The Middle-East weapons trade is possibly even more confusing than the politics.
Possibly my favourite tidbit is that the Russians are actually directly arming the Syrian rebels, even though they're there to bomb them.
From what I've understood they mostly supposedly arm the Syriacs, who are part of the Eastern Christianity same as Russia, so that makes marginal sense. You know, protecting the Christians from ISIS. Even though obviously they also bomb the Syriac Christians because they're anti-government rebels. But then sometimes the Russians might also just hand over those arms to the Kurds "for distribution". (As reported by some reporters.) Whether that is approved in Moscow is anyone's guess. Maybe they've been bribed by the Kurds, or maybe they just like the Kurds 'cause they get s*** done. Or maybe they arm the Kurds so they can fight the Turkish who are an ally of US.
The end result is that every keeps getting more weapons, but also pretty much everyone gets them irregurarly and from different sources just so things stay hard to follow.
I'm sure someone could design some crazy board game around this.
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