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2 THE ROVING
EYE Night bus from
Baghdad By Pepe Escobar
ATTANF, on the Syria-Iraq border - The
road from Damascus to the border is pure
Desolation Row. Scattered nomad shepherds search
rare, precious grasslands for their flocks. An
incoming rickety Nissan bus from Iraq passes by,
loaded with goods but carrying only four people. A
pair of rusty Soviet-era missiles are transported
by a slow military truck - to be positioned at the
border in a face-off with the Americans?
There are three major crossing points from
Syria to Iraq: al-
Yarubiye in the northeast,
al-Bukamal, and Attanf. Attanf, the village,
consists of three bombed-out houses. The border
itself is just a customs and immigration post. The
arrival of a stranger provokes quite a commotion -
as in a Sergio Leone western.
In typical police-state style, everyone
in the dingy immigration control room is afraid to talk. No
one speaks a single word of any foreign language. An
Iraqi doctor, a woman, fleeing hell in Baghdad and
about to become the newest refugee in Syria, is
brought in a hurry to mediate. No one will talk
without an express authorization from "Damascus" -
this remote, wrathful entity beyond human
understanding.
The Iraqi refugees are
quite straightforward, though. Yes, there are only
American soldiers on the other side, 7 kilometers
of no-man's land away, a true measure of Iraq's
"sovereignty". Yes, they may hold cars and trucks
coming from Syria for many hours, sometimes even a
day, before letting them through. Yes, they look
for young men who may be potential jihadis. Yes,
the road is dangerous, but not as dangerous as
Amman-Baghdad and Inch'Allah.
The White
House and the State Department insist Syria allows
and/or encourages jihadis to cross its border into
Iraq - going as far as stating that 90% of the
suicide bombers in Iraq have crossed from Syria.
They seem to ignore Colonel William Crowe, the
Pentagon official in charge of all those Americans
on the Iraqi side of the border, who has said, on
the record, that there is "no large influx of
foreign fighters".
Moreover, "Damascus" has repeatedly confirmed that
most of the 724km-long border has been fitted with
barbed wire and reinforced sand barriers - and no
fewer than 1,500 potential jihadis have been
captured or deported.
But the fact is that any
enterprising jihadi with geographical positioning
and minimal tribal connections could cross this
border at will. In theory, "Damascus", from
President Bashar al-Assad on down, is interested
in combating smuggling and jihadi traffic. The
devil is in the details - how the Syrian
police/military hierarchy actually deals with the
problem.
For starters, Syrian business is
in the hands of a powerful Sunni oligarchy. Its
members will obviously be tempted to lend a hand
to their Sunni muqawama (resistance)
brothers in the east. Syrian military forces at
wasteland border points - as in Attanf - consist
of no more than a few bored men with rifles.
Corruption is the norm. Evading surveillance is a
matter of walking a few kilometers in the desert.
Historically, Iran,
Iraq and Syria were united by the Silk Road.
Attanf, for instance, is not very far from
fabled Palmyra. The interaction has never ceased. Nowadays we may
be seeing a new Silk Road pipeline - not only
of men, ideas and commerce but also of
weapons. Whatever comes from Iran has to pass through Iraq
and Syria to reach Lebanon (Hezbollah)
and Palestine (Hamas). Same for Sunni solidarity with Iraq,
expressed through men, ideas, commerce or weapons from either
Lebanon or Syria.
Accusing Syria of
being a suicide-bomber factory is nonsense.
The majority of suicide bombers in Iraq are Saudis,
and they cross from US ally Saudi Arabia. Syria,
since the fall of Baghdad four years ago, may have
witnessed an inflation of
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