US Loses 'Dangerous Game' Delivering Arms to Syrian Rebels

Arms shipments by the US and Saudi Arabia to Syrian rebel groups have ended up on the black market instead, but the situation was completely predictable, Middle East analyst Catherine Shakdam told Radio Sputnik.

Arms shipments by the CIA and Saudi Arabia to Jordan which were intended to be delivered on to Washington-backed Syrian rebels were systematically stolen by Jordanian intelligence operatives and sold to arms merchants on the black market, American and Jordanian officials told the New York Times on Sunday.

​The theft includes millions of dollars of weapons, some of which were used in a shooting in November that killed two Americans and three others at a police training facility in Amman.

Catherine Shakdam, Middle East analyst and director of programs for the Shafaqna Institute for Middle Eastern Studies, told Radio Sputnik that the issue of weapons supplies falling into the wrong hands was a predictable one.

"It has been going on for years, and it really underscores the question that Russia has warned about, that you can't expect to be putting weapons into such a dangerous and very fluid area – Syria and Iraq – and not expect these kinds of things to happen," Shakdam said.

"It's a very dangerous game to arm people left, right and center. I think that Russia has done things the right way by going through the official channels and handling things openly rather than operations which get out of hand very quickly."

Shakdam said that the same chaotic situation happened in Yemen, Iraq and Libya, when the West backed rebels there. She also warned that the multitude of countries supplying weapons means that nobody actually knows what weapons the rebels actually have.

"We know now that radicals have had chemical agents given to them, we know that Turkey has done this but they're not the only ones helping them," Shakdam said.

Jordan’s minister of state for media affairs has denied the claim that Jordanian intelligence agents were responsible for the thefts. Shakdam said that the kingdom has been put in a difficult position by the events that have unfolded around it, and is "in the eye of the storm."

 "Jordan has been put in a very difficult situation anyway, they have had to open up their border to training camps and so on." 

"Back in 2011, Jordan was potentially on the brink of an uprising, and there is a desire to control public perception and public fears."