On June 12 The NYT’s CJ Chivers reported from Syria on workshops that make some ammunition for the foreign supported insurgency in Syria. The piece, starting with the headline, was a long whine about the alleged lack of arms of these poor killers. It included photos from the workshops by Chiver’s sidekick Tyler Hicks.
Starved for Arms, Syria Rebels Make Their Own
“Everybody knows we do not have the weapons we need to defend ourselves,” said Abu Trad, a commander of the Saraqib Rebels Front, shortly before he allowed visitors into this mortar-round plant. “But we have the will, and we have humble means, and we have tools.”
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[T]he arms plants remain a prominent feature of the opposition’s logistics, as arms flows from the Arab world fail to keep up with demand.
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“All we need is effective weapons,” [Khaled Muhammed Addibis, a rebel commander,] said. “Effective weapons. Nothing else.”
When Chivers wrote the above the official propaganda line said that the US was not actively arming the “rebels” but that Obama was “withstanding the pressure to do so”. That was nonsense and Chivers knew it was. While he wrote the story of those poor “rebels” who had to make weapons themselves because they do not get them elsewhere, Chivers also saw many modern weapons coming in from Libya and elsewhere and he knwe that the CIA was involved in distributing them. But he never reported on that. Instead he wrote the above lies. How do we know that? Well, just look what Chivers writes today:
Evidence gathered in Syria, along with flight-control data and interviews with militia members, smugglers, rebels, analysts and officials in several countries, offers a profile of a complex and active multinational effort, financed largely by Qatar, to transport arms from Libya to Syria’s opposition fighters.
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[W]hile the system appears to succeed in moving arms across multiple borders and to select rebel groups, once inside Syria the flow branches out. Extremist fighters, some of them aligned with Al Qaeda, have the money to buy the newly arrived stock, and many rebels are willing to sell.
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But the Libyan influx appears to account for at least a portion of the antitank weapons seen in the conflict this spring, including Belgian-made projectiles for M40 recoilless rifles and some of the Russian-made Konkurs-M guided missiles that have been destroying Syrian tanks in recent months.
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Signs of munitions from the former Qaddafi stockpile are readily visible.Late last month The New York Times found crates, storage sleeves and spent cartridge cases for antitank rounds from Libya in the possession of Ahfad al-Rasul, a prominent group fighting the government and aligned with the Supreme Military Council.
While he reported on insurgents “starved of arms” Chivers and his photographer Hicks, actually had seen the recoilless rifles, the guided missiles and lots of crates of ammunition from Libya. But at that time the official propaganda theme was “poor underarmed rebels” and Chivers diligently followed it. That propaganda theme was used to create some public support for escalating the war by pushing even more arms into the rebels hands. The story of the “starved of arms rebels” was untrue and Chivers knew that “late last month” when he traveled in Syria. As always their are some nuggets of truth in the NYT’s and Chivers’ reporting. But often, as shown here, the writers are pushed, or oblige silently, to keep to the official line the White House is distributing. The few time the NYT is going against the official U.S. propaganda are just diversion to keep up an image of a free press.
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The 11 countries who form the friends for the destruction of Syria met today in Qatar.
Before the meeting started Secretary of State Kerry had planned to organize a common distribution of weapons through the CIA controlled Free Syrian Army head General Idris to somewhat cut out the jihadist from the weapon stream:
Western and Arab opponents of Bashar Assad met in Qatar on Saturday to tighten coordination of their support for rebels battling to overthrow the Syrian president.
Ministers from 11 countries including the United States, European and regional Sunni Muslim powers, held talks that Washington said should commit participants to direct all aid through the Western-backed Supreme Military Council, which it hopes can offset the growing power of jihadist rebel forces.
That move was thought to be was necessary as Saudi Arabia as well as Qatar were freely distributing weapon to the various takfiri terrorist groups:
Two Gulf sources told Reuters on Saturday that Saudi Arabia, which has taken a lead role among Arab opponents of Assad, had also accelerated delivery of advanced weapons to the rebels.
“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.
Before today’s meeting Qatar made an attempt to put the takfiris it supports under the nominal umbrella of the Free Syrian Army:
The Free Syrian Army has offered powerful Islamist rebel groups a share of advanced new weapons if they unify under the FSA banner.
“Idriss offered to support the Islamist factions by sharing the weapons he expects to receive, if they joined an alliance with the FSA and agree to certain conditions,” the Damascus-based rebel said yesterday.
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He also said a delegation from Qatar had been in attendance – the only non-Syrian presence at the meeting. That had surprised those taking part, the rebel said, but might have been linked to the summit of opposition backers, known as The Friends of Syria, due to take place in Doha today.
The conference in Qatar has ended by now and Kerry has (again) failed:
Ministers from the 11 main countries which form the Friends of Syria group agreed “to provide urgently all the necessary materiel and equipment to the opposition on the ground, each country in its own way in order to enable them to counter brutal attacks by the regime and its allies”.
“Each country in its own way” means Kerry failed – badly – to united the weapon flow. It seems then that Saudi Arabia and Qatar will continue to provide weapons to Jabhat al-Nusra and the other takfiri terrorist groups in Syria.
This disunity should let the Obama administration recognize that their argument to feed weapons to the “good rebels” to starve the takfiris will not work. When Qatar and Saudi Arabia continue to provide these “in their own way” then the takfiris will continue to be the strongest section of the insurgency.
As a lot of new weapons are streaming in the Syrian Arab Army should probably stop its current offense and stay defensive while devising new tactics against such weapons. Tanks advancing openly or as sitting ducks at checkpoints are massive targets and will not survive an onslaught of Konkurs-M, Kornet and other modern anti-tank weapons. There are ways to counter them but that will need some time to be prepared and trained. Meanwhile large weapon transports can be observed and raided in quick and surprising raids could interdict them.