Military Review English Edition March-April 2014 | Page 26

T he MANPADS Task Force, housed in the

Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement of
the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs at State,
reports directly to the National Security Staff and
includes representatives from the Department of
State, Department of Defense (DOD), Department
of Homeland Security, the intelligence community,
and others. Even though the mission is globally
focused, I spent the lion’s share of my time planning
for the threat posed by MANPADS falling into the
hands of terrorists and other nonstate actors during
and after the crisis in Syria.
For our purposes, the U.S. planning effort for
Syria will provide the lens to examine the unique
role played by the State Department within the
interagency process, including how the organization
functions and works with other players.
Before diving in, it is important to put the MANPADS threat in Syria into context. At the time of the
Syrian revolution in 2011, Bashar al-Assad’s regime
had acquired a sizeable inventory of MANPADS,
mostly to counter the Israeli air threat. The Assad
regime possessed thousands of ex-Soviet SA-7
MANPADS, as well as a significant number of more
advanced systems.
Beyond regime-held stocks, video and photographic evidence from the civil war in Syria has
shown opposition forces, including the al-Qaida
affiliate al-Nusrah Front, in possession of a variety
of MANPADS acquired from capt \