IN 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.
Its an individual decision. Once youve decided, you go
to a mosque to make the initial contact. Then you are sent to
a private home and from there for a weeks 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.
Most are filtered down the Euphrates river valley to join
the insurgencys combat cells, others crossing in the north
head for the town of Tal Afar and the northern capital, Mosul.
Once dismissed as a small and insignificant part of the
insurgency in Iraq, the US military now concedes that the
threat posed by foreign fighters is one of the most dangerous
they face.
If the might of the US military was humbled in South East
Asia thanks in large part to the Ho Chi Min Trail, the jungle
supply route that fed insurgents in South Vietnam, then
American forces in Iraq today face no less a challenge from
the fanatics who cross into Iraq from Syria.
Over the past few weeks US Marines have carried out a
series of offensives in the western Iraqi province of Anbar to
try to smash the Euphrates supply line, yet most of the towns
along the river valley remain in rebel hands. The main border
town of al-Qaim is even nicknamed the jihad superbowl by US
forces.
The way ahead is not going to be easy, President Bush
conceded yesterday, after meeting Ibrahim al- Jaafari, the
visiting Iraqi Prime Minister, at the White House. The
enemys goal is to drive us out of Iraq before the Iraqis have
established a secure, democratic government. They will not
succeed. General John Abizaid, the commander of the US
Central Command, which is responsible for Iraq, told Congress
on Thursday that he believed that more foreign fighters were
entering the country now than six months ago.
Exact figures are hard to come by, but it is believed that
several thousand fighters are in the country. Some are
remnants of the thousands who poured in during the US-led
invasion of Iraq. According to Lieutenant-General JohnVines,
the commander of coalition forces in Iraq, 150 foreign
volunteers now cross into the country from Syria every month.
This week US forces raiding a hideout near the Syrian
border found passports from Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Libya,
Algeria and Tunisia. There was even a return airline ticket
from Tripoli to Damascus.
They represent only a fraction of the estimated
20,000-strong insurgent force and it is the most potent weapon
in the rebel arsenal. Led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian
fugitive who heads al-Qaeda in Iraq, most of the foreigners
are used as volunteers for suicide car bomb attacks. Since the
handover of sovereignty in Iraq a year ago, there have been
479 car bombers killing 2,174 people and wounding 5,520. In
the latest incident, 6 US soldiers were killed and 13 Marines
were wounded yesterday in a suicide attack in Fallujah, a town
that was supposed to be under complete US military control.
Instead of confronting the foreign fighters inside Iraq,
the Bush Administration is now turning up the pressure on
Syria to stop the Mujahidin trail passing through its country.
It is a fact that terrorists come across the Syrian
border. It is also a fact that Syria is a dictatorship with a
very large intelligence community. And one has to assume they
know it is going on in their country, Donald Rumsfeld, the US
Defence Secretary, said.
It is widely accepted that the Syrian authorities actively
encouraged foreign fighters and their own people to cross into
Iraq before and during the US-led invasion, when thousands of
Arab Mujahidin fought alongside Saddams troops.
But Syria insists that it is now trying to stop Islamic
extremists using its country as a springboard for attack.
Farouk al-Sharaa, the Foreign Minister, challenged the
countrys accusers to provide evidence of collusion. He
insisted that the country was doing what it could to stop the
smuggling of foreign fighters and that America should co-
operate with Syria rather than threaten it.
He said that Syrian border guards needed special equipment,
such as night-vision goggles, to secure the border. Syria
claims to have detained more than 1,200 foreigners trying to
cross into Iraq in the past few months. Some remain under
detention, others have been deported.
A recent inspection of the border by Colonel Julian
Lyne-Pirkis, the British military attaché in Damascus,
disclosed that the Syrians have tried to tighten the border.
They have constructed a 12ft-high sand berm along the 360-mile
frontier, deployed 7,000 guards and built 540 border posts.
But Colonel Lyne-Pirkis described the efforts as fairly
basic. He said: They are making progress, but they can still
do more on the border to improve it.
Seen from Baghdad, however, the border control efforts are
missing the point. To the minds of Iraqs new leaders,
Damascus is the hub of antiIraqi activity where former members
of Saddams Baathist regime are allowed to order operations,
raise finance and spread the message of jihad.
At a recent meeting in a third country, an Iraqi minister
handed over to his Syrian counterpart a list of more than a
dozen insurgent suspects living in Damascus. The list included
names, addresses and their role in planning attacks.
What did the Syrians do with this information? Nothing.
They allowed these people to continue their work, the Iraqi
minister said. Part of the problem is persuading Syria and
other Arab countries to crack down on their citizens who
volunteer to fight.
Many Arab countries are only too pleased to see potential
troublemakers set off for Iraq, where it is hoped that they
will be killed or captured.
This week Abdullah Mohammed Rashid al- Roshoud, one of
Saudi Arabias most wanted militants, was reportedly killed in
Iraq in a US airstrike near al-Qaim, on the Syrian border.
Al-Zarqawi, Jordans most wanted fugitive, is also in Iraq
with a special team of American troops on his tail.
We learnt our lesson from the war in Afghanistan, a
senior Arab intelligence official said. We will not allow
fanatics to return from Iraq and cause trouble. Anybody who
leaves to fight in Iraq will not be allowed back home. If he
does come back he will be arrested.
But this attitude could well backfire. A classified CIA
report produced last month and leaked this week predicted that
foreign fighters, trained in guerrilla warfare in Iraq over
the past two years, could indeed return home with combat
skills that would be used in a new wave of terrorist attacks.
Like the veterans of the war in Afghanistan against the
Soviet Union, who went on to form al-Qaeda and mastermind the
September 11 attacks, those schooled in the bloody streets of
Baghdad, Mosul and Ramadi may one day return to Syria, Saudi
Arabia and even Western countries to begin the next phase of
their jihad.
MEN AT THE HEART OF SPREADING TERROR
THE LEADERS
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
Age: 39
Born: Zarqa,
Jordan
Career: Iraqs most wanted
terrorist has a $25 million price on his head for numerous
attacks by his al-Qaeda-affiliated group, including a bombing
that killed 23 people at a Baghdad kebab shop on June 19. He
recently appealed on his website for young radicals living in
Europe to join the ranks of lions in his martyrs brigade.
Reported to have left Iraq, possibly for Iran, for surgery
after being wounded by shrapnel in May
Abdullah Muhammad Rashid
al-Rashoud
Age: 37
Country:
Saudi Arabia
Career: One of Saudi Arabias
most wanted militants, reported killed this week by a US air
strike in al-Qaim after entering Iraq in April. One of the top
names on Saudi Arabias list of 26 most-wanted terror leaders,
of whom only two are still at large. Issued statements on the
internet calling young men to take part in jihad
Abu Maysara al-Iraqi
The name under
which al-Zarqawis group has signed several announcements
posted on the internet about insurgent fighting, including the
death of al-Roshoud and news about the kidnapping and killing
of British and American hostages
THE FOOT SOLDIERS
Wail al-Dhaleai
Age:
22
Country:
Britain
Career: Died bombing a US
military checkpoint in Iraq in May 2004. He travelled there
from Sheffield where he had arrived in 2000 as an
asylum-seeker from Yemen
Idris Bazis
Age:
41
Country: France
Career: The
French-Algerian moved last June from France to Manchester,
then travelled via Syria to Iraq. He is thought to have
carried out a suicide bombing in Hilla on February 28
Mohammed Afalah
Age:
28
Country:
Spain
Career: The Moroccan-born
stallholder from Madrid helped to organise the train bombings
in March 2004. He is believed to have died in a suicide
bombing in Baghdad on May 19
Boubaker El Hakim
Age:
21
Country:
France
Career: Tunisian-born Muslim based
in Paris travelled to Syria and later Iraq. Sent back to
France last September after being jailed in Syria for trying
to re-enter Iraq without papers. Arrested again in France on
June 18 on terrorist
charges