Rebels asking for more weapons, not food
BEIRUT — The head of Syria’s rebels said Friday that the food and medical supplies the United States plans to give his fighters for the first time won’t bring them any closer to defeating President Bashar Assad’s forces in the country’s civil war.
“We don’t want food and drink, and we don’t want bandages. When we’re wounded, we want to die. The only thing we want is weapons,” Gen. Salim Idris, chief of staff of the opposition’s Supreme Military Council, told The Associated Press by telephone.
The former brigadier in Assad’s army warned that the world’s failure to provide heavier arms is only prolonging the nearly two-year-old uprising that has killed an estimated 70,000 people.
In what was described as a significant policy shift, the Obama administration said Thursday it was giving an additional $60 million in assistance to Syria’s political opposition and said it would, for the first time, provide non-lethal aid directly to rebels battling to topple Assad.
The move was announced by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at an international conference on Syria in Rome. In the coming days, several European nations are expected to take similar steps in working with the military wing of the opposition to increase pressure on Assad to step down and pave the way for a democratic transition.
But the frustration expressed by Idris is shared by most of his colleagues in the Syrian opposition, as well as by scores of rebels fighting in Syria. They feel abandoned by the outside world while the Assad regime pounds them with artillery and bombs.
The main rebel units, known together as the Free Syrian Army, regrouped in December under a unified, Western-backed command headed by Idris and called the Supreme Military Council, following promises of more military assistance once a central council was in place. Despite those pledges, opposition members say very little has been delivered in terms of financial aid, and more importantly, in weapons and ammunition.
The international community remains reluctant to send weapons, fearing they may fall into the hands of extremists increasingly gaining ground among the rebels.
Mouaz al-Khatib, the leader of the Syrian opposition coalition, has lamented the West’s focus on the presence of Islamic militants among the fighters. In a forceful speech Thursday to the Rome conference, he said the media reports give “more attention to the length of fighters’ beards than to the (regime’s) massacres.”
Idris, a 55-year-old who studied in Germany and taught electronics at a Syrian military college before defecting in July, said the modest package of aid — consisting of an undetermined amount of food rations and medical supplies — will not help them win against Assad’s forces who regularly use warplanes to pound rebel strongholds.
“We need anti-tank and antiaircraft missiles to stop Bashar Assad’s criminal, murderous regime from annihilating the Syrian people,” he said. “The whole world knows what we need, and yet they watch as the Syrian people are slaughtered.”
Still, he said he hoped that the promised aid is delivered, which would provide some relief to the civilians caught in the fighting.
Russia, meanwhile, sharply criticized the decision by Western powers to boost support for Syrian opposition forces, saying the promised assistance would only intensify the conflict. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said the moves announced in Rome “encourage extremists to seize power by force.”
Russia is a close ally of Syria that has continued to supply arms to Assad’s regime as well as shielding the country from UN sanctions.
Idris denied media reports the rebels have recently received arms shipments and said his troops were suffering from “severe shortages” in weapons and ammunitions.