{"id":6089,"date":"2013-06-18T16:51:51","date_gmt":"2013-06-18T15:51:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/?p=6089"},"modified":"2025-07-10T08:06:22","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T07:06:22","slug":"2013jun18syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/2013jun18syria\/","title":{"rendered":"Middle East state arms Syrian Islamists"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The highly-portable Russian-made Konkurs anti-tank missile is being supplied, ironically, to the Syrian Sunni Islamist rebels.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An unnamed Middle Eastern state has supplied Syrian rebels with 250 sophisticated Soviet-made anti-tank missiles, most of which were given to radical Islamist militias fighting President Bashar Assad, according to a report published in London-based Arabic daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

According to the report, the unidentified state made its first delivery of 9M113 Konkurs missiles to the rebels a week ago via Turkey. The Konkurs antitank missile, ironicaly supplied by Russia, has a maximum range of four kilometers and a hit probability of 90 percent. Egypt, Iran and Turkey are the only known operators of the missile system in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

The information has come from The Times of Israel<\/a><\/strong>. \u00a0The weapons would not have come from President Assad’s Shia Muslim ally, Iran.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Israel National News<\/a><\/strong> has reported that France and Belgium have joined Saudi Arabia in supplying the Free Syrian Army with weapons.<\/p>\n

The news comes as world leaders have been gathering on the shores of Loch Erne in Northern Ireland as the G8 summit. \u00a0President Putin is determined that President Assad should remain in power in any settlement, but the Western powers, including William Hague, the UK Foreign Secretary, and President Obama are supporting the rebels, who include militant Al-Qaeda elements and other hard-line Sunni activists dedicated to exterminating both the Shia Muslims and Syria’s 10% Christian minority, who have enjoyed freedom under the Assad regime.<\/p>\n

President Obama has said he will arm the rebels, thus prolonging the Syrian civil war. \u00a0The US has taken particular umbrage at the alleged small-scale use of chemical weapons by President Assad’s side, as if it is somehow preferable or more gentlemanly to blow opponents to pieces with mortars than suffocate them by Sarin.<\/p>\n

However,\u00a0Leaked emails from a UK weapons company<\/a><\/strong> appear to show that Washington was involved in a plan to supply the rebels with chemical weapons whose use could then be blamed on Assad. \u00a0In addition to that, \u00a0reports of atrocities on both sides have put paid to the idea that the rebels are benign and restrained.<\/p>\n

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has argued that Britain will have no means of preventing UK weapons ending up in the hands of “al Qaida-affliated thugs” if it supplies arms to the Syrian rebels, Boris Johnson warned.<\/p>\n

Writing for the Daily Telegraph<\/a><\/strong> the London mayor put himself at the head of the growing opposition at Westminster to any move by David Cameron to arm the rebels, saying Britain could not end the conflict by “pressing weapons into the hands of maniacs”. \u00a0The Archbishop of York has agreed.<\/p>\n

However, the Foreign Secretary William Hague hit back<\/a><\/strong> saying there are “more than two sides” in the conflict.<\/p>\n

However the scale of the opposition among MPs of all parties means Mr Cameron – who has promised a Commons vote on any move by Britain to arm the rebels – will almost certainly find his path blocked if he tries to follow suit.<\/p>\n

The London Mayor described an incident in Aleppo where a 15-year-old boy was taken away and beaten and then summarily executed by Islamist rebels for making a joking reference to the Prophet Mohammed.<\/p>\n

“Odious, twisted, hate-filled thugs; arrogant and inadequate creeps, intoxicated by the pathetic illusion of power that comes with guns; poisoned by a perversion of religion into a contempt for all norms of civilised behaviour,” he wrote.<\/p>\n

“They are fighting not for freedom but for a terrifying Islamic state in which they would have the whip hand – and yet there is no dodging or fudging the matter: these are among the Syrian rebels who are hoping now to benefit from the flow of Western arms .<\/p>\n

“How is it supposed to work? How are we meant to furnish machine guns and anti-tank weapons to one set of opposition forces, without them ending up in the hands of men like the al Qaida-affiliated thugs who executed a child for telling a joke?<\/p>\n

“This is not the moment to send more arms. This is the moment for a total ceasefire, an end to the madness.<\/p>\n

“We can’t use Syria as an arena for geopolitical point-scoring or muscle-flexing, and we won’t get a ceasefire by pressing weapons into the hands of maniacs,” he argued.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An unnamed Middle Eastern state has supplied Syrian rebels with 250 sophisticated Soviet-made anti-tank missiles, most of which were given to radical Islamist militias fighting President Bashar Assad, according to a report published in London-based Arabic daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat on Tuesday. According to the report, the unidentified state made its first delivery of 9M113 Konkurs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,121],"tags":[410,341,7,861,25,860,390,392],"class_list":["post-6089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-freedom","category-globalism-depopulation-id","tag-assad","tag-boris-johnson","tag-david-cameron","tag-g8-summit","tag-obama","tag-putin","tag-syria","tag-william-hague"],"aioseo_notices":[],"rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Stephen","author_link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/author\/stephen\/"},"rttpg_comment":6,"rttpg_category":"Christian freedom<\/a> Globalism Depopulation ID<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"An unnamed Middle Eastern state has supplied Syrian rebels with 250 sophisticated Soviet-made anti-tank missiles, most of which were given to radical Islamist militias fighting President Bashar Assad, according to a report published in London-based Arabic daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat on Tuesday. According to the report, the unidentified state made its first delivery of 9M113 Konkurs…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6089"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35034,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6089\/revisions\/35034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}