US arms Syrian Islamists with surface-to-air missiles - World Socialist Web Site
▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/11/23/syri-n23.html
US arms Syrian Islamists with surface-to-air missiles
By Bill Van Auken
23 November 2016
A US-backed Islamist militia in southern Syria has been armed with portable surface-to-air missiles, so-called manpads. These weapons are capable of shooting down Syrian government aircraft as well as Russian warplanes, which have played a prominent role in providing air support to the Syrian army against the Al Qaeda-linked “rebels.”
The group, the Ansar al-Islam Front, exhibited the weapons, SA-7 Strela-2 missiles, in a video it posted on Sunday, claiming that it had “a good number” of them in its possession. The video, produced by a Dubai-based Syrian opposition propaganda network, shows the Islamists un-crating, assembling and testing the manpads.
