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Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin Ozeti
International ïïeralb Sribune TUESDAY, MARCH 26, 2013
In Syrian war, arms airlift
guided by C.I.A.
Working with Turkey
and Arab states, U.S.
bolsters aid to rebels
BY C.J. CHIVERS AND ERIC SCHMITT
With help from the CIA., Arab govern¬
ments and Turkey have sharply in¬
creased their military aid to Syrian op¬
position fighters in recent months,
expanding a secret airlift of arms and
equipment for the uprising against
President Bashar al-Assad, according
to air traffic data, interviews with offi¬
cials in several countries and the ac¬
counts of rebel commanders.
The airlift, which began on a small
scale in early 2012 and continued inter¬
mittently through last autumn, expan¬
ded into a steady and much heavier flow
late last year, the data show. It has
grown to include more than 160 military
cargo flights by Jordanian, Qatari and
Saudi military-style cargo planes land¬
ing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara,
and, to a lesser degree, at other Turkish
and Jordanian airports.
As it evolved, the airlift correlated with
shifts in the war within Syria, as rebels
drove the Syrian Army from territory by
the middle of last year. Even as the
Obama administration has publicly re¬
fused to give more than "nonlethal" aid
to the rebels, the involvement of the
C.I.A. in the arms shipments albeit
mostiy in a consultative role, U.S. officials
say has shown that the United States is
more willing to help its Arab allies sup¬
port the lethal side of the civil war.
From offices at secret locations, U.S.
intelligence officers have helped the
Arab governments shop for weapons,
including a large procurement from
Croatia, and have investigated rebel
commanders and groups to determine
who should receive the weapons as they
arrive, according to U.S. officials speak¬
ing on the condition of anonymity. The
C.I.A. declined to comment on the ship¬
ments or its role in them.
The shipments also highlight the com¬
petition for Syria's future between
Sunni Muslim states and Iran, the Shiite
The flights are "suggestive
of a well-planned and
coordinated clandestine
military logistics operation."
theocracy that remains Mr. Assad's
main ally. John Kerry, the U.S. secretary
of state, pressed Iraq on Sunday to do
more to halt Iranian arms shipments
moving through its airspace; he did so
even as the most recent military cargo
flight from Qatar for the rebels landed at
Esenboga on Sunday night.
Syrian opposition figures and some
U.S. lawmakers and officials have ar¬
gued that Russian and Iranian arms
shipments to support Mr. Assad's gov¬
ernment have made arming the rebels
more necessary.
Most of the cargo flights have oc¬
curred since November, after the presi¬
dential election in the United States and
as the Turkish and Arab governments
grew more frustrated with the rebels'
slow progress against Mr. Assad's well-
equipped military. The flights also be¬
came more frequent as the humanitari¬
an crisis inside Syria deepened in the
winter and cascades of refugees crossed
into neighboring countries.
The Turkish government has had
oversight over much of the program,
down to affixing transponders to trucks
ferrying the military goods through
Turkey so it could monitor shipments as
they moved by land into Syria, officials
said. The scale of shipments was very
large, according to officials familiar
with the pipeline and to an arms-traf¬
ficking investigator who assembled
data on the cargo planes involved.
"A conservative estimate of the pay-
load of these flights would be 3,500 tons
of military equipment," said Hugh Grif¬
fiths, of the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute, who has mon¬
itored illicit arms transfers.
"The intensity and frequency of these
flights," he added, are "suggestive of a
well-planned and coordinated clandes¬
tine military logistics operation.".
Although rebel commanders and the
data indicate that Qatar and Saudi Ara¬
bia had been shipping military matériel
via Turkey to the opposition since early
and late 2012, respectively, a major
hurdle was removed late last autumn
after the Turkish government agreed to
allow the pace of air shipments to accel¬
erate, officials said.
Simultaneously, arms and equipment
were being purchased by Saudi Arabia
in Croatia and flown to Jordan on Jorda¬
nian cargo planes for rebels working in
southern Syria and for retransfer to
Turkey for rebel groups operating from
there, several officials said.
Those multiple logistics streams
throughout the winter formed what one
former U.S. official who was briefed on
the program called "a cataract of
weaponry."
U.S. officials, rebel commanders and a
Turkish opposition politician have de¬
scribed the Arab roles as an open secret,
but have also said the program is
freighted with risk, including the possi¬
bility of drawing Turkey or Jordan ac¬
tively into the war and of provoking mil¬
itary action by Iran.
Still, rebel commanders have criti¬
cized the shipments as insufficient, say¬
ing the quantities of weapons they re¬
ceive are too small and the types too
light to fight Mr. Assad's military effec¬
tively. They also accused those distrib¬
uting the weapons of being parsimoni¬
ous or corrupt.
"The outside countries give us
weapons and bullets little by little," said
Abdel Rahman Ayachi, a commander in
Soquor al-Sham, an Islamist fighting
group in northern Syria. He made a ges¬
ture as if switching on and off a tap.
"They open, and they close the way to
the bullets like water," he said.
Two other commanders, Hassan
Aboud of Soqûor al-Sham and Abu Ay-
man of Ahrar al-Sham, another Islamist
group, said that whoever was vetting
groups to receive the weapons had been
doing an inadequate job.
"There are fake Free Syrian Army
brigades claiming to be revolutionaries,
and when they get the weapons they sell
them in trade," Mr. Aboud said.
The former U.S. official said that Dav¬
id H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director until
November, had been instrumental in
helping to get this aviation network
moving and had prodded various coun¬
tries to work together on it. Mr. Pet¬
raeus did not return multiple e-mails
asking for comment.
The U.S. government became in¬
volved, the former U.S. official said, in
part because there was a sense that oth¬
er states would arm the rebels anyhow.
The C.I.A. role in facilitating the ship¬
ments, he said, gave the United States a
degree of influence over the process, in¬
cluding trying to steer weapons away
from Islamist groups and persuading
donors to withhold portable antiaircraft
missiles that might be used in future ter¬
rorist attacks on civilian aircraft.
U.S. officials have confirmed that se¬
nior White House officials were regu¬
larly briefed on the shipments.
Robert F. Worth contributed reporting
from Washington and Istanbul, Dan
Bilefskyfrom Paris, and Sebnem Arsu
from Istanbul and Ankara.
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