Joining The Fray

"In this desperate situation, which is increasingly threatening the entire region, surely each of us can understand that our friends and partners, the US., Britain and France are considering helping parts of the Syrian opposition with weapons shipments."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel

Canada too considers the situation to be dangerously frantic, and desperately dreadful for Syrians. Canada's contribution remains under consideration, but for the time being will be restricted to financial aid directed toward humanitarian relief, not arms supplies. And this is as it should be. The simple fact being that now that the United States has back-tracked and advised it will release arms to the rebels, it has also given the green light to its allies to do the same.

This is where France in particular, and Saudi Arabia and Qatar certainly come in. They have been constrained by American urgings and cautionary warnings about the potential -- actually the certainty -- that whatever is supplied to the Free Syrian Army will find itself, in part, in the eventual possession of the Islamist groups among the rebels. The Free Syrian Army may be comprised of more secular-minded Syrians, but the arrival of battle-hardened terrorist groups has advanced their cause.

It will take a month, it has been stated, for the U.S. to begin its direct supplies to Syrian rebels. In the interim, large-scale arms have been released to the rebels through other avenues, courtesy of Qatar largely. No danger of Qatar's or Saudi Arabia's finances being strained by the need to give support to the Sunni rebels attempting to overturn the Iran- and Russian-supplied Syrian regime with their superior heavy-duty, technologically-advanced arms.

Carefully vetted groups will also be militarily trained even while arms are being delivered. The regime's military have a double advantage, that of representing an official state military of professionals, along with advanced weaponry, while their adversaries come from every walk of civilian life. They may be determined to do their best to unseat the tyrant who has made their lives miserable, but they are militarily untrained and completely lacking cohesion.

Light weapons and anti-tank missiles are being sent along by the United States. And France is prepared to forward additional supplies directly from Europes, while Saudi Arabia is dispatching shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles to take down some of those fighter jets strafing rebel-held towns and villages. The intention is to adequately arm the rebels to balance the fighting field, to train them in the use of the arms, in proven defensive and offensive techniques.

To make them more capable, so that they can be less reliant on the infiltration amongst them of foreign fighters bringing along with them the confidence of battle experience, weapons out of Libya, and their fundamentalist Sharia-led Islamism. "Numbers are an issue. Al-Nusra has added thousands of fighters in the past year. We are going to have to outpace that", explained an American counter-terrorism official.

Arm the rebels, encourage them, train them, direct them and continue to appraise the allocation of weaponry availability. Full stop. There is no stomach in NATO, in the United States or anywhere else in the Western world to launch yet another interference by the West in matters Middle-East. Although, needless to say, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and Jordan can feel free, alongside Turkey, to enter their military on their shared geography.