The Washington Post writes in a report that a young militant from recently formed Harakat Hazm armed group, named Abdullah Awda, and his followers were chosen to receive the weapons because of ‘their moderate views’.
US authorities have been trying to justify officially sending weapons to Syria militants and helping them change the government. They have been talking of ‘moderate groups’ that could be trusted with advanced weapons, but what Syria’s war has hardly shown a sign of, is moderation.
The report says Awda’s group is based across rocky, forested wilderness in the northern province of Idlib.
It adds Obama administration has been worried to choose between thousands of militant groups to deliver its advanced arms to, “But the arrival at the base last month of US-made TOW antitank missiles, the first advanced American weaponry to be dispatched to Syria since the conflict began, has reignited long-abandoned hopes among the rebels that the Obama administration is preparing to soften its resistance to the provision of significant military aid”.
However the report plays down importance of the delivery which is actually sending arms to topple Syria’s legitimate government, by saying that the BGM-71 missiles, are few in number and “about two decades old” and hardly better than what the militants already have; and the rebels say it won’t change the balance in their favor.
However, the shipment “is an important first step,” Awda said during the first visit to his base by a journalist since the missiles arrived.
The weapons were not directly provided by the United States.
“Friends of Syria” delivered them, he said, referring to the US-backed alliance of Western powers and Persian Gulf Arab states established to support the war.
Awda declined to offer further details of the provenance of the missiles. But he said the donors made clear to him that the delivery had US approval, and US officials have confirmed that they endorsed the supply.
“The most important thing is not the TOW missile itself, it’s the change in the policy,” he said.
The US has been supporting the extremist-marked war in Syria, even with loss of thousands of lives.
CIA operatives have been training militant groups in Jordan since the war escalated in Syria; US allies have been giving support to infiltrate more forces and weapons to the war and the Obama administration was steps away from bombing the crisis-hit country over conflicting reports of a chemical attack in August last year.
US and its Western allies have engineered slapping hard sanctions to the government in Syria, while letting flow of weapons pouring at the hands of what is said to be opposition.
This is while reports say hundreds of foreign nationals are fighting in Syria, and there are many al-Qaeda-affiliates and radical groups with same views of the terrorist group, killing Syrian soldiers and people.
On Tuesday the New York-based Human Rights Watch asked the UN Security Council to help stop flow of more arms to the extensive war.
The group said UNSC should impose an arms embargo on “any groups implicated in widespread or systematic human rights abuses."
SHI/SHI