Saudi ‘will supply Syrian rebels with anti-tank and possibly anti-aircraft weapons’

A senior Saudi official has told the BBC that his country is responding to the recent Russian air strikes on Syrian rebels by stepping up its supplies of lethal weapons to three different rebel groups. The official, who asked to remain anonymous, said that modern equipment, including anti-tank weapons, will be provided to factions of the Free Syria Army that are Arab- and western-backed, fighting against Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s forces as well as his Russian, Iranian and Lebanese allies.

He added that the groups in question do not include Daesh or Al-Nusra Front, which are both considered terrorist organisations. Saudi support, he stressed, would go to three rebel alliances: Jaish Al-Fatah (Army of Conquest), the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the Southern Front. Qatar and Turkey have been instrumental in maintaining Saudi support for Sunni rebels fighting Assad’s forces and Daesh extremists, he pointed out, while Russia is labelling all of Assad’s enemies as terrorists, including the moderate opposition trained by the US.

The Saudi official did not rule out the possibility of supplying the rebels with surface-to-air missiles, a measure opposed by many in the West for fear that they would fall into the hands of Daesh and be used ultimately to shoot down US-led coalition warplanes or even civilian aircraft.

A new jihad

Meanwhile, a senior Gulf official told the BBC that he fears that Russia’s military intervention in Syria will trigger a new jihad, or “holy war”, repeating Russia’s disastrous experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The official, who also asked for anonymity, explained that during the UN General Assembly in New York, Arab diplomats warned Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that his country’s actions in Syria were creating what the official referred to as “a Frankenstein monster” that would draw in large numbers of jihadists striving to “liberate” Syria from the Russians, Iranians and Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon. He said that Russia’s response to this had been to intensify its airstrikes.

The Gulf official also added that four years after the start of the Syrian conflict and after thousands of deaths, neither the West nor the Gulf states have a strategy for resolving it. He said that there is a need for clearer US leadership and that the worst thing the West can do at the moment is to accept a compromise with Assad, even for a limited period of time. He insisted that the Sunni countries in the region would not accept this, nor would they accept any settlement that “allowed Iran to dominate Syria”, pointing out that Daesh and other extremist groups were the symptoms, not the cause, of Syria’s misfortunes, which he blamed completely on Assad.

‘Grozny-style’ approach in Syria

Most of the Gulf States and Turkey have said repeatedly that the solution to the Syrian conflict is the removal of Assad from power. However, they now realise that Russia will not let this happen, even if it causes bloodshed, and that it will continue to defend him and his family’s grip along Syria’s Mediterranean coast. In this regard, the Gulf official expressed his fears of what he called a “Grozny-style” scorched-earth approach by Russia towards Syria, with liberated areas being completely levelled.