US Forces Have Engaged Syrians

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US Forces Have Engaged Syrians

Sat, 15 Oct 2005 06:30:01 -0700

 

 

 

 

GI's and Syrians in Tense Clashes on Iraqi Border

By James Risen and David E. Sanger

The New York Times

 

Saturdy 15 October 2005

 

Washington, Oct. 14 - A series of clashes in the last year between

American and Syrian troops, including a prolonged firefight this

summer that killed several Syrians, has raised the prospect that

cross-border military operations may become a dangerous new front in

the Iraq war, according to current and former military and government

officials.

 

The firefight, between Army Rangers and Syrian troops along the

border with Iraq, was the most serious of the conflicts with President

Bashar al-Assad's forces, according to American and Syrian officials.

 

It illustrated the dangers facing American troops as Washington

tries to apply more political and military pressure on a country that

President Bush last week labeled one of the " allies of convenience "

with Islamic extremists. He also named Iran.

 

One of Mr. Bush's most senior aides, who declined to be identified

because of the sensitivity of the subject, said that so far American

military forces in Iraq had moved right up to the border to cut off

the entry of insurgents, but he insisted that they had refrained from

going over it.

 

But other officials, who say they got their information in the

field or by talking to Special Operations commanders, say that as

American efforts to cut off the flow of fighters have intensified, the

operations have spilled over the border - sometimes by accident,

sometimes by design.

 

Some current and former officials add that the United States

military is considering plans to conduct special operations inside

Syria, using small covert teams for cross-border intelligence gathering.

 

The broadening military effort along the border has intensified as

the Iraqi constitutional referendum scheduled for Saturday approaches,

and as frustration mounts in the Bush administration and among senior

American commanders over their inability to prevent foreign radical

Islamists from engaging in suicide bombings and other deadly terrorist

acts inside Iraq.

 

Increasingly, officials say, Syria is to the Iraq war what

Cambodia was in the Vietnam War: a sanctuary for fighters, money and

supplies to flow over the border and, ultimately, a place for a shadow

struggle.

 

Covert military operations are among the most closely held of

secrets, and planning for them is extremely delicate politically as

well, so none of those who discussed the subject would allow

themselves to be identified. They included military officers, civilian

officials and people who are otherwise actively involved in military

operations or have close ties to Special Operations forces.

 

In the summer firefight, several Syrian soldiers were killed,

leading to a protest from the Syrian government to the United States

Embassy in Damascus, according to American and Syrian officials.

 

A military official who spoke with some of the Rangers who took

part in the incident said they had described it as an intense

firefight, although it could not be learned whether there had been any

American casualties. Nor could the exact location of the clash, along

the porous and poorly marked border, be learned.

 

In a meeting at the White House on Oct. 1, senior aides to Mr.

Bush considered a variety of options for further actions against

Syria, apparently including special operations along with other

methods for putting pressure on Mr. Assad in coming weeks.

 

American officials say Mr. Bush has not yet signed off on a

specific strategy and has no current plan to try to oust Mr. Assad,

partly for fear of who might take over. The United States is not

planning large-scale military operations inside Syria and the

president has not authorized any covert action programs to topple the

Assad government, several officials said.

 

" There is no finding on Syria, " said one senior official, using

the term for presidential approval of a covert action program.

 

" We've got our hands full in the neighborhood, " added a senior

official involved in the discussion.

 

Some other current and former officials suggest that there already

have been initial intelligence gathering operations by small

clandestine Special Operations units inside Syria. Several senior

administration officials said such special operations had not yet been

conducted, although they did not dispute the notion that they were

under consideration.

 

Whether they have already occurred or are still being planned, the

goal of such operations is limited to singling out insurgents passing

through Syria and do not appear to amount to an organized effort to

punish or topple the Syrian government.

 

According to people who have spoken with Special Operations

commanders, teams like the Army's Delta Force are well suited for

reconnaissance and intelligence gathering inside Syria. They could

identify and disrupt the lines of communications, sanctuaries and

gathering points used by foreign Arab fighters and Islamist extremists

seeking to wage war against American troops in Iraq.

 

What the administration calls Syria's acquiescence in insurgent

operations organized and carried out from its territory is a major

factor driving the White House as it conducts what seems to be a major

reassessment of its Syria policy.

 

The withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon earlier this year in

the wake of the assassination in February of Rafik Hariri, the former

Lebanese prime minister, in Beirut led to a renewed debate in the

White House about whether - and how - to push for change in Damascus.

 

With no clear or acceptable alternative to Mr. Assad's government

on the horizon, the administration now seems to be awaiting the

outcome of an international investigation of the Hariri assassination,

which may lead to charges against senior Syrian officials.

 

Detlev Mehlis, the German prosecutor in charge of the United

Nations investigation of the killing, is expected to complete a report

on his findings this month.

 

If Mr. Mehlis reports that senior Syrian officials are implicated

in the Hariri assassination, some Bush administration officials say

that could weaken the Assad government.

 

" I think the administration is looking at the Mehlis investigation

as possibly providing a kind of slow-motion regime change, " said one

former United States official familiar with Syria policy. The death -

Syrian officials called it a suicide - on Wednesday of Interior

Minister Ghazi Kanaan of Syria, who was questioned in connection with

the United Nations investigation, may have been an indication of the

intense pressure building on the Assad government from that inquiry.

 

Zalmay Khalilzad, the United States ambassador to Iraq, issued one

of the administration's most explicit public challenges to Damascus

recently when he said that " our patience is running out with Syria. "

 

" Syria has to decide what price it's willing to pay in making Iraq

success difficult, " he said on Sept. 12. " And time is running out for

Damascus to decide on this issue. "

 

Some hawks in the administration make little secret of their hope

that mounting political and military pressure will lead to Mr. Assad's

fall, despite their worries about who might succeed him. Other

American officials seem to believe that by taking modest military

steps against his country, they will so intimidate Mr. Assad that he

will alter his behavior and prevent Syrian territory from being used

as a sanctuary for the Iraqi insurgency and its leadership.

 

" Our policy is to get Syria to change its behavior, " said a senior

administration official. " It has failed to change its behavior with

regard to the border with Iraq, with regard to its relationships with

rejectionist Palestinian groups, and it has only reluctantly gotten

the message on Lebanon. "

 

The official added: " We have had people for years sending them

messages telling them to change their behavior. And they don't seem to

recognize the seriousness of those messages. The hope is that Syria

gets the message. "

 

There are some indications that this strategy, described as

" rattling the cage, " may be working. Some current and former

administration officials say that the flow of foreign fighters has

already diminished because Mr. Assad has started to restrict their

movement through Syria.

 

But while he appears to be curbing the number of foreign Arab

fighters moving through Syria, the American officials say he has not

yet restricted former senior members of Saddam Hussein's government

from using Syria as a haven from which to provide money and

coordination to the Sunni-based insurgency in Iraq.

 

" You see small tactical changes, which they don't announce, so

they are not on the hook for permanent changes, " a senior official

said about Syria's response. " They are doing just enough to reduce the

pressure in hopes we won't pay attention, and then they slide back again. "

 

In an interview with CNN this week, Mr. Assad denied that there

were any insurgent sanctuaries inside Syria. " There is no such safe

haven or camp, " he insisted.

 

In this tense period of give and take between Washington and

Damascus, the firefight this summer was clearly a critical event. It

came at a time when the American military in Iraq was mounting a

series of major offensives in the Euphrates Valley near the Syrian

border to choke off the routes that foreign fighters have used to get

into Iraq.

 

The Americans and Iraqis have been fortifying that side of the

border and increasing patrols, raising the possibility of firing

across the unmarked border and of crossing it in " hot pursuit. "

 

From time to time there have been reports of clashes, usually

characterized as incidental friction between American and Syrian

forces. There have been some quiet attempts to work out ways to avoid

that, but formal agreements have been elusive in an atmosphere of

mutual mistrust.

 

Some current and former United States military and intelligence

officials who said they believed that Americans were already secretly

penetrating Syrian territory question what they see as the Bush

administration's excessive focus on the threat posed by foreign Arab

fighters going through Syria. They say the vast majority of insurgents

battling American forces are Iraqis, not foreign jihadis.

 

According to a new study by the Center for Strategic and

International Studies, intelligence analysis and the pattern of

detentions in Iraq show that the number of foreign fighters represents

" well below 10 percent, and may well be closer to 4 percent to 6

percent " of the total makeup of the insurgency.

 

One former United States official with access to recent

intelligence on the insurgency added that American intelligence

reports had concluded that 95 percent of the insurgents were Iraqi.

 

This former intelligence official said that in conversations with

several midcareer American military officers who had recently served

in Iraq, they had privately complained to him that senior commanders

in Iraq seemed fixated on the issue of foreign fighters, despite the

evidence that they represented a small portion of the insurgency.

 

" They think that the senior commanders are obsessed with the

foreign fighters because that's an easier issue to deal with, " the

former intelligence official said. " It's easier to blame foreign

fighters instead of developing new counterinsurgency strategies. "

 

Top Pentagon officials and senior commanders have said that while

the number of foreign fighters is small, they are still responsible

for most of the suicide bombings in Iraq. Gen. John P. Abizaid,

commander of United States Central Command, said on Oct. 2 on the NBC

News program " Meet the Press " that he recognized the need to avoid

" hyping the foreign fighter problem. "

 

But he cautioned that " the foreign fighters generally tend to be

people that believe in the ideology of Al Qaeda and their associated

movements, and they tend to be suicide bombers. "

 

" So while the foreign fighters certainly aren't large in number, "

he said, " they are deadly in their application. "

 

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Fri, 14 Oct 2005 21:20:26 -0700

Bush told Blair of 'going beyond Iraq' -- on list, Saudi Arabia

 

 

 

 

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,11538,1592808,00.html

 

Bush told Blair of 'going beyond Iraq'

 

Richard Norton-Taylor

Saturday October 15, 2005

The Guardian

 

George Bush told Tony Blair shortly before the invasion of Iraq that he

intended to target other countries, including Saudi Arabia, which, he

implied, planned to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

 

Mr Bush said he " wanted to go beyond Iraq in dealing with WMD

proliferation, mentioning in particular Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea,

and Pakistan, " according to a note of a telephone conversation between

the two men on January 30 2003.

 

The note is quoted in the US edition, published next week, of Lawless

World, America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules, by the

British international lawyer Philippe Sands. The memo was drawn up by

one of the prime minister's foreign policy advisers in Downing Street

and passed to the Foreign Office, according to Mr Sands.

 

It is not surprising that Mr Bush referred to Iran and North Korea, or

even Pakistan - at the time suspected of spreading nuclear know-how, but

now one of America's closest allies in the " war on terror " . What is

significant is the mention of Saudi Arabia.

 

In Washington, the neo-cons in particular were hostile to the Saudi

royal family and did not think they were doing enough to quell Islamist

extremists - 15 of the 19 September 11 attackers were Saudis. But the

Bush administration did not in public express concern about any Saudi

nuclear ambitions.

 

In September 2003, the Guardian reported that Saudi Arabia had embarked

on a strategic review that included acquiring nuclear weapons. Until

then, the assumption in Washington was that Saudi Arabia was content to

remain under the US nuclear umbrella despite the worsening relationship

between Riyadh and Washington.

 

It is not clear how Mr Blair responded to Mr Bush's remarks during the

telephone conversation, which took place on the eve of a trip to

Washington for talks with the US president.

 

In his book, Blair's Wars, John Kampfner says that at the meeting the

two leaders " agreed to concentrate not just on Iraq ... but also the

Middle East " . But that was taken to be a reference to Palestine. Mr

Blair wanted Mr Bush to express concern about the plight of the

Palestinians to appease the Labour party.

 

Mr Blair at the time was careful to avoid any suggestion that the Bush

administration intended to target other countries after the invasion of

Iraq. However, for the first time he suggested there were links between

Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.

 

After the invasion, Washington adopted a calmer approach towards Iran,

leaving it to Britain, France, and Germany to pursue a diplomatic course.

 

Despite hard evidence that Pakistan was deeply involved in exporting

nuclear technology, the Bush administration embraced President Pervez

Musharraf as an ally against al-Qaida. Washington's relations with Saudi

Arabia remain cool. Mr Sands does not shed further light on the issue.

 

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