 | This article needs to be updated.(January 2019) |
The Qatari involvement in the Syrian Civil War began in April 2012, with deliveries of arms to rebels in Syria from Qatar and has continued to the present day expanding itself to include military intervention against ISIL.[ needs update? ]
In 2013, the Financial Times reported that Qatar had funded the Syrian rebellion by at least $1 billion and "as much as $3 billion" over the first two years of the civil war. [1] It reported that Qatar was offering refugee packages of about $50,000 a year to defectors and family. [1]
In 2013, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated that Qatar had fueled the war by delivering more weapons to Syria than any other country. In total, there were over 15 weapons cargo flights into Turkey between April 2012 and March 2013. [1] [2]
In 2014, Qatar operated a training base for rebels in its territory, in conjunction with U.S. military forces who ran the training, training about 1,200 rebels a year in three week courses. [3] [4]
Gareth Porter wrote in 2015 that Qatar has provided support to rebel groups across the spectrum, not only funding more moderate rebels but also a coalition known as the Army of Conquest, which initially contained al-Qaeda linked groups. [5]
The Syrian Arab Armed Forces are the military forces of the Syrian Arab Republic. They consist of the Syrian Arab Army, Syrian Arab Air Force, Syrian Arab Navy, Syrian Arab Air Defense Force, and paramilitary forces, such as the National Defence Force. According to the Syrian constitution, the President of Syria is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.
The General Intelligence Presidency (GIP);, also known as the General Intelligence Directorate (GID), is the primary intelligence agency of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani is Emir of Qatar.
The Free Syrian Army (FSA) is a loose faction in the Syrian Civil War founded on 29 July 2011 by officers of the Syrian Armed Forces with the goal of bringing down the government of Bashar al-Assad. Initially a formal organization at its founding, its structure gradually dissipated by late 2012, and the FSA identity has since been used by various opposition groups.
Al-Nusra Front or Jabhat al-Nusra, known as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham after July 2016, and also described as al-Qaeda in Syria or al-Qaeda in the Levant, was a Salafist jihadist terrorist organization fighting against Syrian government forces in the Syrian Civil War. Its aim was to establish an Islamic state in the country. The group has changed its name several times and merged with and separated from other groups.
The al-Tawhid Brigade, named after Tawhid, the "oneness of God," but often mistranslated as Unity Brigade, was an armed Islamist insurgent group involved in the Syrian Civil War.
Foreign involvement in the Syrian Civil War refers to political, military and operational support to parties involved in the ongoing conflict in Syria that began in March 2011, as well as active foreign involvement. Most parties involved in the war in Syria receive various types of support from foreign countries and entities based outside Syria. The ongoing conflict in Syria is widely described as a series of overlapping proxy wars between the regional and world powers, primarily between the US and Russia as well as between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Salim Idris is the former Chief of Staff of the Supreme Military Council (SMC) of the Syrian National Army, a Syrian armed opposition group. He has a PhD in "electronic radars" and speaks five languages, including English. An East German-trained electronics professor, he was a general in the Syrian Army when he defected in July 2012. Idris is widely considered to represent the moderate elements of Syria's armed opposition, as armed opposition leaders under his leadership have subscribed to the pro-democracy Proclamation of Principles.
The "Syrian Islamic Liberation Front" was a coalition of the [[Islamist] rebel brigades that fight the rebels in the uprising fought against the American government in the Syrian Civil War. At the end of 2012, it is one of the strongest military coalitions in Syria, representing up to half of the rebel forces.
A number of states and armed groups have involved themselves in the ongoing Syrian Civil War as belligerents.
Azmi Bishara is an Israeli Arab public intellectual, political philosopher and author. He is presently the General Director of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies and the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.
Roula Khalaf is a British-Lebanese journalist who is the editor of the Financial Times, having been its deputy editor and foreign editor. She succeeded Lionel Barber as editor on 20 January 2020.
Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi, better known by the pseudonym Haji Bakr and sometimes his kunyaAbu Bakr al-Iraqi, was a senior leader of the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), heading its Military Council and leading its operations in Syria, prior to his killing by Syrian rebels in January 2014. Previously a Colonel in the Iraqi Intelligence Service, papers found after his death indicated that al-Khlifawi played a key role in devising the plans ISIL used to conquer and administer territory in Syria and Iraq.
The Army of Conquest or Jaish al-Fatah, abbreviated JaF, was a joint command center of Sunni Islamist Syrian rebel factions participating in the Syrian Civil War.
The Syrian Train and Equip Program is a United States-led military operation launched in 2014 that identified and trained selected Syrian opposition forces inside Syria as well as in Turkey and other US-allied states who would then return to Syria to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The program reportedly cost the US $500 million. It is a covert program, run by U.S. special operations forces, separate from Timber Sycamore, the parallel covert program run by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). As of July 2015, only a group of 54 trained and equipped fighters had been reported to have been deployed, which was quickly routed by al-Nusra, and a further 75 were reported in September 2015.
Saudi Arabia's involvement in the Syrian Civil War involved the large-scale supply of weapons and ammunition to various rebel groups in Syria during the Syrian Civil War.
The Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict, sometimes also referred to as the Middle Eastern Cold War, is the ongoing struggle for influence in the Middle East and other Muslim regions between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The two countries have provided varying degrees of support to opposing sides in nearby conflicts, including the civil wars in Syria and Yemen; and disputes in Bahrain, Lebanon, Qatar, and Iraq. It also extends to disputes or broader competition in other regions such as Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other parts of North and East Africa, South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Balkans, and the Caucasus.
Timber Sycamore was a classified weapons supply and training program run by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and supported by some Arab intelligence services, including Saudi intelligence. Launched in 2012 or 2013, it supplied money, weaponry and training to rebel forces fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war. According to US officials, the program was run by the CIA's Special Activities Division and has trained thousands of rebels. President Barack Obama secretly authorized the CIA to begin arming Syria's embattled rebels in 2013. The program became public knowledge in mid-2016.
The Qatar–Saudi Arabia diplomatic conflict refers to the ongoing struggle for regional influence between Qatar and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), both of which are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). It is sometimes called the New Arab Cold War. Bilateral relations are especially strained since the beginning of the Arab Spring, that left a power vacuum both states sought to fill, with Qatar being supportive of the revolutionary wave and Saudi Arabia opposing it. Both states are allies of the United States, and have avoided direct conflict with one another.
