Armed groups in Syria have several hundred portable anti-aircraft missiles that could easily be diverted to extremists and used to destroy commercial planes, according to a new report by an international arms research group that cites the risk of the missiles being smuggled out of Syria by terrorists.
The report was released a few hours after the Federal Aviation Administration issued a notice to US airlines banning all flights in Syrian airspace. The agency said armed extremists in Syria were “known to be equipped with a variety of anti-aircraft weapons that have the capability to threaten civilian aircraft”.
The agency had previously warned against flights over Syria but had not prohibited them.
Most American and other commercial airlines already have halted flights over and into Syria during the past three years of conflict between the Assad government and insurgents. Citing the threat of missile strikes, the FAA warned American carriers in May 2013 to avoid Syrian airspace, and on Monday this was stepped up to a total ban.
“Opposition groups have successfully shot down Syrian military aircraft using these anti-aircraft weapon systems during the course of the conflict,” the FAA said in its “notice to airmen”. The agency added that the presence of anti-aircraft weapons creates a “continuing significant potential threat to civil aviation operating in Syrian airspace.”
Russia halted all of its civilian flights to Syria in April after officials in Moscow said a Russian charter plane flying from Egypt into Syrian air space was targeted by two surface-to-air missiles but escaped damage.
Small Arms Survey, a Switzerland-based research organisation that analyses the global flow of weapons, published a report on Tuesday in the wake of Malaysia Airlines flight 17 (MH17) being shot down over Ukraine. The report focuses on launchers and missiles known as “man-portable air defence systems”, or Manpads, which are dangerous to planes flying at lower altitudes, taking off or landing.
The report estimates that several hundred anti-aircraft missile systems are already in rebel arsenals. Mostly Russian and Chinese in origin, the weapons have been seized by Syrian opposition militias from government forces and smuggled in from nations sympathetic to the insurgents, the report says.
The most immediate danger was that anti-aircraft weapons, especially newer and sophisticated models, could easily be diverted to extremist groups operating outside Syria, it said. Porous borders and the presence in Iraq and other neighbouring countries of groups affiliated with al-Qaida and other extremists heightened the danger that anti-aircraft weapons could spread to other trouble spots. “In the hands of trained terrorists with global reach, even a few missiles pose a potentially catastrophic threat to commercial aviation,” wrote Matthew Schroeder, the report’s author. The analysis is based on government and media reports and video footage of anti-aircraft weapons posted online from inside Syria.
The extremist Islamic State group that has overrun much of northern and western Iraq also operates inside Syria. The militants, who have been fired on by US drones and fighter jets, recently posted an online propaganda video showing one fighter appearing to fire an older-model, Russian-made SA-7 missile system.
The destruction of MH17 was a clear signal that civilian aircraft could be exposed to anti-aircraft missiles at both high and low altitudes, Schroeder said. “The shoot-down of flight MH17 underscores the important of reining in the black market trade in all anti-aircraft missiles,” he said.