Trouble on another front
As American and Iraqi forces began their assault against the insurgents in Fallujah last week, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi closed Iraq's borders with Syria and Jordan. In the case of Syria, Allawi's move was hardly surprising. American officials slapped economic sanctions on Damascus earlier this year for its support of terrorism and its refusal to prevent insurgents from crossing into Iraq.
American intelligence reports indicate that many such fighters began crossing into Iraq from Syria after the ouster of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. In the fall of last year, the Coalition Provisional Authority reported receiving information from a source "with direct access to the information" that "a group of Iraqi individuals are inbound from Syria in order to conduct sniper operations against coalition forces in al Fallujah."
For more than a year, Washington has been pressing Syria to seal its border with Iraq. Two months ago, senior American officials delivered that message to President Bashar Assad in Damascus and expressed concern over Syria's longtime support of anti-Israeli terrorist groups. William Burns, a State Department official who was accompanied by Peter Rodman of the Defense Department later said that Assad was told that "Syria should not be used as a platform to undermine Iraqi stability." In an interview, a senior Defense Department official complained that "elements in the Syrian" government "are actively colluding with our enemies." He says that "extremists in Iraq are using Syria as a place to organize and to get support and to flow back and forth across the border, and we believe this is tolerated by the Syrian government. . . . This means they share responsibility for the killing of Americans, and this has to stop."
Imad Moustapha, Syria's ambassador in Washington, called the charges "silly allegations" and said that Syria was not aiding Islamic extremists--"our sworn enemies." He told U.S. News that his country had taken steps to seal its border with Iraq and charged that some U.S. officials don't want a thaw in relations "even if this improvement helps save American lives." Syria, he adds, wants a stable Iraq.
Syria's ties to militant groups have long hindered its dealings with Washington. The State Department's most recent report on global terrorism said that while Syria has not been implicated directly in a terrorist act since 1986, the government continued to support Hamas, the anti-Israeli group, and also permitted "Iran to use Damascus as a transshipment point for resupplying Hezbollah in Lebanon."
"Secret police." Intelligence reports reviewed by U.S. News provide details on the purported movement of foreign fighters across the Syria-Iraq border. A Defense Intelligence Agency task force report, issued on Oct. 1, 2003, describes Syria as "a major point of access" for foreign fighters. "As of Sep 03, Syrian border security authorities at the Syria-Iraqi border," the report said, "allowed a free flow of persons into Iraq without scrutiny in exchange for bribes."
Another report, issued last November, said that a reliable source reported that "former Iraqi secret police are smuggling foreign fighters from Syria to Mosul" in northern Iraq. Separately, Abu Musab Zarqawi, considered the archterrorist operating in Iraq, may have used Syria to move weapons into Iraq. A report from the Iraq Survey Group, assigned to search for weapons of mass destruction, said there were "indications" that Zarqawi "had facilitated the transfer of seven tons of TNT from Syria to Iraq." It also said it had received information that three groups tied to al Qaeda and led by Syrians were laying land mines and conducting mortar attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. "We have seen only modest improvements on the ground," a senior State Department official says in summing up Syria's efforts to stem the flow of insurgents into Iraq. "To use a well-worn phrase, there is a lot left to do." -Edward T. Pound
This story appears in the November 22, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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