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Syria Civil War

Syria rebels' arms supplies drying up

Guardian Online
Despite widespread pledges of support from western and Arab states, the main Syrian opposition coalition says it has still not seen any significant increase in funding or arms supplies.
Members of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, formed in November, say that there is still no sign of western capitals relaxing their ban on delivering weapons to the rebels and even Gulf Arab governments, which helped arm opposition groups last year, are supplying less each week.
"The supplies are drying up. It is still Syrian expats -individuals - who are providing the funding by and large," said a Syrian businessman who has helped fund the opposition since the uprising began 22 months ago.
As it has become increasingly clear that large-scale external assistance is unlikely to materialise, the many locally-based rebel groups have found ways of sustaining themselves militarily and financially, but have largely given up hoping for a sudden breakthrough.
As a result, he said, the fragmented rebel forces have given up hopes of a sweep through the country and are focusing instead
on a gradual
war of attrition:
besieging isolated government military bases to stop the regime using planes and helicopters against them and ultimately to capture weapons, to compensate for the meagre supplies from abroad.
In November, the rebels succeeded in bringing down some government aircraft with shoulder-launched missiles captured in a regime base, but Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch said sightings of such missiles had faded in recent weeks.
Over the past two months, the US, UK and France as well as other European states and the Gulf monarchies have declared the newly formed national coalition "the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people", in what they hoped would be a turning point in bringing some cohesion to the deeply divided opposition and in forging links between those in exile and rebel commanders inside Syria.
Such links have continued to be elusive, however, and the new coalition and its backers are blaming each other, in rows reminiscent of the problems that dogged its forerunner, the Syrian National Council.
Western governments have made disbursements of aid dependent on proven control over rebel forces in Syria and credible assurances that the assistance would not further the aims of extremist Islamist groups such as the Nusra Front, declared a terrorist organisation by the US. Opposition leaders complain that without significant aid they have little hope of rallying support or exerting any control over the chaotic anti-Assad effort.