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.”
Bookmarks