Arms for Syrian rebels go mostly to extremists – report

 Most of the arms funneled to Syrian rebels reportedly end up in the hands of hard-line extremists, including those affiliated with Al-Qaeda.

The Syrian armed opposition is supplied with small arms from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, while their other foreign allies like the US provide logistical help for the transactions. However according to classified US assessments of the conflict, most of the weapons go to jihadists rather than to secular-minded groups, reports The New York Times.

“The opposition groups that are receiving the most of the lethal aid are exactly the ones we don’t want to have it,” an American official familiar with the outlines of those findings told the newspaper.

The reports suggest that the more plentiful shipments orchestrated by Qatar are particularly likely to go to hard line groups.

The US is frustrated there is no central clearinghouse for the arms shipments and no effective way of vetting the groups that ultimately receive the weapons. CIA head David Petraeus secretly visited Turkey last month, reportedly in an effort to steer up the supply through its territory, the NYT says.

The complexity of the situation cuts the other way too, as the middlemen in Lebanon and Turkey, who funnel Saudi and Qatari weapons to the Syrian rebels, often cannot profile their customers too,the NYT reports.

The situation may have ramifications for the upcoming presidential election in the US. The Obama administration has been keeping the Syrian rebels at arm’s length, avoiding either sending arms to them directly or approving supply of heavy weapons. The reason was precisely the lack of confidence that those would not end up in the wrong hands.