AFP, Washington, 8 Feb 2012 – Rebels inside Syria said Wednesday they need more weapons — not outside boots on the ground — to arm tens of thousands of fighters including regime deserters committed to toppling Bashar al-Assad’s ‘death machine.’
In a rare live webcast from undisclosed locations around Damascus and airing in Washington, commanders operating under the Free Syrian Army (FSA) said the United States in particular should harden its policies against Assad and find a way to shuttle guns, rocket launchers and other heavy weapons to rebels.
‘The major point is logistical material support. We can do this ourselves, we’re not asking for any troops,’ a commander who identified himself only as Mohammad told some 50 people including reporters and Middle East experts gathered at a national security thinktank.
‘We want military support. We want supplies,’ he added. ‘We have the numbers on our side, we just don’t have the weapons.’
On Tuesday, top Republican US Senator John McCain said diplomacy had been nearly exhausted and the time had come to consider arming the outgunned opposition to Assad. The White House and US State Department, however, poured cold water on the idea.
‘We are not considering that step right now,’ said President Barack Obama’s spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday. ‘We don’t think more arms into Syria is the answer,’ added State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.
The Syrian rebel commander said residents of Homs, the besieged city that was shelled days ago by Syrian forces, now faced a ‘disastrous’ humanitarian situation that may worsen in coming days if the army does not loosen its grip on transport routes and allow food and other aid into the city.
The commander, based in eastern Damascus, said ‘there were hundreds of martyrs’ from the Homs shelling, and claimed that ‘we have seen more than 2,000 martyrs’ since the UN resolution vote on Syria Saturday that was vetoed by Russia and China.
Restrictions on journalists in Syria have made independent verification of such tolls impossible.
Activists say troops killed more than 230 people in the Homs shelling Friday night into Saturday, and that 270 more have been killed since Sunday. The entire revolt has claimed the lives of at least 6,000 people since mid-March, according to opposition activists.
‘We are facing a death machine that is one of the worst in the world,’ Mohammad said, adding that his poorly armed rebels are using ‘light weapons to battle tanks.’
But rebels have been holding and even seizing some ground, he said, particularly when Syrian forces flood one area and leave another vulnerable.
‘They go for a week or 10 days, but they can’t stay for long. After a while they pull back,’ Mohammad said.
In a sign of the communication difficulties in besieged areas of Syria, the webcast, conducted via Skype, had its share of problems, and rebel spokespeople from other regions as well as opposition figures in Homs who were expected to join the link-up were unable to connect.
The rebel commander also said Iran was involved in training Syrian forces, a claim made earlier by the FSA.
‘The training… on suppression is done by (Iran-backed) Hezbollah and Iranian apparratchiks ,’ he said. ‘There is actually a training camp run by Hezbollah near Damascus.’
Iran is Syria’s closest ally in the region and has stood behind the regime in Damascus despite international condemnation against the fierce crackdown.
The FSA claims to have 40,000 soldiers who have deserted the regular army. Commander Mohammad said that in the region of Western Ghouta and Dara, to the south of Damascus, there were ‘around 20,000 people who want to carry weapons,’ but the number of armed rebels number only in the hundreds because of the lack of military equipment.