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Stopping the flow of terrorist across the Syria-Iraq border

Secretary of State Rice hammered the Syrians again this week for not controlling terrorist coming across their border. The Syrians said they would like the Iraqi to provide them some evidence. I suppose they could scrape together some DNA from a bomb site where one of the infiltrators exploded.

However, expecting the Syrians, even if they were motivated to stop these guys at the border with Iraq is about as realistic as expecting the US and Iraqis to stop them at the border. It is a long border with few fortifications and stop points.

The choke point, the center of gravity for terrorist infiltration is closer to Damascus. It begins at the airport where the jihadis arrive in the country. That is where Syria could most easily control "the trail of death." From the airport the jihadis head out to places like:

...A garden café on the airport road into Damascus clusters of young men gather to drink coffee, smoke shisha and hear some awe-inspiring accounts of death and glory that will lead many on a journey to certain death in the battle raging across the border in Iraq.

The owner, a former Mujahidin fighter, openly boasts of his exploits and those of his comrades still fighting the war against US forces. Like many veterans he is eager to recount his adventures in the hope of persuading others to join the cause.

A Syrian mother said that her son, a taxi driver, had succumbed to the call to arms last month and set off with a friend on the trail to Iraq, never to be heard of again.

Like thousands of other young men, drawn from across the Arab world and from Muslim communities as far away as Spain, France and even Sheffield, his final point of departure was Syria.

“It’s an individual decision. Once you’ve decided, you go to a mosque to make the initial contact. Then you are sent to a private home and from there for a week’s intensive training inside Syria,” she said. According to former fighters who spoke to The Times in Damascus, volunteers are given a crash course in using Kalashnikov rifles, firing rocket-propelled grenades and the use of remote detonators. The training takes place at secret camps in the Syrian desert, near the Iraqi border. Some attacks are even planned in advance in Damascus and Aleppo. Once the team is ready, a guide leads them across the rugged border into Iraq where they are taken to a safe house.

Syria could find a use for all those intelligence officers it pulled out of Lebanon by putting them to work watching the cafes, mosques, and training camps. How can a entity like Syria permit people to operate terrorist training camps in its borders? OK, they have been doing it for years in the war with Israel, but the Damascus entity should have a handle on people that threaten its existence by prevoking the US and Iraq.

It would not be difficult for the US to put the Damascus airport out of operation, but it would make more sense for Syria to avoid that by stopping the jihadis as they get off the plane. The profile of the human bombers is pretty well known at this point. The US could also take out the cafes where they meet their contacts with a few smart bombs, but it would make more sense for Syrian security agents to make it impossible for them to operate, by closely monitoring those who fit the bomber profile that are seen there. Syria needs to arrest those who are running the training camps. As Bill Clinton demonstrated, bombing training camps is a rather futile act. If Syria does not arrest those responsible for the training camps, the US will have to send special forces troops in to round up the bad guys.

It would be a lot easier to stop these guys before they got to the border.