“We’re really acting as an extension of the United States Government.” A look inside the Syrian Emergency Task Force, the advocacy group working behind the scenes to shape U.S. Syria policy.
Handout/Reuter / Reuters
Elizabeth O'Bagy, the controversial young researcher formerly with the Institute for the Study of War, was thrust into the media spotlight when her work was cited in congressional testimony and her previously undisclosed ties to an advocacy organization emerged. By the next week she had lost her job. Citing a misrepresentation of her credentials, ISW terminated her employment by close of business Tuesday.
The dust up began last week when both Senator John McCain and Secretary of State John Kerry cited O'Bagy's Wall Street Journal op-ed by name as they laid out their arguments for intervention in Syria during hearings on Capitol Hill. Both lawmakers and the WSJ referred to O'Bagy as simply a researcher with ISW. What they did not mention were O'Bagy's ties to another organization: The Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), a small pro-opposition advocacy group based in Washington, lobbying the U.S. government to intervene in Syria.
Throughout the original controversy surrounding O'Bagy's political ties, she said her research and her work with SETF were "completely separate." However she admitted that she and SETF sometimes held joint meetings with lawmakers and that occasionally her work with SETF benefited her in the field with greater access inside Syria. She says she's never hidden her affiliation with the advocacy group, but the connection was rarely made by journalists who cite O'Bagy's work. (Full disclosure: I also interviewed O'Bagy and cited her as simply a researcher a number of times while covering Syria for NPR and then for Syria Deeply).
"Objective analysis, I think, is an inaccurate term," O'Bagy said in an interview conducted before she was fired from ISW. "My research over the past two years has led me to very strong conclusions and to that degree I do have a significant bias."
The Researcher
Before last week, O'Bagy was an obscure, but respected figure in the small community of Syria watchers, researchers, and journalists that stretches from Washington to Beirut to Istanbul. Her work — an April 2012 report "The Free Syrian Army," her September 2012 report "Jihad in Syria," and her March 2013 report "Syria's Political Opposition" — provided one of the most comprehensive looks at Syria's armed and political opposition by a single researcher.
"While I consider it indefensible to misrepresent your credentials, especially when you're advising policymakers on a subject as sensitive as Syria, the zeal with which people are attacking O'Bagy is disturbing," said Hannah Allam, a journalist who covers foreign policy out of Washington, D.C. for McClatchy. She interviewed O'Bagy in her reporting on Syria and talked to her frequently over the past year. Allam took particular exception to criticism of O'Bagy's age. "A lot of the piling on comes from people who pontificate on Syria without ever having set foot in the country, without Arabic skills, without the courage to traverse a war zone at the mercy of ragtag rebel militias," Allam said.
But Allam also said she detected a gradual change in O'Bagy's statements over time: "Her initial findings were extremely informative to me and many other journalists." As the crisis in Syria wore on, however, Allam said O'Bagy began to display more overt support and sympathy for the Syrian opposition, while acknowledging problems among the rebel ranks.
When Allam saw O'Bagy's Wall Street Journal op-ed, she was shocked: "It not only contradicted what virtually every other astute observer of the conflict said, but also was at odds with some of her own assessments that she'd provided to McClatchy in interviews."
