DOHA (Reuters) – International opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad agreed yesterday to give urgent military support to Western-backed rebels, aiming to stem a counter-offensive by Assad’s forces and offset the growing power of jihadist fighters.
Assad’s recapture of the strategic border town of Qusair, spearheaded by Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, and an expected assault on the divided northern city of Aleppo have alarmed supporters of the Syrian opposition.
The US administration has responded by saying, for the first time, it would arm rebels, while Gulf sources say Saudi Arabia has accelerated the delivery of advanced weapons to the rebels over the last week.
Ministers from the 11 core members of the Friends of Syria group, agreed “to provide urgently all the necessary materiel and equipment to the opposition on the ground,” according to a statement released at the end of their meeting in Qatar.
The statement did not commit all the countries to send weapons, but said each country could provide assistance “in its own way, in order to enable (the rebels) to counter brutal attacks by the regime and its allies”.
The aid should be channelled through the Western-backed Supreme Military Council, a move that Washington and its European allies hope will prevent weapons falling into the hands of Islamist radicals including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.
Ministers from the Friends group – which includes Western and Arab states as well as Turkey – also condemned “the intervention of Hezbollah militias and fighters from Iran and Iraq”, demanding they withdraw immediately.
As well as fighting in Qusair, Hezbollah is deployed alongside Iraqi gunmen around the Shi’ite shrine of Sayyida Zainab, south of Damascus, while Iranian military commanders are believed to be advising Assad’s officers on counter-insurgency.
Two Gulf sources told Reuters that Saudi Arabia, which started supplying anti-aircraft missiles to the rebels on a small scale two months ago, had accelerated delivery of sophisticated weaponry.
“In the past week there have been more arrivals of these advanced weapons. They are getting them more frequently,” one source said, without giving details. Another Gulf source described them as “potentially balance-tipping” supplies.
French military advisers are already training the rebels to use some of the new equipment in Turkey and Jordan, sources familiar with the training programmes said. U.S. forces have been carrying out similar training, rebels say.
Rebel fighters say they need anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons to stem the fightback by Assad’s forces in a civil war that has killed 93,000 people, driven 1.6 million refugees abroad and cost tens of billions of dollars in destruction of property, businesses and infrastructure.
Louay Meqdad, spokesman for the Supreme Military Council led by former Syrian army general Salim Idriss, said it had received several batches of weapons.
“They are the first consignments from one of the countries that support the Syrian people and there are clear promises from Arab and foreign countries that there will be more during the coming days,” he told Reuters Television in Istanbul.
