Puppet Arab League tells members they can provide weapons to Syria militants

The Arab League summit in the Qatari capital Doha has given the green light to its members to send arms to the foreign-backed militants fighting against the Syrian government.

Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi attends a press conference after the Arab League summit in Doha, Qatar, on March 26, 2013.
On Tuesday, the Arab League issued a resolution at the summit, giving member states the right to offer the militants all the means of what it called self-defense, including weapons.

Syria’s foreign-backed opposition was also formally handed Syria’s seat at the summit on Tuesday.

Speaking at the meeting, the head of the so-called Syrian National Coalition (SNC), Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib, called on the United Nations to follow suit and give Syria’s seat to the opposition.

Even before the seat was given to the SNC, the Syrian media outlets condemned the anticipated move harshly.

They criticized the opposition takeover of Damascus’ seat at the Arab League, calling it a legal and a moral crime.

“Shame on you, Arab brothers,” the newspaper Tishreen said in a report published on Monday. It denounced “this theft that the sheikdom of Qatar and other collaborator, treacherous, backward Arab regimes have committed.”

“The league has handed Syria’s stolen seat to bandits and thugs,” Syrian government daily al-Thawra wrote.

“They have forgotten that it is the people who grant the powers and not the emirs of obscurantism and sand,” it added.

A Syrian state television also said, “Qatar wants to bypass the rules of the Arab League by giving the seat of a founding member of the league to a coalition that obeys only the money and fuel of the [Persian] Gulf and submits to American dictates.”

The Syria crisis began in March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of soldiers and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.

The Syrian government says that the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants are foreign nationals.