“There’s a number of sources,” says David Axe, a freelance war reporter who knows a lot about weaponry. “ISIS, like all Syrian opposition groups,” he says, “enjoys a strong level of support from Turkey, from Qatar, from Saudi Arabia."
The reason, says Axe, has to do with common interests. "What ISIS wants, to some extent, overlaps with what certain powerful people in some of these Gulf states want, which is, for lack of a better word, a 'Sunni-stan' — a homogenous Sunni Muslim state in what is now Syria and Iraq.” Turkey, he adds, wants to see Syria's president out of power.
Officially, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia deny that their citizens support ISIS in any way. Qatar and Saudi Arabia even point to laws they have passed that make it difficult for individuals to send aid to militants. However, research by the Brookings Institution shows their enforcement of such laws and policies has been mixed.
Money from the Gulf is used to acquire weapons on the black market, says Axe. He says New York Times reporting last year examined air traffic data and found that planes fly with weapons from the Gulf to Turkey, or sometimes head to third countries like Croatia to pick up weapons first and then to Turkey.
Croatia has a thriving small arms industry, says Axe, with black market ties.From Turkey, the weapons are moved overland into Syria.
