Congress hesitant to share IS intelligence with Putin, Assad
Congress wants more eyes on the Islamic State (IS). They would just rather it not be Vladimir Putin's.
A bipartisan House Homeland Committee task force on Sept. 29 released a report on terrorist travel to Middle East conflict zones that bemoaned a lack of international cooperation in tracking would-be terrorists. The report laments the absence of a comprehensive strategy in the United States and calls on European nations to do more to keep tabs on its citizens as they travel to Syria, Iraq and Libya.
But the comprehensive report that is six months in the making was partly overtaken by the fast-evolving situation on the ground before it was even released. Russia's growing role in Syria and Iraq's announcement over the weekend of an intelligence-sharing agreement with Russia, Iran and Syria's pro-Assad forces left lawmakers grappling for answers.
"I will say the one thing we have in common with the Russians is our dislike for the terrorists," committee chairman Mike McCaul, R-Texas, told Al-Monitor. "The complication is their obvious support for [Bashar al-] Assad. And as long as Assad remains in power, he remains a magnet for the jihadists."
Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y. — the task force leader — did not rule out intelligence sharing with Russian and other US foes in the Middle East to prevent terrorist travel. The report concluded that some 30,000 people have traveled internationally to fight alongside IS, including some 250 Americans and 4,500 Western Europeans.
"Our job was to identify the issues and the problems, and then the leadership in this country has got to decide whether they want to work with him [Putin] or not," Katko said. "I think it's too early to tell; we don't know what their motives are. But anybody who's going against [IS] we've got to at least recognize as a [potential] top avenue to work with."
But Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., highlighted the geopolitical costs of backing Assad or his supporters.
"If all we're doing is looking at [IS] through a soda straw without looking at the bigger picture, then we're going to screw it up even more," she said. "I think there's some things where we could find aligned interests, but we've got to be looking at it in the context of the bigger picture."
Much of the report's recommendations focused on putting more pressure on America's European partners to "end the patchwork approach to information sharing" and include more names on regional and international watch lists, despite privacy concerns. Lawmakers said the administration should expect a slew of proposed legislation to turn the report's recommendations into reality in the coming weeks and months.
"Good intelligence can stop this," McCaul said. "And the intelligence sharing within our partners … is really key to this."
The congressional debate closely mirrors debates happening inside the Obama administration, where officials are also trying to ascertain Putin's goals before deciding how much to work with him. The administration had ruled out military cooperation with Assad against IS in the past but has been more open to the idea of sharing intelligence with his Russian ally.
"We’re just at the beginning of trying to understand what the Russians’ intentions are in Syria, in Iraq, and to try to see if there are mutually beneficial ways forward here,” a senior US official told reporters over the weekend after Secretary of State John Kerry met with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov. “We’ve got a long way to go in that conversation.”
Katko echoed those sentiments Sept. 29.
"If you can have a verifiable system where you can trust your counterparts and the information flows both ways — and the information that flows both ways is being properly used by everybody — then I think you have a system that works," Katko told Al-Monitor. "But you have to make sure that that's the case. And that's where the devil's in the details."
Congressional Correspondent
Julian Pecquet is Al-Monitor's Congressional Correspondent. He previously led The Hill's Global Affairs blog. On Twitter:@congresspulse Contact him via email jpecquet@al-monitor.com
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