US troops conduct op inside Syria?
Hot from the presses:
Quote:
U.S. military helicopters attacked an area along Syria's border with Iraq Sunday, killing eight people, the Syrian government said, condemning what it called serious aggression.
A government statement carried by the official Syrian Arab News Agency said the attack occurred at the Sukkariyeh Farm near the town of Abu Kamal, five miles (eight kilometers) inside the Syrian border. Four helicopters attacked a civilian building under construction, firing at the workers inside shortly before sundown, the statement said.
Edit: Now there appears to be anonymous confirmation:
Quote:
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - U.S. military helicopters attacked territory inside Syria close to its border with Iraq Sunday, killing eight people in a strike the Syrian government condemned as "serious aggression."
A U.S. military official said the raid by special forces targeted the foreign fighter network that travels through Syria into Iraq in an area where the Americans have been unable to shut it down because it was out of the military's reach.
"We are taking matters into our own hands," the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of cross-border raids.
Something deeper happening in Syria ?
Bill Roggio's report is here - hat tip to the result if what is reported is true.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archiv...in_syria_d.php
Reactions and news reports have been generally predictable - e.g., see these LATimes Blogs.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/baby...whats-beh.html
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/baby...vows-to-r.html
My personal take on the Syrian diplomatic response was that it seemed restrained. Yup, the "round up the usual suspects" rhetoric, but also a "we want to iron out this wrinkle in the road" approach.
Might the raid have something to do with this (unrelated ??) news item from Syria:
Quote:
SYRIA: Al Qaeda mastermind said to be captured
An intriguing morsel about the mysterious leader of a ferocious militant group has been floating around the Lebanese and Syrian media this weekend.
According to a report in the Arab-language Syrian newspaper Al Liwaa, Syrian officials captured the leader of the Al Qaeda-linked militant group Fatah al Islam two months ago in Syria.
The report, summarized in English here, says that Shaker Abssi, a former Libyan air force pilot turned radical Islamist, was captured in the poor Meliha district of southern Damascus and hauled off to prison. ...
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/baby...-al-qaeda.html
Perhaps, I am too influenced by Bob Baer's new book on Iran (which is a current read); but was there some Syrian back-channelling going on. After all, AQ-Iraq is scarcely a friend of things Shia and Iranian. Just a thought.
JMM, I truly appreciate the massive amount of work you do
in obtaining and posting many valuable and informative links on this board.
However, after viewing the appalling ignorance and crass stupidity displayed by many commenting at the LA Times links above, I've been forced to move my Acme Industries Portable Yardarm [® Tomsyl] to place it under the early morning Sun in order to take to the bottle at this hour...
Please, in future, have pity on the geriatric set. :o
I don't think the statement that the
Quote:
Originally Posted by
DaveDoyle
...
Administration officials declined to say whether the emerging application of self-defense could lead to strikes against camps inside Iran that have been used to train Shiite “special groups” that have fought with the American military and Iraqi security forces. (from the NYT link from JMM99)
doctrine is 'emerging' is correct. The Times is a bit behind the curve on that, that's been the doctrine for some time -- it's just rather selectively applied. Logically and correctly so. It's applied for very high value targets where a positive impact is probable, a specific and achievable outcome can be obtained or to place a little pressure on someone to clean up their act. Some make the news, some do not.
As for Iran, there are and have been rumors that's already occurring:
Quote:
Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year.
LINK
Yeah, it's Seymour but he wasn't alone in spouting it -- so did the Cockburns and some others. True? Who knows. Possible? Sure. :cool:
McClatchy adds some details ...
but tells a similar story as the NYT - instead of an unstated number of "anons", McC has three.
Quote:
Posted on Monday, October 27, 2008
CIA led mystery Syria raid that killed terrorist leader
By Jonathan S. Landay and Nancy A. Youssef
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — A CIA-led raid on a compound in eastern Syria killed an al Qaida in Iraq commander who oversaw the smuggling into Iraq of foreign fighters whose attacks claimed thousands of Iraqi and American lives, three U.S. officials said Monday.
The body of Badran Turki Hishan al Mazidih, an Iraqi national who used the nom de guerre Abu Ghadiya, was flown out of Syria on a U.S. helicopter at the end of the operation Sunday by CIA paramilitary officers and special forces, one U.S. official said.
"It was a successful operation," a second U.S. official told McClatchy. "The bottom line: This was a significant blow to the foreign fighter pipeline between Syria and Iraq."
A senior U.S. military officer said the raid was launched after human and technical intelligence confirmed that al Mazidih was present at the compound close to Syria's border with Iraq. "The situation finally presented itself," he said.
The three U.S. officials, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity because the operation was classified, declined to reveal other details of the raid. A CIA spokesman declined to comment. ....
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/54828.html
One cannot expect the exactitude of a military after-action report from the media. Eventually, the facts of this operation will come out of the woodwork - after someone retires and writes a book.
All reports on this raid are unconfirmed ...
except for the classified reports which are that for good reasons.
Anyway, here is some of Mr. Bergman's take on the background:
Quote:
(from Schmedlap's url)
Ronen Bergman, author of The Secret War with Iran, makes the claim in the Yediot Ahronoth newspaper, based on briefings with two senior American officials, one of whom he says until recently "held a very high ranking in the Pentagon".
Mr Bergman told Sky News the raid happened after America had lobbied Syria intensely to deal with an al Qaeda group conducting activity on the border.
The Syrians were unwilling to be seen publicly bowing to US pressure to tackle the group, he says, but in the end gave the Americans the green light to do so themselves.
He claims the Syrian government told the Americans: "If you want to do this, do it. We are going to give you a corridor and carte blanche. We will not harm your troops."
Mr Bergman maintains Syrian intelligence has been co-operating secretly with its US counterpart for some time in its war with al Qaeda. ....
We now have a Wiki page on the 2008 Abu Kamal raid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Abu_Kamal_raid
Be interesting to see where the Sky story goes - if anywhere (... to Anonland, where the Anons cavort among the unicorns ...). Seriously, the scenario is plausible, but that does not make it probable.
Today's Sunday Times (UK) Article
Despite the diplomatic and PR flaps by Syria, the story of Syria's involvement in the raid does not go away. Perhaps, the story is too juicy to go away - and, perhaps, too good a story to be true, since it definitely is not confirmed by US sources on the record.
There are some facts from Syria in the Times article that are consistent with the story (earlier arrest of Fatah al–Islam leader & car bomb in Damascus near Syrian Intel HQs; eyewitnesses at scene of raid, etc.).
Quote:
From The Sunday Times
November 2, 2008
Questions raised over Syrian complicity in US raid
Syria has denounced a US strike on its territory but sources say Damascus secretly backed the raid
by Marie Colvin and Uzi Mahnaimi
The 38-year-old farmer was watering his maize in the scrubby vastness of eastern Syria when four Black Hawk helicopters swooped in low over the palm trees, heading from the border with Iraq formed by the Euphrates River.
It was late afternoon. The light was fading and the chill of the desert winter night was setting in. The helicopters, following their leader in a disciplined arc, hovered just above the one-storey concrete and mud homes of the village of Sukariyeh before the attack began.
Two of them landed next to a ramshackle building site and uniformed men hit the ground firing. Two other helicopters gave aerial cover.
“To begin with I thought they were Syrian helicopters, but then I saw eight or nine soldiers armed to the teeth. They carried big black M16s,” said Mohammad al-Ali, the farmer. His land lies closest to the site where an American commando squad last week staged an unprecedented strike in Syrian territory. .....
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle5062848.ece
A lengthy piece follows the lead quote above.
Rex, trying to figure this one out ...
from the standpoint of motives (what a government or intelligence service "wants") seems to me a waste of time. We do not have enough facts (as opposed to speculation) to make even a probable link between the Syrian Intel guys and ours. Right now, there is a lot going on (which neither of us knows much about - unless you have inside info) with Iraq, Syria and Iran in regard to continued US presence and the extent thereof (e.g., Iraq SOFA and the results of our election, also a wait and see).
No complaints about your main points, but I imagine some explanation (plausible or implausible to such as Mr. Peake) could be made - but not by JJM. What intrigues me is that the story hasn't died - yet.
Don't know nothing about our insertion capabilities vs. Syrian defenses against same (and if all that is not locked tight in classification, "someone ought to be fired", for sure). But, assuming arguendo that (1) our insertion capability is infallable compared to Syrian counter-capabilities; and (2) the Syrians detected our insertion; about the only conclusion to be made is that they knew we were coming. And, apparently, the AQ-Iraq people also had enough warning for the firefight to ensue.
Not to beat a dead horse ....
but we run into such as this.
Quote:
Iraq sends more police to Syrian border
Iraq sends police to Syrian border in wake of US raid last weekend
RYAN LUCAS
AP News
Nov 01, 2008 15:10 EST
Iraq sent police reinforcements Saturday to the Syrian border after last weekend's U.S. raid against an alleged al-Qaida hideout in Syria raised tension between the two countries, officials said.
Police Col. Jubair Rashid Naief said a police quick reaction force for Anbar province moved to the border town of Qaim, about 200 miles northwest of Baghdad, to prevent al-Qaida from moving into the area from Syria.
Al-Arabiya television quoted witnesses as saying scores of armored vehicles were seen moving from the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi to Qaim, which had been a major al-Qaida stronghold until Anbar's Sunni tribes turned against al-Qaida.
The police moves follow last Sunday's bold U.S. raid on the Syrian border town of Abu Kamal, during which U.S. officials say they killed a top al-Qaida militant who operated a network of smuggling fighters into Iraq.
.....
.... Earlier this week, Syria also sent additional troops to the border following the raid, but has since withdrawn them.
The Iraqi government has rejected the attack, but has urged Syria to crack down on organizations on its territory that are trying to hurt Iraq.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari voiced confidence the raid would not damage long-term relations, saying there is "good understanding to overcome this crisis."
http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=439506
Certainly, this is a factoid. What it means to us (US), or to the Syrians and Iraqis, I hazard not a guess - nor as to what a "good understanding" means between Iraq and Syria.
"Not in my department ...."
I assume the MAJ mentioned in this article was authoirized to say what he said - about US-Syrian co-operation before the raid in the sector to the north - since the XO of 3ACR was also mentioned as a participant in the interview:
Quote:
The National - Abu Dhabi
Syria stops insurgents on Iraq border
Phil Sands, Foreign Correspondent
Last Updated: November 02. 2008 11:52PM UAE / November 2. 2008 7:52PM GMT
MOSUL, IRAQ // Syria has been helping US and Iraqi troops catch extremists trying to cross the border, a US military intelligence official said in an interview with The National.
In addition to arresting insurgents on their side of the frontier, Syrian security services have passed information to US forces that is being used to target insurgents inside Iraq, according to Major Adam Boyd, the head intelligence officer with the third armoured cavalry regiment. His unit is responsible for Mosul, the Jazeera desert and policing a 380km stretch of the Iraqi-Syrian border in Nineveh province.
“We don’t deal directly with the Syrians, but I will tell you that they have been relatively good in the near recent past, arresting people on their side of the border,” he said in an interview at the regiment’s headquarters in Mosul, in northern Iraq.
“We are still working on some specific targets after individuals were arrested on the Syrian side and that information has been passed over and that has allowed us to target on this side of the border.”
Major Boyd said such intelligence sharing had not happened on a “regular basis”, however, and that foreign fighters were still infiltrating.
.....
Major Boyd declined to comment on the raid, which happened south of his area of operations. He also declined to talk about its possible effect on border security, saying that US and Iraqi forces would try to “kill or capture” foreign fighters as long as they continued to enter the country.
.....
Major Boyd said concerns about the effectiveness of Syrian frontier police remained, although he stressed that their failures might be a result of local corruption and tribal alliances – which also affect the Iraqi border force – rather than Syrian policy.
“For every example of co-operation from Syria, there are an equal number of incidents that are not helpful,” he said. “We just captured someone who was trying to escape into Syria and found out that he’d been arrested last November on the Syrian side after they caught him with a bunch of fake passports. But he bribed his way out and managed to get back in.
“But, again, I don’t know I necessarily attribute that to the government as to an individual Syrian border patrol unit.”
Illegal crossing between Syria and Iraq remains fairly commonplace, although most crossers are traders, smugglers and shepherds, not insurgents. “The Iraqi border forces themselves are mainly locally recruited and from the Shammar tribe,” Major Boyd said. “The Shammar also control trade routes through the western Jazeera and their people are on both sides of the border.
“The reason they can get across, aside from the Shammar helping them, is that the berm along the border is broken in many places, or worn down so you can back up two trucks and pass things back and forth.”
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20...06390/1011/ART
Most stories along this line make little sense
because most are leaked or released filled with mis- and dis- information purposely and then the generally ignorant and incompetent news media garble them even more...
As for the rest, we can -- at this point and given as little as we really know -- not bother to disagree on who may have done what and why. Both your scenario and mine and a dozen or more others are totally possible; probability is not an issue in a daylight operation like this. I still posit that this line from my earler comment: ""Get some willing help from the guys everyones loves to hate. Happens a lot."" is a frequent occurrence and there are few nations -- very few -- that have not taken advantage of that. We're generally willing because we know the worst will be believed in any event. :D
Many intel operations initially appear to make little sense and cooperation between nations, particularly in the ME, as you well know, often takes strange turns. Actions and motives are seldom what they seem. Rarely is a better word. Almost never, in fact, is even better... :wry:
All idle speculation; we just do not and are not likely to know enough to really say anything definitive either way. ;)
