Western and Arab 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.
Ministers from the 11 core members agreed ‘to provide urgently all the necessary material and equipment to the opposition on the ground
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 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 past week.
Ministers from the 11 core members of the Friends of Syria group agreed “to provide urgently all the necessary material 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.
The ministers also condemned “the intervention of Hezbollah militias and fighters from Iran and Iraq”, demanding that 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.
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 euros in destruction of property, businesses and infrastructure.
Rebel spokesman Louay Meqdad said the Supreme Military Council, led by former Syrian army general Salim Idriss, 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.
The increasingly sectarian dynamic of the war pits mainly Sunni Muslim rebels against forces loyal to Assad – who is from the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam – and has split the Middle East along Sunni-Shi’ite lines.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani of Qatar, which along with Saudi Arabia has been one of the most open Arab backers of the anti-Assad rebels, said that supplying them with weapons was the only way to resolve the conflict.
“Force is necessary to achieve justice. And the provision of weapons is the only way to achieve peace in Syria’s case,” Sheikh Hamad told ministers at the start of the talks.
“We cannot wait due to disagreement among (UN) Security Council members over finding a solution to the problem,” he said.
The meeting in Qatar brought together ministers and senior officials of countries that support the anti-Assad rebels – France, Germany, Egypt, Italy, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Britain and the United States – although the fractured Syrian opposition itself was notably absent.
Sheikh Hamad said all but two countries had agreed on the kind of support to provide to the rebels. He did not name the dissenters, but Germany and Italy have both said in the past they oppose arming the rebel brigades.
The final statement expressed concern at Syria’s worsening humanitarian crisis, which prompted the United Nations to launch a $5 billion (€3.8bn) appeal earlier this month – its biggest ever.
It called on the world “to shoulder its responsibilities by taking urgent and tangible actions to alleviate the Syrian people’s suffering”.