Gunfire in All Directions

There are events where one quickly and instinctively knows the truth will probably be left by the wayside. The U.S. attack on a Syrian village near the Iraq border is just such an event. The Syrians will never admit it if there truly was a logistical center there that supported the insurgents in Iraq. And the United States will never admit it if only innocent civilians were killed there instead of the suspected al-Qaeda forces they targeted.

Whether it was a snafu or not, the question remains: why now? Certainly the problem of holy warriors from throughout the Middle East being smuggled into Iraq isn’t new. But it was the Americans themselves who just this past summer claimed, to their relief, that such infiltrations had been reduced by half this year. And the Syrians increasingly recognize that the spirits they have summoned up have since turned against them.

That much was made abundantly clear by the al-Qaeda attack in Damascus last month. Since that point at the latest, there has been growing Syrian interest in stricter control of their border with Iraq. Why, then, this escalation? Was it George Bush’s way of saying goodbye to Syria?

The timing, so close to the presidential elections in the U.S., is curious, to say the least. The decision for such an operation could not have come from a local commander. It must have been blessed at higher political levels. An attack on Syrian territory is also a shot across Europe’s bow at a time when Europe has been trying to strengthen political ties with Syria and encouraging them to follow more constructive policies. And the event is more than just embarrassing for the Iraqi government: if Baghdad knew nothing of the planned operation the government then leaves itself open to the question of just how much sovereignty Iraq actually has. If they knew about the plans, then they will be hard put to explain their apparently hostile position to a neighboring Arab sister state.