U.S.A Unprovoked Attack on Syria Why now?
World Thursday, October 30th, 2008“Why now at the end of the Bush administration, with Washington trying to play nice with Damascus and tensions easing throughout the region, would U.S. forces stage such a gambit?”
Thousands of Syrians have held a peaceful protest in Damascus today against a U.S. raid on a village in the east of the country that has claimed the lives of eight people and put a further strain on U.S.-Syrian relations.
The protestors, including civil servants and students, waved flags and carried banners reading “No to American terrorism” and “America the sponsor of destruction and wars”.
These anti-U.S. sentiments are being felt not just in Syria but all over the Middle East because the Syrians insist that the victims were civilians who had nothing to do with terrorism.
Although the U.S. state department and the White House have refused to confirm, deny or comment on the cross-border raid – the first of its kind involving a helicopter attack and U.S. boots on the ground that far into Syrian territory, unnamed U.S. officials have said the mission was aimed at capturing or killing Abu Ghadiya, an Iraqi-born al-Qaeda cell leader the U.S. says has helped to bring thousands of fighters across the border.
But residents of Sukkiraya farm in the Syrian Abu Kamal border area, the scene of the U.S. raid, strongly deny that the dead had any links to al-Qaeda.
According to the BBC, five of those killed in the U.S. raid were from the same family. The woman who lost her husband and four sons in the raid said all the men were working on the house that was in the compound where the Americans landed, and denied any link between them and al-Qaeda.
“I went outside to get my son and the Americans shot me,” Souad Khousaim told the BBC from her hospital bed where she is being treated from injuries received during the attack. “I was screaming in terror.”
According to the witnesses, the U.S. had sent four helicopters to the area, two of which landed, allowing U.S. special forces to dismount. The Americans searched the place, then left, leaving behind bullet casings and scattered shoes belonging to the dead men, one villager told the BBC.
Local people insist that the men killed were all builders who had just laid the foundations for a new house, along with a night watchman.
Nobody mentioned the target of the U.S. mission, Abu Ghadiya. Everybody agreed that al-Qaeda was never there, that there was no gun battle and that the raid was an American war crime.
“The world must see what the Americans have done here,” a relative of the dead men told the BBC.
- “War crime”
The attack, described as a “war crime attempt” by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem, left the Syrians outraged about the violation of their sovereignty and their territory.
In retaliation, Syria has shut down a U.S. school and cultural centre in Damascus, and its United Nations envoy has requested that the Security Council intervene to prevent further incursions into Syrian territory.
“This act of aggression perpetrated by the U.S. forces against Syrian civilians indicates the U.S. administration’s determination to go on in its policies that brought nothing but killing and destruction to the region,” said Syria’s letter to the Security Council.
The Syrian government also threatened to cut off co-operation on Iraqi border security if the U.S. carried out any more raids on Syrian territory.
The Iraqi government also condemned the U.S. attack and said that it would share the results of its own investigation into the raid.
But the Americans say they have the right of self-defence – even if that means crossing an international border. A new U.S. presidential order has reportedly been made to this effect. It means the Americans will be prepared to take such action again in future, in Syria and elsewhere, further damaging the U.S. image in the Middle East and the world.
- Why now?
The cross-border raid has led to speculation among analysts about meaning of the attack, according to an editorial on the Inter Press Service.
“So the question is: Why?”, geostrategic analyst and journalist Helena Cobban wrote on her blog. “Why now at the end of the Bush administration, with Washington trying to play nice with Damascus and tensions easing throughout the region, would U.S. forces stage such a gambit?”
The raid also comes as Syria is engaged in indirect talks with Israel, through Turkish mediation, apparently in a calculated effort to ease tensions with the West and the U.S.
The attack could also complicate the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) the U.S. is negotiating with Iraqi authorities which would allow American troops to stay in Iraq after the United Nations mandate expires at the end of this year. U.S.-Iraqi talks on the SOFA have been bogged down, and a persistent Iraqi demand has been that Iraqi soil not be used as a launch pad for attacks on other countries.
“The Iraqi government rejects U.S. aircraft bombarding posts inside Syria,” a government spokesperson, Ali al-Dabbagh, said on Tuesday. “The constitution does not allow Iraq to be used as a staging ground to attack neighboring countries.”
- “The law of the jungle”
Hawks within the Bush administration have long called for expanding Middle Eastern conflicts into Syria. Bush’s deputy national security adviser, Elliott Abrams, told Israeli officials during a high-level meeting that the U.S. would not object if Israel extended its 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon into Syria.
But if the cross-border attack was an attempt to lure Syria into a war, it appears to have failed because Damascus has engaged in a measured response.
Syria’s press attache in London, Jihad Makdissi, told the BBC that the U.S. should have approach Syria first. “If they 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,” he said.
Some analysts also believe that the raid was a political stunt by the Bush administration to deliver an “October Surprise” to gain more votes for Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain just over a week before the election in which he badly trails Democratic rival Senator Barack Obama in most polls.
However, the attack doesn’t not appear to have made an immediate impact, as on Wednesday the Democrat led McCain by 52-45% in the latest ABC News-Washington Post poll.
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on Oct 30 2008. Filed under