U.S. Weaponry Is Turning Syria Into Proxy War With Russia - The New York Times
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/world/middleeast/syria-russia-airstrikes.html?smid=tw-nytimesworld&smtyp=cur&_r=1
“By bombing us, Russia is bombing the 13 ‘Friends of Syria’ countries,” he said, referring to the group of the United States and its allies that called for the ouster of Mr. Assad after his crackdown on political protests in 2011.
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The C.I.A. program that delivered the TOWs (an acronym for tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided missiles) is separate from — and significantly larger than — the failed $500 million Pentagon program that was canceled last week after it trained only a handful of fighters. That was unsuccessful largely because few recruits would agree to its goal of fighting only the militant Islamic State and not Mr. Assad.
Rebel commanders scoffed when asked about reports of the delivery of 500 TOWs from Saudi Arabia, saying it was an insignificant number compared with what is available. Saudi Arabia in 2013 ordered more than 13,000 of them. Given that American weapons contracts require disclosure of the “end user,” insurgents said they were being delivered with Washington’s approval.
Equally graphic videos of new Russian firepower have been posted by pro-government fighters and journalists embedded with them.
Russian attack helicopters swoop low over fields, seemingly close enough to touch, then veer upward to unleash barrages of rockets, flares and heavy machine-gun fire. Explosions pepper distant villages, with smoke rising over clusters of houses as narrators declare progress against “terrorists.”
They appear to be using techniques honed in Afghanistan, where the occupying Soviet Army fought insurgents who were eventually supplied with antiaircraft missiles by the United States. Some of those insurgents later began Al Qaeda.