Al Qaeda's choke point--Damacus airport

Joe Lieberman:

The United States is at last making significant progress against al Qaeda in Iraq--but the road to victory now requires cutting off al Qaeda's road to Iraq through Damascus.

Thanks to Gen. David Petraeus's new counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, and the strength and skill of the American soldiers fighting there, al Qaeda in Iraq is now being routed from its former strongholds in Anbar and Diyala provinces. Many of Iraq's Sunni Arabs, meanwhile, are uniting with us against al Qaeda, alienated by the barbarism and brutality of their erstwhile allies.

As Gen. Petraeus recently said of al Qaeda in Iraq: "We have them off plan."

But defeating al Qaeda in Iraq requires not only that we continue pressing the offensive against its leadership and infrastructure inside the country. We must also aggressively target its links to "global" al Qaeda and close off the routes its foreign fighters are using to get into Iraq.

Recently declassified American intelligence reveals just how much al Qaeda in Iraq is dependent for its survival on the support it receives from the broader, global al Qaeda network, and how most of that support flows into Iraq through one country--Syria. Al Qaeda in Iraq is sustained by a transnational network of facilitators and human smugglers, who replenish its supply of suicide bombers--approximately 60 to 80 Islamist extremists, recruited every month from across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, and sent to meet their al Qaeda handlers in Syria, from where they are taken to Iraq to blow themselves up to kill countless others.

Although small in number, these foreign fighters are a vital strategic asset to al Qaeda in Iraq, providing it with the essential human ammunition it needs to conduct high-visibility, mass-casualty suicide bombings, such as we saw last week in northern Iraq. In fact, the U.S. military estimates that between 80% and 90% of suicide attacks in Iraq are perpetrated by foreign fighters, making them the deadliest weapon in al Qaeda's war arsenal. Without them, al Qaeda in Iraq would be critically, perhaps even fatally, weakened.

That is why we now must focus on disrupting this flow of suicide bombers--and that means focusing on Syria, through which up to 80% of the Iraq-bound extremists transit. Indeed, even terrorists from countries that directly border Iraq travel by land via Syria to Iraq, instead of directly from their home countries, because of the permissive environment for terrorism that the Syrian government has fostered. Syria refuses to tighten its visa regime for individuals transiting its territory.

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Responsible air carriers should be asked to stop flights into Damascus International, as long as it remains the main terminal of international terror. Despite its use by al Qaeda and Hezbollah terrorists, the airport continues to be serviced by many major non-U.S. carriers, including Alitalia, Air France, and British Airways.

Interrupting the flow of foreign fighters would mean countless fewer suicide bombings in Iraq, and countless fewer innocent people murdered by the barbaric enemy we are fighting there. At a time when the al Qaeda network in Iraq is already under heavy stress thanks to American and Iraqi military operations, closing off the supply line through which al Qaeda in Iraq is armed with its most deadly weapons--suicide bombers--would be devastating to the terrorists' cause.

Simply put, for the U.S. and our Iraqi allies, defeating al Qaeda in Iraq means locking shut Syria's "Open Door" policy to terrorists. It is past time for Syria to do so.

Permitting the Damascus airport to act as a conduit for terrorist is an act of war by Syria. It should be treated as such. If the airlines continue to participate in facilitating this rat line into the war zone they should suffer economic consequences including denial of landing rights in the US. If that is not sufficient to stop the traffic we should take steps to disable the runways at the airport to make them unusable. Perhaps the Syrians can be persuaded" to take effective action to stop the traffic and keep the airport open, but stopping the traffic should be their only option.

I have been making the point about the Damascus airport for four years now. I am delighted to be joined in that point by Sen. Lieberman. He is one of the rare and few Democrat who seems serious about fighting this war and he deserves support for that effort.

W. Thomas Smith says the infiltration is facilitated by the smugglers who have been running their trade in that area for hundreds of years.

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We know they are doing it, and have adjusted our tactics to deal with them as they move deeper into the country. Currently, we "own" most of the towns and villages on the border, so those populated areas are usually not effective way-stations for foreign fighters (like they were back in 2005). The bad guys today are crossing in — often with the cigs, goats, and gas — connecting with facilitators, then moving out into the desert where they attempt to regroup before moving to other points throughout Iraq. They're also running up against our sniper teams and special operators who are killing and capturing a lot of them.

But we need assistance on the front end.

The loss of Anbar and their normal ratlines should have had a big impact on the infiltration. At least it has to be much more difficult now. Assad's sovereignty over the aairport needs to be challenged.