Syrian Opposition Says West Has Promised Military Aid

Scene showing the impact of fighting in Damascus, Syria. US-backed rebels are attacking several cities and border areas throughout the country., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Syrian opposition says west has promised military aid

New National Coalition claims its 'accountability and unity' has assuaged concerns about arming rebels

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
The Guardian, Monday 12 November 2012 15.33 EST

The Syrian opposition says it has been promised western military support in return for forming a united front, in advance of a donors' conference in London on Friday intended to consolidate the new rebel coalition.

British officials say the conference will discuss purely non-lethal aid to the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, formed on Sunday in Doha, but neither British or French officials are ruling out arming the opposition in the coming months in an attempt to break the bloody deadlock in Syria.

The conflict showed more signs of spreading as Israeli tanks fired at Syrian positions for the second time in as many days in response to Syria mortar fire landing on the Israeli-held Golan Heights, and a Syrian government jet bombed a rebel-held village just yards from the Turkish border. Turkey has raised the possibility of asking Nato to deploy Patriot anti-aircraft missiles along its southern border.

It has yet to put a formal request to the alliance, but Turkish officials said that the latest bombing showed that it was necessary for it to strengthen the defences on its southern flank. Turkey, which has about 120,000 Syrian refugees on its territory, is also pushing for expanding western backing for the rebels.

The new National Coalition, which claims to represent 90% of Syrian opposition groups, including the various rebel armed forces inside the country, said it expects to take Syria's seat at an Arab League meeting on Wednesday in Cairo, and then be recognised as the country's provisional government by western and Arab governments at a meeting of the "Friends of Syria" in Marrakech next month.

"The international community realises the situation in Syria is unsustainable and that its own self-interest is at stake as it destabilises the region," said Yaser Tabbara, a coalition spokesman. "We have assuaged a lot of the concerns and fulfilled a lot of preconditions on the Syrian armed opposition in terms of accountability and unity, and I believe the international community is ready to invest in the opposition both militarily and politically. That is the sense we got in Doha."

Tabbara said the coalition would be asking for "the types of weapons with which we can enforce our own no-fly zones", a reference to portable anti-aircraft missiles which the rebels have long been seeking. Western officials have had deep misgivings about providing such missiles in case they ended up in terrorist hands and were used against civilian airliners, but they are increasingly alarmed about the destabilising consequences of non-intervention. Qatar and Saudia Arabia have provided most of the rebels' arms supplies, but those weapons have gone disproportionately to extremist Salafist and jihadist groups, who have been increasingly prominent in Aleppo and other fronts in the civil war.

Britain and the US are reviewing their current policy of restricting their assistance to non-military equipment. Spurred on by a prime minister frustrated with the military impasse and the rising death toll, the British government has announced it is opening talks with rebel commanders, while the French military are believed to be making contingency plans for supplying weapons. Welcoming the formation of the National Coalition, the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, made a pointed reference to the prospect of arming the opposition.

"France – who recognizes the Syrian people's right to defend themselves against the attacks of the criminal regime in Damascus – very much hopes this coalition can be quickly consolidated, enjoying the broadest possible support from Syrians and the international community," Fabius said.

On the eve of Tuesday's Arab League meeting in Cairo, western officials have been urging the coalition leadership to act fast to turn the Doha agreement into an functioning alternative administration, to speed international recognition and arms supplies. "We are not entirely there," a European diplomat said.

Syrian opposition leaders say, in return, they can only establish the necessary structures once they receive more western backing.

"We keep hearing about this concept of sequencing," Tabbara said. "But we are in a Catch 22. We are told we will get the serious support once we have operational structures in place but we in the middle know things are more complex. In order to build a government with full authority inside the country we need support and political recognition. We are trying to balance this Catch 22 as delicately as we can, and try to move in parallel with the demands of the international community."

Syria is likely to figure in the EU summit next month, but so far no member state has put the existing EU arms embargo on the agenda. Revising or lifting it would require the unanimous agreement of all 27 member states. UK lawyers are looking at whether the wording of the embargo agreement, allowing a state to supply weapons if it determines it "is intended solely for humanitarian or protective use", provides a loophole.

Western capitals may hope that the credible threat of heightened intervention could be enough to persuade Russia and China to agree to a UN security council resolution putting sanctions on Assad.

Russia has thus far been adamantly opposed to a punitive UN action against the regime, a close regional ally. Russia gave the new coalition a cool reception, urging it to negotiate with Assad and to reject "outside interference".