Foreign instructors are training Syrian rebels in modern warfare in Jordan, suggest media reports from Europe.
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Free Syrian Army fighters (Reuters/Muzaffar Salman) |
In the past three months some 200 men have already received training in two camps in the east and the south of Jordan, Der Spiegel reports. The military training focuses on the use of anti-tank weaponry, the news magazine reported, citing what it said were participants and organizers. It adds that there are plans to provide training for a total of 1,200 fighters from the Free Syrian Army – the opposition force battling the regime of President Bashar Assad.
The report said that some of the Americans wore army uniforms, but it did not specify whether they worked for private firms or represented the US military.
Last October the Pentagon confirmed that a small group of US special forces and military advisers had spent the summer in Jordan training the country’s military to act in case Syria used its chemical weapons. Reportedly, select groups of Syrian rebels were trained, too.
As Britain’s The Guardian reported on Friday, the US is not alone in their efforts. UK and French instructors are also in Jordan training the Syria rebels.
Though the American, British and French Defense Ministries have not commented so far on the information about the FSA being trained in Jordan, this move does not contradict either the US plans for non-lethal directaid to Syrian opposition or British understanding of the EU arms embargo enforced on Syria.
"Such technical assistance can include assistance, advice and training on how to maintain security in areas no longer controlled by the regime, on co-ordination between civilian and military councils, on how to protect civilians and minimize the risks to them, and how to maintain security during a transition," the UK Foreign Minister William Hague told the British Parliament last Wednesday.
Der Spiegel’s source in Brussels shared that the EU embargo on arms supplies to Syria adopted in early March is “deliberately hazy.”
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A Syrian living in Jordan flashes the victory sign during a protest against Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in front of the Syrian Embassy in Amman February 8, 2013. (Reuters/Muhammad Hamed) |
In Libya the Western interference in the country’s affairs started with establishing a no-fly zone, ostensibly to protect the civilian population in a civil war, and ended with an allied military force helping the Libyan rebels storm the capital Tripoli to oust the country’s strongman Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. The leader finally was brutally murdered by militia without legitimate criminal investigations and court decisions.
Today Libya exists as a territory with nominal central authority and uncontrollable violence regularly sparking between groups of armed rebels and local Bedouins.
Jordanian intelligence is also taking part in training the Syrian rebels, busy filtering off radical Islamists (Salafists) from the candidates for advanced foreign training. The foreign instructors particularly prefer to choose former officers who have defected from the Syrian regular troops.
"The Americans now trust us more than the Turks, because with the Turks everything is about gaining leverage for action against the Kurds," a Jordanian insider in Amman explained to The Guardian.
Reportedly, the Americans are disappointed with the results of help being channeled to the Syrian opposition groups through Turkey, as Ankara has either failed or deliberately allowed the Islamist extremists to prevail the rebel activities in the northern Syrian front.
Other known sponsors of the rebels, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, are also channeling their help to the Syrian opposition via Jordan.