Bush's Unauthorized Attack on Syria Killed Civilians; Dems Silent

By Stephen Zunes, AlterNet. Posted November 10, 2008.

A raid by U.S. forces into Syria last month was not only a major breach of international law, but has resulted in serious diplomatic repercussions which will likely harm U.S. strategic interests in the region. On October 25, four U.S. Army helicopters entered Syrian airspace from Iraq, firing upon laborers at the Sukkariyeh Farm near the town of Abu Kamal; two of the helicopters landed and eight commandoes reportedly stormed a building. By the time it was over, eight people had been killed, at least seven of whom were civilians, including three children.

It is believed to be the first time the United States has ever engaged in ground combat operations in Syria. And, though Congress did not authorize any operations against that country, there appears to be virtually no opposition in the Democrat-controlled Congress to President George W. Bush unilaterally deciding to attack Syria, even when the casualties appear to have been almost exclusively innocent civilians.

Claim of Counter-Terrorism

The apparent target of the raid, who was the sole non-civilian casualty (though no evidence of finding his body has been publicly reported), was Abu Ghadiya, whom the United States has accused of helping to smuggle foreign fighters into Iraq for the an extremist Salafi Sunni group known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). There appears to have been no effort by the Bush administration, however, to ask the Syrian government to either arrest Abu Ghadiya or extradite him.

An administration official told The Washington Post, "You have to clean up the global threat that is in your backyard, and if you won't do that, we are left with no choice but to take these matters into our hands." In reality, there was no indication that Abu Ghadiya had any relationship with the branch of Al-Qaeda headed by Osama bin Laden which does have a global reach. (Many analysts see AQI as simply an Iraqi-led group that simply appropriated the name.) Furthermore, the Syrians have been quite aggressive in tracking down suspected al-Qaeda cells that did.

For example, former CIA director George Tenet had praised Syria for providing the United States with intelligence dossiers on al-Qaeda in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and had called for increased intelligence cooperation with the Syrian regime. In one example, intelligence provided by Syria helped thwart a potentially devastaing attack on the headquarters of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain.

Syria's secular government, which has itself been the target of the very kind of hard-line Salafi Sunni terrorists the U.S. claims they were targeting, would have little motivation to knowingly allow someone like that to operate within their territory. Nor would they want to facilitate the growth of such dangerous groups destabilizing their neighbor Iraq. Indeed, a recent National Intelligence Estimate noted how Syria had "cracked down on some Sunni extremist groups attempting to infiltrate fighters into Iraq through Syria because of threats they pose to Syrian stability."

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem just completed a visit to Great Britain, where he and British foreign minister David Miliband issued a joint statement declaring that "tackling al-Qaeda and groups inspired by it was a high priority" and that the two governments had "agreed to work more closely together to tackle this threat."

Syria is among a small minority of Arab countries which have formally recognized the Iraqi government, which also raises questions as to why they would seek to destabilize it. Furthermore, Syria's closest regional ally is the Shia government of Iran, which served as the exiled base for the major Shia parties which currently control the Iraqi government and which have been a target of hard-line Sunni groups like AQI, which are fanatically anti-Iranian and see Shiism as apostasy.

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Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco and serves as a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus.

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