates that the United States is already deeply involved in a secret operation to support the revolt currently underway in Syria. Margolis is a respected journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, International Herald Tribune and The Los Angeles Times. Building upon the history of secret operations by US and French forces to help the recent Libyan insurrection, Margolis has been able to construct a picture of emerging high level clandestine US support for the Syrian opposition. This support includes command and control resources, encrypted signals networks and sophisticated weaponry such as Stinger missiles.

It is of note that the ABC in Australia reported on 13th August that the US was not ruling out employing and enforcing a no-fly zone in north- western Syria. This report derived from a revealing aet of answers on the question of Syria by John O Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism when speaking to the US think tank, The Council on Foreign relations on US Policy towards Yemen. Of additional interest is Margolis’ as yet unverified suggestion that US mercenaries, organised by the organisation formerly known as Blackwater but now re-branded as Academi are training Syrian rebels in Turkey and possibly sending combat teams into Syria. This information is in addition to the recent public revelation that the CIA was conducting a support operation from a southern Turkish military base, ostensibly to co-ordinate the distribution of ‘non-lethal’ US aid to the Syrian opposition.

The US system of covert and clandestine warfare, which has assumed an even greater prominence under President Obama, has now assumed a major role in the Foreign Policy arsenal of the US. Avoiding already nominal Congressional oversight over ‘covert’ operations, the US has classified operations such as the Libyan and Syrian interventions as ‘clandestine’, and thus subject to military secrecy, in that they are conducted by Joint Special Operations Command teams. The teams are subject to CIA derived objectives and direction, but clandestine operations are carried out by Military Special Operations forces such as Navy Seal Team 6, which conducted the raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Abbotabad, Pakistan in 2011. Under the umbrella of the ‘War on Terror’, the US has established military doctrines which permit them to carry out the policies enunciated by George W Bush in 2002, which claimed the right for the US to pursue its enemies, anywhere at any time. US ‘hot pursuit’ doctrines, developed during the Vietnam War and later through the Drug Wars carried on by the US Drug Enforcement Agency have given way to the doctrine of ‘Preparing the Battlefield’. This doctrine permits the US to establish long term clandestine teams in nations it perceives may at some stage become an enemy, or may harbour such enemies.

Such operations may be effectively permanent, illegal and belligerent military- political teams, established to give the US the ability to destabilise and overthrow unfriendly or un-cooperative governments. It is in this context that one must consider the potential for Australian involvement in activities such as those currently being undertaken in Syria. Australian military doctrine and Foreign Policy have been ever more closely allied in recent times and customised to provide a tight fit with the requirements of coalition based military operations, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Desmond Ball, the renowned Australian researcher has noted recently the doctrinal blinkers with which the Australian military has perceived the emerging field of Cyber Warfare, essentially as a mere adjunct to existing battlefield based counter- insurgency warfare capabilities.

This is symbolic of the deep commitment of Australian political and military institutions to strategic and tactical orientations recently derived from the US alliance. The Australian Defence Forces have become heavily enmeshed in the carrying out of US strategies in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Conditioned by more than ten years of counter- insurgency warfare, they have become enmeshed in the US experience and in developments in US doctrine. Recent public statements by the head of ASIS also reveal that our external Intelligence agency has extended its own operations to include a far wider variety of countries than previously has been the case. Of note in this matter is the revelation in 2012 that Australian SAS troops had been operating for ASIS clandestinely in a variety of African states . ASIS, our own version of the CIA, has been conducting these operations using Special Forces personnel, rather than ASIS operatives, ostensibly in order to gain information on possible terrorist threats to Australia. ASIS operatives are now allowed to carry weapons in self defence, but intelligence doctrine may well stretch that privilege to permit their use in ‘counter-espionage’ activities, which opens the way for ASIS and SAS members working for them to be involved in clandestine acts involving firearms. If ASIS and Australian Special Forces capabilities already include a presence in the middle east, in countries other than Iraq, as is probable, it may make them attractive as resources to be called on in pursuit of US objectives in the region. Evidence that this scenario may have some basis in fact is the report that then Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd asked for troopers from SAS 4 Squadron to be used in Libya in 2011, but was “thwarted by opposition from the Defence Minister, Stephen Smith, and the Chief of the Australian Defence Force.”

Despite the emphasis on an independent intelligence capability in Nick Warner’s recent ’ASIS at 60’ speech, the extent to which ASIS doctrine now appears to be operating in harmony with recent US policy orientations, begs the question as to how deeply Australian Intelligence and Special forces are embedded in the ‘clandestine’ strategies of the US, especially in the Middle East. It is not a great stretch of the imagination to see how Australian agents and sources, and possibly Australian
personnel might be partners in US operations against governments such as that of Syria. If the US is arming, training and providing command and control resources for a clandestine operation, aimed at destroying the Syrian government, then its
Australian allies are well placed to provide support in a variety of ways. This may be as simple as providing information to its US counterparts, through the networks which ASIS appears to be maintaining, or it may be more direct.

It is also quite likely that former Australian Special Forces members are already involved as mercenaries in Syria, working for companies such as Blackwater/Academi. The depth of US and Allied involvement in the downfall of the Libyan government and soon of the Syrian government will ultimately be revealed. The extent to which it involves an extension of the Bush Doctrine and its goals of regime change by the Osama Presidency, or the potential ‘Balkanisation of the Middle East’, as Eric Margolis has implied, remains to be seen. Although the US has thus far represented its response to the Syrian crisis as that of a supporter of a coalition of localised forces, including Quatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, that wish to end the violence against Syrian civilians, there remains a possibility that Australian forces and agencies may already have been asked to become involved or may eventually provide support for such actions.

Are Australian Intelligence agencies and their surrogates already working in Syria?
As yet there is no evidence or proof, but given the support given by the Gillard government to US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan there is no guarantee that proposals like those made by former Foreign Minister Rudd in 2011 will not emerge
again to haunt the Defense and Intelligence Agencies of Australia. 15th August 2012

All references in original.Copyright Rob Scott 2012

http://www.facebook.com/#!/rob.scott.1441

Scott 2012

Rob Scott is an independent academic (MA International Relations) and commentator,based in Adelaide, South Australia, specialising in Intelligence Services.