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4B Daily News – Thursday, March 15, 2012 Syrian rebels lack guns, money after key defeats BEIRUT (AP) — Two significant defeats at the hands of Syrian govern- ment troops have exposed the limitations of the country's rebel forces: They are low on cash, running out of weapons and facing a fiercely loyal military that will fight to the death. Insisting that their drive to oust President Bashar Assad by force remains strong, the Free Syrian Army says the arms shortage is the main obstacle. ''Send us money, we're desperate. Send us weapons,'' Ahmad Kassem, who coordinates military operations for the FSA, told The Associated Press in an interview. ''We don't need fighters. We have excess men who can fight, but we need weapons to protect our land and honor.'' In the past year, the rebels briefly seized small amounts of territory, most recently in the Baba Amr district of Homs and the city of Idlib in northern Syria. After nearly four weeks of relentless shelling, the government reclaimed Baba Amr on March 1 following an assault that killed hun- dreds of people and trans- formed the neighborhood into a symbol of the upris- ing. The humanitarian sit- uation in Baba Amr, part of the third-largest city in Syria, remains catastroph- ic for civilians. Government forces next turned their guns on Idlib, another bastion of opposition support. On Tuesday, government forces took control of the city in a three-day opera- tion — significantly shorter but still bloody. The Free Syrian Army has emerged as the most potent armed force fight- ing Assad. It is highly decentralized, with its leaders in the relative safety of neighboring countries. The rebels have not come close to carving out a zone akin to Beng- hazi in eastern Libya, the center of the successful uprising against Moam- mar Gadhafi last year. ''If we had a safe haven to operate out of inside Syria, we would've won the battle against Bashar a long time ago,'' said Muneef Al-Zaeem, an FSA spokesman based in Jordan. The defeats have sapped some of the rebels' momentum, but the fighters say they are using the opportunity to regroup. ''We absolutely do not feel defeated, not at all,'' said Fayez Amru, a FSA member who defected from the military about a month ago and is now based in Turkey. But he lashed out at the interna- tional community, saying even the most blistering criticism of Assad will not help those facing down the regime's tanks. He appealed for weapons. ''I wonder about this international community, which has not offered the Syrian people a single gun,'' he said, bitterly. ''People in the so-called free, civilized world should be ashamed of themselves.'' An influx of weapons could transform the con- flict. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been dis- cussing military aid, but the U.S. and others have not advocated arming the rebels, in part out of fear it would create an even more bloody and pro- longed battle. Syria has a complex web of allegiances in the region that extend to Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, raising fears of wider violence. Analysts see reason to be concerned, given that criminals could try to exploit burgeoning rebel force. Some observers already see trouble brew- ing. ''The recruits into this 'army' range from fathers defending their families to bereaved young men to defectors fighting for their lives, but its ranks are not devoid of fundamentalist militants and unrecon- structed villains,'' accord- ing to a recent analysis of the Syrian conflict by the International Crisis Group. ''To date, the lat- ter elements have not been predominant, although they are all that the regime, its supporters and its allies want to see.'' The regime says it is fighting foreign terrorists and armed gangs, assert- ing that the yearlong uprising is not a popular revolt. But the opposition denies that, saying Assad's opponents have been forced to take up arms after the government used tanks, snipers and machine guns to crush peaceful protesters. In recent months, inter- views with more than a dozen FSA members indi- cate that the group's weapons come from Iraq and Lebanon, as well as from army defectors who kept their weapons when they abandoned their posts. One FSA fighter, who is based in Turkey, said it was easiest to smuggle in arms from Iraq, but the quality of the weapons was bad. ''Our RPGs are Russ- ian-made and mostly come in from Iraq, but four out of five rounds are a dud,'' he said, asking that his name not be pub- lished out of fear for his safety. He also said costs were skyrocketing. An AK-47 assault rifle is anywhere between $1,000 and $1,500, he said. Syrian army officers also have sold weapons to the rebels in some cases, trying to turn a profit, according to several peo- ple, including Mohammed Qaddah, a Free Syrian Army official who helps draw up mili- tary plans for the rebels. Without a steady arms supply, he said, the rebels will rely on the well-worn tactics of insurgencies the world over. ''We use Molotov cocktails, homemade grenades and roadside ambushes,'' he said. Qaddah said there are thousands of rebels will- ing to fight in a suburb of the capital, Damascus — an allegation that is impossible to confirm — but there are only 750 machine guns. ''They take turns using them,'' Qaddah said. As the rebels struggle to get weapons, Damas- cus has a steady supply from Russia. Earlier this week, Rus- sia said it will abide by existing contracts to deliver weapons to Syria despite Assad's crack- down. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov defended that stance Wednesday, saying Moscow is providing Syria with arms to fend off external threats. Assad considers the uprising to be a foreign plot to destroy the coun- try. ''We are selling weapons to Syria for its national defense, national security,'' Lavrov told lawmakers in the Russian parliament. ''We aren't providing Syria with any weapons that could be used against protesters, against peaceful citizens, helping fuel the conflict. We aren't doing that. We are only helping Syria to protect its security against external threats.'' Russia, a key Syrian ally since Soviet times, has been the main suppli- er of arms for the Syrian military, which has relied almost exclusively on Soviet and Russian-made weapons, from assault rifles to tanks to aircraft and missiles. So far, the FSA does not pose a real threat to the Syrian army, a highly professional and ironclad military. But Al-Zaeem, the FSA spokesman in Jor- dan, vowed to keep up the fight. ''We're planning ambushes, which will be painful for Bashar's army and its allies,'' he said. ''We promise Bashar it will be painful. He will see.'' Panetta tells Afghans that US remains committed to mission CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan (AP) — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in a series of meetings with troops and Afghan leaders Wednesday, said the U.S. must never lose sight of its mission in the war, despite recent violence including what appeared to be an attempted attack near the runway of a military base where he was about to land. It wasn't clear whether it was an attempt to attack the defense chief, whose travel to southern Afghanistan was not made public before he arrived. Panetta was informed of the incident after landing. ''We will not allow individual incidents to undermine our resolve to that mission,'' he told about 200 Marines at Camp Leatherneck. ''We will be tested we will be challenged, we'll be challenged by our enemy, we'll be challenged by ourselves, we'll be challenged by the hell of war itself. But none of that, none of that, must ever deter us from the mission that we must achieve.'' According to Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. John Kirby, an Afghan stole a vehicle at a British airfield in southern Afghanistan and drove it onto a runway, crashing into a ditch about the same time that Leon Panetta's aircraft was landing. He said the pickup truck drove at high speed onto the ramp where Panetta's plane was intended to stop. No one in Panetta's party was injured. Panetta's trip to the warfront, which included three stops in the south, was planned months ago, long before the weekend shooting spree allegedly by a U.S. soldier that claimed the lives of 16 vil- lagers, including women and chil- dren. Everywhere he went, including a meeting with provincial leaders, Panetta referred obliquely to the massacre, but didn't go into it in detail. Instead, he talked about the need for the Afghan and coalition forces to keep working together to help transition security of the country to the Afghan forces. The trip, however, has pro- pelled Panetta into the center of escalating anti-American anger in Afghanistan, with the shooting spree coming on the heels of the burning of Qurans and other reli- gious materials at a U.S. base. U.S. officials have said the inci- Print Runs Every Monday - Wednesday- Friday $99 Clock Repair 20910 Pebblestone Dr. Red Bluff Jim Paul Electrical clocks Call for appt. 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