U.S. and Russia can’t agree on definition of ‘terrorist’

WASHINGTON _ While they confer about “de-conflicting” their bombing raids in Syria, U.S. and Russian military officials also might want to discuss what the word “terrorist” means.tmpplchld That would be an easier discussion for the Russians, who began airstrikes Wednesday, than the Americans, who have been bombing Syria for more than a year.tmpplchld For Russian President Vladimir Putin and his generals, the definition of “terrorist,” when it comes to the increasingly turbulent Syrian civil war, is simple: anyone who uses violence to try to topple President Bashar Assad.tmpplchld Assad is a dictator, but he’s Moscow’s dictator, just as Saddam Hussein was Washington’s dictator for decades before President George W. Bush turned against him and launched an ill-fated March 2003 invasion. The consequences of the was with Iraq are still playing out more than a dozen years later across the Middle East.tmpplchld For President Barack Obama and his top military aides, it’s becoming more complicated by the day to say just who is a terrorist in Syria.tmpplchld Like Moscow, Washington views some of the anti-Assad forces as terrorists, starting with the Islamic State group.tmpplchld But the United States’ uneasy alliances with Turkey and the elusive “moderate opposition groups” in Syria, and the reluctance of Obama and Congress to get drawn further into that nation’s bloody disaster, require American leaders to engage in verbal jiujitsu when asked if the U.S.-led air campaign is also targeting the Nusra Front, Ahrar al Shram and other al-Qaida-linked groups.tmpplchld “The fundamental problem is that the United States is trying to divorce its international anti-terrorism campaign from the rest of the Syrian civil war,” said Christopher Kozak, an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War in Washington. “That’s very difficult as we saw when the (U.S.-trained) New Syrian Force went in and just got obliterated by Nusra. The rebels want to fight the regime, not ISIS.tmpplchld “The Russians have some leverage because they’re coming in with a position that’s more coherent. Their anti-terrorism strategy is part of an endgame for ending the civil war, which is to protect the Assad regime.” ISIS is one of several acronyms for the Islamic State; ISIL is another.tmpplchld tmpplchld Beneath their diverging views of who is a terrorist is a more fundamental difference between Moscow and Washington: Russia traces the rise of Islamic State to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq; the United States attributes it to the brutal Assad rule that it blames for the deaths of more than 200,000 Syrians.tmpplchld Despite Assad’s record, Russia is backing his regime with airstrikes.tmpplchld After Russia began bombing Syria this week, Pentagon officials have declined to directly answer questions on how they felt about the Kremlin targeting Assad’s enemies other than Islamic State. U.S. military spokesmen declined to answer the questions directly.tmpplchld tmpplchld tmpplchld At a United Nations. briefing, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov offered a simple assessment when asked who the bad guys are in Syria.tmpplchld Lavrov listed the Islamic State, Nusra “and other terrorist groups.” Asked to elaborate, he responded: “If it looks like a terrorist, it if acts like a terrorist, if it walks like a terrorist, if it fights like a terrorist, it’s a terrorist.”tmpplchld In contrast, the U.S. Central Command, which runs American military operations in the Middle East, has been careful about how it describes the targets of U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria and Iraq.tmpplchld Virtually all of the targets specified by the Central Command in more than 7,100 airstrikes in the two countries have been Islamic State fighters, bases, vehicles, weapons or other equipment.tmpplchld In one exception, on Nov. 6, 2014, the Central Command announced that U.S.-led warplanes had bombed elements of Nusra outside Sarmada in northwestern Syria, near the Turkish border.tmpplchld Syrian opposition groups, including some that were supplied by the U.S., , protested vehemently.tmpplchld “Rebel groups on the ground see Nusra as a partner,” Kozak said.tmpplchld Since then, the Central Command has not said Nusra is a bombing target. Instead, such strikes are described aimed at the Khorasan Group, which is a terrorist cell that housed with Nusra. In each instance, the Central Command uses specific terminology noting that the al-Qaida-linked group is “plotting external attacks against the United States and our allies,” or a similar version of that phrase.tmpplchld In revealing last month that an American strike had killed David Drugeon, a former French intelligence agent who defected to a- Qaida, the Pentagon said: “Drugeon was a member of a network of veteran al-Qaida operatives, sometimes called the Khorasan Group, who are plotting attacks against the United States, its allies, and partners.”tmpplchld For Syrian opposition groups, Kozak said, the Khorasan Group is a virtual fiction. They see it, he said, as the same as Nusra.tmpplchld “The distinction between Nusra and the Khorasan Group is something the Pentagon has whipped up in order not to come out and say that we’re hitting Nusra,” Kozak said. “They want to parse that line in order not to be dragged into a conflict with Nusra as well as the Islamic State. Nusra is very effective. This (Obama) administration in particular is very careful about being sucked into more quagmires in the Middle East.”tmpplchld ___tmpplchld (c)2015 McClatchy Washington Bureautmpplchld Visit the McClatchy Washington Bureau at www.mcclatchydc.comtmpplchld Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.tmpplchld