Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A.
Reuters
Free Syrian Army fighters
inside a house in Aleppo last week. The United States has been helping
Arab governments and Turkey send arms to the rebels.
By C. J. CHIVERS and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: March 24, 2013 228 Comments
With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply
increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition 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 officials in several countries and the accounts of
rebel commanders.
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Even with the weapons from abroad, rebels say they are hard pressed to fight the government.
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The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued
intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much
heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include
more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari
military-style cargo planes landing 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 Syria’s army from territory by the middle of last
year. And even as the Obama administration has publicly refused to give
more than “nonlethal” aid to the rebels, the involvement of the C.I.A.
in the arms shipments — albeit mostly in a consultative role, American
officials say — has shown that the United States is more willing to help
its Arab allies support the lethal side of the civil war.
From offices at secret locations, American intelligence officers have
helped the Arab governments shop for weapons, including a large
procurement from Croatia, and have vetted rebel commanders and groups to
determine who should receive the weapons as they arrive, according to
American officials speaking on the condition of anonymity. The C.I.A.
declined to comment on the shipments or its role in them.
The shipments also highlight the competition for Syria’s future between
Sunni Muslim states and Iran, the Shiite theocracy that remains Mr.
Assad’s main ally. Secretary of State John Kerry pressed Iraq on Sunday
to do more to halt Iranian arms shipments through its airspace; he did
so even as the most recent military cargo flight from Qatar for the
rebels landed at Esenboga early Sunday night.
Syrian opposition figures and some American lawmakers and officials have
argued that Russian and Iranian arms shipments to support Mr. Assad’s
government have made arming the rebels more necessary.
Most of the cargo flights have occurred since November, after the
presidential election in the United States and as the Turkish and Arab
governments grew more frustrated by the rebels’ slow progress against
Mr. Assad’s well-equipped military. The flights also became more
frequent as the humanitarian 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 might monitor shipments as they move by land into Syria,
officials said. The scale of shipments was very large, according to
officials familiar with the pipeline and to an arms-trafficking
investigator who assembled data on the cargo planes involved.
“A conservative estimate of the payload of these flights would be 3,500
tons of military equipment,” said Hugh Griffiths, of the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute, who monitors illicit arms
transfers.
“The intensity and frequency of these flights,” he added, are
“suggestive of a well-planned and coordinated clandestine military
logistics operation.”
Although rebel commanders and the data indicate that Qatar and Saudi
Arabia had been shipping military materials via Turkey to the opposition
since early and late 2012, respectively, a major hurdle was removed
late last fall after the Turkish government agreed to allow the pace of
air shipments to accelerate, officials said.
Simultaneously, arms and equipment were being purchased by Saudi Arabia in Croatia
and flown to Jordan on Jordanian cargo planes for rebels working in
southern Syria and for retransfer to Turkey for rebels groups operating
from there, several officials said.
These multiple logistics streams throughout the winter formed what one
former American official who was briefed on the program called “a
cataract of weaponry.”
American officials, rebel commanders and a Turkish opposition politician
have described the Arab roles as an open secret, but have also said the
program is freighted with risk, including the possibility of drawing
Turkey or Jordan actively into the war and of provoking military action
by Iran.
Still, rebel commanders have criticized the shipments as insufficient,
saying the quantities of weapons they receive are too small and the
types too light to fight Mr. Assad’s military effectively. They also
accused those distributing the weapons of being parsimonious 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 gesture 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 Soquor al-Sham and Abu Ayman of
Ahrar al-Sham, another Islamist group, said that whoever was vetting
which groups receive the weapons was 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 American official noted that the size of the shipments and the degree of distributions are voluminous.
“People hear the amounts flowing in, and it is huge,” he said. “But they
burn through a million rounds of ammo in two weeks.”
A Tentative Start
The airlift to Syrian rebels began slowly. On Jan. 3, 2012, months after
the crackdown by the Alawite-led government against antigovernment
demonstrators had morphed into a military campaign, a pair of Qatar
Emiri Air Force C-130 transport aircraft touched down in Istanbul,
according to air traffic data.
They were a vanguard.
Weeks later, the Syrian Army besieged Homs, Syria’s third largest city.
Artillery and tanks pounded neighborhoods. Ground forces moved in.
Across the country, the army and loyalist militias were trying to stamp
out the rebellion with force — further infuriating Syria’s Sunni Arab
majority, which was severely outgunned. The rebels called for
international help, and more weapons.
By late midspring the first stream of cargo flights from an Arab state
began, according to air traffic data and information from plane
spotters.
On a string of nights from April 26 through May 4, a Qatari Air Force
C-17 — a huge American-made cargo plane — made six landings in Turkey,
at Esenboga Airport. By Aug. 8 the Qataris had made 14 more cargo
flights. All came from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, a hub for American
military logistics in the Middle East.
Qatar has denied providing any arms to the rebels. A Qatari official,
who requested anonymity, said Qatar has shipped in only what he called
nonlethal aid. He declined to answer further questions. It is not clear
whether Qatar has purchased and supplied the arms alone or is also
providing air transportation service for other donors. But American and
other Western officials, and rebel commanders, have said Qatar has been
an active arms supplier — so much so that the United States became
concerned about some of the Islamist groups that Qatar has armed.
The Qatari flights aligned with the tide-turning military campaign by
rebel forces in the northern province of Idlib, as their campaign of
ambushes, roadside bombs and attacks on isolated outposts began driving
Mr. Assad’s military and supporting militias from parts of the
countryside.
As flights continued into the summer, the rebels also opened an offensive in that city — a battle that soon bogged down.
The former American official said David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director
until November, had been instrumental in helping to get this aviation
network moving and had prodded various countries to work together on it.
Mr. Petraeus did not return multiple e-mails asking for comment.
The American government became involved, the former American official
said, in part because there was a sense that other states would arm the
rebels anyhow. The C.I.A. role in facilitating the shipments, he said,
gave the United States a degree of influence over the process, including
trying to steer weapons away from Islamist groups and persuading donors
to withhold portable antiaircraft missiles that might be used in future
terrorist attacks on civilian aircraft.
American officials have confirmed that senior White House officials were
regularly briefed on the shipments. “These countries were going to do
it one way or another,” the former official said. “They weren’t asking
for a ‘Mother, may I?’ from us. But if we could help them in certain
ways, they’d appreciate that.”
Through the fall, the Qatari Air Force cargo fleet became even more
busy, running flights almost every other day in October. But the rebels
were clamoring for even more weapons, continuing to assert that they
lacked the firepower to fight a military armed with tanks, artillery,
multiple rocket launchers and aircraft.
Many were also complaining, saying they were hearing from arms donors
that the Obama administration was limiting their supplies and blocking
the distribution of the antiaircraft and anti-armor weapons they most
sought. These complaints continue.
“Arming or not arming, lethal or nonlethal — it all depends on what
America says,” said Mohammed Abu Ahmed, who leads a band of anti-Assad
fighters in Idlib Province.
The Breakout
Soon, other players joined the airlift: In November, three Royal
Jordanian Air Force C-130s landed in Esenboga, in a hint at what would
become a stepped-up Jordanian and Saudi role.
Within three weeks, two other Jordanian cargo planes began making a
round-trip run between Amman, the capital of Jordan, and Zagreb, the
capital of Croatia, where, officials from several countries said, the
aircraft were picking up a large Saudi purchase of infantry arms from a
Croatian-controlled stockpile.
The first flight returned to Amman on Dec. 15, according to intercepts
of a transponder from one of the aircraft recorded by a plane spotter in
Cyprus and air traffic control data from an aviation official in the
region.
In all, records show that two Jordanian Ilyushins bearing the logo of
the Jordanian International Air Cargo firm but flying under Jordanian
military call signs made a combined 36 round-trip flights between Amman
and Croatia from December through February. The same two planes made
five flights between Amman and Turkey this January.
As the Jordanian flights were under way, the Qatari flights continued
and the Royal Saudi Air Force began a busy schedule, too — making at
least 30 C-130 flights into Esenboga from mid-February to early March
this year, according to flight data provided by a regional air traffic
control official.
Several of the Saudi flights were spotted coming and going at Ankara by
civilians, who alerted opposition politicians in Turkey.
“The use of Turkish airspace at such a critical time, with the conflict
in Syria across our borders, and by foreign planes from countries that
are known to be central to the conflict, defines Turkey as a party in
the conflict,” said Attilla Kart, a member of the Turkish Parliament
from the C.H.P. opposition party, who confirmed details about several
Saudi shipments. “The government has the responsibility to respond to
these claims.”
Turkish and Saudi Arabian officials declined to discuss the flights or
any arms transfers. The Turkish government has not officially approved
military aid to Syrian rebels.
Croatia and Jordan both denied any role in moving arms to the Syrian
rebels. Jordanian aviation officials went so far as to insist that no
cargo flights occurred.
The director of cargo for Jordanian International Air Cargo, Muhammad
Jubour, insisted on March 7 that his firm had no knowledge of any
flights to or from Croatia.
“This is all lies,” he said. “We never did any such thing.”
A regional air traffic official who has been researching the flights
confirmed the flight data, and offered an explanation. “Jordanian
International Air Cargo,” the official said, “is a front company for
Jordan’s air force.”
After being informed of the air-traffic control and transponder data
that showed the plane’s routes, Mr. Jubour, from the cargo company,
claimed that his firm did not own any Ilyushin cargo planes.
Asked why his employer’s Web site still displayed images of two
Ilyushin-76MFs and text claiming they were part of the company fleet,
Mr. Jubour had no immediate reply. That night the company’s Web site was
taken down.
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