While American
troops relentlessly grind down the military power of Saddam
Hussein's dictatorship, a new and more unconventional threat is
emerging to American troops in Iraq: low intensity guerrilla
warfare supported by Iraq's neighbors, Syria and Iran.
Both countries
teamed up to support the Lebanon-based terrorist group, Hezballah,
in its successful campaign to drive out American peacekeeping
troops in Lebanon in the early 1980s and may harbor ambitions to
repeat that strategy in Iraq in the future.
According to U.S.
intelligence sources, Iran's leaders decided last month to dispatch
paramilitary forces across Iran's border with Iraq to harass
American soldiers after the fall of the Iraqi dictator. According to ,
an
unidentified U.S. intelligence agency issued a report on March 24
that detailed the conversations of Iran's top leaders, including
President Mohammad Khatami and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamanei, at a meeting to formulate Iran's policy in postwar
Iraq.
Iran's leaders
reportedly decided to raise the costs of occupation by sending
paramilitary forces to five Iraqi cities (Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala,
Basra, and Kirkuk) to foment anti-American violence. Iran already has deployed
the Badr Brigade, a pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiite guerrilla force, to
northern Iraq.
Iran's national
security adviser, Hassan Rowhani, publicly warned on March 14 that
there will be no "happy ending" to the occupation of Iraq. Iran also has tried to stir
up opposition to American forces in Afghanistan, where it has
supported Gulbeddin Hekmatyar, a radical Islamic leader who has
joined with remnants of the Taliban to attack the Afghan government
and U.S. troops.
Syria also has
dropped some ominous hints of its intentions. Syrian President Bashir
Assad, asked in a March 27th interview if Syria would be
the next target of American war plans, said, "We are not going to
wait until they include Syria in the plan or declare that or
not… Some Arab capitals will stand beside Baghdad. When I talk about some Arab
capitals, it does not make sense to exclude Syria."
The next day
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned that, "We have
information that shipments of military supplies have been crossing
the border from Syria into Iraq, including night-vision
goggles. These
deliveries pose a direct threat to the lives of coalition
forces. We consider
such trafficking to be hostile acts and will hold the Syrian
government accountable for such shipments."
Syria also has
allowed Arab volunteers to cross its border into Iraq to fight for
Saddam's dictatorship. British sources believe that 600 Arabs
already have crossed into Iraq from Syria and British Special
Forces have intercepted Arab volunteers in western Iraq who were
given Syrian passports to facilitate their travel to Baghdad,
according to the London Times.
Syria and Iran
successfully opposed the multinational peacekeeping force that was
dispatched to stabilize Lebanon following the 1982 Israeli
intervention in Lebanon. Iran organized, trained,
funded and armed the radical Islamic Hezballah (Party of God), a
Lebanese Shiite terrorist group that killed more than 300 Americans
in bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the Marine barracks in Beirut
in 1983. Syria, which
allowed Iran to airlift arms to Hezballah through Syrian airfields,
also cooperated with Hezballah inside Lebanon, which it continues
to occupy with 30,000 troops. Now Syria and Iran
apparently are making similar plans to stir up Iraqi Shiites
against the American military presence.
The Bush Administration must follow up on Rumsfeld's warning to
Syria with high-level diplomatic messages to both Syria and Iran
that meddling inside Iraq will be considered a hostile act that
will irreversibly poison relations with the United States, trigger
a forceful American reaction, and incur prohibitive economic,
diplomatic, and military costs. Such external interference
must be nipped in the bud before it can turn post-Saddam Iraq into
another Lebanon-like sanctuary for anti-Western
terrorists.