Syria's Partnership With Evil No Surprise to the Informed …

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 27, 2003

Byline: Yedidya Atlas, SPECIAL TO INSIGHT

Many commentators seem surprised at the Bush administration's harsh allegations of Syrian cooperation with Iraq against the United States. They shouldn't be. Syria has a long history of anti-American activity, and the Assad regime is hardly out of character by siding with Saddam Hussein.

Four months after Bashar Assad succeeded his deceased father, Syria began importing an estimated 200,000 barrels of Iraqi oil per day in violation of U.N. sanctions, thus earning Damascus about $1.5 billion last year. Then Syria increased support for terrorist groups: Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) General Command /Jibril, the PFLP/Habash, the Democratic Front for Liberation of Palestine/Hawatmeh, the Palestine Liberation Front, the Fatah Revolutionary Council/Abu Nidal, Fatah/Abu Mussa and an extremist faction of the Popular Struggle Front, as well as the PKK (a Kurdish terrorist group), Japanese Red Army and others.

This Syrian patronage allows the terrorist organizations to find refuge on Syrian or Syrian-controlled Lebanese territory. They can organize training, develop a logistical infrastructure (weapons, storehouses, communications, false documentation, financing, etc.) and take advantage of the political and propaganda cover of official Syrian bodies. They can travel freely between Syria, Lebanon and Iran, and between Syria, Lebanon and other Arab states; they can travel to and from Europe and even to the United States.

Yet, in spite of Syria's continuing sponsorship of terrorism, its occupation of Lebanon, its violation of U.N. sanctions on Iraq and, according to a recently declassified CIA report, its continuing development of an offensive chemical- and biological-weapons capability, the Bush administration not only failed to label Syria a "rogue state" or include it in the so-called "axis of evil," but falsely characterized Syria as an ally in the war against al-Qaeda.

According to an April 16 report in the Los Angeles Times, "Syria has functioned as a hub for an al-Qaeda network that moved Islamic extremists and funds from Italy to northeastern Iraq,'' where they fought alongside the Ansar al-Islam terrorist group eradicated by U.S. and Kurdish forces in March.

Add to this mix the similarities between the Assad and Hussein regimes. Both have been ruled by rival branches of the same secular Arab nationalist Ba'ath Party; both have used Pan-Arab ideology to mask the violent political domination of a minority sectarian group (Sunni Muslims constitute 20 percent of Iraq, whereas the Alawite subsect makes up 12 percent of the Syrian population and controls the military and police institutions); and both have achieved regional domination by slaughtering tens of thousands of their own citizens and by developing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). The last thing Assad needs is the rise of a democratic, stable government next door. It might give the average Syrian the right idea.

Saddam Hussein used the Syrian conduit, among others, to assure the flow of dual-use equipment for his WMD programs and rearm his military. Assad's flow of arms to Iraq even increased as U.S. troops were deployed in the Persian Gulf. Arms and spare parts from former Soviet-bloc countries arrived in Syrian ports and were transported overland to Iraq.

Assad's regime has acquired Iraq's solid-fuel experts, which will enable Syria to develop technology to increase the range of its missile arsenal. According to intelligence sources, at least seven Iraqi scientists from Saddam's solid-fuel-research program have taken up residence in the Syrian town of Hamat, reportedly the site of a new Syrian missile-research facility.

But that's not all. Syria has provided a wholesale bolt-hole for Iraqi officials and Saddam's relatives. On April 6, U.S. forces fired on a Russian diplomatic convoy en route to Syria from Baghdad apparently carrying Iraqi officials. Besides leading Arab diplomatic opposition to U.S. demands before the war, Syria's chief government-appointed cleric issued a fatwa (religious ruling) calling on Muslims to carry out suicide operations to defend Iraq. In early March, Iraqi intelligence opened a training camp for Arab "martyrs'' near al-Khalis, 40 miles north of Baghdad. During the next few weeks, Syrian-sponsored terrorist groups mobilized volunteers in Syria and Syrian-occupied Lebanon (including Fatah, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad). On April 12, U.S. forces discovered some 300 related suicide vests filled with C-4 explosives and detonators inside an Iraqi school. It is thought 80 more vests had been moved from the site and likely are in the hands of non-Iraqi suicide bombers.

These and other "volunteer" troops arrived in Damascus, where convoys brought them and weapons overland to Iraq. In southern Iraq, Syrian-sponsored "volunteers" driving pickup trucks with Kornet antitank missiles mounted in the back knocked out two U.S. tanks during the first week of the war. Even more critical were intelligence reports that Syria had provided the Iraqis with night-vision equipment.