US Needs New Strategy to Militarize Syrian Opposition Groups Against Assad

The US government should focus its efforts on new ways to raise military forces within Syria from local opposition groups to fight against the government of President Bashar Assad, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) said in a new report on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The report — "From the Bottom, Up: A Strategy for US Military Support to Syria’s Armed Opposition" — examined the current state of US support for opposition groups in each region in Syria, and urged the Obama administration to expand its support for the opposition groups.

"[T]he primary US effort should be on a bottom-up strategy for building cohesive, moderate armed opposition institutions with a regional focus that is tailored for each individual region within Syria," the report stated.

The report advised the US government to push the current "moderate armed opposition groups’ to join in larger regional coalitions with a genuinely unified command."

However, such a strategy could take up to a decade to achieve, the report acknowledged.

The executive director of the CNAS think thank is Michelle Flournoy, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2012 and one of the principal architects of US military policies toward Syria at that time.