WASHINGTON, Oct. 14 - A series of clashes
in the last year between American and Syrian troops, including a prolonged
firefight this summer that killed several Syrians, has raised the prospect that
cross-border military operations may become a dangerous new front in the
Iraq war, according to current and former military and government
officials.
The firefight, between Army Rangers and
Syrian troops along the border with Iraq, was the most serious of the conflicts
with President Bashar al-Assad's forces, according to American and Syrian
officials.
It illustrated the dangers facing
American troops as Washington tries to apply more political and military
pressure on a country that President Bush last week labeled one of the "allies
of convenience" with Islamic extremists. He also named Iran.
One of Mr. Bush's most senior aides, who
declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject, said that
so far American military forces in Iraq had moved right up to the border to cut
off the entry of insurgents, but he insisted that they had refrained from going
over it.
But other officials, who say they got
their information in the field or by talking to Special Operations commanders,
say that as American efforts to cut off the flow of fighters have intensified,
the operations have spilled over the border - sometimes by accident, sometimes
by design.
Some current and former officials add
that the United States military is considering plans to conduct special
operations inside Syria, using small covert teams for cross-border intelligence gathering.
The broadening military effort along the
border has intensified as the Iraqi constitutional referendum scheduled for
Saturday approaches, and as frustration mounts in the Bush administration and
among senior American commanders over their inability to prevent foreign radical
Islamists from engaging in suicide bombings and other deadly terrorist acts
inside Iraq.
Increasingly, officials say, Syria is to
the Iraq war what Cambodia was in the Vietnam War: a sanctuary for fighters, money and supplies to
flow over the border and, ultimately, a place for a shadow struggle.
Covert military operations are among the
most closely held of secrets, and planning for them is extremely delicate
politically as well, so none of those who discussed the subject would allow
themselves to be identified. They included military officers, civilian officials
and people who are otherwise actively involved in military operations or have
close ties to Special Operations forces.
In the summer firefight, several Syrian
soldiers were killed, leading to a protest from the Syrian government to the
United States Embassy in Damascus, according to American and Syrian officials.
A military official who spoke with some
of the Rangers who took part in the incident said they had described it as an
intense firefight, although it could not be learned whether there had been any
American casualties. Nor could the exact location of the clash, along the porous
and poorly marked border, be learned.
In a meeting at the White House on Oct.
1, senior aides to Mr. Bush considered a variety of options for further actions
against Syria, apparently including special operations along with other methods
for putting pressure on Mr. Assad in coming weeks.
American officials say Mr. Bush has not
yet signed off on a specific strategy and has no current plan to try to oust Mr.
Assad, partly for fear of who might take over. The United States is not planning
large-scale military operations inside Syria and the president has not
authorized any covert action programs to topple the Assad government, several
officials said.
"There is no finding on Syria," said one
senior official, using the term for presidential approval of a covert action
program.
"We've got our hands full in the
neighborhood," added a senior official involved in the discussion.
Some other current and former officials
suggest that there already have been initial intelligence gathering operations
by small clandestine Special Operations units inside Syria. Several senior
administration officials said such special operations had not yet been
conducted, although they did not dispute the notion that they were under
consideration.
Whether they have already occurred or are
still being planned, the goal of such operations is limited to singling out
insurgents passing through Syria and do not appear to amount to an organized
effort to punish or topple the Syrian government.
According to people who have spoken with
Special Operations commanders, teams like the Army's Delta Force are well suited
for reconnaissance and intelligence gathering inside Syria. They could identify
and disrupt the lines of communications, sanctuaries and gathering points used
by foreign Arab fighters and Islamist extremists seeking to wage war against
American troops in Iraq.
What the administration calls Syria's
acquiescence in insurgent operations organized and carried out from its
territory is a major factor driving the White House as it conducts what seems to
be a major reassessment of its Syria policy.
The withdrawal of Syrian troops from
Lebanon earlier this year in the wake of the assassination in February of Rafik
Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, in Beirut led to a renewed debate in
the White House about whether - and how - to push for change in Damascus.
With no clear or acceptable alternative
to Mr. Assad's government on the horizon, the administration now seems to be
awaiting the outcome of an international investigation of the Hariri
assassination, which may lead to charges against senior Syrian officials.
Detlev Mehlis, the German prosecutor in
charge of the United Nations investigation of the killing, is expected to
complete a report on his findings this month.
If Mr. Mehlis reports that senior Syrian
officials are implicated in the Hariri assassination, some Bush administration
officials say that could weaken the Assad government.
"I think the administration is looking at
the Mehlis investigation as possibly providing a kind of slow-motion regime
change," said one former United States official familiar with Syria policy. The
death - Syrian officials called it a suicide - on Wednesday of Interior Minister
Ghazi Kanaan of Syria, who was questioned in connection with the United Nations
investigation, may have been an indication of the intense pressure building on
the Assad government from that inquiry.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the United States
ambassador to Iraq, issued one of the administration's most explicit public
challenges to Damascus recently when he said that "our patience is running out
with Syria."
"Syria has to decide what price it's
willing to pay in making Iraq success difficult," he said on Sept. 12. "And time
is running out for Damascus to decide on this issue."
Some hawks in the administration make
little secret of their hope that mounting political and military pressure will
lead to Mr. Assad's fall, despite their worries about who might succeed him.
Other American officials seem to believe that by taking modest military steps
against his country, they will so intimidate Mr. Assad that he will alter his
behavior and prevent Syrian territory from being used as a sanctuary for the
Iraqi insurgency and its leadership.
"Our policy is to get Syria to change its
behavior," said a senior administration official. "It has failed to change its
behavior with regard to the border with Iraq, with regard to its relationships
with rejectionist Palestinian groups, and it has only reluctantly gotten the
message on Lebanon."
The official added: "We have had people
for years sending them messages telling them to change their behavior. And they
don't seem to recognize the seriousness of those messages. The hope is that
Syria gets the message."
There are some indications that this
strategy, described as "rattling the cage," may be working. Some current and
former administration officials say that the flow of foreign fighters has
already diminished because Mr. Assad has started to restrict their movement
through Syria.
But while he appears to be curbing the
number of foreign Arab fighters moving through Syria, the American officials say
he has not yet restricted former senior members of Saddam Hussein's government from using Syria as a haven from which
to provide money and coordination to the Sunni-based insurgency in
Iraq.
"You see small tactical changes, which
they don't announce, so they are not on the hook for permanent changes," a
senior official said about Syria's response. "They are doing just enough to
reduce the pressure in hopes we won't pay attention, and then they slide back
again."
In an interview with CNN this week, Mr.
Assad denied that there were any insurgent sanctuaries inside Syria. "There is
no such safe haven or camp," he insisted.
In this tense period of give and take
between Washington and Damascus, the firefight this summer was clearly a
critical event. It came at a time when the American military in Iraq was
mounting a series of major offensives in the Euphrates Valley near the Syrian
border to choke off the routes that foreign fighters have used to get into Iraq.
The Americans and Iraqis have been
fortifying that side of the border and increasing patrols, raising the
possibility of firing across the unmarked border and of crossing it in "hot
pursuit."
From time to time there have been reports
of clashes, usually characterized as incidental friction between American and
Syrian forces. There have been some quiet attempts to work out ways to avoid
that, but formal agreements have been elusive in an atmosphere of mutual
mistrust.
Some current and former United States
military and intelligence officials who said they believed that Americans were
already secretly penetrating Syrian territory question what they see as the Bush
administration's excessive focus on the threat posed by foreign Arab fighters
going through Syria. They say the vast majority of insurgents battling American
forces are Iraqis, not foreign jihadis.
According to a new study by the Center
for Strategic and International Studies, intelligence analysis and the pattern
of detentions in Iraq show that the number of foreign fighters represents "well
below 10 percent, and may well be closer to 4 percent to 6 percent" of the total
makeup of the insurgency.
One former United States official with
access to recent intelligence on the insurgency added that American intelligence
reports had concluded that 95 percent of the insurgents were Iraqi.
This former intelligence official said
that in conversations with several midcareer American military officers who had
recently served in Iraq, they had privately complained to him that senior
commanders in Iraq seemed fixated on the issue of foreign fighters, despite the
evidence that they represented a small portion of the insurgency.
"They think that the senior commanders
are obsessed with the foreign fighters because that's an easier issue to deal
with," the former intelligence official said. "It's easier to blame foreign
fighters instead of developing new counterinsurgency strategies."
Top Pentagon officials and senior
commanders have said that while the number of foreign fighters is small, they
are still responsible for most of the suicide bombings in Iraq. Gen. John P.
Abizaid, commander of United States Central Command, said on Oct. 2 on the NBC
News program "Meet the Press" that he recognized the need to avoid "hyping the
foreign fighter problem."
But he cautioned that "the foreign
fighters generally tend to be people that believe in the ideology of Al Qaeda
and their associated movements, and they tend to be suicide bombers."
"So while the foreign fighters certainly
aren't large in number," he said, "they are deadly in their
application."