Why wouldn’t the Saudi royal family arm their favourite anti-Shiite militia?<\/i><\/p>\n
John Kerry has had a miserable time of it in the Gulf<\/a>. He has to love them all \u2013 the kings and princes and emirs \u2013 and he needs their support against Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Because, of course, they are sending cash and weapons to the rebels. But which rebels? The soft, secular safe guys of the Free Syrian Army<\/a> or the horrible \u2018terrorist\u2019 Islamists who are also fighting Assad and who, give and take a few thousands square yards, have just captured the Syrian provincial capital of Raqa?<\/p>\n In Qatar yesterday, the US Secretary of State<\/a> vouchsafed to tell the world that he now had \u201cgreater guarantees\u201d that arms were being sent to \u201cmoderate\u201d groups in Syria. Such guarantees may exist \u2013 but they are worthless. If Saudi Arabia and Qatar are sending guns to the opposition, how can they possibly label them \u2018Not for al-Nusra or other Islamist groups\u2019? And since the Saudi royal family are Wahabis \u2013 like many of the Islamist fighters in Syria and, indeed, the 9\/11 killers in America \u2013 why shouldn\u2019t the Saudis arm their favourite anti-Shiite militia in Syria?<\/p>\n Mr Kerry seemed to have no idea. \u201cBashar Assad has lost legitimacy,\u201d he announced \u2013 wasn\u2019t that supposed to have happened two years ago? \u2013 \u201cand there is no way he will restore that.\u201d But if the Saudis and the Qataris are pouring weapons into Syria and the Americans cannot \u2013 let us tell the truth here \u2013 control who gets them, who will be the \u2018legitimate\u2019 rulers of post-Bashar Syria. All in the Gulf are agreed that Bashar is a very nasty piece of work. But do Saudi Arabia and Qatar \u2013 famed for their freedoms, parliamentary democracies and human rights \u2013 intend to install a western-style democracy in Damascus?<\/p>\n The Saudis have been raging about Assad\u2019s Scuds<\/a>. \u201cThis cannot go on,\u201d Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud al-Feisal told Kerry of the continuing Syrian government ballistic missile attacks on Aleppo. And so say all of us. But the attacks are<\/em> going on \u2013 and the Saudis and the Qataris and the Americans and, I suppose, the British, can\u2019t do anything about them. When Kerry was asked in Riyadh on Monday whether Saudi weapons supplies to the rebels were a concern, he blandly replied by talking about Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah weapons supplies to the Assad regime.<\/p>\n In a world which has no institutional memory, no one asked why the Hezbollah should be giving weapons to the Assad regime when the Israelis are still boasting that only last month they bombed a weapons convoy going from Assad to<\/em> the Hezbollah. Confusing, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s Kerry\u2019s wonderful remark in Riyadh that \u201cthe United States will continue to work with our friends to empower the Syrian opposition to hopefully be able to bring about a peaceful revolution.\u201d Forget the split infinitive. Forget the fact that the Americans claim to be sending only money and bandages and the Brits are only planning to send \u2018non-lethal’ armoured vehicles. Schoolchildren should be asked to parse this nonsense. \u2018Friends\u2019? \u2018Empower\u2019? \u2018Hopefully\u2019? \u2018Peaceful\u2019? No wonder Bashar al-Assad sounds so confident.<\/p>\n _______________________<\/p>\n Robert Fisk, based in Beirut, is a multiple award-winning journalist on the Middle East and a <\/i>correspondent for <\/i>The Independent, a UK newspaper.\u00a0 He is the author of many books on the region, including The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East<\/a>.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n