Jihad Makdissi is the spokesman for Syria’s embassy in London. He appears quite frequently on Arab and European Satellite TV news shows such as the BBC and Aljazeerah.

Here is his latest appearance on BBC Radio today.

Being an avid reader of Syria Comment, Jihad wanted to comment on our last few discussion topics.

Here is an email he sent earlier this morning.

(camille Alexndre Otrakji)

—————————

Dear Camille,

I read attentively your article on the Arab Peace initiative and the possible flipping of peace tracks.

Also I was following the coverage of Syria Comment on the US Raid and Minister Moualem’s visit to London.

I just wanted to share with you (informally) my thoughts on these topics:

On the Arab Peace initiative:

All Israeli leaders negotiated with Syria starting with Shamir, until Olmert (whether directly or indirectly), None of them had a clear vision for peace with Syria or genuine conviction of peace per say, except maybe Rabin, to some extent of course, in light of his famous “deposit” to the Clinton Administration.

Until this moment, the Israelis have no political will to achieve peace with Syria, and Syria has no illusion about that but cannot afford as a country not to respond to any peace initiative.

The Israelis are very good in evading peace requirements whenever they feel that a settlement is eminent, and the most effective evasion would be through blaming their internal politics … early elections, difficulty of digesting several concessions at once … etc.

As for Peres and Barak’s recent statements on the Arab Peace imitative, it is another attempt to bluff and evade Peace. What the Israelis are doing now, unfortunately through the help of some Arab countries, is to produce a second initiative … they are still discussing whether it should be launched as a European initiative or as an Arab one. This new initiative is a replica of the Arab Peace Initiative … minus the right of return of Palestinians.

I refer you to a recent meeting in Oxford City between Israelis, British and other figures from a major Arab country … Immediately after this meeting Bill Rammel, the British Minister in charge of the Middle East at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, flew to Jordan to promote what was discussed in Oxford.

Another meeting on a broader level will be held in NY for the same purpose. All said, that does not mean that Israel is now ready to accept the modified initiative after abolishing the Right of Return. It is only an effective way of playing on time and unfortunately, this time, with the complicity of certain Arab countries.

As for the notion of weakening Syria and its allies simply by reviving the Arab peace initiative, it is not consistent at all because any Pan Arab initiative will not enable any Arab country to negotiate on the Golan on behalf of Syria because comprehensiveness is the broader political umbrella for all tracks and not the substitution.

On Minister Moualem’s Visit to London:

The visit was very successful on both the bilateral level as well as the regional level. Minister Moualem is a man with a strategic vision and Miliband was very impressed and encouraged to engage and explore Moualem’s Approach. Please forgive me if I can’t go into details, but I can tell you before the end of the year there will be a new positive development, and also I can assure you that Syria’s regional role in the region is most appreciated and fully acknowledged.

This American Administration became an embarrassment for all its allies.

On the American Raid:

The Syrian Diplomacy is adopting a gradual response while waiting to get clarifications from the USA and from the Iraqi Government.

So far we have taken the following steps:

Diplomatically, we briefed the accredited ambassadors in Damascus about the details of the aggression. Also we approached the Secretary General of the United Nations and the Security Council and made it clear for them that this sheer violation in international law is a double crime because it was launched by a country which [is] supposed to be a permanent member of the Security Council in charge of maintaining Peace and stability in the world.

Administratively: Syria shut down the American cultural Center in Damascus.

On the popular level: the thousands of people who demonstrated in Damascus wanted to send a double message to the United States and also to others who didn’t condemn the Raid, that these kinds of aggressions will only enhance the national unity and the rallying around our president. More and more Syrians are not differentiating between the terrorist explosion of the 27th of September, and the American Raid against Syrian civilians.

Security wise: Syria made it clear that the security and stability of Syria has a top priority, and that our efforts in counter-terrorism are intended solely to maintain peace and security of Iraq and Iraqis, That is why we are supporting the political process in Iraq in order to help maintain the Arab identity Of Iraq.

Finally let me share with you excerpts of the US Department of Defense definition of hot pursuit as an example just to let people draw their own conclusions on the American schizophrenic behavior:

“Pursuit commenced within the territory, internal waters, the archipelagic waters, the territorial sea, or territorial airspace of the pursuing state and continued without interruption beyond the territory, territorial sea, or airspace. Hot pursuit also exists if pursuit commences within the contiguous or exclusive economic zones or on the continental shelf of the pursuing state, continues without interruption, and is undertaken based on a violation of the rights for the protection of which the zone was established. The right of hot pursuit ceases as soon as the ship or hostile force pursued enters the territory or territorial sea of its own state or of a third state.”

Thank you

Jihad Makdissi

Spokesman of the Syrian Embassy in London

What’s going on with the New York Times ridiculous report on the protest? See the article: “As if on cue…”?. … Things seem to be cooling down in Cham now, after yesterday’s protest.

Frederick Deknatel is right about Graham Bowley’s NYTimes coverage of the Syrian protests. Browley, who must be in New York, dismisses the demonstration as “stage-managed.” I suppose he is trying to suggest that Syrians are not upset by the US incursion and extra-judicial assassination on their territory. Bowley who watched the demo on BBC TV and came to that conclusion. Of course demonstrations in Syria are organized by the government, but to suggest that people are not upset when one has not interviewed anyone there to see if they are angry is well….. not good journalism. Where was the NYTime’s Robert Worth who is based in Lebanon? He is always excellent and does his homework.

Syria Comment’s own Alex gets a shout out in Haaretz, even if Yoav Stern incorrectly associates him with the Syrian government. Alex runs a computer company in Montreal. He has no links to the government in Syria.

Olmert intends to resume indirect talks with Syria
By Barak Ravid and Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondents
31/10/2008

…. Meanwhile, a Syrian commentator living in the West, Camille Alexandre Otrakji, said he believed the proposal raised by President Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to negotiate based on the Arab peace initiative could be dangerous. In a blog on a public affairs Web site focusing on Syria, Otrakji wrote that the initiative could “…probably be another cycle of chaos, violence, war threats followed by a sequence of flipping peace tracks.” Otrakji does not represent the official Syrian position, but his comments are apparently close to that position.

[Landis Analysis] when Syria’s democratic opposition activists need the world’s sympathy and attention, as word of their sentencing comes out, the Bush administration has diverted attention with its attack on Syria. The treatment of democracy activists over the last two years has been lamentable. Most depressingly, the US attack allows the Syrian government to cast its persecution of the opposition as necessary in the face of foreign aggression and national crisis. It reminds Syrians that they could become Iraqis, which the government exploits to round up its opponents and accuse them of “weakening national sentiment”. US military tactics and the terrible conditions in Iraq undermine America’s traditional and worthy call for democratic rights.

RIGHTS: Bush’s “Freedom Agenda” Stumbles in Syria
By Ali Gharib and Zainab Mineeia

WASHINGTON, Oct 31 (IPS) – With media and diplomatic attention focused on the international incident ignited by a U.S. cross-border raid from Iraq into Syrian territory last weekend, the Syrian government quietly handed down 30-month prison terms to a group of democracy activists on Wednesday.

Few took notice, although Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a statement calling for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to immediately overturn the convictions and order the release of prisoners arrested during a crackdown on the Damascus Declaration movement in late 2007 and early 2008.

Forty activists who participated in a Damascus Declaration forum had been detained, although most were later released. In a 20-minute sentencing session, the 12 who were prosecuted and convicted were given stiff prison terms for allegedly attempting to promote gradual political change in the country.

“In a transparent bid to silence its critics, the government is jailing democracy activists for simply attending a meeting,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW. “The trial was a mere cover to legitimise the government’s repression of opposition groups and peaceful critics.”

But the best cover for the Syrian regime may have come from the U.S., Syria expert and Oklahoma University professor Joshua Landis told IPS.

“The world is not concentrating on this; the world is concentrating on America’s violation of Syrian territory,” Landis told IPS, noting that even some of the U.S.’s allies have condemned the raid.

“America would normally be putting out a statement,” he said, “but no one cares about these guys because the world is focused on [the recent raid]. Everyone is focused on this international issue that America created.”

“These 12 democracy promoters are going to disappear into jail because there is chaos at the border. It punctuates the failure of the Freedom Agenda,” Landis added. …

Every Middle Eastern society is so fearful of the chaos and insecurity that could be visited upon them with the collapse of their government that they cling to their dictatorial regimes,” Landis told IPS. “It’s relegitimised dictatorship.”

 

 

I discuss this same problem in this show on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman:

If anyone needs reminding of the sad state of President Bush’s democracy agenda, watch this horrifying video: Iraqi Prostitutes – Syria – YouTube: It is a shame that there are not special forces to protect these women. 

Farrah Hassen writes an excellent backgrounder to US – Syrian relations since 2000. “A bumpy ride for the US over Syria,” in Asia Times. 

Sybella Wilkes, UNHCR’s spokesperson in Syria writes this note:

Dear Joshua,

I’m just back from the Iraqi borders where the poor Palestinians are recovering from heavy rainfall and flooding.  Life is agony on these border camps. They can’t go forwards, they can’t go back. My story should be out later today.

I realize you have other pressing issues on Syria at the moment(!), but I am doing my best to keep the Palestinians on everyone’s radars.

Best wishes,  Sybella

Here is her story:

Flood ordeal for Palestinians stuck on Iraq-Syria border

ABC News has learned, Gen. Devid Petraeus proposed visiting Syria shortly after taking over as the top U.S. commander for the Middle East. The idea was swiftly rejected by Bush administration officials at the White House, State Department and Pentagon.

The idea was swiftly rejected by Bush administration officials at the White House, State Department and the Pentagon.

Petraeus, who becomes the commander of U.S. Central Command (Centcom) Friday, had hoped to meet in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Petraeus proposed the trip, and senior officials objected, before the covert U.S. strike earlier this week on a target inside Syria’s border with Iraq.

Damascus has decided to cut off its diplomatic relations with Iraq in response to a deadly raid carried out by the U.S. on Syrian soil earlier this week, Al-Arabiya reported on Thursday.

In Washington, Syrian diplomats were quoted as saying they were reversing their earlier decision to have a senior U.S. State Department official visit Damascus to advance Syria-Israel peace talks.

US mulling over next move against Syria
Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:16:25 GMT

The US State Department says it is considering a response to Syria after Damascus shut down US schools and a cultural center in the country.

“We will not go into further details of the diplomatic exchange. We’re looking at how to respond,” Wood said.

AP foreign, Thursday October 30 2008

US Charge d’affaires Maura Connelly was summoned Wednesday to the Syrian Foreign Ministry where the chief of protocol “verbally communicated” Syria’s “request that the American cultural center be closed immediately,” Deputy Spokesperson Robert Wood said.

The pressure can be described as a “good cop, bad cop” routine. The bad cop decision to conduct a special forces raid into Syria appears to be rapidly backfiring. Indeed the decision by Washington to offer no public diplomacy has allowed the Syrians, perhaps the least media friendly of all Middle Eastern states, to control the agenda.

…. All we are left with [on the American side] is the comments from unnamed US officials that: “We are taking matters into our own hands”.

Al Jazeera provided the most in-depth coverage, managing to interview local residents of Sukkariyeh as well as obtaining mobile phone footage of the audacious daylight helicopter assault. …

The bigger picture is that the relative success of the surge has led to increased confidence in military action amongst US commanders who believe that having gained the initiative they can afford to be more assertive. Indeed the US press linked the attack to the policy that President Bush assented to earlier this year. This secret directive, for which Congress made an outlay of $300m, promised backing for covert attacks by US forces from Lebanon to Afghanistan.

Politics and peace
By Yossi Alpher Published: October 30, 2008

The Likud and Kadima are running neck-and-neck in early polls. Far behind is Labor’s Ehud Barak, whose peace platform appears to be based on a broader regional approach that embraces the controversial 2002 Arab Peace Initiative spearheaded by the Saudis. Unfortunately for Barak, the Saudis and other moderate Arabs are prepared to do precious little to make good on their initiative until Israel and its Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese neighbors first make peace on their own.

To this list of key actors we must add Olmert himself. By refusing to declare himself unable to continue in office due to his legal difficulties, he remains acting prime minister and leaves Livni out in the cold during her upcoming campaign.

Were he to step aside, she would automatically replace him, with all the advantages this would give her in the campaign. Moreover, by pursuing his own peace initiatives with the Palestinians and Syria despite his lame duck status and abject lack of a mandate, Olmert threatens to become a factor in these elections.

Another key factor in the campaign is the American election. If Barack Obama is elected president, this could influence some middle-of-the-road Israeli voters to pull to the left.

TV station: Syria pulls troops off of Iraqi border

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) – A Syrian television station is reporting that the country is reducing the number of troops on its border with Iraq in response to a deadly U.S. cross-border raid.

Thousands of Syrians have taken to the streets of the capital Damascus to protest against a US raid which killed eight people near the border with Iraq. Riot police were deployed outside the US embassy as the demonstrators, mostly civil servants and students, gathered for the government-backed protest a few kilometres away. The embassy, which was pelted with stones during a protest against US-led air raids on Iraq in 1998, was closed on Thursday due to security concerns. But the situation remained peaceful as the protesters filled the Youssef al-Azmi square and surrounding streets in the al-Maliki neighbourhood, with some Syrians forming circles and performing traditional dances.

…. Mr. Assad in recent months appears to have made a strategic choice to come in from the cold by improving Syria’s relations with Europe, opening diplomatic relations with the new government in Beirut and even flirting with Israel via back-channel peace talks over the Golan Heights. Though the Bush administration remains ideologically opposed to reconciling with Damascus, Syria has made no secret of its hope for better ties with the next administration, particularly if it’s led by Barack Obama.

Such incomplete moves have left Damascus in awkward limbo between a cautious West and its fuming long-time ally, Iran. Analysts in both Syria and the United States say that Syria’s strategic limbo may explain why the U.S. military decided to take action now after five years of complaining about the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq via Syria.

Some suggest that political considerations in the United States may have also been a factor, as the U.S. military may have been trying to set a precedent for action in Syria before the next administration takes over.

“Syria has its hands tied behind its back. It can’t allow its anger to rule this moment,” said Joshua Landis, co-director of the Centre for Peace Studies at the University of Oklahoma and editor of the syriacomment.com website. “In the past, clearly, the [U.S.] military in Iraq would have been very anxious about what Syria could do in retaliation.”

…. For now, the back-channel talks between Syria and Israel remain alive, though frozen while Israel heads into new elections. But Mr. Assad received critical diplomatic support when France, Britain and the European Union spoke out against the U.S. raid. The Iraqi government also condemned the assault, saying its territory should not have been used for an attack against a neighbour.

Mr. Assad likely believes that he only has to outlast Mr. Bush to see his new policy course bear fruit. Few in Syria make any secret of the fact that they’re pining for Jan. 20, 2009, the day the next U.S. president will be sworn in.

“The whole world is waiting for the end of Bush’s presidency,” Prof. Kabalan said. “Syria especially.”

Syria 101 – Youtube

Below I copy the note from a new Fulbrighter in Damascus. I became fascinated with Syria as a Fulbrighter in 1981-82, the year of Hama and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. It is a truly wonderful program that has done more for US-Syria understanding than anything else. I hope it will not fall victim to the latest attack.

Dear Josh Landis,

Just a note from a recently arrived Fulbrighter in Damascus, where things are getting increasingly interesting and unsettling. I read your blog daily here; you probably know having been here that it’s often easier to get news about Syria from sources outside the country than from the media here in Cham. Today we found out, during a break in a’amia class at the American Cultural Center, that the building might be shut down along with the American School. We were not told yet what effect this will have on the Fulbright program. Certainly the Syrian government could cancel our visas if they chose to go that far. That seems far away and hopefully will stay that way.  We all arrived here under strict travel restrictions and plenty of State Department prep talk about the risks of grant study in Syria. The Embassy has said nothing official yet beyond a standard “Warden’s Message” about “maintaing vigilance” and avoiding protests; their hands are tied by Washington, it seems, which is saying nothing. But for how long? I write a blog here and am sending you the link as a lark: 

 http://hiddencities.wordpress.com

Here’s hoping all of us on Fulbright are able to stay in the country and enjoy life and studies here, which are grand except when you read all day about a Special Forces helicopter raid on a farm near the Iraqi border.

Best, Freddy Deknatel

Syria puts US embassy under guard as tens of thousands join protest
Haroon Siddique and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Thursday October 30 2008

Hundreds of Syrian riot police surrounded the US embassy in Damascus today as tens of thousands of protesters gathered nearby to denounce a US raid that killed eight people near the Iraqi border.

The crowds converged on Youssef al-Azmi square, about a mile from the embassy – which has been closed for the day because of security concerns.

Troops wearing helmets and carrying batons and shields took up positions around the embassy and the adjacent US residence building. Two fire engines were also parked nearby.

But there were no signs of violence as protesters formed circles and danced traditional dances

“America the sponsor of destruction and wars,” read one banner, as protesters waved national flags and pictures of President Bashar Assad.

“We will not submit to terrorism,” read another.

Hussam Baayoun, a 20-year-old university student, said the US raid was a “criminal act” and added: “We want the Americans to stop their acts of terrorism in Syria, in Iraq and the rest of the world.”

The Syrian government has demanded a US apology for the attack in the eastern border community, which it says left eight civilians dead, and has threatened to cut off cooperation on Iraqi border security if there are more raids on its territory.

Syrian security around the embassy is usually tight and Americans in the country are generally made to feel welcome but when the US invaded Iraq protesters attacked the embassy.

The American school has also been shut for the day. The Syrian government has ordered the closure of the school, expected within a week, and the immediate closing of the American cultural centre linked to the embassy.

In Washington, state department deputy spokesman Robert Wood said yesterday that the government was considering how to respond to the order to shut the cultural centre and American school and stressed the US expected the Syrian government to “provide adequate security for the buildings”. The US embassy warned its citizens in Syria to be vigilant.

There has been no formal acknowledgment of the raid from Washington, but US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, claimed the raid killed Badran Turki al-Mazidih, a top al-Qaida figure in Iraq who operated a network smuggling fighters into the war-torn country. An Iraqi national, he also goes by the name Abu Ghadiyah.

Washington lists Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism and has operated sanctions since 2004. But in recent months Damascus has been trying to end years of global seclusion. Assad is seen as less hardline than his father, who preceded him as president.

US accusations that Syria is not doing enough to prevent foreign fighters from crossing its borders into Iraq remain a sore point in relations. Syria says it is doing all it can to safeguard its long, porous border

The End of International Law? 
By Robert Dreyfuss in the Nation

A parallel new Bush doctrine is emerging, in the last days of the soon-to-be-ancien regime, and it needs to be strangled in its crib. Like the original Bush doctrine — the one that Sarah Palin couldn’t name, which called for preventive military action against emerging threats — this one also casts international law aside by insisting that the United States has an inherent right to cross international borders in “hot pursuit” of anyone it doesn’t like.

They’re already applying it to Pakistan, and this week Syria was the target. Is Iran next?

Why the West wants Syria to dump all its old friends
By David Blair, 29-Oct – 2008

The West and Israel both want Syria to acquire the habit of spurning allies. The friends they want Mr Assad to shake off are, in ascending order of importance, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Hizbollah and Iran.

In return for dumping all his allies, Mr Assad would get a normal relationship with the West, the lifting of US sanctions and, in the event of a peace agreement with Israel, the return of the Golan Heights. If this happened, the strategic balance of the Middle East would be transformed. At present, Syria forms the crucial supply route linking Hizbollah with its chief paymaster and arms dealer, Iran. Mr Assad’s goodwill also saves Iran from near total diplomatic isolation in the Middle East.

By reaching an accommodation with Syria, the West could gravely weaken both Iran and Hizbollah with a single blow. Hence the importance that Britain attaches to sounding out Mr Assad. As it happens, his wife, Asma, is half-British and the couple met when Mr Assad was a doctor in London.

Even if he was willing to make this extraordinary leap, would Israel hand over the Golan Heights? At present, Israel sees the talks with the Palestinians as a higher priority.

“When you look at the Palestinian issue, there’s a sense of urgency. There’s no sense of urgency with Syria,” said Professor Asher Susser, the head of Middle East Studies at Tel Aviv University. “I don’t see any Israeli government handing over the Golan.”

This would be doubly true if Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party wins Israel’s forthcoming election. If so, this would let Mr Assad off the hook and allow him to continue his eternal game of keeping all doors open and every bridge unburnt.

Jordan’s lower house blasts US over raid into Syria

…”The attack on Syria is an attack on every inch of the Arab world and means that no Arab land is safe from U.S. attacks,” said a statement read by Deputy Najeh Momani. 

The statement was made in a session of parliament, which was designed for Q&A with the government but MPs took the opportunity to condemn the U.S. aggression on Syria, describing it as a terrorist strike. 

The national bloc also criticized the government’s reaction to the event as “disappointing”….

What is Syria Up To?
By Howard Schweber
The Huffington Post, 30 October 2008

….Although there has been no comment from either the White House or the State Department about the most recent raid, officials quoted in several sources say that it reflects the administrations broad interpretation of Article 51 of the U.N. Charter which provides the right of individual or collective self-defense to member states. This is the same provision that Israel has repeatedly cited to justify its own military actions including its attack on Something Mysterious in Syria last September; it has also been used by Turkish troops pursuing Kurdish militants in their sanctuaries in northern Iraq. President Bush hinted at the scope of the theory in his speech to the U.N. this past month: “As sovereign states, we have an obligation to govern responsibly . . . We have an obligation to prevent our territory from being used as a sanctuary for terrorism and proliferation and human trafficking and organized crime.” It is important to note that this is not the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive attack, it is a theory of “self-defense” that according to administration sources justifies attacks on insurgents in other nations if they threaten “the forces, allies, or interests of the United States” according to U.S. officials. The word “interest,” of course, makes the scope of this theory essentially infinite…

Iraq’s Security Agreement Demands Revealed: No US Attacks On Neighbors
By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA
The Huffington Post, 30 October 2008

Iraq wants a security agreement with the U.S. to include a clear ban on U.S. troops using Iraqi territory to attack Iraq’s neighbors, the government spokesman said Wednesday, three days after a dramatic U.S. raid on Syria.

Also Wednesday, the country’s most influential Shiite cleric expressed concerned that Iraqi sovereignty be protected in the pact. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani wields vast influence among the Shiite majority and his explicit opposition could scuttle the deal.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the ban was among four proposed amendments to the draft agreement approved by the Cabinet this week and forwarded to the U.S.

President Bush said Wednesday that the U.S. had received and negotiators were analyzing the Iraqis’ proposed amendments to the so-called Status of Forces Agreement.

“We obviously want to be helpful and constructive without undermining basic principles,” Bush said in the Oval Office during a meeting with Massoud Barzani, the president of the semiautonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. “I remain very open and confident that the SOFA will get passed.”

Al-Dabbagh said the Iraqis want the right to declare the agreement null and void if the U.S. unilaterally attacks one of Iraq’s neighbors.

U.S. troops launched a daring daylight attack Sunday a few miles into Syrian territory against what U.S. officials said was a key figure in al-Qaida’s operation that moves foreign fighters and weapons into Iraq.

A senior U.S. official said the al-Qaida figure, an Iraqi known as Abu Ghadiyah, was killed. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the raid was classified. Syria says eight civilians died and has demanded an apology…

Bush to Highlight Success in War Against Terrorism
By John D. McKinnon
The Wall Street Journal, 29 October 2008

President George W. Bush, riding low in the polls, isn’t doing any out-and-out campaigning for Republicans this week. But he’s still hoping to score a few points with voters on the national-security front.

In a speech scheduled for Thursday, Bush plans to highlight his administration’s success in preventing another terrorist attack in the U.S., making perhaps his strongest claim for credit yet.

“More than seven years have passed without another attack on our soil. This is not an accident,” Bush plans to say, according to an advance text of the speech released by the White House. “Since 9/11, we have gone on the offense against the terrorists abroad – so we do not have to face them here at home. And we are standing with young democracies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond as they seek to replace the hateful ideology of the extremists with an alternative vision of liberty and hope.”

With only five days to go until Election Day, Bush’s speech to a graduating class of FBI agents isn’t likely to garner much attention. Even if it does, the war on terrorism has slipped on many voters’ list of worries, given all the economic and financial problems that have emerged.

Still, it marks a success of sorts for Republicans that the war against terrorism has faded – or at least been overshadowed – so much as an issue. In recent days, a number of conservatives have been pointing to the U.S. success.

In his speech, Bush plans to give the FBI a share of the credit.

“Since 9/11, the Bureau has worked with our partners around the world to disrupt planned terrorist attacks,” he will say, according to the advance text. “Most Americans will never know the full stories of how these attacks were stopped, and how many lives were saved. But we do know this: The men and women of the FBI are working tirelessly to keep our nation safe, and they have earned the thanks of every American.”

Pakistan to US: Stop missile strikes near border
By STEPHEN GRAHAM
AP, 29 October 2008

Pakistan’s government summoned the U.S. ambassador on Wednesday to urge an immediate halt to missile strikes on suspected militant hide-outs near the Afghan border.

Missile strikes have killed at least two senior al-Qaida commanders in Pakistan, putting some pressure on extremist groups accused of planning attacks in Afghanistan — and perhaps terror strikes in the West.

However, a marked uptick in frequency of the missile attacks has badly strained America’s seven-year alliance with Pakistan, where rising violence is exacerbating economic problems gnawing at the nuclear-armed Islamic republic’s stability.

Having called in U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson on Wednesday, “a strong protest was lodged on the continued missile attacks by U.S. drones inside Pakistani territory,” a Foreign Ministry statement said.

The attacks have led to the loss of “precious lives and property” and “undermine public support for the government’s counterterrorism policies,” the statement said.

“It was emphasized that such attacks were a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and should be stopped immediately,” it said.

A U.S. embassy spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

American commanders complain that Pakistani forces have not put enough pressure on militants in its remote and impoverished border regions, an area considered a possible hiding place for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri.

Reflecting that frustration, U.S. military and CIA drones that patrol the frontier region are believed to have carried out at least 15 strikes since mid-August, including one that killed about 20 people at the home of a Taliban commander on Monday.

The United States rarely confirms or denies involvement.

Lawmakers on Monday pass a resolution condemning the attacks and calling on the government to take “more effective measures” to stop them.

The Foreign Ministry said it gave a copy of the resolution to Patterson on Wednesday.

ANALYSIS: Legality of US strike in Syria debatable
By Mike McCarthy
DPA, 29 October 2008

The US raid against a top al-Qaeda operative this week in Syria was the latest effort by the Bush administration to step up pressure on the terrorist network, even by striking in countries without the approval of their governments. Syria strongly protested the helicopter-borne attack on Sunday, 8 kilometres beyond the Iraqi border, where the United States is believed to have killed an al-Qaeda lieutenant responsible for smuggling fighters, weapons and money into Iraq.

The White House has not publicly acknowledged the attack. Damascus says that only civilians were killed.

Syrian outrage after the strike mirrored similar complaints from Islamabad over a series of crossborder raids and strikes by US forces against al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban militants who use the rugged, ungoverned region inside Pakistan near the border as refuge.

Washington appears to be ordering the attacks based on broad legal arguments that the US can act in self-defence to protect US and coalition soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, if neighbouring countries are unwilling or unable to crack down on militants, international law experts say.

“If the state is unable to control what is going on within its territory, then the case can be made that it relinquishes some of its sovereignty to those who can,” Anthony Clark Arend, a professor of international law and diplomacy at Georgetown University in Washington, said in assessing the Bush administration’s legal rationale.

Arend said he frequently disagrees with legal conclusions adopted by the Bush administration, but in the cases of the assaults in Syria and Pakistan, the White House’s position is not “an unreasonable argument.”

“But many legal scholars would say that this is per se illegal unless you can show that the state is supporting or encouraging” the militants.

Washington has long complained that Syria has not taken adequate steps to prevent the flow of militants and potential suicide bombers across its border into Iraq, but Sunday’s attack, the boldest incursion so far by the US military into Syria, came as US generals had observed in the last year a sharp drop in infiltrations…

U.S. Invokes Self-Defense in Syria Raid From Iraq Expansive Definition Rejected By Damascus
The New York Times, 29 October 2008

In seeking support in international law for its actions, the Bush administration is joining a list of nations that have cited Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which enshrines the right of individual or collective self-defense to all member states.

Over the years, a growing body of legal argument has made the case that this right of self-defense allows a nation to take military action on the territory of another sovereign nation that is unable or unwilling to take measures on its own to halt the threat.

This argument was emphasized when the Israeli military mounted a hostage-rescue mission at Entebbe airport in Uganda in 1976, and similar arguments have been made to defend actions by the Colombian military against the FARC guerrillas seeking haven in neighboring countries, and Turkish troops pursuing Kurdish militants in their sanctuaries in northern Iraq.

Israel also made this argument when, in September last year, its warplanes attacked what Israel said was a nuclear reactor in Syria that was nearing operational capability.

This month, General David Petraeus, the former top commander in Iraq, said that the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq had dwindled to less than 20 a month from a peak of more than 120 a month a year ago.

But one military officer said Monday that while Syria had been able to take specific steps like detaining combat-age men found flying into Damascus airport on one-way tickets, there had been less success in halting the flow of money and weapons to the insurgency.

The Iraqi government found itself in an awkward position on Monday as it sought at once to remain on friendly terms with Syria, which is a neighbor and now home to more than a million Iraqi refugees, but also to bolster the United States in going after people believed to be fomenting antigovernment unrest in Iraq.

“This area was a staging ground for activities by terrorist organizations hostile to Iraq,” said Ali al-Dabbagh, the Iraqi government spokesman.

He said Iraq had previously requested that Syrian authorities hand over insurgents who used Syria as their base.

America’s Military Attack in Syria—Possible Reasons and Likely Costs
By Daniel Levy
Prospects for Peace, 28 October 2008

Details are finally emerging of the American military operation inside Syria in Abu Kamal on Sunday afternoon. While there still has been no official on-record briefing from the Pentagon, unnamed DoD sources have filled in some of the gaps and reports on the operation appear in today’s press. The target was apparently “Abu al-Ghadiyah” (Badran al-Mazidi), described alternatively as a high-ranking AQI (al-Qaeda in Iraq) operative or facilitator of smugglings and infiltration networks from Syria into Iraq, and vice versa. While it appears that there have been instances of cross-border “hot pursuit” by U.S. forces across Syrian borders before, today’s Washington Post makes the assertion that this is “the first acknowledged instance of U.S. ground forces operating in Syria.” Syrian and Arab T.V. have been full of pictures of the area of the raid and its aftermath, interviews with the civilian wounded in hospitals, and now images of thousands attending the funerals of the 8 civilians who it is claimed also fell victim to this attack (there are claims that American forces nabbed two AQI operatives–these are as yet unconfirmed–there might still be a DoD briefing today).

Condemnations have been prevalent in the Arab media, with the headline of the UAE daily al-Khaleej being typical: “U.S. Aggression Against Syria”. And criticism has not only come from the obvious places–Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world–but also from Russia, Europe and beyond. There have also been some interesting exceptions to this trend within the Arab world–notably Saudi Arabia, leading some to speculate that the Saudis encouraged or were even complicit in this operation. But even as the details are emerging many are still baffled as to why this raid took place, and especially why now. As ever when it comes to the Middle East, and especially where Syria is concerned, tantalizing and mischievous theories proliferate. Here is an attempt, then, to make sense of why this happened, and what the implications might be…

Qunfuz has an excellent article on the raid into Syria and the sentiments of Syrians.

PRI interview with Landis on Syria Raid

Twilight Struggle
In its closing days, the Bush administration escalates the war on terror.
By Eli Lake,  The New Republic  Published: Tuesday, October 28, 2008

On Sunday, U.S. helicopters accompanied by a special forces team struck in Sukkariyeh, Syria, just over the border from Iraq. It was a raid with enormous implications for the war in Iraq and the broader war on terror. The target of the raid was a man named Badran Turki Hishan al-Mazidih, better known in his circles as Abu Ghadiya. Since 2004, intelligence officials have been targeting Abu Ghadiya for his pernicious role in Iraq: helping fuel the Sunni insurgency by transporting foreign fighters, money, and weapons. Never before had Americans struck within Syria with such visible fingerprints. But officials believe that killing Abu Ghadiya justified that kind of action. One military official told me that the elimination of Abu Ghadiya represents a significant triumph over al Qaeda in Iraq. “The organization is pretty much finished now,” he told me.

That is a big story. But it doesn’t begin to capture the magnitude of the strike in Sukkariyeh. We have entered a new phase in the war on terror. In July, according to three administration sources, the Bush administration formally gave the military new power to strike terrorist safe havens outside of Iraq and Afghanistan. Before then, a military strike in a country like Syria or Pakistan would have required President Bush’s personal approval. Now, those kinds of strikes in the region can occur at the discretion of the incoming commander of Central Command (Centcomm), General David Petraeus. One intelligence source described the order as institutionalizing the “Chicago Way,” an allusion to Sean Connery’s famous soliloquy about bringing a gun to a knife fight.

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.” When queried about the order from July, deputy spokesman for the National Security Council Ben Chang offered no comment.

Strikes within Iran could be justified by the order, since senior al Qaeda leaders such as Saif al Adel are believed to have used that country as a base for aiding the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda affiliates in Iraqi Kurdistan. For now, however, any action inside Iranian territory will require at least sign off from the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff because of Iran’s capacity to retaliate inside the western hemisphere.

Why has the administration changed policy at this late date? For starters, the administration is genuinely worried about al Qaeda’s resurgence, not just in Pakistan, but across Asia and Africa. Within the administration, there is growing frustration with security services that are either unable or unwilling to root out al Qaeda within their borders. Pakistan is perhaps the best example of this. And even friendly services, like the one in Kenya, have made maddeningly little progress in their fight against terrorism.

When the administration first proposed this approach, it met with internal resistance. The National Intelligence Council produced a paper outlining the risk associated with this change in policy such as scuttling the prospect for better security cooperation in the future. And Admiral William Fallon, who preceded Petraeus at Centcomm, opposed taking direct action against al Qaeda and affiliated targets in Syria. But with the clock winding down on the administration, it has a greater appetite for racking up victories against al Qaeda–and less worries about any residual political consequences from striking. Roger Cressey, a former deputy to Richard Clarke in the Clinton and Bush administrations, says, “[W]ith the administration in the final weeks, the bar for military operations will be lowered because the downsides for the president are minimal.”

The big mystery now is whether the next administration will dismantle this policy or permit Petraeus to follow it to fruition. Obama has said nothing about Sunday’s strikes in Syria (a silence that has rightly earned him taunting from the McCain campaign). On one level, this new policy conflicts with Obama’s stated desire for opening up diplomatic channels to places like Tehran and Damascus. On the other hand, this is precisely the type of policy that he has repeatedly promised at least for Pakistan, whose territory is believed to host Osama bin Laden: If America has actionable intelligence on al Qaeda leaders, and the country housing those terrorist sits on its hands, we will act. His campaign rhetoric has now become the official war policy he will inherit. Is this a development that pleases him?

Eli Lake was the national security reporter for the now defunct New York Sun

Guards at Rawda circle in front of the US embassy in Damascus

Syria says it could take further steps over US helicopter raid.  AFP

Syria demands US apology for helicopter raid
Damascus foreign minister dismisses claim senior al-Qaida man was killed
Guardian, By Mark Tran

Syria today demanded an apology and compensation from the US after a helicopter raid into its territory left at least eight people dead.

The deputy foreign minister, Faisal Mekdad, also rejected US claims that Sunday’s attack killed a top operative of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Ghadiyah, who had been about to conduct an attack in Iraq, according to US intelligence.

Mekdad told the Associated Press all the victims were Syrian civilians, and Damascus did not know the whereabouts of the wanted Iraqi. He added that the search for Abu Ghadiyah by Syrian and foreign intelligence agencies should continue…..

…Last year, the then US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, praised Syria’s cooperation in reducing violence in Iraq. But Syria has since refused to restart intelligence-sharing with the US until Washington recognises its assistance by returning an ambassador to Damascus.

Villagers in Syria say their relatives were killed in the strike

Profile: Abu Ghadiya
BBC

Mystery surrounds the fate of a top al-Qaeda operative reportedly targeted by an alleged US strike on Syria….

US officials have identified Syrian militant Abu Ghadiya as a key figure behind the smuggling of foreign fighters into Iraq.  They are reportedly claiming that his death in the raid will have a major impact on al-Qaeda’s capabilities.

But this runs at odds with statements made by the militant’s organisation, al-Qaeda in Iraq, which announced his death on jihadist web sites over two years ago.

According to an al-Qaeda obituary of the militant released in August 2006, Abu Ghadiya died on the Saudi-Iraqi border sometime after the US-Iraqi offensive on Fallujah in November 2004. The group said he had been sent to the area to meet with a leader of al-Qaeda’s Saudi branch.

Both men died in an airstrike which targeted a house they were meeting in, the group claimed.

Major target: But al-Qaeda’s story is not accepted by the US……

In Syria, a short-sighted attack
29 Oct 2008 – Editorial: International herald Tribune

The weekend attack inside Syria by U.S. Special Operations Forces hunting for an alleged smuggler of Al Qaeda recruits into Iraq may have a fleeting tactical benefit, at best. In all other ways, it runs counter to the interests of the United States and its allies.

If this operation was not authorized at the highest level, there is something wrong with the administration’s chain of command. And if President Bush and Vice President Cheney did authorize an action that risks sabotaging Israeli-Syrian peace talks, reversing the trend of Syrian cooperation in Iraq and Lebanon, and playing into the hands of Iran, then Bush and Cheney have learned nothing from their previous mistakes and misdeeds.

The attack came shortly after U.S. commanders praised Syria for reducing the flow of guerrillas into Iraq from 100 per month to 20. The helicopter assault – in which Syria claims seven civilians were killed – also coincided with Syria’s establishing, for the first time, full diplomatic relations with Lebanon. This was a sign that Syria’s ruler, Bashar Assad, is serious about ending his pariah status in the West. It was also a signal to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan that Assad, whose alliance with Iran they abhor, is now eager to return to the Arab fold.

The timing of the cross-border assault could not have been worse. And the justification given – that Syria sacrificed the inviolability of its territory by failing to eliminate the infiltration of would-be fighters and suicide bombers – exhibits disdain for the principles of international law.

Syria demands UN action against U.S. over raid
Haaretz.com, 28 October 2008

Syria demanded on Tuesday that the United Nations Security Council take action against the U.S. over a helicopter raid on its soil on Sunday….

In a letter to the UN secretary general and the Security Council, Syria asked that the attack be condemned and that Washington held responsible, Syria’s official news agency SANA reported.

“Syria …, as it draws attention to this blatant act of aggression, expects the Security Council and United Nations members to shoulder their responsibilities to prevent such a dangerous violation in the future and hold the aggressor responsible,” said the letter, carried by SANA.

In another move reflecting Syria’s revolt at the U.S. raid and apparently also at Baghdad’s lack of a stronger response to it, the Syrian government Tuesday postponed a meeting of the joint Iraqi-Syrian Supreme Committee that was scheduled to convene in Baghdad on Nov. 12.

Iraq has said it doesn’t approve of the raid into Syria even if the U.S. claims such operations were legitimate. Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Iraq doesn’t want its territory used for attacks in neighboring nations, but also urged Syria to crack down on organizations operating on its territory that have the intention of harming Iraq.

The Syrian letter to the UN said also that the Iraqi government should investigate the attack and shoulder responsibility to prevent use of its territories as a base for aggression.

Iraq denounces Syria raid, seeks U.S. pact changes
By Mariam Karouny and Waleed Ibrahim
Reuters, 28 October 2008

Iraq drew up amendments on Tuesday that it will demand of the United States in a bid to salvage an agreement allowing U.S. forces to remain beyond the end of this year.

Baghdad also issued a belated rebuke of Washington for a helicopter strike on Syria, a sign of the pressure Iraq’s government is under to reassure its neighbors that it is not letting U.S. forces use its territory against them.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki will now send U.S. negotiators the proposed amendments to the security deal, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said.

Dabbagh did not provide details of the proposed amendments. Asked if they covered just the wording of the deal, he said: “the wording, yes, and some of the content.” But a cabinet member indicated that the proposed changes would not require the pact’s main points to be renegotiated.

“We worked to avoid any ambiguity.” The pact already includes a number of key concessions to Baghdad, such as a 2011 withdrawal date and a mechanism for Iraq to try U.S. troops for major crimes committed while off duty. Othman said the proposed amendments would not alter the pact’s wording on the issue of legal jurisdiction over U.S. troops.

U.S. School in Syria Ordered Shut After Attack
The Wall Street Journal, 28 October 2008

The Syrian government ordered an American school and a U.S. cultural center in Damascus closed in response to a deadly U.S. attack on a village near the Iraq border, the state-run news agency said.

The state news agency, SANA, didn’t say when the school and the center would be closed but said the closures will continue until further notice.

There is a small American community in the Syrian capital and one American school and a cultural center.

In Washington, a State Department spokesman said he had heard about the order but declined to comment further because the U.S. hadn’t been officially notified by the Syrian government.

Diplomats: IAEA says Syrian nuke info needs probe
By GEORGE JAHN
AP, 28 October 2008

Freshly evaluated soil and air samples from a Syrian site bombed by Israel on suspicion it was a covert nuclear reactor provide enough evidence to push ahead with a U.N probe, diplomats said Tuesday.

The findings are important after months of uncertainty about the status of the investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Preliminary results regarding environmental samples collected from the site by an IAEA team and made public earlier this year were inconclusive, adding weight to Syrian assertions that no trips beyond the initial IAEA visit in June were necessary. But the diplomats told The Associated Press that the IAEA’s final evaluation, completed a few days ago, has the agency convinced it needs to press on with its investigation.

The agency feels “there is enough evidence there to warrant a follow-up” said one of the diplomats. He, and a colleague from another IAEA country demanded anonymity in exchange for divulging confidential information, which is not meant to be made public until the IAEA’s meeting of its 35-nation board of governors next month.

Russia’s Medvedev shrugs off U.S. sanctions on arms
By Denis Dyomkin
Swissinfo.ch, 28 October 2008

U.S. sanctions on Russia’s state arms exporter are short-sighted and will not have a significant impact on its sales, President Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday.

The U.S. State Department last week imposed sanctions on firms in China and Russia for alleged sales of sensitive technology that could help Iran, North Korea and Syria develop weapons of mass destruction or missile systems.

Terrorism Comes to Damascus: Syria Faces its Own Islamist Threat
By Fadhil Ali
The Jamestown Foundation, 24 October 2008

After a generation of internal stability Syria was struck by a terrorist attack in its capital of Damascus on September 27. According to an official Syrian source, 17 people were killed and 14 injured when a car bomb detonated in a crowded area on the busy main road that links the city with Damascus international airport. Though the explosion took place near the headquarters of the Palestine Security Service, a branch of Syria’s extensive security complex, all of the casualties were reported to be civilians, save for a military officer and his son. Later reports cited claims by Syrian opposition groups that the officer killed was Brigadier General Abdul Karim Abbas, who was questioned by the international commission investigating the assassination of Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri (Naharnet, September 29; Middle East Times, October 6). The car was estimated to have held 200 kg of explosives. General Bassam Abdul Majeed, the Syrian interior minister, described the attack as a terrorist act (sana.sy, September 28).

A day later Syrian authorities issued a statement with more details about the attack. Authorities detailed the results of the initial investigation:

[A] terrorist was driving the car used in the attack. The vehicle is a GMC, plate number 83115 and had entered the country on September 26, 2008, through a border check point coming from a neighboring Arab country… the process of identifying the suicide attacker is continuing by checking the DNA of his dead body… the investigation with the arrested suspects has shown that the terrorist attacker is linked to a Takfiri [Islamic extremist] group. Members of that group had been arrested previously and their interrogation and the search for fugitives will continue (sana.sy, September 29).

The Syrian statements did not initially specify the group alleged to be involved or the country from which the car originated. In addition to non-Arab Turkey and Israel, Syria shares a border with three Arab countries: Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon.

After announcing the arrest of the alleged Syrian ringleader charged with responsibility in the Damascus bombing, President Assad claimed that some members of Lebanon’s anti-Syrian “March 14” political coalition were financing terrorist activities in Syria. The president added that Syria was threatened by “radical fundamentalist groups in north Lebanon trying to use Syria as a passage between Lebanon and Iraq” (Ya Libnan, October 17)…

We Should Talk to Our Enemies
By Nicholas Burns
Newsweek, 25 October 2008

One of the sharpest and most telling differences on foreign policy between Barack Obama and John McCain is whether the United States should talk to difficult and disreputable leaders like Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. In each of the three presidential debates, McCain belittled Obama as naive for arguing that America should be willing to negotiate with such adversaries. In the vice presidential debate, Sarah Palin went even further, accusing Obama of “bad judgment … that is dangerous,” an ironic charge given her own very modest foreign-policy credentials.

Are McCain and Palin correct that America should stonewall its foes? I lived this issue for 27 years as a career diplomat, serving both Republican and Democratic administrations. Maybe that’s why I’ve been struggling to find the real wisdom and logic in this Republican assault against Obama. I’ll bet that a poll of senior diplomats who have served presidents from Carter to Bush would reveal an overwhelming majority who agree with the following position: of course we should talk to difficult adversaries—when it is in our interest and at a time of our choosing.

The more challenging and pertinent question, especially for the McCain-Palin ticket, is the reverse: Is it really smart to declare we will never talk to such leaders? Is it really in our long-term national interest to shut ourselves off from one of the most important and powerful states in the Middle East—Iran—or one of our major suppliers of oil, Venezuela?

During the five decades of the cold war, when Americans had a more Manichaean view of the world, we did, from time to time, cut off relations with particularly odious leaders such as North Korea’s Kim Il Sung or Albania’s bloodthirsty and maniacal strongman, Enver Hoxha. But for the most part even our most ardent cold-war presidents—Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, none of whom was often accused of being weak or naive—decided that sitting down with our adversaries made good sense for America. They all talked to Soviet leaders—men vastly more threatening to America’s survival than Ahmadinejad or Chávez are now. JFK negotiated a nuclear Test-Ban Treaty with his mortal adversary, Nikita Khrushchev, just one year after the two narrowly avoided a nuclear holocaust during the Cuban missile crisis. Perhaps more dramatically, Nixon, the greatest anticommunist crusader of his time, went to China in 1972 to repair a more than 20-year rupture with Mao Zedong that he believed no longer worked for America.

All of these cold-war presidents embraced a foreign-policy maxim memorialized by one of the toughest and most experienced leaders of our time, Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin, who defended his discussions with Yasir Arafat by declaring, “You don’t make peace with friends, you make peace with very unsavory enemies.” Why should the United States approach the world any differently now? Especially now? As Americans learned all too dramatically on 9/11 and again during the financial crisis this autumn, we inhabit a rapidly integrating planet where dangers can strike at any time and from great distances. And when others—China, India, Brazil—are rising to share power in the world with us, America needs to spend more time, not less, talking and listening to friends and foes alike.

The real truth Americans need to embrace is that nearly all of the most urgent global challenges—the quaking financial markets, climate change, terrorism—cannot be resolved by America’s acting alone in the world. Rather than retreat into isolationism, as we have often done in our history, or go it alone as the unilateralists advocated disastrously in the past decade, we need to commit ourselves to a national strategy of smart engagement with the rest of the world. Simply put, we need all the friends we can get. And we need to think more creatively about how to blunt the power of opponents through smart diplomacy, not just the force of arms…

Lebanon’s Hariri, Nasrallah hold rare meeting
By Yara Bayoumy
Reuters, 27 October 2008

Lebanon’s Shi’ite Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has met his main political foe, Sunni majority leader Saad al-Hariri, for the first time since the war with Israel in 2006, a statement said on Monday…..

The rare meeting, which occurred on Sunday night, marks a breakthrough in the relationship between the two opponents and is likely to cool tensions before 2009 parliamentary elections.

“There was an affirmation of national unity and civil peace and the need to take all measures to prevent tension … and to reinforce dialogue and to avoid strife regardless of political differences,” the statement issued by both sides said.

Hezbollah’s al Manar television aired footage of the meeting which was attended by aides to both leaders. The statement also said that Nasrallah and Hariri would be in “mutual contact.”

The political crisis reached breaking point in May when Hezbollah and its allies briefly took control of the predominantly Muslim half of Beirut, sparking fighting with followers of rival leaders, including Hariri’s.

…The statement said Hariri and Nasrallah were also committed to implementing the Qatari-mediated deal which had called for “national dialogue” talks, the first of which were held last month. The next session is due on November 5.

Central to the dialogue is a discussion on the fate of Hezbollah’s weapons….

Saad al-Hariri, his father’s political heir, has insisted that the issue of Hezbollah’s weapons be discussed. Hezbollah says it needs its weapons to defend Lebanon from Israel. The group stood its ground in the 34-day war with Israel in 2006.

Hezbollah, which is the most powerful faction in Lebanon and heads an alliance with veto power in government, is not expected to yield to its opponents who want the group’s weapons to be folded under state control.

However it has expressed a willingness to discuss a defense strategy that would define the role of its guerrillas, who outgun the Lebanese army and are armed with thousands of missiles that can hit Israel.

The next president will have to bring U.S. policy back in compliance with those norms and restore a diplomacy that balances the interests of different powers in the region. We hope the latest Syria operation does not reflect a deliberate effort by Bush and Cheney to foil such efforts.

Syria comes down on dissidents
By Stephen Starr

DAMASCUS – On Wednesday, 12 Syrian dissidents were sentenced to two-and-a-half years each by the National Security Court in Damascus. The 12 were held behind a cage in a court room packed with family members and well-wishers. After the sentences were read out, several of the detained shouted cries of defiance and locked hands together.

The trial, which lasted several months, has been charged by international human-rights groups of being a violation of “the activists’ right to freedom of movement and an undue interference with their rights to freedom of expression and association”. About a dozen diplomats from various embassies, including Canadian and Dutch representatives, attended the proceedings

Iran’s Comeback Kid and the Quest for Reform
By JOE MACARON (Middle East Times), October 29, 2008

Many young Iranians are seeking political change after the failed policies of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, giving reformists an opportunity to make a comeback. Reformist and former President Mohammad Khatami was received with tears and roses and calls of “long live the next president” at a recent rally. Photo shows Iranian women watching a football skills contest in Tehran on Oct. 10. (Image by ABACAPRESS.COM via Newscom)

On extra-judicial executions
Posted by Helena Cobban
October 28, 2008 4:50 PM EST | Link

by Camille Alexandre Otrakji

Over the past few weeks, Israeli leaders Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres and Saudi diplomats have been energetically promoting the Saudi / Arab peace initiative of 2002 as an alternative to the current Syrian and Palestinian peace negotiations tracks.

The initiative has many merits, but it also contains a deal breaker for Israel.

Saudi Plan / Arab initiative

The Arab Peace Initiative is based on the Saudi peace plan which was first formulated by (then-Crown Prince) King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia during and after a meeting he had with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in 2002. Mr. Friedman had actually written a column a few weeks earlier suggesting a similar plan for reaching a comprehensive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The plan is an initiative that aims to achieve a peaceful solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. It offers Israel normalization of relations and comprehensive peace with all Arab countries in exchange for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from all of the occupied territories including the Golan Heights, and the recognition of “an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital”.

A month later, at the Beirut Summit of the Arab League, the peace initiative was endorsed unanimously by all participating members of the Arab League after the plan was amended to include, at the request of Syria and Lebanon, an article about a just solution to the Palestinian Refugee problem, to be agreed upon in accordance with section 11 of UN General Assembly Resolution 194.

The Arab Peace Initiative is therefore an expanded version of the Saudi peace plan. The main difference between the two plans is the inclusion of the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

Revival of interest in the Arab Peace Initiative

It started last month at the United Nations.

Israeli President Shimon Peres, in his speech to the UN General Assembly, said: “The Arabs replaced the three NOs of Khartoum (no peace, no negotiation, no recognition) with a peace initiative, inaugurated by King Abdullah Abdul Aziz Al Saud. I call upon the king to further his initiative; it may become an invitation for comprehensive peace, one to convert battlegrounds to common grounds.”

Last Thursday, Mr. Peres met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Sharm el-Sheikh. After that meeting he made the following statement: “We accept the Arab peace initiative in order to bring peace to the entire region”. Peres added that while the Saudi plan “needs to be negotiated”, its spirit is “correct.”

Also last week, Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak indicated his support for the Saudi plan. He suggested that the current Syrian and Palestinian tracks are not making much progress and therefore he decided that it is better to move them all to a single track based on the Saudi plan. “There is definitely room to introduce a comprehensive Israeli plan to counter the Saudi plan that would be the basis for a discussion on overall regional peace”. Then Mr. Barak noted the “deep, joint interest” with moderate Arab leaders in containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions and limiting the influence of the radical Islamic Hezbollah movement in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Also this month, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal and his brother, former Ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal both promoted the Saudi peace plan

Last week Syrian ambassador to the United States, Dr. Imad Moustapha, was asked about the way he sees Israel’s future role in the Middle East after the end of the Arab Israeli conflict. The ambassador said “It is important to understand that any Syrian approach to peace with Israel falls under its endorsement of the Pan Arab Peace Initiative. Therefore, any long-term relationship with Israel will ultimately fall within a broader Arab strategic plan.”

Advantages of the unified Arab track

Israeli leaders will find it easier to justify the necessary land concessions to the Syrians and Palestinians, if they are part of a comprehensive settlement. Currently, most Israelis are not sure if they are getting a good deal. Because the Syrian front has been quiet since 1975, “peace” with Syria is not considered as a valuable reward that will clearly translate into more security for Israel. Moreover, Syria made it clear that its relations with Hizbollah, Hamas, and Iran are non-negotiable. And finally, Israelis see Syria as an economically weak country that won’t offer Israel any financial benefit.

In contrast, being able to do business with Dubai, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (after a comprehensive settlement between Israel and all Arab countries) would probably be perceived as a much more attractive reward for Israelis.

Additionally, a clear commitment by the Arab world to a peaceful settlement to the Arab Israeli conflict will be more reassuring in terms of the settlement’s extent and endurance.

Syria, always a proponent of a comprehensive settlement of the Arab Israeli conflict, will probably feel more comfortable with the scope of the Arab peace initiative compared to having to conduct separate peace negotiations. Syria’s current indirect talks with Israel through Turkish mediators were enough to earn Syria an intensely negative Saudi media campaign which portrayed Syria as a fake nationalist that used Arab nationalist movements for the sole purpose of gaining more favorable rewards exclusively for Syria at the expense of Palestinian and Lebanese rights. By moving from a Syrian track to an Arab track, the Saudis and Egyptians will have a role to play and will therefore be expected to stop trying to obstruct Syria’s current efforts towards a peaceful settlement.

The weaker Arabs (the Palestinians and the Lebanese), can also expect to benefit from the added combined weight and support of the Arab world.

The Arab plan makes it easier for individual Arab leaders to carry out their future normalization with Israel in a systematic way. Instead of needing to debate it and to justify it, each ruler will be able to explain to the hard liners among his people that they have no choice, since the whole Arab world agreed to normalize with Israel.

On the other hand …

Mr. Barak is already talking about his interest in formulating Israeli proposals to “counter” the Saudi peace plan.

There are multiple problems with Mr. Barak’s approach. First, the Arab world did not adopt the “Saudi” plan. It adopted the more strict “Arab peace initiative”. The difference is in the Arab initiative’s call for the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Is Israel ready to tacke that challenge at this point?

If the Arab initiative is to be countered or renegotiated, who is Mr. Barak expecting to negotiate with on the Arab side? Is he planning to exclusively talk to his favorite “Arab Moderate” partners? Wouldn’t that be another attempt to isolate Syria? Is he expecting to split the Arab world in two camps, a “moderate camp” that accepts his counter proposal, and a rejectionist camp that does not?

An “Arab” peace initiative requires some kind of unity, or cooperation among the leading Arab states. A few days after Saudi Prince Saud Al-Faisal stated that Syria and Saudi Arabia will be able to solve any issues between them without any need for third party mediation, Tariq Alhomayed, the editor of the largest Saudi owned newspaper, Asharq Alawsat, wrote an editorial that only a bitter enemy of Syria can write.

Israel has been negotiating with the Palestinians and Syrians since 1991. During those long seventeen years neither track led to an agreement. The same Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres who are calling today for abandoning the Syrian and Palestinian tracks in favor of a unified Arab track, spent the better part of the nineties advocating freezing the Syrian or Palestinian tracks in order to apply pressure on Israel’s two Arab partners in negotiations with the hope of making them accept more compromises, rather than risk losing the interest of the Israelis in pursuing their respective tracks.

President Clinton wrote in his memoirs that former Prime Minister Ehud Barak “got cold feet” when he reached a final agreement with late Syrian President Hafez Assad. Instead of risking his political future by proposing to his people an agreement that included a withdrawal to the June 4th 1967 line in the Golan, Mr. Barak decided to withdraw from south Lebanon in order to weaken Syria’s negotiating position by taking away the Lebanon/Hizbollah card from the hand of Hafez Assad. The prime minister was hoping that by doind so Syria will be forced to take his offer next time they talk.

Throughout the past decade, Mr. Peres consistently advocated weakening and isolating Syria in order to bring it to the “moderate” Arab camp. He has pursued a strategy of refusing to settle the conflict with Syria based on UN resolutions calling on Israel to withdraw from Arab lands it occupied during the 1967 war, and instead trying to weaken Syria until it accepts terms that comply with what Mr. Peres was willing to offer. While Mr. Peres always managed to be generous in praising his many friends among the leaders of the “moderate Arab” nations, he actively contributed to the demonization of Syria that took place during the past few years.

If Israel is falling in love again with the Arab Peace Initiative for all the right reasons, then it can only be good news for everyone. Syria will be the first to sit on that table.

But if Israel’s aging leaders are devoid of courage or creative ideas and are merely trying to recirculate their tried, tested and proven delaying tactics, or if Mr. Peres managed to convince his desperate friends among the “moderate Arab” allies that together they can marginalize Syria and its allies simply by reviving the Arab peace initiative, then there will probably be another cycle of chaos, violence, war threats followed by a sequence of flipping peace tracks.

(SANA news) Thousands of citizens escorted the funeral procession until the village of Hamdan where the bodies of those killed in the aggression were buried. The citizens and mourners stressed that this US aggression which claimed the lives of civilians reflected the logic of destruction and aggression pursued by the US against civilians irrespective of any moral or legal deterrent. The funeral procession was attended by official and public circles in Deir el-Zour Governorate.

 Syria is closing the American school and cultural center.

…..I have two sons at the school and heard this also from a board member. I don’t suppose those gung-ho CIA types thought about what this would mean when they swung in on their helicopters.

If the closure is permanent, it will be devastating not just for my family, not just for Americans, but for the whole international community here in Syria. There are dozens of children at this school with parents at international companies such as Shell, working for the UN and also many children from well-off Syrian families.

The school has had some difficult times recently — last year the government delayed the issue of 34 visas so the school started late. This year, the education ministry imposed a Syrian studies element in the curriculum and made it compulsory for all students to take Arabic. But the school was doing its best to cope. No way can they do anything in the face of such a foreign policy disaster….

U.S. Calls Raid a Warning to Syria
By Ann Scott Tyson and Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post staff writers
Tuesday, October 28, 2008; Page A01

U.S. military helicopters launched an extremely rare attack Sunday on Syrian territory close to the border with Iraq, killing eight people in a strike the government in Damascus condemned as “serious aggression.”….

The military’s argument is that “you can only claim sovereignty if you enforce it,” said Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “When you are dealing with states that do not maintain their sovereignty and become a de facto sanctuary, the only way you have to deal with them is this kind of operation,” he said.

…. U.S. officials have long complained that the Syrian government has allowed Arab fighters to pass through the country to enter Iraq, but since last year, top military leaders have praised Syrian efforts to curb the flow. In recent months, officials have estimated that as few as 20 fighters a month have been crossing into Iraq, down from more than a hundred a month in 2006.

But officials said the raid Sunday, apparently the first acknowledged instance of U.S. ground forces operating in Syria, was intended to send a warning to the Syrian government. “You have to clean up the global threat that is in your back yard, and if you won’t do that, we are left with no choice but to take these matters into our hands,” said a senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the cross-border strike.

The United States has offered similar justifications for recent cross-border strikes in Pakistan, where it has launched missile attacks and at least one air assault against suspected members of Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgency. “As targets present themselves, and are identified . . . they become more and more at risk. Just like in Pakistan, there will be steps taken to deal with it,” the senior official said.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem called the operation Sunday a “criminal and terrorist aggression” that killed seven civilians. Speaking to reporters in London, he said Bush administration officials were following “the policy of cowboys” and noted that the United States has been unable to seal its own border with Mexico.

The office of French President Nicolas Sarkozy issued a statement expressing “serious concerns” about the raid and the loss of Syrian lives. Syria has lately embarked on policies that France and other Western governments have viewed favorably, including indirect peace talks with Israel. Russia also voiced concern about the operation.

In the raid, four helicopters carrying U.S. troops flew into an isolated area of scattered residences and buildings in search of an Iraqi insurgent whom the U.S. Treasury designated in February as a key facilitator of the transfer of weapons, money and fighters into Iraq. Treasury officials gave his full name as Badran Turki Hishan al-Mazidih and his nickname as Abu Ghadiyah, and said that the founder of the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had named him the organization’s commander for Syrian logistics in 2004.

On the ground, U.S. troops disembarked and opened fire to kill “several armed males who posed a threat to U.S. forces,” according to the senior official. The official declined to say whether Mazidih was killed or injured in the fighting. Other unnamed U.S. officials were quoted in news media accounts Monday as saying he had been killed.

Moualem said U.S. troops landed at a farm where they killed a father and his three children, the farm’s guard and his wife, and a fisherman.

The network run by Mazidih has smuggled hundreds of foreign fighters into Iraq, including many who became suicide bombers, officials and analysts said. “He ran one of the largest and most productive foreign fighter networks out of Syria” and was “directly responsible for hundreds of foreign fighters who killed thousands” of Iraqis, the senior official said.

The U.S. military has shown patience, the official said, but “eventually you can’t wait for guys like that to come back across the border and kill scores of Iraqis or, worse, your own forces.” …

July report made public their latest findings.

The documents indicated that at least 95 Syrian “coordinators” were involved in moving the foreign fighters. Many of the coordinators were from smuggling families in Bedouin clans and other Syrian tribes. A number of them appeared to be cooperating with al-Qaeda in Iraq for pay rather than out of ideological sympathy.

Many recruits reported to their handlers in Iraq that they had passed through Damascus, Syria’s capital, and then an area near the Iraqi border called Abu Kamal. Sunday’s raid occurred in Abu Kamal. ….

Sami Moubayed, The strike that shattered US-Syria ties, Asia Times

It is certain that the attack, for which full details are yet to be known, will lead to plenty of bad blood between Damascus and Washington.

Syrians already feel that the US is ungrateful for a range of accomplishments in which Syria has assisted, such as harboring 1.5 million Iraqi refugees, tightening control of the border, hammering out the Doha Agreement, ending the presidential dilemma in Lebanon, and helping moderate the behavior of Iran.

Although the US is upset that Syria has managed to shake off US-imposed isolation, Washington does realize that Syria’s cooperation is needed to get things done in the Middle East. In December 1990, former US secretary of state James Baker described Syria as “a major Arab country who happens to share the same goals as we do”.

But, in December 2004, US President George W Bush said, “Syria is a very weak country, and therefore it cannot be trusted.”

The huge difference in US policy on Syria over the past 15 years shows how difficult it is to mend a very fractured, and perhaps irreparable, relationship. This is especially true after the events of October 27 and will remain so as long as Bush is in the White House, or if he is replaced by Senator John McCain.

When the Gulf War started in 1991, Syria was on America’s blacklist because of a failed attempt to blow up an Israeli airplane at Heathrow Airport in London in 1986. In light of the Gulf War, however, Bush realized that as much as he would have loved to punish Syria for its anti-Israel behavior, he needed Syria to prevent the occurrence of similar attacks.

The late president Hafez al-Assad, eager to comply, met with Baker for the first time on September 14, 1990, signaling the start of a 10-year honeymoon between Damascus and Washington. Then, on November 23, Assad met with Bush, who requested Syrian support in Operation Desert Storm, and promised to hold an Arab-Israeli peace conference once Kuwait was liberated. ….

… After Sunday, Syria is no longer satisfied. History proves that when the Syrians become angry, they can do much in the Middle East. Nazem al-Qudsi was right in 1945: America is Syria’s potential best friend. But this potential friendship will only work with a wise man like Roosevelt, not someone who invades air space and kills civilians, like George W Bush.

Senior Al Qaeda member killed in U.S. raid in Syria, officials say
LA Times By Greg Miller and Josh Meyer
October 28, 2008

The raid was the latest sign that the U.S. is now willing to mount attacks in sovereign nations in pursuit of insurgent groups operating in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as those who support them. Last month, U.S. special operations forces carried out a similar raid in the tribal border region of Pakistan, drawing loud criticism from the Pakistani public and senior government officials in Islamabad, the capital.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said the U.S. committed “criminal and terrorist aggression” by conducting a raid in which seven civilians died, including three children, a woman and a fisherman. …

Abu Ghadiyah, an Iraqi native believed to be in his late 20s, has for several years been a key figure in the flow of foreign fighters and weapons into Iraq, American officials said.

“He comes from a family of smugglers,” said the senior U.S. official. “He seems to have turned the family business toward the movement of terrorists, explosives, weapons, etc., into Iraq.”….

“He’s the classic example of a terrorist facilitator and financier,” said Matthew Levitt, who from 2005 to early 2007 helped oversee a U.S. government crackdown on Abu Ghadiyah’s financial network while deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the Treasury Department.

However, Abu Ghadiyah’s death is unlikely to decimate the network because of its strong funding streams and because other members, including a brother, have been active, said Levitt, now with the Institute for Near East Policy, a Washington-based think tank….

U.S. officials said Abu Ghadiyah, a nickname for Badran Turki Hishan Mazidih, was appointed by former Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab Zarqawi to be the group’s Syrian commander for logistics in 2004. After Zarqawi’s death in 2006, Abu Ghadiyah began working for the new leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub Masri, according to U.S. officials.

Abu Ghadiyah provided and arranged false passports, weapons, guides, safe houses and allowances to foreign terrorists preparing to enter Iraq, Treasury officials said….

In Baghdad, the Shiite Muslim-led Iraqi government said it wanted good ties with Syria but that Damascus needed to do more to stop fighters from slipping across its borders

New york Times
By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER, Published: October 27, 2008

The timing was startling, not least because American officials praised Syria in recent months for its efforts to halt traffic across the border.

But in justifying the attack, American officials said the Bush administration was determined to operate under an expansive definition of self-defense that provided a rationale for strikes on militant targets in sovereign nations without those countries’ consent…..

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States has attacked terrorism suspects in the ungoverned spaces of countries like Yemen and Somalia. But administration officials said Monday that the strikes in Pakistan and Syria were carried out on the basis of a legal argument that has been refined in recent months to justify strikes by troops and by rockets on militants in countries with which the United States is not at war.

The justification is different from the concept of pre-emption the administration articulated immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, and which was used as the rationale for the invasion of Iraq. While pre-emption was used to justify attacks against governments and their armies, the self-defense argument would justify attacks on insurgents operating on foreign soil that threatened the forces, allies or interests of the United States.

Administration officials pointed Monday to a passage in President Bush’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month as the clearest articulation of this position to date.

“As sovereign states, we have an obligation to govern responsibly, and solve problems before they spill across borders,” Mr. Bush said. “We have an obligation to prevent our territory from being used as a sanctuary for terrorism and proliferation and human trafficking and organized crime.”

In seeking to carry out cross-border missions inside Pakistan and now in Syria, the United States government is expected to make the case that these operations will help protect the lives of American troops. It is not clear how far-reaching the White House may be in seeking to apply the rationale, but several senior American officials expressed hope that it would be embraced by the next president as well….

But one military officer said Monday that while Syria had been able to take specific steps like detaining combat-age men found flying into Damascus airport on one-way tickets, there had been less success in halting the flow of money and weapons to the insurgency.

The Iraqi government found itself in an awkward position on Monday as it sought at once to remain on friendly terms with Syria, which is a neighbor and now home to more than a million Iraqi refugees, but also to bolster the United States in going after people believed to be fomenting antigovernment unrest in Iraq.

“This area was a staging ground for activities by terrorist organizations hostile to Iraq,” said Ali al-Dabbagh, the Iraqi government spokesman. He said Iraq had previously requested that Syrian authorities hand over insurgents who used Syria as their base. 

“We will do what is necessary to protect our troops,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in Senate testimony last month, when asked about the cross-border operations….

Simon Tisdall in the Guardian

The US incursion says a lot about American weakness, too. In Iraq, withdrawal looms. Securing the “surge” gains, handing off to the Iraqi security forces, and signing an end-of-year status of forces agreement (Sofa) are imperative military aims. But they are also political needs that opponents, such as Baghdad’s Shia politicians and al-Qaida in Iraq, are trying to exploit. ….

Even though Iraqi government spokesmen justified the US action, politicians warned it could further complicate the Sofa negotiation. The raid has again highlighted the limitations of Iraq’s sovereignty and the instability of its frontiers with Syria, Turkey and Iran. It also demonstrated Washington’s readiness to disregard border security agreements between Iraq and its neighbours that it was instrumental in creating.

Just as Russia’s Vladimir Putin accused the Bush administration of engineering the Georgia crisis to help John McCain’s presidential bid, yesterday’s surprise is certain to be cast in a similar light by some in the US. It may also be seen as a sort of “goodbye” present from the neocons. Conversely, Bush’s growing propensity for sending special forces after the “bad guys” wherever they are thought to be, and damn the consequences, may help convince American voters that Obama is the safer, saner bet.

The quote attributed to an unidentified military official in Washington justifying yesterday’s raid – that “we’re taking matters into our own hands” – could serve as an epitaph for the Bush administration

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WSJ [Reg]: Hitting Syria, Five Years Late
2008-10-28 03:18:26.160 GMT

Polls Show Even Split Between Israeli Blocs
JERUSALEM, Oct. 27 — Israel moved closer Monday to a bruising election campaign that will decide the future of peace talks, as polls showed the centrist foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, in a surprisingly close race with hard-line opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu.

Syrian foreign minister condemned U.S. for its “terrorist aggression” on Syria. ·”Killing civilians in international law means a terrorist aggression,” he said. ·Syria would “defend our territories” if the U.S. launched a similar operation again.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Moualem speaks during a news conference in London October 27, 2008.

Helena Cobban at Just World News has a very smart post on the raid. She reminds us that such an opperation would need the special permission of the White House. Here is what she wrote SC:

I just saw you had written that it “had the fingerprints of the White House.” That was good– but your main argument was that it had been designed/decided by the Joint Chiefs. No. The JCS is an orderly, very high-level team that fully supports the work of the regional commands, including Centcom. The JCS themselves don’t make risky decisions like this one. It had to be some form of “Special Forces” that executed the raid– as Pat Lang wrote. But the key point is that none of these forces make their own decisions when it comes to infringing on the sovereignty of a sensitive but as-yet-unviolated country like Syria. A decision like that is in the realm of high politics/diplomacy, where decisions are made only by two men.

She has much more.

Foreign Fighters Smuggler Believed Killed In Syria-US Official, WASHINGTON (AFP)

A top agent smuggling foreign fighters into Iraq is believed to have been killed in a U.S. cross-border raid into Syria, a U.S. official said Monday.   The official identified the man as Abu Ghadiya and said he was “one of the most prominent foreign fighter facilitators in the region.”

“The operation was successful,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “He is believed to have been killed.”

Blanford in Time:

Cross-border strikes are an increasingly common tactic by U.S. forces operating along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. U.S. missile-firing drones reportedly killed at least 20 people on Sunday in Pakistan’s South Waziristan province close to the Afghan border, an area suspected of harboring Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Andrew Exum, a former U.S. army officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and founder of the influential Abu Muqawama counter-insurgency blog, suggests that the American action in Syria shows that the tactic may simply have been exported. “The precedent has already been established of crossing borders into safe havens. Operational commanders would have to be thinking, if we can do it in Pakistan, why can’t we do it in Syria,” he says.

Experts with knowledge of the region say they suspect the raid into Syria was conducted by a U.S. special-operations unit, rather than regular military forces. They cited Task Force 88, a hunter-killer team, as the unit that most likely carried out the attack. By having such clandestine teams carrying out these strikes, the U.S. government restricts how many people inside the government are aware of the details, and enables Pentagon spokesmen to honestly say they know nothing about them.

Col. Lang writes:

How does one explain this operation?

At present; the Bush Administration and its perennial and unending hostility to Syria is about to disappear, negotiations between the US and Iraq are in a delicate condition, Syria has signaled a desire to improve relations with the US, Israel and Lebanon, there is a new US commander in Iraq.

Where in all of that is an explanation for this US commando raid into the Syrian border country?

Some thoughts:

– The US Special Operations Forces (USSOF) counter-terrorist forces may have been “off the leash” on this one.  These forces are exclusively focused on hunting down terrorist people and support group world-wide.  Rumsfeld made them largely independent of the regular military chain of command.  They amount to a global SWAT team.  They develop their own targeting intelligence and make their own plans.  The amount of control that the local US joint commander has over them is not very clear.  They are not noted for a great deal of insight into geopolitical niceties.

– General Odierno, the man who replaced Petraeus in Iraq, is not famous for nuanced reactions to frustrating situations.

Whatever the cause, the result of ham fisted actions of this kind can be disastrous for the chance of making something better emerge from the situation that Bush/Cheney is leaving for President Obama and his team.  pl 

(Addendum – Monday Morning): Recent information has caused me to trim my sails a bit on the notion that  Petraeus is angry about this raid. It was probably constructed by Special Forces and not Cheney’s office. Evidently there are real issues at the border and Petraeus has been warning the Syrians that they must do more. His interest in going to Syria in the fall of 2007 was as much to read Syria the riot act about compliance as it was to seek intelligence sharing, although that had been a principal subject of the Sharm al-Shaykh meeting between Mu`alem and Rice in May. Bashar al-Asad is no mood to give anything to Bush or Rice in the closing months of their administration.

Satellite intelligence probably picked up smugglers, which were interpreted to be al-Qaida. Quite possibly these poor people killed in the raid were a family of smugglers. The US is now claiming that the raid sucessfully killed their target, a facilitator for Iraqis. Seymour Hersh wrote a brilliant story about a similar raid five years ago that killed a eight smugglers. Here is a bit of “The Syrian Bet: Did the Bush Administration burn a useful source on Al Qaeda?“

Army helicopters and Bradley Fighting Vehicles attacked two groups of cars heading into Syria, triggering enormous explosions and fireballs that lit up the night sky. A gas station and nearby homes were destroyed. Task Force 20 sped across the border into Syria….

“The operation was a fiasco in which as many as eighty people—occupants of the cars and trucks as well as civilians living nearby—were killed. The vehicles, it turned out, were being used to smuggle gasoline….

In short, this may have been a simple botched operation based on bad intelligence. But in the larger scheme of things, it is the price of refusing to repair relations with the Syrians when they could have been.

[Older Landis Analysis]:Overnight, the US has managed to turn the press coverage to its favor by putting out releases that focus on "rat lines" and the like, i.e. "The US and Iraqi government accuse Damascus of being reluctant to guard its borders and not doing enough to stop militants, including those from al-Qaeda, crossing the border into Iraq."

But the real question is why now. Syria has been improving border compliance steadily.  Petraeus announced this month that Syria has brought down infiltration from 100 to 20 a month. (As quoted in the LA Times)

In the past 5 years, the US has had plenty of reason and opportunity to pursue cross border raids, but did not do so because it believed that the way to solve the problem was by cooperating with Syria, not by bombing it. Undoubtedly, policy makers also feared that Syria might punish the US in response. Both the State Department and DOD have consistently pushed for intelligence sharing with Damascus only to be shot down by the Vice President’s office. This was told to me by a high ranking intelligence officer in Washington.

Secretary of State, Rice asked Syria’s F.M. at Sharm al-Shaykh in May 2007 for permission to send two US generals to Damascus to restart intelligence sharing. Damascus was excited by this prospect because it is in Syria’s national interest. But Damascus demanded that Washington appoint an Ambassador to Damascus in recognition of Syria’s support and cooperation. The White House refused to permit the normalization of relations, so Syria refused to allow the US generals into Syria.

In Dec. 2007,  Petraeus himself tried to go to Damascus to restart intelligence cooperation. The Vice President refused him permission. This was the time that  Petraeus announced that Syria had improved compliance and cut back infiltration across the border.

I think we can assume that this cross border raid was not inspired by Petraeus. It has the finger prints of the White House.  Petraeus and Rice have consistently fought to improve relations with Syria in order to win better coordination on the border.

This would explain why press releases on this issue are being released from “sources” in Washington and not being made by boots on the ground in Iraq. My hunch is that Centcom in Iraq is furious about being pressed to carry out this raid during the last minutes of Bush authority. They understand that it will complicate any future efforts to improve Syrian-US relations, which is the only real way to get better cooperation on the border issue. By ordering this raid, the Bush administration has administered a poison pill to US-Syrian relations and to Syrian-Iraq relations. 

As Jonathan Marcus of the BBC has written, “With the Bush administration on the way out, this US military incursion may represent something of a parting shot against the Syrians.”

The White House may be counting on Syria not to respond to this provocation, believing that Damascus will be constrained by its interest in cultivating a new relationship with an Obama administration. There is much hope in Damascus that an Obama administration will resume dialogue and allow the Defense Department to re-establish intelligence sharing and allow the State Department ot restore proper relations with Damascus.

[end of Landis analysis]

LA Times:

"This month Gen. David H. Petraeus, the former top commander in Iraq, said [Syrian] efforts had helped cut the number of foreign fighters crossing the Syrian border from about 100 to 20 a month. But he made it clear that more needed to be done."

Baghdad (Deutsche Presse- Agentur ) –

The Iraqi government on Monday said that it is talking to US officials over the American raid on the remote Syrian border village of Al-Sukariya and that it hoped the incident would not spoil Iraq’s ties with Damascus.

“The Americans failed to reply to all the requests by the Syrian government and to allow the Iraqis to build up security co-ordination across the border,” Samir al-Taqi, director of the Orient Centre for International Studies, a Syrian think-tank, told al-Jazeera.

Aljazeera English reports on the US raid into Syria.

LONDON (Reuters) – An alleged U.S. attack on a Syrian village near the border with Iraq was an “outrageous crime”, a Syrian diplomat told the BBC.

Syria says U.S. military helicopters attacked the Bou Kamal border area on Sunday, killing eight civilians. The United States, which accuses Syria of not doing enough to stop al Qaeda fighters and other insurgents crossing into Iraq, has neither confirmed nor denied the incident.

"This is an outrageous crime and an act of aggression, of course," Syria’s press attache in London, Jihad Makdissi, told the BBC.

He said the U.S. strike hit “a building under construction, a civilian building”.

"If they (the United States) have any proof of any insurgency, instead of applying the law of the jungle and penetrating, unprovoked, a sovereign country, they should come to the Syrians first and share this information," Maqdisi said.

“This administration … have proved to be irrational and they have no respect for international law or human rights. We expect a clarification, and of course Syria reserves the right to respond accordingly in the proper way.”

Syria’s foreign ministry has summoned the U.S. charge d’affaires in Damascus to protest over the raid.

Syria also called on the Iraqi government to carry out an immediate inquiry into the attack and to ensure that Iraq was not used for “aggression against Syria”, the state news agency SANA said.

Addendum: This report was just sent by a reader (6:30 p.m. central time, Sunday):

Joshua and all,

I just spoke on the phone with a doctor in ABou Kamal- He confirmed that the attack happened around sunset. The 4 helicopters came from the East of the township, he saw them coming. The soldiers debarked and shot people who were working in a building under construction on the periphery of the township.

9 people were pronounced dead on arrival to the hospital- Two more are severely wounded and are being operated on right now [he does not expect them to survive]- He has not read the papers (there are none to read at this time of the night) nor listened to the news and there is no internet there….His report was completely spontaneous-

I was not able to get the details on the ages of the injured but he described them as poor simple people (Masakeen)from the town. If the matter were otherwise, he would have let me know.

[Landis analysis] The Bush administration seems to be ratcheting up action against Syria during its last days in power. The cross border raid undertaken on Sunday, which killed eight people, seems to fit into a broader pattern of the Bush administration initiating cross boarder attacks into countries that it is not officially at war with. The recent attacks in Northwest Pakistan are a case in point.

In late 2007 then-Coalition commander General David Petraeus praised Syria’s cooperation in reducing violence in Iraq; “Syria has taken steps to reduce the flow of the foreign fighters through its borders with Iraq” (VOA, December 6, 2007). Iraqi President Jalal Talabani told US President George W. Bush last month that Iran and Syria — long targets of US blame over the deadly unrest in Iraq — no longer pose a problem.

Syria, however, has refused to restart intelligence sharing with the US, which was broken off following the deterioration of relations in 2005. Petraeus sought to go to Damascus in December 2007 to restart intelligence sharing, but was forbidden from doing so by the White House.

Syria has been eager to restart intelligence sharing which would help to reduce cross border violations, but it demands a price – that the US recognize Syria’s assistance by returning an ambassador to Damascus. The White House has refused to do this, preferring to use sticks to force Syrian compliance. One must presume that the most recent killing of Syrians is designed to be just such a stick.

It will, of course, not force compliance, but the Bush administration must assume that an Obama victory on November 4 will force Syria to behave nicely in order to win favor with the new administration. Thus, White House analysts may assume that it can have a ‘freebee” — taking a bit of personal revenge on Syria without the US paying a price. Damascus may just have to write it off as a good bye salute from its friends in Washington.

[End of Analysis]

Ian Black and Ewen MacAskill in the Guardian, “Washington admitted it had targeted “foreign fighters.”

In Washington an unnamed military official told the Associated Press the raid had targeted elements of a “foreign fighter logistics network”, and that, due to Syrian inaction, the US was “taking matters into our own hands”. It was the first known American attack on Syrian soil.

Intriguingly, Farhan al-Mahalawi, mayor of the nearby Iraqi border town of Qaim, told the Reuters news agency that the targeted village had been surrounded by Syrian troops.

… Joshua Landis, an American expert on Syria, commented last night: “The Bush administration must assume that an Obama victory will force Syria to behave nicely in order to win favour with the new administration. Thus White House analysts may assume that it can have a “freebee” – taking a bit of personal revenge on Syria without the US paying a price.”

A warning Syria’s President Assad must heed,” By James Hider: Analysis for London Times

…. While US commanders may have calculated that a cross-border raid was tactically necessary to tackle Islamist extremists using Syrian territory, the attack also sent a tough strategic message to Syria that it is not inviolate and must choose carefully whom it supports.

AMERICAN STRIKE ON SYRIA: A GIFT FROM CHENEY TO MCCAIN? , by Marc Gopin

… We are closer than ever before to serious conversations between Israel and Syria, Syria has recognized an international border with Lebanon for the first time in modern history, and this is horrifying to neoconservatives who ran Washington for the last decade. They need to use force and force only to conquer Iraq, Iran and Syria. And they need to promote a conception of the American presidency that is focused on the use of military force.

Syria accuses U.S. in deadly helicopter attack, CNN)

The U.S. military said it is investigating claims from Syria that U.S. helicopters based in Iraq killed eight people and wounded another Sunday in an attack inside Syria’s territory Sunday.

Syria’s state news agency SANA said four U.S. helicopters crossed the border and struck a farm about 5 miles inside Syria before returning to Iraqi airspace.

The raid occurred about 4:45 p.m. The helicopters hit a civilian building under construction on the farm, killing killing three men, the wife of a guard and four children, SANA said.

Military officials are investigating the claims, Sgt. Brooke Murphy, a U.S. military spokeswoman, told CNN. “Unfortunately, we cannot confirm anything at the moment,” she said.

The attack occurred near the town of Al-Bukamal, which is home to a Red Crescent camp for Iraqi refugees. The town is across the border from the Iraqi city of Qaim, which has been a major route for Sunni Arab fighters battling U.S. troops in Iraq.

“We still have a certain level of foreign fighter movement, not much, through Anbar, because of our activities out there,” Kelly said. But he said Iraqi intelligence believes al Qaeda operatives and others “live pretty openly on the Syrian side, and periodically we know that they try to come across.”

Syria demanded Iraq’s government “immediately investigate this serious violation” and bar U.S. forces from striking Syria from its territory. The Syrian government summoned U.S. and Iraqi diplomats to the Foreign Ministry in Damascus to condemn the attack, SANA reported

AFP REPORTS:

“American soldiers” who had emerged from helicopters “attacked a civilian building under construction and fired at workmen inside, causing eight deaths,”

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani told US President George W. Bush last month that Iran and Syria — long targets of US blame over the deadly unrest in Iraq — no longer pose a problem.

Iraqi officials have also said that Syria has been boosting border security.

Syria’s first ambassador to Iraq in 26 years took up his post in Baghdad this month, marking the official end of more than two decades of icy relations.

On September 28 US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice confirmed she had met her Syrian counterpart, Walid Muallem, to discuss Middle East peace efforts despite renewed criticism from Washington over Syrian policies.

Their talks came after Bush slammed Syria in his farewell address to the UN General Assembly. “A few nations — regimes like Syria and Iran — continue to sponsor terror,” he charged.

Syria: US choppers attack village near Iraq border
By ALBERT AJI, AP, Sunday, October 26, 2008; 3:31 PM

DAMASCUS, Syria — U.S. military helicopters attacked an area along Syria’s border with Iraq Sunday, killing eight people, the Syrian government said.

The Syrian report comes just days after the commander of U.S. forces in western Iraq told reporters that American troops were redoubling efforts to secure the Syrian border, which he said was an “uncontrolled” gateway for fighters entering Iraq.

A government statement carried by the official Syrian Arab News Agency said Sunday’s attack was on the Sukkariyeh Farm near the town of Abu Kamal, five miles inside the Syrian border. Four helicopters attacked a civilian building under construction, firing on the workers inside, shortly before sundown, the statement said. The U.S. military in Baghdad did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The area is near the Iraqi border city of Qaim, which had been a major crossing point for fighters, weapons and money coming into Iraq to fuel the Sunni insurgency.

Iraqi insurgents seized Qaim in April 2005, forcing U.S. Marines to recapture the town the following month in heavy fighting. The area became secure only after Sunni tribes in Anbar turned against al-Qaida in late 2006 and joined forces with the Americans.

On Thursday, U.S. Maj. Gen. John Kelly said Iraq’s western borders with Saudi Arabia and Jordan were fairly tight as a result of good policing by security forces in those countries but that Syria was a “different story.”

“The Syrian side is, I guess, uncontrolled by their side,” Kelly said. “We still have a certain level of foreign fighter movement.”

He added that the U.S. was helping construct a sand berm and ditches along the border.

“There hasn’t been much, in the way of a physical barrier, along that border for years,” Kelly said.

Marc Gopin, AMERICAN STRIKE ON SYRIA: A GIFT FROM CHENEY TO MCCAIN? … After years of scrupulously avoiding crossing into Syrian territory, the American military receives instructions to invade a town in Syria and kill 8 people.

A U.S. military official confirmed late Sunday an American helicopter attack in an area along Syria’s border with Iraq, which left 8 people dead and three people wounded.

Syria condemned the attack, which it called “serious aggression.”

We are closer than ever before to serious conversations between Israel and Syria, Syria has recognized an international border with Lebanon for the first time in modern history, and this is horrifying to neoconservatives who ran Washington for the last decade. They need to use force and force only to conquer Iraq, Iran and Syria. And they need to promote a conception of the American presidency that is focused on the use of military force. It is vital to their conception of American hegemony.