Syria

• Senior US and Iraqi officials believe that while Syria overtly refrains from supporting the Iraqi insurgency, it still allows Islamist groups including al-Qaeda in Iraq to recruit young men inside its borders and then send them into Iraq, where substantial numbers have served as suicide bombers. In addition, Syria has also allowed senior Baathist leaders to operate freely and provide direction for the insurgency from inside its borders, among them Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri.

• Multi-National Forces commander General George Casey has been careful not to exaggerate the level of Syrian involvement but has also warned that Syria has allowed Baathists inside its territory to provide money, supplies, and direction to their fellow travelers operating inside Iraq. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in March 2005, Casey stated that there are Baathist leaders in Syria who operate, plan, and direct much of the Iraqi insurgency from there in addition to providing the insurgents with resources such as petty cash. Casey stated that he had no hard evidence that the Syrian government was itself involved in the insurgency but that there was evidence that Syrian officials were aware of these Baathist leaders and their activities yet had refrained from acting against them.

• The State Department stated in the late spring of 2005 that it had seen "some efforts" out of Syria to stem the insurgency but believed the government there could "do more" in this regard. The same statement claimed that there were Baathists operating in Syria that were supporting and directing the insurgency and that the Syrian government was simply unwilling to take action against them.

• In February 2005, the Baghdad TV station al-Iraqiyyah aired the taped confessions of several insurgents from Sudan, Syria, and Iraq who confessed that they had been trained in Syria and at least 3 of these insurgents stated that they had been trained by Syrian intelligence to kidnap, behead, and assassinate Iraqi security forces. The majority of these men stated that there actions had been driven strictly by the prospect of monetary rewards and made no mention of any further religious or nationalistic motivations.

• Syria has repeatedly denied that it supports or harbors anyone involved in the insurgency in Iraq, though it did turn over a group of men believed to be involved in financing the insurgency under heavy American pressure in February 2005. One of these captives was Sabawi Ibrahim Hassan, Saddam Hussein's half-brother and a leading insurgent financier.

• There have been reports that Zarqawi does most of the recruiting for his organization in Syria and that his recruiting and transit network through the country is known to Syrian intelligence. Media reports have even claimed that there was a meeting of Zarqawi lieutenants in Syria in the spring of 2005, though US intelligence assessments in June called into question the belief that Zarqawi had personally attended the meeting.

• US officials and commanders as well as their Iraqi counterparts acknowledge that Syria has made some efforts to improve border security and reduce infiltration under US pressure. Sealing its border is problematic from the Syrian perspective because its border security is weak, lacks training and equipment, and much of the border lacks clear demarcation. At the same time, these same officials and commanders believe that Syria deliberately turns a blind eye to those infiltrations it is able to disrupt and allows large numbers of Islamists to transit its borders.

• In a May 2005 speech before the UN Security Council, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari asked neighboring states to do more to cut down the problem of foreign infiltration into Iraq, specifically mentioning Syria even while acknowledging recent efforts to stem the flow of foreign fighters. According to Zebari, Syria had recently thwarted an effort by 1,000 foreign fighters to infiltrate into Iraq and welcomed the action, but continued to note that the country remained the preferred transit route for Baathists as well as foreign Islamists. A senior US intelligence official echoed Zebari's comments, stating that there was "no question" Syria played a significant role in the ability of foreign fighters to move into Iraq.

• The Washington Post ran an article in the summer of 2005 that included an interview with a self-declared insurgent organizer in Syria named Abu Ibrahim. According to Abu Ibrahim, Syria was "the hub" for foreign insurgents and had arrested him for several days in 2004 under US pressure, only to release him again soon afterwards. Abu Ibrahim openly admitted to ferrying men, weapons, and cash into Iraq and boasted that he was routinely tailed by Syrian intelligence officials who did nothing to interfere with his activities. Abu Ibrahim also stated that during the early days of the war, Syrian border guards waved busloads of mostly Saudi would-be jihadis into Iraq. Ibrahim himself was inspired to join the insurgency by an Islamist preacher who called himself Abu Qaqaa, who told him that the government would not interfere in their activities as long as they were fighting against the US and Israel. While it is impossible to openly verify Abu Ibrahim's claims, they do not appear to differ greatly with both public statements and classified assessments by US officials and the US intelligence community.

• Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice both stated in mid-2005 that Syria was continuing to allow Iraqi Baathists and Islamists to operate in Syria and travel across the Syria-Iraq border. This presents ongoing problems for the coalition because Iraq has comparatively few border posts and that many of these had been attacked, with some of them being destroyed or abandoned. A major effort is now underway to rebuild them, but so far this is making limited progress and both the morale and effectiveness of the Iraqi border guards are often quite low.

• The border region around Huasaybah (Qusaybah) has long been a center for smuggling and criminal activity. Two smuggler tribes, the Mahalawis and the Salmanis, have long controlled the flow of illegal goods across the border and permit an insurgent presence in the area with Syria tolerance. Even under Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi government was unable to secure the area - a 400-man unit sent to Huasaybah in March 2000 to crush the smugglers collapsed after a few skirmishes and was forced to seek refuge at a local phosphate plant.

• The entire route along the Euphrates from Hit to Haditha to Ubaydi to Qaim to Karbilah to Qusaybah to Abu Kamal in Syria has become a logistics route and partial sanctuary for the insurgency and is the main conduit through which volunteers and supplies flow in from Syria. In the spring of 2005, the US Marine Corps launched its largest offensive since Fallujah against the area after tracking foreign fighters there who had sought refuge after being defeated in Fallujah and Ramadi. While in the area, the US marines faced off against a combination of Baathist and al-Qaeda elements.

• The emphasis on insurgent infiltration through Syria must not be over-stressed as Iraqi insurgents do not require major arms shipments, money and critical supplies can be moved across the border in small quantities, and foreign jihadis can enter Iraq as normal visitors without any equipment. US Customs and Border Protection officers are still working to train their Iraqi counterparts and have had only a moderate success at detaining potential insurgents and arms suppliers as well as at identifying and breaking up smuggling rings. Another US CBP team of officers and border agents was deployed in February 2005 to help speed up the training of the Iraqi border units. This will help, but Iraq's new border security forces have been some of its most ineffective units, many of its border forts remain abandoned, and those that are staffed exhibit only minimal activity. As a result, even if all of Iraq's neighbors were working to secure the border security would still be a problem.

• Iraq's borders total 3,650 kilometers in length (1,458 kilometers with Iran, 181 with Jordan, 240 with Kuwait, 814 with Saudi Arabia, 650 with Syria, and 352 with Turkey) and most of them are desert, desolate, water, or mountains, with even the country's 58 kilometer coastline being an area with considerable small craft and shipping traffic that continues to present security problems.

• Syria plays a role in dealing with Iraqi Shi'ites as well as Sunnis, maintaining ties to SCIRI, Dawaa, and Dawaa's Tanzeem al-Iraq that it first developed during the Iran-Iraq War even while tolerating and encouraging former Baathist operations. Since Syria's Alawite oligarchy is closer to Shi'ites than Sunnis, it likely sees its support of Sunni insurgents as a way to weaken the US but also maintains ties to Iraqi Shi'ites in the event the insurgency is eventually defeated.

Iran

• The Iranian role in the Iraqi insurgency is highly controversial, as Iran has an active presence inside Iraq and maintains ties to several Shi'ite political parties. These include key parties in the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) coalition that won the January elections including SCIRI, Dawaa, and Tanzeem al-Iraq. The IRGC and VEVAK presence in southern Iraq dates back to the 1980s and both organizations maintain a network of intelligence agents and informants at present.

• Then-Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi expressed his concern at an Iranian role inside Iraq in 2004 and early 2005, as did several other interim Iraqi government officials. None was more critical, however, than Interim Defense Minister Hazim Shaalan, who claimed in July 2004 that Iran remained Iraq's "first enemy" by supporting terrorism against the interim government, allowing infiltration into Iraq, and by interfering in the Iraqi political process in order to "kill democracy" inside the country. A few months later, Shaalan (a secular Shi'ite) accused Iran of trying to set up a Khomeinist-style regime inside Iraq, which he dubbed "Saddam with a turban."

• During a September 2004 briefing, Shaalan stated that Iran intervention inside Iraq and its support of Muqtada al-Sadr posed a major threat to Iraqi national security, that Iran was continuing to support al-Sadr by sending him weaponry, money, and VEVAK and IRGC operatives posing as pilgrims, and that Iraq needed a strong national security force to adequately defend itself against these threats.

• In its study of Iranian influence inside Iraq, the International Crisis Group (ICG) quoted an Iranian cleric who was a close associate of Grand Ayatollah Sistani as saying that Iran's policies inside Iraq were 100% wrong, were acting against the interests of the Iraqi people, and would result in a lack of trust on the part of the Iraqi Shi'ites towards their Iranian co-believers.

• King Abdullah II of Jordan has also leveled a number of criticisms about Iranian influence inside Iraq, even charging that Iran was planning to rig the Iraqi elections with 1,000,000 false registrants and warning of the risk of a "Shi'ite crescent" stretching from Iran across Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.

• In an interview aired on Iraqi TV in January 2005, Muayed al-Nasseri, the captured leader of the Baathist Jaish Mohammed (Army of Mohammed) claimed his group received regular shipments of weaponry and money from Syria and Iran. According to al-Nasseri, a number of countries were supporting the insurgency and that Jaish Mohammed was primarily supported by Iran.

• Iran has repeatedly denied charges that it is involved in the insurgency and most US and Iraqi officials interviewed in late 2004 and early 2005 tended to view claims that Iran was actively supporting elements of the Sunni insurgency with skepticism. Senior officials in the new Iraqi government have discounted Iran as a major threat and many American experts are more concerned with the role that Iran would play in a potential Iraqi civil war.

• General Casey discounted the view that the new Iraqi government should be viewed as Iranian puppets and stated that he viewed Iran as the long-term and Syria the short-term threats to Iraqi security, with Syria taking precendence because of the level of infiltration and the insurgent leaders known to be operating there.

• Many of the Iraqi political parties and militias that sought refuge in Iran before the fall of Saddam Hussein were never particularly grateful to the Iranian leadership because of their attempt to force them to accept Khomeinism during their stay there and are not pro-Iranian in their outlook now. Grand Ayatollah Sistani opposes the view that the clergy should play an active role in government and has rejected the theological legitimacy of Khomeini's velayet-e-faqih as heresy. The Shi'ite parties that sought refuge inside Iran during the Iraq-Iran War were forced by Iran to accept Khomeinism for the duration of their exile but have renounced this view upon Saddam's overthrow and have explicitly stated that Iraq should not be a theocracy, much less ruled by velayet-e-faqih under auspices of a rahbar (supreme leader) as in Iran.

• The judgment of an analysis by ICG and the opinion of many US experts in and outside of Iraq is that Iran is not directing the new Iraqi government, nor has there been anything that could be characterized as a major Iranian effort to destabilize or take control of Iraq since the defeat of Muqtada al-Sadr.

• Iran tolerates the presence of the al-Qaeda leadership inside its borders and allows members of the organization safe transit across the country as a means of putting pressure on the US despite the organization's decidely ambiguous view of anti-Shi'ite sectarianism. In keeping with this policy, Iran has supported the Kurdish al-Qaeda associate group Ansar al-Islam and either turns a blind eye to or actively enables the group's cross-border infiltration into Iraqi Kurdistan.

• Iran has never been passive in dealing with Iraq and sent high-level official Kamal Kharrazi to Iraq in May 2005 only 48 hours after the US Secretary of State had left the country. Kharrazi met with Prime Minister Jaafari and Foreign Minister Zebari as well as top officials in all of the major Iraqi Shi'ite parties, attempting to highlight Iran's role in enabling the Iraqi Shi'ites in establishing primacy inside Iraq even though members of Jaafari's own Dawaa party are hardly staunch supporters of Iran. Kharrazi also warned Iraqi officials that long after the US withdrew, Iraqis would still have to live next door to Iran.

• Iran faces an agenda in that it needs the US to stabilize Iraq and provide economic aid in order to carry out its own designs inside the country, yet it also fears the US presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Gulf. Iranian officials have openly threatened to destabilize Iraq if the US brings military pressure against Iran over its nuclear program. A schism in the new Iraqi government could lead to some factions turning to Iran for support and the ascendancy of the hardliners in the Iranian regime continue to raise the spectre of IRGC or VEVAK elements intervening in Iraq if even if the rest of the Iranian government refrains from supporting their actions. At this point however, these are potential risks rather than present realities.

My Comments

Not a lot to add to this, though I suspect that the Iran section would have considerably revised were this written to during the height of the fighting against Sadr. I think that Cordesman helps to put the role of foreign involvement in the insurgency (as he did earlier with the issue of foreign fighters) at appropriate levels and here as earlier he thoroughly debunks the idea that the US invasion of Iraq basically gave Iraq to Iran.