Gulf states may begin deliveries as options for ending civil war narrow
Syria’s ragtag rebel army may start getting deliveries of weapons and other ordnance, a development that analysts say will make it easier for them to maintain their 11-month-old fight against Bashar Al-Assad’s regime but fall short of giving them tools they need for victory.
The Friends of Syria conference of Arab and Western states meeting in Tunis on Friday failed to agree on a plan for aiding the rebels, but Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states made clear they want to do more than step up trade sanctions, provide humanitarian aid and plan for Syria’s post-Al-Assad future.
Asked at the conference if he thought arming the Syrian opposition was a good idea, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal, answered: “I think it’s an excellent idea.” Qatar’s Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al-Thani urged the Tunis meeting to deploy an Arab force to open and protect humanitarian corridors between opposition strongholds and Syria’s neighbors.
“There’s a growing will, specifically on the part of Saudi Arabia and some of the other Gulf countries, to back the rebels. They clearly have the money to do so if they want to do so and they have the wherewithal to obtain weaponry and move it across the border, either from Lebanon or from Turkey,” Jonathan Spyer, a researcher who was with the rebels in Syria’s Idlib province earlier this month.
Options for ending Syria’s civil war are narrowing as United Nations Security Council vetoes by Russia and China have created a dead-end in the diplomatic track while the growing carnage has exerted pressure on the international community to step in to save lives.
But even without the presence of Russia and China at the Friends of Syria meeting, participants were unable to hammer out a strategy. While the Gulf states are backing efforts to bring down the Al-Assad regime, Syria’s next door neighbors worry that arming the rebels or intervening directly may send streams of refugees across their borders or even carry the fighting into the own countries.
Faced with a logjam, the Gulf states may help the rebel Free Syria Army (FSA) on their own, taking advantage of Syria’s porous border with Lebanon and perhaps persuading Turkey to allow supplies other than weapons through, analysts say. Ankara is hosting the FSA and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has urged Al-Assad to step down, but it has been hesitant about getting more deeply involved.
“I believe that the international appetite for some military or some operation to help opposition has increased,” Ayesha Sabavala, an analyst who follows Syria for the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), told The Media Line
An unnamed Syrian opposition figure told Reuters on Friday that Western and other countries are quietly allowing light arms, communications equipment and night vision goggles purchased by Syrian exiles to reach the FSA. “There is not a decision by any country to arm the rebels but countries are allowing Syrians to buy weapons and send them into the country,” the source said.
But the weapons and other equipment aren’t likely to tip the balance in the rebels’ favor, said Sabavala.
“It would certainly strengthen the opposition to an extent. But Al-Assad will fight till the end,” she said “What it will do is make for a more coherent and effective opposition. The FSA is still fairly small … most of the equipment the FSA has is light artillery. It doesn’t compare with what the Syrian army has. But it will help to a certain extent.”
On paper, the FSA looks like no match for the Syrian army.
The FSA counts no more than a few-thousand men and it is less of an army than a disparate collection of local fighters who sometimes coordinate their actions with each other and only nominally report to their commander, the former Air Force Colonel Riad Asaad. Their weapons consist mainly of AK-47 rifles, RPG 7s and light artillery, nearly all of it taken from Syrian Army stores by soldiers defecting to the opposition.
According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, Al-Assad has 325,000 troops under his command, of which 220,000 are in the army and another 108,000 in paramilitary forces. The Syrian Air Force has 555 combat capable aircraft, including 150 fighters and 289 fighter ground attack planes, although they have not yet been used against civilians. Damascus is believed to have chemical and perhaps biological weapons.
Spyer, who is the author of Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict, said the only reason the FSA had succeeded in standing up to the Syrian Army and wresting control of some areas is because Al-Assad’s hands are tied by international public opinion over the killing and doubts about the loyalty of many of his troops.
The UN said last month that 5,400 people had been killed since the uprising’s start. But since then hundreds more have been killed and the international organization says it has stopped counting. Activists put the number of casualties at more than 7,300. Al-Assad, who belongs to the minority Alawite sect and derives its strength mainly from its co-religionists, cannot count on the loyalty of his Sunni Muslim troops. Sunnis account for about 60% of Syria’s population.
Spyer said, ending the civil war will require the U.S. and/or other Western powers to step in
“The game changers, which one hears again and again from the fighters in Syria, will come if and when the West chooses to begin to back the rebels in two ways,” Spyer said. “First is the issue of arming, supplying and training and secondly the issue of supporting buffer zones or humanitarian corridors within Syria itself, internationally guaranteed from which the rebels and the opposition can begin to organize in a much more coherent way.”
The catch is that enforcing the buffer zones would inevitably lead to direct military intervention which the West is loathe to risk, he said.