10 Facts About Timber Sycamore

Timber Sycamore was a classified weapons supply and training program run by the United States Central Intelligence Agency and supported by some Arab intelligence services, including Saudi intelligence.

Critics saw it as ineffective and expensive, and raised concerns about diversion of weapons to jihadist groups and about Timber Sycamore-backed rebels fighting alongside the al-Nusra Front.

In July 2017, US officials stated that Timber Sycamore would be phased out, with funds possibly redirected to fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or to offering rebel forces defensive capabilities.

Timber Sycamore began in late 2012 or early 2013, and was similar to other Pentagon or CIA-run weapons routing and training programs that were established in previous decades to support foreign rebel forces.

Existence of Timber Sycamore was revealed by The New York Times and Al Jazeera in June 2016, after Jane's Defence Weekly reported, in late 2015, that the US Federal Business Opportunities website was soliciting contracts to ship thousands of tons of weapons from Eastern Europe to Tasucu, Turkey and Aqaba, Jordan.

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Timber Sycamore was run by the Military Operations Command in Amman and provided Kalashnikov assault rifles, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, TOW anti-tank guided missiles, night vision goggles, pickup trucks, and other weapons to prospective Syrian rebel forces.

Timber Sycamore is distinct from the Syrian Train and Equip Program, another Pentagon program established to train Syrian rebel forces to fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant The Pentagon made it clear their goal in Syria and Iraq was 'to fight ISIS and fight ISIS only [and] we've asked [our partner forces] to be committed to that same mission' and that they would not fight Assad's military.

Arms received via Timber Sycamore have flooded Middle Eastern black markets with heavy weaponry.

The advent of the war transformed the region into a center for smuggling weapons, and the more formal support provided by Timber Sycamore only intensified the scale of smuggling operations on the border.

In 2016, Australian columnist Paul Malone speculated in the Sydney Morning Herald that weapons delivered by Timber Sycamore might be acquired by al-Qaeda in Syria, comparing the program to CIA support for the Afghan mujahideen, or American weaponry being seized by ISIL in 2014 in Mosul, Iraq.