Foreign powers that support the forces opposing President Assad’s troops continue to help militants in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo.
Photo: AFP
Foreign powers that support the forces opposing President Assad’s troops continue to help militants in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo, the Financial Times information website reports. That’s despite Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists forming a large part of the opposition.
According to militants, who are surrounded inside Aleppo, they have plenty of weapons and ammo, which is delivered by ‘tens of trucks’ from Turkey, the website reports, citing an activist working on both sides of the border.
Payments for the weapons and supplies that are delivered into rebel-controlled areas of Syria, are made by regional powers such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar that turn a blind eye to some of the militants’ terrorist affiliations.
“The Americans, of course, knew what was going on. They ignored it to put some pressure back on Russia and Iran,” the Financial Times quotes a Western diplomat in contact with the opposition as saying.
The report claims that the militants in Aleppo have more problems with cash than with guns and ammo.
“A lot of money has gone in the last month to get all these groups to play along,” a Syrian opposition figure residing in Turkey said, the website reports. “That’s the only way you get these guys to work together – you have to pay them.”
It is widely known that the Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, Al-Nusra Front (now renamed Fatah al-Sham), is one of the main forces fighting the Syrian Army in Aleppo, although the group has now renounced direct ties to the international terrorist group.
The government troops were pushed back by the militant forces, who even declared the “end of the siege,” with some attributing the success to Fatah al-Sham.
“It succeeded not because of outside support but because Fatah al-Sham and the other jihadist groups are incredibly disciplined, with plenty of guys willing to blow themselves up at the front,” the Western diplomat said.
At the same time, according to reports from the Russian Air Force and the Syrian Army, at least 2,000 terrorists have been killed in Aleppo in the last 10 days.
Western diplomats are calling the Syrian government to stop fighting the terrorists holed up in Aleppo and start negotiations with them, for the sake of the up to 300,000 civilians still stayed in the besieged city.
Adel Jubair, the Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, has been threatening to increase aid to the militants in Syria if the conflict is not resolved politically.
The Syrian government has opened humanitarian corridors for civilians for leaving Aleppo. However, people practically cannot use them because terrorists, who need a civilian human shield, have posted snipers that shoot those trying to escape.
As for today, 400 civilians have fled the city through humanitarian corridors. Some 90 terrorists surrendered to government troops in connection with Damascus’s promise to pardon those who lay down arms.
According to the Russia’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Vladimir Safronkov, the unwillingness and inability of the states involved to eliminate terrorists in Syria is being camouflaged with “lament and mourning” over the humanitarian situation in Aleppo.
“Propaganda, emotional rhetoric, groundless accusations and stoking tensions” are intentionally hindering a political settlement in Syria, Safronkov said at a UN Security Council session in New York. The diplomat also noted that “the only way to end the Syrian conflict was to unite in fighting terrorism and restore the political dialogue inside Syria.”
While Damascus and Moscow are organizing humanitarian relief in Aleppo and other Syrian regions, European diplomats in the UN say that “Russia must act,” Safronkov added.
“What about what you must do?” Safronkov asked his Security Council colleagues, stressing that the time has come to recognize that the source of the humanitarian crisis in the country cannot be the Syrian government’s counterterrorist operations.
It’s about sunni vs shia! That’s the deal. If Assad’s regime (alawi/shia) can reach a compromise with sunni tribes … that would be supported by RU and Iran, through Turkey (since RU & TR are conciliating now) … there would less reasons for sunni monarchies from the Gulf to meddle in Syria.
It’s also about Israel and the desire to break the current nation into smaller states.
The army of Assad are Sunni.
If you think Germany and Japan is colonized, they have nothing to Saudi and the other rich gulf states. Saudi, Qatar and Kuwait are puppet states that would not go against their masters. If you study their history you would realise all of them came into power as vassals of the British.
Servant of the British Empire: On the founding of Ibn Saud’s kingdom
The sultan of Najd, Abdelaziz al-Saud bowed his head before the British High Commissioner in Percy Cox’s Iraq. His voice quavered, and then he started begging with humiliation: “Your grace are my father and you are my mother. I can never forget the debt I owe you. You made me and you held my hand, you elevated me and lifted me. I am prepared, at your beckoning, to give up for you now half of my kingdom…no, by Allah, I will give up all of my kingdom, if your grace commands me!”
No; it is actually the Sunni extremists vs. the rest of Syria (and Rojava).
Talks on federalization and compromise are finally going on between Sunni tribes and the Kurds.
It Turkey had stopped its support for the Sunni extremists, the war would have been over a long time ago. However, one cannot rely upon a change in Turkey’s behaviour, except toward the Islamic state; otherwise it will be “business as usual”:
The “Gulf monarchies”, as you aptly named them, are dastardly bombing Yemen even now as I am writing this now; Saudi Arabia is probably more aggressive then ever and Qatar’s interests reach as far as Afghanistan, so I consider it highly unlikely that the regime in Doha will ever be able to resist the temptation to meddle in Syrian affairs (especially considering the original issue of running gas pipelines through Syria’s territory).