Bombing attempt revives US claim of Syrian link

IRAQ: The alleged involvement of a Syrian in a failed car bomb attack on an Iraqi police station on Monday has revived US charges that Damascus is backing the escalating insurgency in Iraq.

Since Washington complained last March that Damascus was providing the Iraqi army with night-vision goggles and allowing foreign fighters to cross from its territory into Iraq, Damascus has rejected any connection with developments in Iraq.

Analysts say that Damascus is unlikely to support ousted Baathist opponents of the US occupation or Syrian Islamists involved in the resistance. The ruling Syrian and Iraqi branches of the Baath party were such bitter rivals that Baghdad backed a violent revolt staged by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood during the early 1980s. After Damascus crushed the rebellion and brutally uprooted the Muslim Brotherhood, Iraq and Saudi Arabia gave sanctuary to senior and rank-and-file members of the movement. Therefore, if Syrian Islamists are involved in the Iraqi resistance, it is likely that they have been based in Iraq and Saudi Arabia or are dissidents with connections to the Brotherhood or other pan-Islamist groupings.

Dr Mustafa Alani, a scholar with the Royal United Services Institute in London, agreed that Iraq is now a fertile ground for foreign Islamist "jihadis" to pursue their campaign against the US, but made the point that these fighters also require the "close support" of Iraqis to operate in their country.

This would mean the provision of accommodation, funding, weapons, explosives and vehicles for bomb attacks. While US and British spokesmen argue that suicide bombings have been almost exclusively used by Islamist groups, Dr Alani said Iraqis were capable of adopting this tactic.

A Saudi dissident based in London, Dr Muhammad al-Massari, told al-Jazeera yesterday that there were 5,000 Saudi Islamist fighters in Iraq and said that the resistance operations mounted so far were the "tip of the iceberg".

He also predicted the Islamist insurrection would spread to Saudi Arabia.

Although his figure for the number of Saudis seems high, there could be hundreds of Saudis and other jihadis in Iraq, many of them prepared to give up their lives to help render the US occupation untenable. Iraqi and Arab analysts do not believe the resistance is comprised mainly of foreign jihadis but of Islamist and nationalist Iraqis determined to expel US forces.