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Syria tries border diversion

NY Times:

The barbed wire was new, so new in fact it was still being rolled out Friday as Maj. Gen. Amin Soliman Charabeh pointed toward the swirling barrier as proof that his country was doing all it could to stop weapons smugglers and infiltrators from slipping across his country's border into Iraq, fueling the insurgency there.

Border policemen in military uniforms stood in front of the rolls of wire, each armed with an automatic weapon. They were young men, four in a row, and each said it was his first day at that post.

This was a trip organized by the Syrian government for a group of foreign reporters, and it quickly became clear that the official message Syria was trying to promote was not that it had sealed its borders. On the contrary, Syria was trying to make the point that the border remained porous, and that it was not Syria's fault.

As Syria braces for possible sanctions after a United Nations investigation implicated top Syrian officials in the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, the government has searched for whatever leverage it can find to try to negotiate internationally. Syria has tried to pacify its critics, especially the United States, by offering to do what it can on other fronts, like securing the border.

But given the size of the border, which stretches for hundreds of miles, the country's limited financial resources and what they say is a lack of cooperation from the allied forces on the Iraqi side, Syrian officials said, there are limits to what can fairly be expected of them.

"In the daytime, it is very hard for anyone to go to the other side," General Charabeh, who oversees security across the length of the border, said as he pointed into Iraqi territory. "During the night, with the absence of night surveillance technology, it might be possible."

The trip, however, appeared to reveal more than just the Syrians' hard luck story. Some measures they claimed to have taken months ago looked as though they were just now being rolled out. On one berm there was a footpath, recently blocked by the new fencing, and there appeared to be footprints in the dirt.

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The choke point is not at the border. It is at the airport in Damascus where the jihadis arrive. Get them at the airport with fewer resources rather than having to deal with a force to space issue on the border. If they do not catch them at the airport, catch them at the mosques in Damascus or the resturants and coffee houses where they meet. If they wait until they get to the borderm they are giving up the game.