CIA and Saudi weapons for Syrian rebels fueled black market arms trafficking, report says
NYT: Millions of dollars of arms U.S. & Saudi Arabia sent to Jordan for Syrian rebels were sold to arms traffickers
Topics: arms trade, CIA, Syria, War, News, Politics News
Millions of dollars worth of weapons the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia sent to Syrian rebels have been “systematically” stolen and sold to arms traffickers on the black market, according to an explosive joint investigation by The New York Times and Al Jazeera.
U.S. and Jordanian investigators do not know where most of the arms went, reviving fears that the deadly military-grade black market weapons could have ended up in the hands of criminal networks and extremist groups outside the country.
Some of the stolen arms include Kalashnikov assault rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.
U.S. and Jordanian officials say weapons provided to Jordan that were meant to be relayed to Syrian rebels were stolen by operatives in the powerful Jordanian intelligence service, the General Intelligence Directorate, or GID. Intelligence operatives subsequently sold these arms on the black market, and used the money to buy expensive luxury items like SUVs and iPhones, according to Jordanian officials.
In their present arrangement, the CIA and allied Arab intelligence agencies buy weapons in bulk primarily in Eastern Europe, especially the Balkans, and hand these over to Jordanian intelligence, which then transfers the arms to Syrian rebels.
These weapons have been traced to at least one attack — a shooting at a police training facility in Jordan’s capital, Amman. The FBI is presently investigating an attack in November in which a Jordanian police captain killed two American contractors, two Jordanians and one South African. U.S. investigators traced the serial numbers of the weapons used in the attack to those provided by the CIA for Syrian rebels.
This investigation “highlights the messy, unplanned consequences of programs to arm and train rebels — the kind of program the C.I.A. and Pentagon have conducted for decades,” the Times wrote.
The Syrian rebel training program, code-named Timber Sycamore, was approved by the Obama administration in April 2013. It is classified, but American officials have acknowledged that the CIA and intelligence services in allied Middle Eastern countries have trained thousands of rebels in hopes of overthrowing the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. The program is based in Jordan, Syria’s neighbor.
The U.S. and Saudi Arabia are the biggest contributors to Timber Sycamore. The Saudi regime provides weapons and large sums of money. The Times notes that “C.I.A. paramilitary operatives tak[e] the lead in training the rebels to use Kalashnikovs, mortars, antitank guided missiles and other weapons.”
A previous report by The New York Times detailed how the extremist Saudi absolute monarchy has helped bankroll the CIA rebel-training program.
“From the moment the C.I.A. operation was started, Saudi money supported it,” the Times noted. With the help of its “vast oil reserves,” the Saudi regime has provided billions of dollars worth of weapons. Covert financing has also come from Qatar, Turkey and Jordan.