Questions of Fact and Policy Surround U.S. Syria Strike

Excellent analysis by Amy Zalman, Ph.D


Questions of Fact and Policy Surround U.S. Syria Strike

Questions of Fact and Policy Surround U.S. Syria Strike
Wednesday October 29, 2008
On Sunday, October 27, four U.S. helicopters carried out an attack on a site just inside the Syrian border with Iraq. According to the Syrian government, the area was a construction site and the attack killed workers, a married couple and one man's four children.

The Syrian government immediately called the attack "terrorist aggression" and called the United States to account for having killed civilians in the attack. On Tuesday, Syria submitted a letter to the United Nations, protesting the violation of its sovereignty. It also closed down an American school and a cultural center (although according to news reports on Wednesday, both are still open).

Who was the Target?
Although the United States has been quiet about the attacks, news reports cite officials who say that the attack killed a member of Al Qaida in Iraq who was about to begin an attack. Since 2003, the border area has served as a corridor for foreign fighters entering Iraq to do battle with the U.S. The number of fighters flowing through has been reduced considerably in the last year, with American and Iraqi effort and increased border patrol.

In other reports, officials said the attack killed Abu Ghadiya, a Syrian national who has led jihadist efforts in Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. According to Al Qaeda, Abu Ghadiya was killed by the U.S. in 2006. The United States says this is not the case, and has built the case that Abu Ghadiya is running a network that smuggles foreign fighters into Iraq. According to the BBC: "Al-Qaeda in Iraq has so far made no comment on the reports of Abu Ghadiya's death, and the US has refused officially to confirm or deny reports that Abu Ghadiya really was the target of the strike."

Was Syrian Intelligence Complicit?
On Tuesday, an article by an intelligence expert in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahranot said that the attack was carried out with the cooperation of Syrian intelligence and that Syrian and U.S. intelligence have been cooperating. The apparent lack of defensive response by Syrian forces has been cited as evidence of its foreknowledge.

Ronen Bergman, author of The Secret War with Iran, makes the claim in the Yediot Ahronoth newspaper, based on briefings with two senior American officials, one of whom he says until recently "held a very high ranking in the Pentagon".

Mr Bergman told Sky News the raid happened after America had lobbied Syria intensely to deal with an al Qaeda group conducting activity on the border.

The Syrians were unwilling to be seen publicly bowing to US pressure to tackle the group, he says, but in the end gave the Americans the green light to do so themselves.

He claims the Syrian government told the Americans: "If you want to do this, do it. We are going to give you a corridor and carte blanche. We will not harm your troops."

Implications: Expanding the Notion of Self Defense
The Syrian strike, coupled with a recent U.S. raid inside Pakistan, suggests high level sanction for U.S. military action on behalf of the 'war on terror.' An article in The New Republic cites "three administration sources" who say that the Bush Administration authorized the military to strike "terrorist safe havens outside of Iraq and Afghanistan." In fact, the U.S. has been considering attacks inside other countries since at least 2005, when it aborted a plan to attack Al Qaida leaders in northern Pakistan.

According to the New York Times, the attack in Syria was more broadly reflective of an "administration... operating under an expansive new definition of self-defense. The policy, officials said, provided a rationale for conventional strikes on militant targets in a sovereign nation without its consent — if that nation were unable or unwilling to halt the threat on its own."

The implications, in the view of journalist Eli Lake, could be extensive:

The new order could pave the way for direct action in Kenya, Mali, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen--all places where the American intelligence believe al Qaeda has a significant presence, but can no longer count on the indigenous security services to act. In the parlance of the Cold War, Petraeus will now have the authority to fight a regional "dirty war."