A Syrian rebel fighter fires his AK-47 rifle towards a Syrian army helicopter in Aleppo’s Hanano district Photo: AFP/GETTY
By
Richard Spencer, Aleppo
8:48PM BST 12 Aug 2012
Abdulqadr Saleh al-Hajji, who goes by the nom de guerre Hajji Mari, told The
Daily Telegraph it was clear that his men were outnumbered, outgunned
and bombed from the air.
Derisively pointing his walky-talky to the sky, he said: “Tell your Mr
Hague I am fighting the enemy like this!
“We asked the United Nations to help us, but Mr Hague after all this
bombing in the city said he would send us ‘communication devices’. What use
can they be against bombing? It’s like coming up to a man who is dying and
offering him sunglasses. He will have sunglasses but he will still die.”
The Foreign Secretary announced on Friday that the aid would be directed to
rebel fighters for the first time. It would fund provisions of communication
equipment and medical supplies to help defend Syrians from the onslaught by
President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
Hajji Mari, who leads the Liwa al-Tawhid, or Brigade of Unity, that controls
at least half of Aleppo said he needed ammunition. “Anyway, I will go
on all the television channels of the world to thank William Hague for
sending us communication devices.”
As he spoke, his small red Nokia mobile phone rang. “I will give this to
Mr Hague in exchange,” he said.
Hajji Mari, 32, but older-looking than his years, was a seed merchant in the
market town of Mari just outside Aleppo until the uprising began, when he
formed the Brigade of Unity with the leaders of neighbouring towns’ rebel
militias. Their decision to launch a lightning raid on Aleppo was not
supported by the internationally recognised Free Syria Army and the
subsequent fighting has exposed the FSA’s failure to supply weapons.
Abdulaziz al-Salameh, who formed the brigade with Hajji Mari, said it had
received just two shipments of weapons since it began operations – one of
300 rifles with ammunition and 700 rocket- propelled grenades and one of
3,000 hand grenades.
He said lack of ammunition was the single biggest obstacle to the rebel cause. “Give
us bullets and we will take Syria,” Mr Salameh said.
The West has repeatedly refused to countenance military intervention in Syria
and would struggle to gain the authorisation of the United Nations Security
Council.
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, and the Turkish foreign minister
Ahmet Davutoglu, used a meeting in Turkey on Saturday to raise the threat of
a no-fly zone. But Mrs Clinton added: “It is one thing to talk about
all kinds of potential actions, but you cannot make reasoned decisions
without doing intense analysis and operational planning.”
Rebels on the ground are convinced that the US, France and Britain could and
should declare a no-fly zone unilaterally to prevent aerial attacks and turn
against the regime as happened in Libya last year. “The conscience of
the world is dead,” said Ahmed Amdani, a shopkeeper attending the
funeral of a Unity Brigade fighter in the town of Tal Rifaat.
“This is something people here will never forgive. We are not terrorists,
we are just defending ourselves, and we need something from the air to stop
these Russian jets.”
Like many other Syrians, he claimed that the West intervened in Libya and not
in Syria because Libya had oil.
Despite Hajji Mari’s bravado, there is a mixture of pride and desperation in
the air at his headquarters. A box of ready-prepared Molotov cocktails lies
by the door, for when the rocket-propelled grenades to destroy regime tanks
run out.
Al-Watan, a pro-regime newspaper, said government forces were advancing
against the opposition in Aleppo and would expand their operations into
Sukari neighbourhood in the south of the city, after its recapture of the
nearby Salaheddin.
Source
