Fsa: Us arms creating Somalia-style warlords in Syria

FSA Brigadier General Abdelilah al-Bashir, one of the top commanders of the Supreme Military Council, the US is undermining the pro-West militants fighting against the Syrian government.

According to anti-war website, Bashir’s complaints seem to center around the US bypassing the ineffectual FSA council and are directly shipping arms to various fighters on the ground.

Those shipments aim at giving the US some more control over the rank-and-file rebel militants, but is also making them less dependent on the FSA leadership, and more inclined to operate independently.

The US has offered almost no information on who it is sending the arms to, but some indications are that some of the weapons are winding up in the hands of extremist factions.

Former UN envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi also warned that the war-torn country was heading toward becoming “another Somalia” ruled by (foreign backed) warlords, in an interview published in a German weekly this weekend.

He also said that the entire region may “blow up” if a political solution is not found.

When asked what he predicted would ultimately become of Syria, the Algerian diplomat told der Spiegel: “It will become another Somalia. It will not be divided, as many have predicted. It’s going to be a failed state, with warlords all over the place.”

Brahimi also painted a grim picture for the countries neighboring Syria.

He said the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) — a terrorist group known for its ruthless tactics and suicide bombers — “is active in both Syria and Iraq already, and Jordan is really struggling to continue resisting. Even Turkey. According to a senior Iraqi official, ISIL has carried out 100 operations in Syria and 1,000 operations in Iraq in just three months.”

He added that there were 500 or 600 French militants, and roughly the same number of Britons, fighting in Syria, together with several thousand non-Syrians terrorists.

“These are your nationals that are training in Syria and that are part of [ISIL], which believes that you have got to build a (self-ruled) Islamic state all over the world. That’s a threat to you, isn’t it?”

Brahimi, the former special representative on Syria for the United Nations and the Arab League, resigned in frustration last month after making little progress towards ending the foreign caused civil war, now in its fourth year.