| December 23, 2005 Regime Change In Syria? Connecting the Dots From Mosul to Hafia by Karen Button, insurgent49 
As the Bush administration continues to crank up the rhetoric about
Syria being a bad international player, laying the groundwork for
possible UN sanctions and the almost inevitable military action, one
might wonder: why Syria? Syria’s government has cooperated
to a limited extent since Mr. Bush began his War on Terror. Though
Syria did oppose US military action in Iraq, they have contracted with
the US for “questioning” detainees the CIA sends to the
Ba’athist-led country. As Washington cuts contact with Damascus citing Syria’s rogue-state behavior, it is really just another step in isolating a country that the Bush administration set its sights on years ago. In a double bind, the administration has refused offers by Syria to revive intelligence cooperation that was severed by Syria after the US invaded Iraq. At the same time it criticizes Syria for not doing enough to prevent foreign fighters from crossing its borders into Iraq. "What we see in general is an administration that is categorically refusing to engage with Syria on any level," said Syria's ambassador to the US, Imad Moustapha. "We see an administration that would really love to see another crisis in the Middle East, this time targeting Syria. Even before the Iraq war started, they had this grand vision for the Middle East." He is, of course, right. The Washington Post’s William Arkin wrote, “The January 2002 Nuclear Posture Review levied requirements on the military to conduct planning for potential use of nuclear weapons against Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and North Korea.” Later that year, in a May 6 speech to the Heritage Foundation, then Under Secretary of State John Bolton named Libya, Syria and Cuba as countries that were attempting to obtain weapons of mass destruction. "States that renounce terror and abandon WMD can become part of our effort. But those that do not can expect to become our targets," he said. Since then, Libya has had a change-of-heart, as they term it in Washington, renouncing any plans for weapons procurement or development and cowing to terms set by the West. Libya has since been held up as an example of what is expected from Syria. The Defense Department, in a document entitled “Contingency Planning Guidance” for 2004, outlined “emerging threats” that ultimately resulted in a directive to the Defense Intelligence Agency to significantly increase its work on Syria. This entails analyzing the country’s leadership, military forces, equipment capability, electrical infrastructure, communications design and vulnerabilities. The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri may or may not have been committed by the Syrians, but was certainly convenient for Mr. Bush to point an immediate accusatory finger. Convenient also, was the timing of Mr. Bolton’s contentious installation as US Ambassador to the UN. The UN’s investigative report (the Mehlis Report) into Mr. Hariri’s killing was inconclusive and left more questions than answers. It has been widely criticized for a number of reasons, not the least of which is Mr. Bolton’s involvement, which can hardly been seen as neutral. Why, for example, has the report relied so much on its main witness, Zuhir Mohamed Said Saddik who, like Iraq’s witness-for-war Ahmed Chalabi, is a convicted embezzler? Why didn’t the report focus on gathering hard facts, instead? An obvious gap was a lack of investigation into the background of the car used in the bombing, stolen from Japan in 2004 and somehow ending up in Lebanon six months later? Publicly questioned yet not even mentioned in the report, did Syria actually possess the technology to block the sophisticated bomb detonation detection equipment installed in Hariri’s car? Beyond the Mehlis Report, one question we must ask ourselves is: Who really stands to gain from the assassination of Mr. Hariri? Does Syria, a country already under enormous international pressure to withdraw from Lebanon? What would murdering a popular politician and hugely successful businessman with powerful ties accomplish for Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad? The subsequent political fallout has done nothing for Syria, but it has had the desired effect for the US—to further isolate and vilify a country marked for regime change in Washington long before Mr. Hariri was killed. This is not to excuse Syria. Like Saddam’s Iraq, Syria is controlled by Ba’athist Party elite who are dictatorial and often violent. Its human rights record is dismal and they are known to assassinate political opponents. So if Syria did kill the former prime minister, why is the Bush government so concerned about that, yet willing to contract with the same government to torture detainees? Remember Maher Arar? He is the Syrian-Canadian software engineer who was detained by US officials at Kennedy airport enroute home to Canada in early 2003. After being intensely interrogated for days, Arar was placed on a CIA jet and "rendered" to Syria where he was further interrogated and tortured for 10 months in an underground cell. Some of the real reasons for regime change can likely be found in following the oil. Yep, we’re back to oil. Prior to the US invasion of oil-rich Iraq, Washington and Tel Aviv began discussions to reopen an old oil pipeline route that once ran from Mosul to Haifa. The pipeline was redirected to Syria in 1948 after the British mandate in Palestine expired. During those discussions in early 2003, the Israeli Minister for National Infrastructures, Joseph Paritzky, was widely quoted as saying that the new pipeline would cut Israel’s energy bill by “at least 25 percent since the country is currently largely dependent on expensive imports from Russia.” This is not an insignificant amount and could transform Israel’s economy according to some analysts. Israel now imports about 80 percent of its oil from the former Soviet Union due to a 1979 Persian and Arab trade embargo. The old pipeline route went through Jordan and it’s assumed the new one would as well. In fact, negotiations for this pipeline date back to the 1980s when Donald Rumsfeld was leading the charge and had already secured Bechtel for the deal. Today, Bechtel is still in line for the project. In June 2003 James Akins, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and oft-quoted Arab expert, stated: "There would be a fee for transit rights through Jordan, just as there would be fees for Israel from those using what would be the Haifa terminal. After all, this is a new world order now. This is what things look like particularly if we wipe out Syria. It just goes to show that this is all about oil, for the United States and its ally." During the same time period, the Bush administration issued more threats against Syria than in the history of relations between the two nations. Their reasoning has been an insecure border, through which Syria has been accused of allowing the transit of military equipment and people – a convenient double-standard given that Iraq’s borders were wide open for months between Jordan and Turkey. Apparently would-be insurgents only enter through Syria. But the United States is already unofficially at war with Syria. For the past six months, US Army Rangers and the Special Operations Delta Force have been crossing the border into Syria, supposedly to "interdict" terrorists coming into Iraq. Several Syrian soldiers have been killed according to The Guardian, Al-Jazeera and other sources. This is despite the Pentagon’s own admission that only 4-5 percent of the resistance in Iraq is foreign. Meanwhile, Iraqi communities along the Syrian border have been laid siege to since early May when these operations began. The UN news agency IRIN has reported that up to 100,000 people have become homeless as US-led forces drop 500-pound bombs on the homes of suspected “insurgents.” Further compounding this humanitarian crisis is an inaccessibility to the communities since five bridges crossing the Euphrates have also been bombed. The Iraqi Red Crescent, one of the few aid agencies still left in Iraq, has called upon the military to stop the killing of civilians. Meanwhile the aid and advocacy organization Doctors for Iraq has testified at the World Health Organization’s invitation to the extreme conditions in the west. Whether or not the US is using these border operations as a cover to enter Syria, the facts remain that it is using whatever means necessary to create a new world order in the Middle East, and Syria appears to be next on the hit list. Karen Button is a freelance journalist and peace activist. She can be reached at kbutton@insurgent49.com |
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2005
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Reserved. in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership. |
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