Analysts Question Timing of Syria Raid

By Ali Gharib


	Syrian villagers mourn their relatives killed in the Oct. 27 U.S. raid on Al-Sukkariyah, near the Syria-Iraq border. Eight villagers, including a woman and two teenagers, were killed in the attack, and 20 children orphaned (AFP photo/Ramzi Haidar).

A CROSS-BORDER raid into Syria by U.S. forces in Iraq, and a subsequent stonewalling by U.S. officials unwilling to divulge details, has led to rampant speculation among U.S. analysts about the origins and meaning of the attack.

“So the question is: Why?” wrote geo-strategic analyst and journalist Helena Cobban on her blog, wondering if the raid could have been pulled off without explicit permission from the highest levels of the President George W. Bush administration.

“So why now at the end of the Bush administration, with Washington trying to play nice with Damascus and tensions easing throughout the region, would U.S. forces stage such a gambit?” echoed Borzou Daragahi on the “Babylon and Beyond” blog at the Los Angeles Times Web site.

The questions started to swirl late on the afternoon of Sunday, Oct. 26, when U.S. helicopters allegedly crossed five miles over the desert border between Syria and Iraq. According to reports, eight U.S. soldiers alighted when a helicopter landed, attacking the al-Sukkariyah farm in the Syrian Abu Kamal border area.

The cross-border raid—the first of its kind involving a helicopter attack and U.S. boots on the ground that far into Syrian territory—left eight dead, according to Syrian press reports.

The attack is especially curious since, according to a report in that weekend’s New York Times, Bush appears to have rolled back his initiative to lead troop-driven cross-border attacks—initially approved this summer—by Afghan-based U.S. forces into Pakistani territory.

The raid also comes as Syria is negotiating with Israel, through Turkish mediation, presumably in a calculated effort to alleviate tensions with the West and the U.S. The Bush administration’s take on the Israel-Syria talks has been lukewarm at best.

More immediately for the U.S., the raid could complicate negotiations on a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Iraqi authorities to allow U.S. forces to keep operating in Iraq after the U.N. mandate expires at the end of this year.

The talks on the SOFA have been bogged down, and a persistent Iraqi demand has been that Iraqi soil not be used as a launch pad for attacks on other countries.

“The Iraqi government rejects U.S. aircraft bombarding posts inside Syria,” a government spokesperson, Ali al-Dabbagh, said on the Tuesday after the attack. “The constitution does not allow Iraq to be used as a staging ground to attack neighboring countries.”

The U.S. Department of Defense has repeatedly declined to comment on the Syrian incident, including to a direct request by IPS, but several press reports have quoted unnamed U.S. officials confirming the attack, and saying that it was ordered by the CIA.

One U.S. official anonymously told Agence France-Presse that the strike was aimed at Abu Ghadiya, whom the official called “one of the most prominent foreign fighter facilitators in the region.” The official said he believed the target was killed.

The spokesman for the Syrian Embassy in Washington, Ahmed Salkini, told IPS that the name did not appear on the official Syrian list of those dead.

In retaliation, Syria shut down a U.S. school and cultural center in Damascus, and its U.N. envoy has requested that the Security Council intervene to prevent further incursions into Syrian territory.

Neoconservatives and hawks within the administration have long clamored for expanding Middle Eastern conflicts into Syria, which was named as one of the three countries in Bush’s famous “Axis of Evil.”

Indeed, Bush’s neoconservative deputy national security adviser, Elliott Abrams, told Israeli officials during a high-level meeting that the U.S. would not object if Israel extended its 2006 war with Hezbollah into Syria.

But if the cross-border attack was an attempt by hawks to lure Syria into a war, it appears to have failed; Syria has engaged in a measured and strictly diplomatic response.

“[...T]he Syrians have not responded, and are not about to respond, in any way that is violent or otherwise escalates tensions,” said Cobban, a well-respected commenter and veteran analyst, on her Just World News blog.

“I’ve been studying the behavior of this Ba’athist regime in Syria closely for 34 years now. They have steely nerves. They are just about impossible to ‘provoke,’ at any point that they judge a harsh response is not in their interest,” she wrote.

While foreign fighters from Syria have long been problematic to the U.S. occupation of Iraq, since 2006, U.S. patrols along the border and some Syrian cooperation have dramatically reduced the number of foreign fighters flowing into Iraq.

Last December, the former U.S. commander in Iraq and now the CENTCOM chief, Gen. David Petraeus, said, “Syria has taken steps to reduce the flow of the foreign fighters through its borders with Iraq.”

Petraeus reiterated the notion in October, when he reported that fighters from Syria moving into Iraq have had their monthly total reduced from about 100 to 20.

But on Oct. 23, the commander of U.S. troops in western Iraq, Marine Major John Kelly, said that while there has been progress, it wasn’t enough.

The suspected involvement of some of the most vociferous anti-Syria hawks at the highest levels of the Bush administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney, have combined with U.S. silence on the matter to fuel a guessing game as to just exactly who ordered or approved the Oct. 26 cross-border raid.

“This operation is pretty clearly run by U.S. special operations forces pursuing a terrorist target,” Col. Pat Lang, a retired U.S. military intelligence officer, told IPS. “Their sole mission is like a SWAT team to go around and hunt terrorists.”

Lang said that these special operations forces sometimes operate distinctly outside the normal military chain of command by design of hawkish former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld.

“If left to themselves, they would do this kind of thing [the Syria raid]. That’s what they do,” said Lang. “They don’t follow policy, they carry out their assigned mission.”

Because the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, is dealing with mounting concerns about the SOFA, Lang suspects that he’d be hesitant to directly approve such a bold and provocative attack as that Sunday afternoon’s.

“I haven’t established it yet, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the authority to do this came right out of the White House,” Lang told IPS.

Asked if the decision doesn’t undermine pressing U.S. goals for commanders in Iraq, Lang said that while the considerations are there, they don’t always filter up into decision making in the executive branch.

“Usually command arrangements of various kinds are messy,” Lang said, “and this White House has shown a tendency to want to bypass the established chain of command and influence what’s going on [in the field].”

But in addition to being a bold foreign policy move, the raid has also been interpreted by some as a political stunt, albeit one unlikely to succeed.

Some journalists and experts have speculated that the raid was a Bush administration attempt to deliver an “October Surprise”—a late game-changing development favoring one candidate—for Republican candidate Sen. John McCain just over a week before the presidential election in which he badly trailed Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama in most polls.

McCain had been seen as holding an advantage in issues of national security.

SIDEBAR

The Myth of the Border and the Reality of the Massacre

When Daood and his four sons left their tent the day of Oct. 26 to work on the small house they had recently began constructing in their small village of Al-Sukkariyah near the Iraqi border, they did not know it was a job they would not complete. When Ali, the guard at the site, had lunch with his wife, they were unaware it would be their last meal together. Just after 4 p.m. that day, and in broad daylight, all seven, along with a fisherman, Ahmad, from the same village, were shot in cold blood by American soldiers arriving on four helicopters from Iraq. Over a week later, Ali, his wife, Daood, his four sons, Ahmad, and the more than 20 orphans they left behind had yet to receive an explanation, let alone compensation, from the Bush administration.

Reports from the usual “anonymous sources,” speaking of an al-Qaeda militant targeted in the attack, soon surfaced. Yet pictures of all those killed were immediately released. Was such a “high-level” al-Qaeda operative protected by kids and a woman? And what of the murdered woman, the seven others, including two teenagers, killed, and the 20 orphans? And if this is about a border—one that minimal-resourced Syria is to solely secure—why is the all-powerful U.S. Army not securing it on the Iraq side? No questions asked, no answers provided.

The bottom line is that first, there was no al-Qaeda operative involved. The Americans and Iraqis are aware of the tremendous measures Syria takes to combat these militants, who target Syria and consider it just as much of an enemy. This was merely an allegation geared for American domestic consumption. Second, the Syrian-Iraqi border was never a priority for U.S. troops, who understand that the struggle comes from within Iraq, from Iraqis fighting what they perceive as occupation of their land. This border, and the issue of foreign fighters have always been a mere distraction and diversion to justify violence when all else fails.

While amassing our troops at the Iraqi border helped save American soldiers’ lives, Syria did not do so to comply with American demands, but because of our own national interest. As American and Israeli policies fueled terrorism across our region, Syria was stuck between the hot-bed of religious extremists in northern Lebanon and the post-occupation presence of al-Qaeda in Iraq. As insecurity and instability are characteristically contagious, achieving stability in our neighborhood was a matter of paramount national interest. We also understood that we could benefit economically, financiall, and politically from stable neighbors.

We secured the border for the sake of the Iraqis as well, with whom we share a long history of close family, cultural, linguistic and religious ties. We would not allow anyone seeking to wreak more mayhem and cause more bloodshed in Iraq to come through Syria. But in its latest miscalculated, belligerent act, the U.S. undermined all our efforts aimed at achieving reconciliation and stability in Iraq.

We have tolerated and ignored the baseless, constant American criticism of our efforts on the border for five years. However, we will not stand helpless in the face of such a despicable terrorist and criminal attack against our civilians. If the Bush administration undertook this atrocity to create a side show for the elections, and to help sway voters, its effort appears to have been in vain both at home and in the region where it ostensibly seeks to bring peace and democracy.

—Ahmed Salkini, Press Secretary, Embassy of Syria