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Sean Gannon is a freelance writer and researcher on Irish and Israeli affairs, specialising in the relationship between the two countries. He is currently preparing a book on this subject and writing the chapter on Ireland for a forthcoming study on the interplay between Anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism and antisemitism in Europe since 9/11.
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By Sean Gannon
September 9, 2004
Despite the fact that his Information Minister said that Damascus had "taken seriously" Israel's threats to carry out military actions on Syrian soil in response to the Beer Sheva suicide bombings, Bashar al-Assad could be forgiven for not being overly concerned by Jerusalem's bellicose rhetoric. Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom may speak of "very clear consequences" but previous Israeli retaliations for attacks for which the Damascus regime was held accountable have hardly been the stuff of 'shock and awe.' For instance, the killing of 16 year-old Haviv Dadon by a Hizbullah shell in Shlomi last August led only to the 'buzzing' by Israel jets of Assad's summer palace in Latakia while the massacre of 21 Israelis in Haifa two months later was answered by nothing more than the bombing of the abandoned Ein Saheb terrorist training camp in the dead of night. With another 16 Israelis dead at the hands of Syrian-sponsored terrorists, more concerted action is manifestly required.
Jerusalem's most recent warnings were mainly directed towards the Hamas executive in Damascus and Yarmouk which Assad continues to insist has no military or operational role in the war against Israel. The IDF, however, sees Khaled Mashaal and Moussa Abu Marzook as stepping up to fill the leadership vacuum left in the territories by the success of its policy of targeted killings and has charged them with direct responsibility for last week's atrocity. According to Israel Radio, it has provided the U.S. administration with "concrete evidence" to back up this claim and to justify strikes against them inside sovereign Syria.
That IDF has the intelligence to, in Deputy Defense Minister Ze'ev Boim's words, "carry out [such] attacks by correct selection of targets, in the correct dosage" is evidenced by "The Damascus Terror Network," a map it released last October which pinpoints the locations of the offices of 17 terror-related organizations sheltered by Assad. That it has the ability was demonstrated by the easy success of the Ein Saheb operation which went, according to one military source, "as smooth as butter." There is, therefore, no logistical reason to prevent Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from carrying out his threat to attack the enemies of Israel "in any place and by any means." Given America's pointed refusal to condemn Israel's warnings to Syria, there is no significant diplomatic reason either. The State Department's declaration in this context that "Israel has the right to defend itself" and its failure to call for restraint makes it clear that the administration which condemned the IDF's initial incursion into one square mile of Area A in April 2001 as an "excessive and disproportionate" response to a terrorist attack now accepts that Israel's war on Hamas cannot be constrained by international borders and boundaries.
But if Syrian-inspired terrorism is ever to be comprehensively defeated, action must be taken not only against the organizations based there but against the Damascus regime itself. Despite America's long-standing demand that it "cease harboring terrorists and [make] a clean break from those responsible for planning and directing terrorist action from Syrian soil," President Assad has made it clear that he has no intention of withdrawing the protection, training facilities and financial and logistical support he lavishes upon them. Reports that he not only facilitates their arming by the Iranian mullahcracy but has given them access to weaponry from his own arsenal makes the situation even graver for Assad presides over the most extensive CBW program of any Arab state. Writing in the summer 2002 edition of the Middle East Quarterly, Danny Shoham estimated that Syria spends between $1 and $2 billion dollars annually on chemical and biological research; his conclusions are backed by the CIA which, in an April 2003 unclassified report to Congress, stated that Syria was developing an offensive biological weapons capability and had armed hundreds of Scud C and D missiles with chemical warheads. Furthermore, in October 2003 John Bolton, the American Undersecretary for Arms Control, accused Syria of maintaining "a stockpile of the nerve agent sarin that can be delivered by aircraft or ballistic missiles" while more recently, evidence has begun to accumulate that Syria was a buyer at Abdul Qadeer Khan's nuclear bazaar.
Bolton said then that there was to that time "no information indicating that the Syrian government has transferred WMD to terrorist organizations or would permit such groups to acquire them." But led as it is by a man who, according to the Jerusalem Post, "inherited all of his father's fanaticism and none of his caution," this is no cause for complacency. The stark fact is that Syria, as a state sponsor of terrorism armed with WMD, represents what Tony Blair described in his address to the Joint Houses of Congress in July 2003 as the "security threat of the twenty-first century."
Therefore, Damascus must be compelled to comply with Security Council Resolution 1373's demand that all states "refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts," a demand which can, given that the resolution was adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, be militarily enforced with the sanction of the Security Council. And it would now appear that military action is the only solution to the problem of Syria. For, despite massive American and European diplomatic, political and economic pressure to cease his tireless sponsorship of terrorism and, more recently, to dismantle his CBW program, Assad is steadfastly refusing to yield.
Why? Because realizing that his ill-equipped army cannot defeat Israel in conventional warfare, Assad believes that terrorist wars of attrition such as that waged by his hero, Hizballah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, in South Lebanon can reap geopolitical rewards. All that interests him regarding the demands being made of his regime, he told al-Hayat last year, is "whether these demands correspond with Syrian interests or not." At present, he sees the sponsorship of anti-Israeli terrorism as being in the national interest. When he is finally and conclusively taught that the opposite is in fact the case, the world will be a safer place for us all.
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