US supporting sale of military equipment to Syria
The thaw continues.
The US is supporting a UN transfer of military equipment to Syria. $2 million worth of computers and surveillance equipment is being sent to Damascus. It is for Syrian customs, but it is all being kept very quiet.
It involves a US company, Cisco Systems. The US government gave them a special permit to operate in Syria - breaking the US embargo.
Dig a little deeper and you find out what this is about. America has been complaining that foreign fighters are crossing from Syria to Iraq. Syria has complained that America has gone back on its promise to supply equipment to help them monitor the border.
Recently things have changed. The US second in command in Iraq publicly praised Syria for stemming the flow of militants. And then Syria went to the US peace conference in Annapolis.
The result - America is very very quietly supplying the equipment. It will clearly benefit both countries.
" computers, servers, local and wide area networking equipment, networked surveillance cameras and other high-tech goods,"
Where do you find military equipments??!
Posted by
Unknown |
8:26 am
Couldn't you find a better source than Fox News ya manzoum?
Posted by
Maysaloon |
12:06 pm
no no she's right - these items aren't military in the strict sense, but they are definitely covered under SALSA.
Cisco has been very active here in Lebanon since the 2006 war, in various public sector/private sector partnership. I'm not surprised that the company is expanding its regional involvement, although rather coincidentally I was recently told that Syria's customs agents prefer Macs. Its a PC world, I guess :)
Posted by
adiamondinsunlight |
12:55 pm