Uncertain quiet descends on Syrian
front By Ferry Biedermann
HIRI, Syria-Iraq border - There has not been any
fighting lately near the desolate border village of Hiri
as there used to be after the US invasion of Iraq,
inhabitants here say. Nor have any cars or people
crossed the border from Syria to Iraq at the official
crossing; it was closed by the Iraqi authorities and the
Americans last month during the fighting in Fallujah.
There are no more US soldiers or flags to be
seen here, just watchtowers, sniping positions and a
fence. On the Syrian side there is a new
three-meter-high earth ramp to stop cars from crossing
illicitly near the village.
Hiri seems abandoned
to its people and a handful of security officers who do
not welcome any visitors, even if they've come just to
have a look and not to cross into Iraq. The village has
become one of the front lines of a different
confrontation.
The United States has again
warned Syria, along with Iran, to stop interfering in
Iraq. "We will make it clear to both Syria and Iran that
... meddling in the internal affairs of Iraq is not in
their interests," US President George W Bush said last
week.
The United States has put steady pressure
on Damascus to stem what it insists is a continuing flow
of people and money to support insurgents in Iraq. After
initially complaining about the porous border, the
United States has shifted its attention to the presence
of members of the former Iraqi regime and its Ba'ath
party in Syria and their alleged role in funding and
supporting the insurgency. Syria officially hosts some
45,000 Iraqis, but wildly inflated figures of up to a
million refugees also circulate.
"There are many
people here from the regime," said Mahdi al-Obeidi, who
calls himself a representative of the "original Ba'ath
party, from before Saddam [Hussein]". Obeidi has been in
Damascus for some 30 years, a refugee from Saddam, not
an associate.
In his shabby office in Damascus,
he claimed to have met with many new arrivals. He no
longer makes a distinction between those who have been
"Saddam's men" and others; this is Iraq's hour of need
and everybody should unite to fight the Americans, he
said.
"Even if I only have one dime left, I
would give it to the resistance," he told Inter Press
Service. Most Iraqis who are in Syria feel that way, he
said, so it should come as no surprise that they try to
support the "freedom fighters". Syrians are in "total
sympathy with the resistance", Obeidi said. Sadly, he
added, the Syrian government has done little to help.
Few analysts in Syria, even some who are close
to the government, deny that at least a trickle of
people may still be crossing into Iraq to join the
insurgents. The border is long, and many say impossible
to seal completely. Families and tribes straddle the
border and are used to moving back and forth more or
less freely. A sheikh of the Duleimi tribe in Abu Kamal
near Hiri says he knows many people who have crossed
into Iraq and back. He was in Iraq during the war to see
his extended family there, and barely made it back
alive.
What seems to concern the Americans much
more than such individual crossings is the possibility
that the Syrian government may turn a blind eye to
large-scale organized infiltration, or even actively
encourage it. It is widely accepted that this was the
case during the war in Iraq last year. Since then, the
authorities have at least tried to clamp down on the
most blatant instances.
Mahmoud Mohammed
al-Ghasi, known as Sheikh Qa'aqa, was a fiery preacher
up to the invasion of Iraq in nearby Aleppo. Dressed as
an Afghan veteran in a combination of fatigues and
traditional garb, he used to urge the faithful to oppose
American designs in the region. After the invasion he
was told to tone it down.
Now Sheikh Qa'aqa
looks like a businessman. He wears a blazer, his beard
is cropped and he has given up preaching in the local
mosque. "The government does not have a problem with
me," Qa'aqa said. "I think some officials just became
worried because I attracted too many people."
A
disappointed former associate who preferred to remain
unnamed said he was in a group of some 300 core
supporters who left Qa'aqa almost a year ago because the
sheikh "turned out to be a fraud". He said that before
the war Qa'aqa had called for a holy war or jihad
against the Americans if they invaded Iraq. After the
fall of Baghdad, Qa'aqa made a U-turn. "A lot of kids
came to talk to him about going to Iraq and he swore
again and again that there is no jihad in Iraq," he
said.
The former associate of Qa'aqa's is
closely watched by the secret police and has been
forbidden to meet with any other of the sheikh's former
followers. "They do not want us to organize," he said.
Nevertheless, he claimed that he and others like him had
"very good contacts" among the insurgents in Iraq and
that crossing the border was no problem.
There
is disagreement in Syria about what the government knows
about such supposed ties and what it does about them.
One adviser to the Foreign Ministry called it
"inconceivable" that the government would allow, let
alone condone, support for the Iraqi insurgents. "Those
people may go and fight, be trained, learn all kinds of
things and come back to make trouble," said Syrian
adviser Riad Daoudi, indicating that the insurgency in
Iraq is not in Syria's interest.
Prominent
human-rights lawyer Anwar al-Bounni takes a different
view. The government seems to be taking its precautions
by arresting fighters who return from Iraq, he said. At
the beginning of December, a man who had been held for
four months after crossing back visited his office, he
said. He is reported to have told Bounni that at least
50 more former fighters were languishing in the same
jail. The lawyer estimated that there must be many
more
elsewhere.
The government has indeed clamped
down on some of the people who were calling for a jihad
in Iraq, said Bounni. In Hama, a town that has a
reputation as a fundamentalist stronghold, 16 preachers
who were calling on their followers to go to Iraq were
arrested in September, said the lawyer. This was done,
he claimed, not because the authorities wanted to stop
the flow of fighters completely, but because they do not
want it to happen "outside their control".
Bounni said the government has no interest in a
stable Iraq. This presumably would set a bad example for
Syria's own population, he added.
Another
analyst made a slight adjustment to that picture. Syria
may still play a "passive" role in allowing fighters and
financial support to cross into Iraq, he said. But the
government would be willing to stop that "in exchange
for a role" in the affairs of its neighbor.
