Rebel-Army Backers Open U.S. Office

By JAY SOLOMON And SIOBHAN GORMAN

WASHINGTON—Supporters of the Free Syrian Army have established an outreach office here for a lobbying effort that is likely to feed the Obama administration's discussions on whether to arm the group or more directly intervene in the Syrian conflict.

The organization, called the Syrian Support Group, says it will seek backing from Congress, the White House and relevant federal agencies to deliver arms and other military goods to help in the group's fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"This focuses on the FSA's capabilities to bring down Assad on its own if provided with the right equipment and information," said Louay Sakka, a Syrian-Canadian co-founder of the support group.

The Obama administration has ruled out supplying U.S. weapons, but the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department have stepped up contacts with the Free Syrian Army through the group's bases in countries such as Turkey and Lebanon.

The contacts are mainly intended to assess the army; the CIA also has helped to develop logistical routes and train army members in communications, officials say.

In new assessments, U.S. officials and military analysts said the rebel army has improved its capabilities in recent months, but remains poorly organized. Some analysts said Mr. Assad's dwindling finances and a strengthening rebel army are diminishing chances that his government will ever fully regain control.

"The conflict in Syria is approaching a tipping point at which the insurgency will control more territory than the regime," wrote Joseph Holliday, an expert on Syria at the Institute for the Study of War, this month.

However, U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday that the conflict is likely to continue for an extended period as the regime and the opposition struggle for dominance, with no near-term resolution in sight.

"It doesn't seem to us that either side at this point is in a position to dominate the other or to prevail in the near term," a senior U.S. intelligence official said. "We're probably looking at a protracted conflict."

For the past six to eight months, the Syrian regime of President Assad and opposition fighters have repeatedly traded the upper hand, the intelligence officials said.

Contributing to the deadlock is the scattered nature of the opposition forces. The Syrian National Council, the nominal governing group for the opposition, has yet to become a force for unifying opposition groups inside Syria, a senior U.S. intelligence official said. "There's nothing to suggest it is now a cohesive insurgency," the official said.

Meanwhile, defections from the Syrian military to the opposition remain largely in the lower ranks, with just a small number of officers leaving, intelligence officials said. One described it as "a trickle of defections."

Mr. Assad's inner circle remains largely intact, the officials noted, and the Sunni business community so far hasn't abandoned the regime.

Mr. Assad continues to control his country's largest cities, such as Damascus, Aleppo and Latakia, military analysts and Syria experts said.

Homs, the third-largest city, is held by the government but contested by rebels. And large areas of Syria, particularly in northern Idlib province and southern Deraa province, are now out of the government's writ, experts said.

The White House remains wary of the Free Syrian Army because of suspected ties to Islamic extremists. The Obama administration also remains concerned that U.S. arms could add to the instability.

In Washington, official administration contacts with the Syrian Support Group are expected to remain at lower levels. But the group's presence is likely to increase the rebels' visibility among members of Congress and the American public.

Mr. Sakka says he and other expatriates initially supported a peaceful political transition. He said his perspective changed in April 2011 when Syrian forces were accused of killing hundreds of people during a peaceful protest in Homs, an incident that has become known as the Clock Tower Massacre.

Since then, Mr. Sakka has been working with Syrian expatriates, retired Syrian military officers, and Western advisers to arm and organize the makeshift army. They also have tried to address U.S. concerns. The Syrian Support Group, Mr. Sakka says, has focused on purging hard-line Islamic militants from the army's ranks.

Mr. Sakka and the Syrian Support Group's full-time director of government relations, Brian Sayers, have crisscrossed Washington in recent days to meet with congressional staffers and Washington think tanks.

Mr. Sayers, a former political officer at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, said the group is looking for a champion on Capitol Hill in the mold of the late Texas congressman, Charlie Wilson, who drove efforts to fund the Afghan mujahedeen against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

"There is a window of opportunity," said Mr. Sayers. "What we do now will affect the region for the next 20 to 30 years."

Write to Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com and Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared June 27, 2012, on page A11 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Rebel-Army Backers Open U.S. Office.