Saudis deliver weapons to Al Qaeda in Phase One of frustrated US War Plan

Syrian Rebels Say Saudi Arabia Is Stepping Up Weapons Deliveries
By ANNE BARNARD, 12 September, 2013 – NYT

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Saudi Arabia, quietly cooperating with American and British intelligence and other Arab governments, has modestly increased deliveries of weapons to rebels fighting in southern Syria, the rebels say.

But the shipments have not been large enough to assuage rebel frustration that they are being abandoned, as the United States shifts its focus to a possible Russian-initiated deal to quarantine the Syrian government’s chemical weapons, or to ease anxieties among the Persian Gulf leaders who have been the rebels’ primary backers.

Publicly, the Saudis expressed patience, with pro-monarchy newspapers saying that the negotiations over Syrian chemical weapons would probably founder and that American military strikes would follow sooner or later. But behind the scenes, analysts say, leaders in Saudi Arabia and allies like Qatar chafed as rebel leaders fumed that their larger need — a way to shift the balance in the two-year-old civil war and end the army’s bombardment of towns and neighborhoods — was being ignored.

The greatest fear of gulf leaders, said Hassan Hassan, who analyzes the gulf role in the Syria conflict at The National, a newspaper based in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, is that talks over Syria’s chemical weapons will shift the American focus to “talking with the Iranians and the regime and Russia rather than with the gulf.”

The gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have positioned themselves as crucial players in Syria, working closely with the United States.

“Now all of a sudden the limelight has been taken away from them,” Mr. Hassan said. “They are afraid the situation can take another course.”

Since the chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs last month that American officials blame on the Syrian government, rebels and analysts say the Saudis have stepped up deliveries of light weapons and antitank guided missiles. The aim was initially to bolster the rebels’ ability to take advantage of any American strikes by storming damaged or undefended bases, analysts and rebels say — though the Saudis refrained from sending the antiaircraft missiles that the rebels covet most. The Syrian government has denied responsibility for the chemical attack.

Rebels in southern Syria who nominally answer to the loose-knit, Western-backed Free Syrian Army said Thursday that they had received new infusions of arms from Saudi Arabia, delivered through Jordan, and that the weapons had helped them gain ground near the border. …more