Arms Shipments Seen From Sudan to Syria Rebels
In an image taken from the Internet, a Syrian rebel with what appeared to be a Chinese-made FN-6 antiaircraft missile.
By C. J. CHIVERS and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: August 12, 2013 36 Comments
Syrian rebels, frustrated by the West’s reluctance to provide arms, have
found a supplier in an unlikely source: Sudan, a country that has been
under international arms embargoes and maintains close ties with a
stalwart backer of the Syrian government, Iran.
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In deals that have not been publicly acknowledged, Western officials and
Syrian rebels say, Sudan’s government sold Sudanese- and Chinese-made
arms to Qatar, which arranged delivery through Turkey to the rebels.
The shipments included antiaircraft missiles and newly manufactured
small-arms cartridges, which were seen on the battlefield in Syria — all
of which have helped the rebels combat the Syrian government’s
better-armed forces and loyalist militias.
Emerging evidence that Sudan has fed the secret arms pipeline to rebels
adds to a growing body of knowledge about where the opposition to
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria is getting its military equipment,
often paid for by Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Saudi Arabia
or other sympathetic donors.
While it is unclear how pivotal the weapons have been in the
two-year-old civil war, they have helped sustain the opposition against
government forces emboldened by aid from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.
Sudan’s involvement adds yet another complication to a civil war that
has long defied a diplomatic resolution. The battle has evolved into a
proxy fight for regional influence between global powers, regional
players and religious sects. In Sudan’s case, it has a connection with
the majority Sunni rebels, and a potentially lucrative financial stake
in prosecuting the war.
But Sudan’s decision to provide arms to the rebels — bucking its own
international supporters and helping to cement its reputation for
fueling conflict — reflects a politically risky balancing act. Sudan
maintains close economic and diplomatic ties to Iran and China.
Both nations have provided military and technical assistance to Sudan’s
state-run arms industry and might see sales of its weapons by Sudan to
help rebels in Syria as an unwanted outcome of their collaboration with
Khartoum, or even as a betrayal.
In interviews, Sudanese officials denied helping arm either side in the
Syrian war. “Sudan has not sent weapons to Syria,” said Imad Sid Ahmad,
the press secretary for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
Al-Sawarmi Khalid Saad, a spokesman for the Sudanese armed forces, added
that the allegations defied common sense, except perhaps as a smear.
“We have no interest in supporting groups in Syria, especially if the
outcome of the fighting is not clear,” Mr. Saad said. “These allegations
are meant to harm our relations with countries Sudan has good relations
with.”
A Qatari official said he had no information about a role by his country
in procuring or moving military equipment from Sudan.
Sudan has a history of providing weapons to armed groups while publicly
denying its hand in such transfers. Its arms or ammunition has turned up
in South Sudan, Somalia, Ivory Coast, Chad, Kenya, Guinea, Mali and
Uganda, said Jonah Leff, a Sudan analyst for the Small Arms Survey,
a research project. It has provided weapons to Joseph Kony’s Lord’s
Resistance Army; rebels in Libya; and the janjaweed, the pro-government
militias that are accused of a campaign of atrocities in Darfur.
“Sudan has positioned itself to be a major global arms supplier whose
wares have reached several conflict zones, including the Syrian rebels,”
said one American official who is familiar with the shipments to
Turkey.
Western analysts and officials said Sudan’s clandestine participation in
arming rebels in Syria suggests inherent tensions in Mr. Bashir’s
foreign policy, which broadly supports Sunni Islamist movements while
maintaining a valued relationship with the Shiite theocracy in Iran.
Other officials suggested that a simple motive was at work — money. Sudan is struggling with a severe economic crisis.
“Qatar has been paying a pretty penny for weapons, with few questions
asked,” said one American official familiar with the transfers. “Once
word gets out that other countries have opened their depots and have
been well paid, that can be an incentive.”
Analysts suspect that Sudan has sold several other classes of weapons to
the rebels, including Chinese-made antimateriel sniper rifles and
antitank missiles, all of which have made debuts in the war this year
but whose immediate sources have been uncertain.
Two American officials said Ukrainian-flagged aircraft had delivered the
shipments. Air traffic control data from an aviation official in the
region shows that at least three Ukrainian aviation transport companies
flew military-style cargo planes this year from Khartoum, the Sudanese
capital, to a military and civilian airfield in western Turkey. In
telephone interviews, officials at two firms denied carrying arms; the
third firm did not answer calls on Monday.
Mr. Ahmad, the Sudanese presidential spokesman, suggested that if
Sudan’s weapons were seen with Syria’s rebels, perhaps Libya had
provided them.
Sudan, he said, has admitted sending arms during the 2011 war to oust
Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Libya’s new leaders have publicly thanked
Sudan. Libya has since been a busy supplier of the weapons to rebels in
Syria.
However, that would not explain the Sudanese-made 7.62x39-millimeter
ammunition documented by The New York Times this year in rebel
possession near the Syrian city of Idlib.
The ammunition, according to its stamped markings, was made in Sudan in
2012 — after the war in Libya had ended. It was used by Soquor al-Sham,
an Islamist group that recognizes the Western-supported Syrian National
Coalition’s military command.
When told that the newly produced Sudanese cartridges were photographed
with Syrian rebels, Mr. Saad, the Sudanese military spokesman, was
dismissive. “Pictures can be fabricated,” he said. “That is not
evidence.”
Sudan’s suggestion that any of its weapons in Syria had been provided by
Libya also would not explain the presence of Chinese-made FN-6
antiaircraft missiles in Syrian rebel units. Neither the Qaddafi
loyalists nor the rebels in Libya were known to possess those weapons in
2011, analysts who track missile proliferation said.
The movements of FN-6s have been at the center of one of the stranger arms-trafficking schemes in the civil war.
The weapons, which fire a heat-seeking missile from a shoulder launcher,
gained nonproliferation specialists’ immediate attention when they
showed up in rebel videos early this year.
Syria’s military was not known to stock them, and their presence in
northern Syria strongly suggested that they were being brought to rebels
via black markets, and perhaps with the consent of the authorities in
Turkey.
After the missiles were shown destroying Syrian military helicopters,
the matter took an unusual turn when a state-controlled newspaper in
China, apparently acting on a marketing impulse, lauded the missile’s performance.
“The kills are proof that the FN-6 is reliable and user-friendly,
because rebel fighters are generally not well trained in operating
missile systems,” the newspaper, Global Times, quoted a Chinese aviation
analyst as saying.
The successful attacks on Syria’s helicopters by Chinese missiles
brought “publicity” that “will raise the image of Chinese defense
products on the international arms trade market,” the newspaper wrote.
The praise proved premature.
As the missiles were put to wider use, rebels began to complain, saying
that more often than not they failed to fire or to lock on targets. One
rebel commander, Abu Bashar, who coordinates fighting in Aleppo and
Idlib Provinces, called the missiles, which he said had gone to Turkey
from Sudan and had been provided to rebels by a Qatari intelligence
officer, a disappointment.
“Most of the FN-6s that we got didn’t work,” he said. He said two of
them had exploded as they were fired, killing two rebels and wounding
four others.
Detailed photos of one of the FN-6 missile tubes, provided by a Syrian
with access to the weapons, showed that someone had taken steps to
obscure its origin. Stenciled markings, the photos showed, had been
covered with spray paint. Such markings typically include a missile’s
serial number, lot number, manufacturer code and year of production.
Rebels said that before they were provided with the missiles, months
ago, they had already been painted, either by the seller, shipper or
middlemen, in a crude effort to make tracing the missiles more
difficult.
Reporting was contributed by Andrew E. Kramer, Nikolay Khalip and
Andrew Roth from Moscow; Robert F. Worth from Washington; Sebnem Arsu
from Istanbul; Nicholas Kulish from Nairobi, Kenya; Isma’il Kushkush
from Khartoum, Sudan; and Karam Shoumali from Turkey and Syria.
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