Syria Sends Qaddafi Arms

Bashar Assad helps Muammar Qaddafi




DEBKAfile Exclusive
Report March 13, 2011, 6:23 PM (GMT+02:00)
Courtesy Of "DEBKA File"

As Washington commended the Arab League for approving a proposed no-fly zone over Libya and European powers drew up plans for saving the anti-Qaddafi movement from defeat, Syria began sending Muammar Qaddafi supplies of arms, ammunition and weapons spare parts to sustain his effort to crush the uprising.

DEBKAfile's military and intelligence sources report exclusively that over the weekend a Libyan army general arrived at the Syrian Naval command at Tartous to establish a liaison office for organizing military hardware supplies from Damascus to the Libyan army and arrange shipping schedules.

Our sources report that another Libyan official was in Damascus early last week to negotiate with Syrian President Bashar Assad the types of weaponry required, prices and transport arrangements. After he left, Assad ordered Syrian emergency military stores to be opened and civilian freighters chartered to carry the consignments they had decided on across the Mediterranean to Libya.

The Syrian and Libyan arsenals are fairly compatible: both are dominated by Russian military products, Mig and Sukhoi fighters and bombers, T-72 tanks, BM-21 rocket launchers, the same armored personnel carriers and anti-air and anti-tank missiles.

The Libyan-Syrian arms transaction is a landmark in the sense that it is the first time since the Arab revolts erupted in January that one Arab regime has stepped in to help another suppress an uprising.

Damascus is also in violation of last month's Security Council Resolution 1970 which included an arms embargo against the Qaddafi regime and by supplying Libya weapons by sea Assad undermines the Western-Arab effort to introduce a no fly zone to curtail Qaddafi's aerial might.
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Now, by replenishing the regime's stocks of arms and ordnance, the Syrian ruler has... spurred Qaddafi on for his final major offensive to crush the uprising without having to stop and wait for fresh supplies of war materiel.

In the last 24 hours, rebel militias were pushed out of the two key oil towns of Ras Lanuf and Brega in eastern Libya after losing their footholds in Tripolitania to the west. Pro-Qaddafi forces were landed for the first time by sea Saturday, March 12, at Agilah, 60 kilometers east of Ras Lanuf, indicating that Qaddafi intends to drop more troops on the coast of Cyrenaica to pursue his thrust into the rebel-held region.

Our military sources report that no obstacles now stand in the path of Qaddafi loyalist troops heading for the rebel center of Benghazi, 200 kilometers from Brega. The rebels have nowhere near the manpower they need to hold Libya's second largest city against a government offensive. There are first signs of an exodus beginning from the city.
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