DOHA: At a desert base, Gulf state Qatar is covertly training Syrian rebels with U.S. help to fight President Bashar al-Assad and may include more overtly Islamist insurgent groups, sources close to the matter say.
The camp, south of the capital between Saudi Arabia’s border and al-Udeid, the largest U.S. air base in the Middle East, is being used to train rebels, the sources said.
Reuters could not independently identify the participants in the program or witness activity inside the base, which lies in a military zone guarded by Qatari special forces and marked on signposts as a restricted area.
But Syrian rebel sources said training in Qatar has included rebels affiliated to the “Free Syrian Army” from northern Syria.
The sources said the effort had been running for nearly a year, although it was too small to have a significant impact on the battlefield, and some rebels complained of not being taught advanced techniques.
The training is in line with Qatar’s self-image as a champion of Arab Spring uprisings and Doha has made no secret of its hatred of Assad.
Small groups of 12 to 20 fighters are identified in Syria and screened by the CIA, the sources said.
Once cleared, they travel to Turkey and are then flown to Doha and driven to the base.
Ground force
“The U.S. wanted to help the rebels oust Assad but didn’t want to be open about their support, so to have rebels trained in Qatar is a good idea, the problem is the scale is too small,” said a Western source in Doha.
It is not clear whether the Qatari program is coordinated with a strategy of Western and Gulf countries to turn disparate non-Islamist rebel groups into a force to combat the militants.
Such efforts have been hampered by Western hesitancy about providing significant military aid, because it could end up with extremists. Gulf states dislike the West’s emphasis on fighting
extremist ISIS. Assad is the bigger problem, they say.
“Rebels have been flown in to get trained in things like ambush techniques,” said a source close to the Qatari government who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the topic.
“The training would last a few months, maybe two or three, and then a new group would be flown in, but no lethal weapons were supplied to them,” one of the sources said.
Screening Process
As the war against Assad has dragged on, frustrated rebels asked their trainers for more advanced techniques, such as building IEDs.
The Qatar project was conceived before the declaration of the hardline ISIS, when militants belonging to its predecessor organization were not regarded as an international security threat.
The group’s rise in Syria and Iraq has hampered the rebellion: Moderate groups cannot fight Assad when the better-armed ISIS seeks their destruction as it strives to build its “caliphate”.
In recent weeks, the Qataris, disappointed by lack of progress in the fight against Assad, have started to consider training members of the Islamic Front, a coalition of Islamist rebels.
Training fighters from Islamic groups could displease fellow Gulf state the United Arab Emirates, which dislikes Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood’s international Islamist network.
But Saudi Arabia, which shares the UAE’s mistrust of the Brotherhood, is more indulgent of moderate Islamist forces when it comes to fighting Assad, diplomats say. Reuters
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