Taking Outsize Role in Syria, Qatar Funnels Arms to Rebels
WASHINGTON
— As an intermittent supply of arms to the Syrian opposition gathered
momentum last year, the Obama administration repeatedly implored its
Arab allies to keep one type of powerful weapon out of the rebels’
hands: heat-seeking shoulder-fired missiles.
The missiles, American officials warned, could one day be used by terrorist groups, some of them affiliated with Al Qaeda, to shoot down civilian aircraft.
But one country ignored this admonition: Qatar,
the tiny, oil- and gas-rich emirate that has made itself the
indispensable nation to rebel forces battling calcified Arab governments
and that has been shipping arms to the Syrian rebels fighting the
government of President Bashar al-Assad since 2011.
Since
the beginning of the year, according to four American and Middle
Eastern officials with knowledge of intelligence reports on the weapons,
Qatar has used a shadowy arms network to move at least two shipments of
shoulder-fired missiles, one of them a batch of Chinese-made FN-6s, to
Syrian rebels who have used them against Mr. Assad’s air force.
Deployment of the missiles comes at a time when American officials
expect that President Obama’s decision to begin a limited effort to arm
the Syrian rebels might be interpreted by Qatar, along with other Arab
countries supporting the rebels, as a green light to drastically expand
arms shipments.
Qatar’s
aggressive effort to bolster the embattled Syrian opposition is the
latest brash move by a country that has been using its wealth to elbow
its way to the forefront of Middle Eastern statecraft, confounding both
its allies in the region and in the West. The strategy is expected to
continue even though Qatar’s longtime leader, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa
al-Thani, stepped down last week, allowing his 33-year-old son to succeed him.
“They
punch immensely above their weight,” one senior Western diplomat said
of the Qataris. “They keep everyone off balance by not being in anyone’s
pocket.”
“Their influence comes partly from being unpredictable,” the diplomat added.
Mr. Obama, during a private meeting in Washington in April, warned Sheik Hamad about the dangers of arming Islamic radicals in Syria,
though American officials for the most part have been wary of applying
too much pressure on the Qatari government. “Syria is their backyard,
and they have their own interests they are pursing,” said one
administration official.
Continue reading the main story
Qatari officials did not respond to requests for comment.
The
United States has little leverage over Qatar on the Syria issue because
it needs the Qataris’ help on other fronts. Qatar is poised to host
peace talks between American and Afghan officials and the Taliban, who
have set up a political office in Doha, the Qatari capital. The United
States Central Command’s forward base in Qatar gives the American
military a command post in the heart of a strategically vital but
volatile region.
Qatar’s
covert efforts to back the Syrian rebels began at the same time that it
was increasing its support for opposition fighters in Libya trying to
overthrow the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Its ability to be
an active player in a global gray market for arms was enhanced by the
C-17 military transport planes it bought from Boeing in 2008, when it
became the first nation in the Middle East to have the durable,
long-range aircraft.
The
Obama administration quietly blessed the shipments to Libya of machine
guns, automatic rifles, mortars and ammunition, but American officials
later grew concerned as evidence grew that Qatar was giving the weapons
to Islamic militants there.
American
and Arab officials have expressed worry about something similar
happening in Syria, where Islamists in the north have turned into the
most capable section of the opposition, in part because of the weapons
from Qatar. Saudi Arabia recently has tried to wrest control from Qatar
and take a greater role in managing the weapons shipments to Syrian
rebels, but officials and outside experts said the Qatari shipments
continue. The greatest worry is over the shoulder-fired missiles —
called man-portable air-defense systems — that Qatar has sent to Syria
since the beginning of the year. Videos posted online show rebels in
Syria with the weapons, including the Chinese FN-6 models provided by
Qatar, and occasionally using them in battle.
The first videos
surfaced in February and showed rebels wielding the Chinese missiles,
which had not been seen in the conflict previously and were not known to
be in Syrian government possession. .
Western
officials and rebels alike say these missiles were provided by Qatar,
which bought them from an unknown seller and brought them to Turkey. The
shipment was at least the second antiaircraft transfer under the
Qataris’ hand, they said. A previous shipment of Eastern bloc missiles
had come from former Qaddafi stockpiles.
The
shipments were small, the Western officials and rebels said, amounting
to no more than a few dozen missiles. And rebels said the Chinese
shipments have been plagued with technical problems, and sometimes fail
to fire. The first FN-6s were seen in the custody of groups under the
Free Syrian Army banner, suggesting that they were being distributed, at
least initially, to fighters backed by the United States and not
directly to extremists or groups with ties to Al Qaeda.
American
and Arab officials said that Qatar’s strategy was a mixture of ideology
— the ruling family’s belief in a prominent role for Islam in political
life — and more hard-nosed calculations.
“They like to back winners,” one Middle Eastern official said.
In
meetings with Mr. Obama, the leaders of Jordan and the United Arab
Emirates have expressed a host of grievances about the Qatari shipments
and have complained that Qatar is pursuing a reckless strategy.
In
Mr. Obama’s meeting with Sheik Hamad at the White House on April 23,
American officials said, he had warned that the weapons were making
their way to radical groups like Jabhet al-Nusra, also known as the
Nusra Front, a Qaeda-affiliated group that the United States has
designated as a terrorist organization.
“It
was very important for the Qataris to understand that Nusra is not only
an organization that destabilizes the situation in Syria,” said one
senior Obama administration official. “It’s a national security interest
of ours that they not have weapons.”
But Charles Lister, an analyst with the IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center
in London who follows the Syria opposition groups, said that there was
evidence in recent weeks that Qatar had increased its backing of
hard-line Islamic militant groups active in northern Syria.
Mr.
Lister said there was no hard evidence that Qatar was arming the Nusra
Front, but he said that because of existing militant dynamics, the
transfer of Qatari-provided arms to certain targeted groups would result
in the same practical effect.
“It’s
inevitable that any weapons supplied by a regional state like Qatar,”
he said via e-mail, “will be used at least in joint operations with
Jabhet al-Nusra — if not shared with the group.”
At
least some extremists have already acquired heat-seeking missiles and
have posted videos of them, although the sources for these arms are not
apparent from videos alone. And they appear to have been made
principally in the Eastern Bloc, not in China.
Erin Banco and Mark Landler contributed reporting from Washington, and Karam Shoumali from Antakya, Turkey.
A version of this article appears in print on June 30, 2013, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Sending Missiles To Syrian Rebels, Qatar Muscles In.
No comments:
Post a Comment