A Note Of Caution On The West Providing Arms To The Opposition

This week there's been a lot of talk about the lifting of the EU arms embargo on Syria and the arming of the Syrian opposition.  One key point has been ensuring the weapons only go to "good" rebels, broadly considered to by the Free Syrian Army (FSA), while ensuring the weapons stay out of the hands of "bad" rebels, Jabhat al-Nusra for example.

Despite the talk of arming the opposition as being a new thing, there's actually been one significant operation to arm the opposition in recent months.  At the start of 2013 Syrian opposition fighters in the Daraa governorate in the south of Syria began to receive arms smuggled in from Jordan.  These arms had been sold from government stockpiles by the Croatian government to Saudi Arabia, working hand-in-hand with the US, who then had them flown to Jordan and moved across the border.  The weapons included:

M79 Osa Rocket Launcher - Manufactured in the former-Yugoslavia.
M60 Recoilless Gun - Lightweight mobile artillery from the former-Yugoslavia.
RPG-22 Rocket Launcher - A Soviet/Russian one-shot disposable rocket launcher.
RBG-6 Grenade Launcher - A Croatian copy of a South African 40mm grenade launcher.

The weapons were later joined by the RAK-12 multiple rocket launcher system.

It was notable that when the weapons began to appear in Youtube videos they all appeared to be in the hands of groups that were aligned with the Free Syrian Army, strongly suggesting the weapons were being purposely supplied to the Free Syrian Army only.

After just over two months from the weapons arriving in the south of the country they had began to appear in Damascus, Idlib, Hama, Deir Ez Zor, and elsewhere, and photographs and videos showed the weapons had spread beyond the Free Syrian Army.  First Ahrar al-Sham, a loose collection of various Islamist and Salafist groups, posted this video showing them using two of the weapons provided by Saudi Arabia

M79 OSA

RBG-6

More recently there's been images showing Jabhat al-Nusra using these weapons, via their official statements

M60 (Source)

M60 (Source)

It's unclear how these weapons reached the hands of these groups, but considering how closely members of the Free Syrian Army and groups like Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra have worked together it seems unsurprising that these weapons might be sold or traded between the groups.

This would seem to add weight to the argument that arming the Free Syrian Army may result in the "bad" rebels getting their hands on the weapons, but in the example of the Croatian weapons there's one other factor to consider.  In the case of the M60 recoilless gun and M79 Osa rocket launcher they both use ammunition that's unique to the weapon, and not commonly available on the black-market, or used widely outside of the former-Yugoslavia.  This means that the only reliable source of ammunition will be the governments providing it, so if they choose to cut off the ammunition supply then the weapons become useless.  This allows a certain amount of control, even if the weapons are reaching the hands of "bad" rebels, and this factor might influence the type of weapon sent to opposition groups in Syria in the future.

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You can contact the author on Twitter @brown_moses or by email at brownmoses@gmail.com

Evidence Of Jabhat al-Nusra With Croatian Weapons

In recent weeks I've been tracking the spread of arms purchased from Croatia by Saudi Arabia which were then sent to what were meant to be moderate Free Syrian Army groups via Jordan.  Already there's been examples of groups such as Ahrar al-Sham and other militant Islamist groups using these weapons, and there's now evidence that Jabhat al-Nusra has been using these weapons.

This first image of a M79 Osa  titled "One of JAN lions fighting to liberate Alsahweh brigade", taken from this Jabhat al-Nusra statement, comes from a joint operation with other opposition groups to capture a military base outside of Al Sahweh, Daraa that took place in the middle of February, and involved a number of groups using a large number of weapons provided by Saudi Arabia from Croatia in the battle.

The second image is taken from this report, and shows a M60 recoilless gun being used to attack an army outpost, Hajez Barad, in Busr al-Harir, Daraa, on March 2nd.  From late December 2012 onwards Busr al-Harir has been the scene of heavy fighting when multiple opposition groups attacked Syrian army forces in the town using large numbers of the Croatian weapons provided by Saudi Arabia.

In both cases multiple opposition groups were involved with the fighting, many of which were the original intended recipients of these weapons, so it's possible that Jabhat al-Nusra received these weapons from those groups during the battles.  It's unclear how many weapons they received, but it'll be another aspect of the Croatian arms story I'll be tracking in the coming weeks and months.

Thanks to @troublejee for his help with this piece.

Update March 28th 2013 This video from Al Jazeera Arabic shows a M79 Osa in the hands of Jabhat al-Nusra in Damascus.


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You can contact the author on Twitter @brown_moses or by email at brownmoses@gmail.com

Video Shows Non-FSA Jihadists Ahrar al-Sham Using Croatian Weapons

Earlier this week the New York Times published their investigation into the new weapons appearing in Syria, which we now know to have been purchased by Saudi Arabia from Croatia and smuggled into Syria from Jordan.  The New York Times wrote:

The weapons’ distribution has been principally to armed groups viewed as nationalist and secular, and appears to have been intended to bypass the jihadist groups whose roles in the war have alarmed Western and regional powers.

For months regional and Western capitals have held back on arming the rebels, in part out of fear that the weapons would fall into the hands of terrorists. But officials said the decision to send in more weapons is aimed at another fear in the West about the role of jihadist groups in the opposition. Such groups have been seen as better equipped than many nationalist fighters and potentially more influential.

The below video posted by the jihadist group Ahrar al-Sham, a collection of various smaller groups based in the north of Syria, mainly around Idlib, Aleppo, and Hama, and not part of the Free Syrian Army, demonstrates that the Croatian weapons being provided to the Free Syrian Army have now begun to reach the hands of jihadists

We see examples of two of the Croatia weapons provided by Saudi Arabia, first the RBG-6 40mm grenade launcher

Then the M79 Osa rocket launcher, and M79 rocket pods

As David Enders writes for McClatchy Newspapers, Ahrar al-Sham's on-going co-operation with the Free Syrian Army has resulted in weapons supposedly intended for "armed groups viewed as nationalist and secular" reaching jihadists such as Ahrar al-Sham, with Enders reporting a spokesman for Ahrar al Sham, Ali Ankir, stating that "of course they share their weapons with us, we fight together."

This demonstrates one of the major problems when providing weapons to armed groups in Syria, no matter what controls are putting into place when supplying the weapons, once the weapons arrive in Syria it's next to impossible to control who the weapons go to.


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You can contact the author on Twitter @brown_moses or by email at brownmoses@gmail.com

More Information On The Equipment Looted From Taftanaz Air Base

Since the opposition capture of Taftanaz air base I've been trying to gather information on exactly what equipment was captured at the air base. This video from Ahrar al-Sham, a loose collection of Islamist and Salafist opposition groups, showing the attack on the base provides some more information

Two sections are of particular interesting, first of all at this point in the video we see what looks like at least a dozen UB-16-57UMP S-5 rocket pods stacked up in a warehouse

S-5 rocket pods featured heavily in the Libyan Civil War, frequently welded to the back of trucks and used as rocket artillery.  So far in Syria there's only been a few rare examples, including one welded to the back of a military truck in Taftanaz air base and used by the defenders, shown at the bottom of my earlier post on Taftanaz air base.

Of course, rocket launchers aren't much use without rockets, so later on in the video we see another warehouse filled with crates.  Unfortunately we don't get a good look at the crate marking, and only a brief look at a couple of rockets stacked on one of the crates, but what we do get a good look at this

What we have here is the warehouse stock list, titled "Aerial Munitions Available in Storage # 6".  The three columns with text in are, from left to right, the available stock, the description, and a sequential number.  The description includes Cyrillic descriptions of the items, and the list states the following items are in stock (thanks to Omar for translation)

1 - 3743 - S-5KO unguided rocket
2 - 3228 - S-5KP unguided rocket
3 - 3669 - V-5K fuze for armoured piercing rocket
4 - 115 - V-5M1 fuze for armoured piercing rocket
5 - 722 - Flare - Red Star
6 - 469 - Flare - White Star
7 - 680 - Flare - Green Star
8 - 564 - Flare - Yellow Star
9 - 949 - PPZ Fire suppressing round

The S-5KO and S-5KP are both types of rockets for the previously shown UB-16-57UMP rocket pods, and the V-5K and V-5KM1 are fuzes for S-5 rockets, more details of which can be found here.  While it's hard to know how up to date the warehouse stock list is does seem to indicate that the piles of crates in that warehouse do still contains various types of S-5 rockets, maybe thousands of them, so I fully expect members of Ahrar al-Sha, Jabhat al-Nusra, and other groups involved with the attack to be welding rocket pods to the back of truck and using them as artillery in the future.

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You can contact the author on Twitter @brown_moses or by email at brownmoses@gmail.com