Thanks to Tom Watson for helping to bring this to the world’s attention. He had this bad translation of an article about Croatia arming Syrian rebels up on his site. A friend of mine is Croatian, and she voluntarily re-translated his Google translation because, well, you know how those can be. I’ve been traveling in Turkey so it’s been generally tough to post, but I don’t want this to get stale. I’ll probably link it or post in comments on his site later.
Zagreb became an international center for arms shipments to the Syrian rebels
In the period from the beginning of November last year [2012] until February of this year [2013], a total of 75 civilian cargo planes took off from the Zagreb airport, carrying weapons to Syrian rebels, diplomatic sources told Jutarnji list. The planes were carrying, aside from Croatian weapons, weapons supplied by other European countries, the collection of which was organized by the United States.
According to our sources, the first two to three shipments had been carried out by a Turkish airline, Turkish Cargo, owned by Turkish Airlines, [the subsequent shipments] were then taken over by a Jordanian company, Jordanian International Air Cargo.
Until recently, it was believed—and The New York Times reported– that a Croatian high official had been negotiating, with his U.S. colleagues, to transport Croatia’s excess weapons and arms to the Syrian rebels. However, according to reliable diplomatic sources, the arming of Syrian rebels was part of a much broader plan.
[According to the same sources], the American officials enlisted their partners – Croatia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey, in the operation of arming the resistance of the Syrian regime. The United States organized the collection of arms, Saudi Arabia was financing it, and Jordan and Turkey were transporting arms from the Jordanian territory into Syria.
Croatia’s role was twofold. It collected the excess of its own weapons—M79 grenade launchers, RPG-22 grenade launchers, RBG-6 multiple grenade launchers and M-60 no-recoil canons– from [Croatian] army warehouses. An unknown quantity of those arms left from Zagreb airport Pleso for Syria, in Turkish A310 aircraft, in early November of last year. However, the United States also organized transport of arms to the Zagreb airport Pleso from several other European countries—Great Britain among them—which was then transported in Jordanian International Cargo planes first to Jordan and then to Syria.
We could say that Zagreb airport Pleso served as an international hub for transport of arms to Syrian rebels. The aircraft used for this transport were A310 and Iljušin 76MF, which leads us to conclude that the 75 flights transported about 3000 tons of various types of weapons and ammunition.
YouTube videos confirm that weapons are being delivered to the Syrian rebels in great quantities. In the videos, rebels show off the new types of weapons they now possess. According to Western media, the transport of those weapons [to Syria] was organized by the United States and Turkey.
Our sources claim that the security of the whole operation of weapons transport from Zagreb’s Pleso became compromised when the air traffic control of Bosnia and Herzegovina started inquiring about the sudden increase of Jordanian airline’s flights from Zagreb. The sudden increase in frequency of incoming Jordanian cargo planes did not go unnoticed in Pleso either. According to our sources, it is unknown how many of the weapons that were shipped ended up in the hands of the Free Syrian Army, backed by the West, and how many in the hands of various militant jihadist movements. According to some estimates, there are several dozen militant jihadist groups also fighting the Syrian regime.
Judging by the videos recently posted on YouTube, a portion of the arms, believed to have originated in Croatian army warehouses, ended up in the hands of the jihadist movement Ahram al-Sham. This was confirmed by their spokesperson when he said that they [Ahram al-Sham] share their weapons with the Free Syrian Army.
According to some information, the weapons that arrived to Syria through Zagreb, ended up in the hands of the Martyrs of Yarmouk, who, two days ago, kidnapped 20 Filipino members of the U.S. peacekeeping force in Golan Heights. The fact that weapons might end up in the hands of militant groups is what frightens Western politicians the most; which is why the majority of the countries insists that the weapons embargo on Syria remain in force. Croatia supported that embargo; and formally it never broke it by engaging in this operation, because it sold the weapons to Jordan.
Croatia proved itself a reliable partner of the U.S. in this whole story. Washington played a crucial role in Croatia’s accession, first to NATO, and now to the European Union. Furthermore, the U.S. Department of Defense has been greatly aiding the Croatian Army in Afghanistan and securing free transport of our soldiers to the ISAF mission. Therefore, it is perfectly clear that Croatia, as a faithful ally, accepted the American request to participate in the operation of weapons transport to Syria.
Art of Olive Green 