SAUDI ARABIA-FREE SYRIAN ARMY Syria's 'moderate' rebels say they need weapons, not training

Record ID: 189516

  • Title: SAUDI ARABIA-FREE SYRIAN ARMY Syria's 'moderate' rebels say they need weapons, not training
  • Date: 18th September 2014
  • Summary: JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA (SEPTEMBER 11, 2014) (REUTERS) FREE SYRIAN ARMY (FSA) COMMANDER AMMAR AL-WAWI SITTING WITH SYRIAN FAMILY LIVING IN JEDDAH
  • Embargoed: 3rd October 2014 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Saudi Arabia
  • Country: Saudi Arabia
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVADQX0G29PCBCLKQD1P8V95R9IO
  • Story Text: What the moderate rebels in Syria need is not more training in fighting but more powerful weapons, a Syrian rebel commander tells Reuters.
    As U.S. President Barack Obama knits together an international coalition to take its campaign against Islamic State from Iraq into Syria, fighters like Ammar al-Wawi could make the difference.
    If he had the chance, he says.
    He fears that restrictions on the kind of weapons he'll receive and the training he'll get under a $500 million White House proposal to arm moderate Syrian rebels will make his job impossible.
    "We need anti-aircraft weapons or no fly zone, also need anti-tank weapons that is able to destroy the weapons of the criminal organization (Islamic State) as well as the weapons of the regime of (Syrian President) Bashar al-Assad," said Wawi, a commander in the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a loose collection of moderate rebels fighting both Islamic State (IS) and Syrian government forces.
    Under the current legislation in Congress, Wawi is unlikely to get what he wants, highlighting a dilemma for Obama after he authorized earlier this month U.S. air strikes for the first time in Syria and more attacks in Iraq in a broad escalation of a campaign against Islamic State militants who have seized a third of both countries.
    A significant part of Obama's plan hinges on congressional approval of $500 million to train and equip Free Syrian Army rebels to "strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to the extremists," as Obama put it last week, and to prevent U.S. troops from "being dragged into another ground war".
    But the administration has resisted providing powerful weapons requested by the rebels such as surface-to-air missiles due to fears they could be captured or used against America or its allies. Those concerns have been amplified since the downing of the Malaysia Airlines passenger jet over restive, rebel-held eastern Ukraine in July.
    The $500 million plan, announced in June a month after Obama said he would work with Congress to ramp up support to the moderate Syrian opposition, was initially limited to training about a 3,000-man force over an 18-month period and then slowly expanding those numbers.
    It reflected the priorities of a president reluctant to get entrenched in another Middle East conflict. It was intended to build on a covert CIA-led effort that was based mostly out of Jordan and would be run by the Department of Defense. Each rebel would need to be vetted by U.S. officials to screen out hardline Islamists, a time-consuming process that would further limit how many fighters could go through the training.
    The goal, say officials and former officials briefed on the original proposal, was not to empower the rebels to prevail in their two-pronged battle against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces on one side and Islamic State militants on the other, but to enable them to hold ground they already have.
    "Unfortunately America and the western countries have left the Syrian people to be slaughtered on a daily basis during four years of revolution. They were killed with all kinds of chemical weapons, the internationally prohibited weapons and Scud missiles, and now we see them trying to destroy Daesh because Daesh has killed an American journalist. We are sorry for the killing of the American journalist. We were hoping for America to stand beside the Syrian people before this criminal organization supported by Iran and the al-Assad regime permeates deeper (in the region)," said Wawi.
    And the threat of Islamic State is not to be undermined, he warned.
    "If the United States doesn't cooperate with us in destroying this organization in a short period, the danger will spread and expand to France, England and America," he said.
    Wawi, an intelligence officer in the Syrian army before joining the rebels in August 2012, says he believes Syria's government tacitly supports Islamic State fighters, or at least exploits them to undermine or fragment the opposition.
    Speaking to Reuters over dinner in Jeddah, he says the biggest threat facing the rebels are barrel bombs, which have been dropped by the army on densely populated neighbourhoods in defiance of a U.N. Security Council resolution banning the indiscriminate and deadly explosives.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2014. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register