Gulf fund’s problems highlight Syria-aid-challenge

‘Issue is how to make sure money gets to the right people’:

US: Two weeks after their bold promise, Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Arab Gulf states have yet to start distributing money from a multimillion-dollar fund designed to prop up Syria's rebels and entice defections from President Bashar Assad's army, Syrian opposition members and international officials say. The cash program was outlined this month at a conference in Istanbul, where representatives of the United States and more than 60 other nations met to strengthen Syria's opposition and increase pressure on the Assad regime.

Hoping to crack Assad's support, Washington and its Arab partners seized on the plan as a path forward even as they disagreed on the idea of giving weapons to badly outgunned Syrian rebels.

But the fund's implementation is already beset by problems - basically, how to get the money there and how to make sure it gets to the right people. There's no way to monitor where the money goes as the country veers toward civil war. Because the rebels hold no territory and struggle even to maintain communications among inside and outside Syria, there is no clear way to deliver the money.

The problems underscore the larger problem to providing aid of any kind to the Syrian rebellion.

The Obama administration recently signed off on $12 million in enhanced communications, medical and other “nonlethal” assistance to the opposition, but it is unclear what goods are making their way into Syria and by what means.

Even the recipients are largely unknown, with American officials themselves saying they are still trying to get to know Syria's armed and political opposition better.

Other Arab and European countries have made similar pledges of aid that Syrians say they haven't seen - five days into a U.N.-brokered cease-fire that was supposed to allow greater humanitarian and other relief to enter the country.

But Assad's government has launched more artillery attacks on opposition strongholds, continuing a year of violent repression that has killed more than 9,000 people and put into doubt international aid hopes.

Associated Press