War : Saber rattling on the Syrian front

2005-10-15

Richard Moore

    ...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.

    "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."

    Zalmay Khalilzad, the United States ambassador to Iraq, issued
    one of the administration's most explicit public challenges to
    Damascus recently..."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."


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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/15/politics/15syria.html?

October 15, 2005 

G.I.'s and Syrians in Tense Clashes on Iraqi Border 
By JAMES RISEN  and DAVID E. SANGER 

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 mid-career 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."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company 
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