| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq-Jordan |
| Border patrols are halting the influx of foreign fighters |
| 2004-04-20 |
| American and allied forces have choked the flow of foreign fighters coming into Iraq from Syria and Iran, curbing a small but persistent source of combatants that has fueled the insurgency, especially in the Sunni Muslim heartland, American military officers said Monday. Along the desolate 350-mile frontier with Syria, the First Marine Expeditionary Force, which relieved the 82nd Airborne Division last month, has positioned units more than a third larger there and has stepped up 24-hour patrols. Air Force U-2 spy planes and remotely piloted Predator reconnaissance aircraft soar over vast swaths of the western desert that smugglers have plied for centuries. Ground sensors are also being used along well-traveled routes, officials say. To deter arms smugglers and foreign militants, the 101st Airborne Division built a 15-foot-high earthen barrier earlier this year along 200 miles of the border with Syria. On the mountainous 500-mile boundary with Iran, Kurdish militia members patrol the north while North Carolina Army National Guard soldiers have joined some of the 17,000 new Iraqi border police officers to monitor important crossings to the south. The number of foreign fighters and their significance in the insurgency has been a contentious issue, even among American officials, with some seeing the problem as much larger than others. American commanders say, though, that some weapons and fighters are still slipping through the notoriously porous borders. Insurgents masquerading as Shiite Muslim pilgrims may have crossed from Iran. The deaths of five marines in a 14-hour firefight on Saturday in Qusaiba, a remote town near the Syrian border, underscores the fierce resistance facing American troops in areas far from the fighting in Falluja, the Sunni town west of Baghdad. The issue of border infiltrators has gained greater attention in recent days as some American officials fear that more foreign insurgents — from zealous untrained youths to veterans of the war in Chechnya — may be drawn to Falluja, a city that has become the icon of the resistance. One senior officer said those fighters, though relatively small in numbers, might be providing "backbone" to that resistance. But in interviews, several American officers said the virtually unguarded Iraqi borders that the United States-led occupation force inherited a year ago after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government have been significantly tightened, especially in the last month. "We have mitigated a problem that we first recognized as soon as we kind of owned the country, and realized real fast that there were specific border areas that were wide open," said one senior military officer who watches border operations closely. Last week the director of operations for the American military's Central Command, Maj. Gen. John Sattler of the Marine Corps, said the biggest difference was on the Syrian border, where the increased marine presence has clamped down on foreign fighters and the "rat lines," or smugglers' routes, that insurgents have used to ferry men and matériel south from the border area to Falluja and Baghdad. "When the marines came into the west they brought a larger force in than the one that they replaced," General Sattler said, declining to specify the increase on the border except to say it was more than one-third larger than the numbers of forces the Army's 82nd Airborne Division put there. "Because they did have more forces and because the way that we continue to use our reconnaissance asset and our combined arms," he said, "they have been able to make that border region tighter." About 1,000 marines are now based at Qaim, a restive border town near Qusaiba, and General Sattler said last week that the force had succeeded in destroying groups of insurgents in that area who were helping infiltrators. "We did find, fix and ultimately finish a number of cells that were out there, that were facilitating this type of movement," he said. The extent of the problem has been a matter of debate. Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., the commander of 82nd Airborne, which last month handed over responsibility for patrolling much of Iraq's borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia to the marines, said last November that in seven months his forces had encountered only about 20 foreign fighters trying to sneak into the country to attack American and allied forces. He said former Hussein loyalists and other Iraqis, not foreigners, had been responsible for attacks against his soldiers. About the same time, though, in Washington officials estimated the number of foreign fighters in Iraq at 1,000 to 3,000, and the White House suggested that the foreigners were continuing to enter the country and mastermind many of the attacks, linking the war in Iraq to the global campaign against terrorism. Fewer than 300 fighters from Syria, Sudan and other countries are in allied custody, and American military officials said they have no reliable estimates of foreign fighters in Iraq now. But as Saudi, Jordanian and to some extent even Iranian authorities have tightened their borders, American officials say Syria still lags in cracking down. Last week, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell issued a stern warning to Syria through the United States Embassy there, telling Syria that "it needs to control the transit of its border by terrorists and people supporting the insurgents in Iraq," said the secretary's spokesman, Richard A. Boucher. The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has said there is little he can do, citing strong tribal connections between the countries and the vast desert areas on either side of the border. "Is the border totally shut down?" said General Sattler. "I won't make that statement." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #12 I'm not buying the "shoulda kept the old Iraq Army" story. The new volunteers won't fight, why would Sadaam's lackeys do any better. The only people in the country with any balls left are the Kurds and the fedayeen. |
| Posted by: Anonymous4381 2004-04-20 6:36:45 PM |
| #11 Anon4052 - lifelong resident of Chula Vista and Santee (San Diego suburbs)- so I know about what I'm talking here too. All it will take is one turban sneaking across the Mexican border to do a boom and it will be shut down - forever. This sick pressure relief valve for the Mexican incompetence will stop and be controlled., eventually, and the socialists and "immigration activists" be damned |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-04-20 6:23:46 PM |
| #10 Frank G : As a lifelong resident of Southern California, I say that you must be dreamin'. The ACLU will come out of their office in Beverly Hills and sob about Orwell and "1984" tactics. The LA Mayor and his flunquis on the City council have this amnesty thing goin'. Very few people care to fight for some useful deployments of troops and drones. It would be just like they did when we were getting our Terminatin' Governor. TRrying to convince courts people were "Disenfranchised because they are to stupid to vote" (oops - off topic) |
| Posted by: Anonymous4052 2004-04-20 6:03:34 PM |
| #9 I would love to see a military guy on the news smile and say, "hold your horses, no need to come to Iraq you rascals. We'll be over to Syria soon enough." |
| Posted by: ruprecht 2004-04-20 5:45:55 PM |
| #8 WOW! military patrols, drones, detectors can control the influx of illegal immigrants??? Where else could this be applied to?? hmmmmmmm |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-04-20 11:07:36 AM |
| #7 The deaths of five marines in a 14-hour firefight on Saturday in Qusaiba, a remote town near the Syrian border, underscores the fierce resistance facing American troops in areas far from the fighting in Falluja, the Sunni town west of Baghdad. A little napalm should take care of that "fierce resistance". |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2004-04-20 11:00:06 AM |
| #6 11A5S: That was another cultural conceit of ours, I suppose. We thought that we were fighting European armies that would stand in formation and surrender their colors. Live and learn. Iraq may turn out to be a lot like Operation Torch in North Africa - a training ground for the next phase of the War on Terror. I'm just relieved that we've not suffered anything like the setback at Kasserine Pass. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2004-04-20 10:22:12 AM |
| #5 OS: I would nominate the failure to control the arms depots and ammo dumps after the war for mistake #1. I think that the plan was that we were going to try to retain the Iraqi Army in some capacity. There were articles in the press that we had called all of these Iraqi generals on their cell phones and they were going to park their units, be given "honors of combat," and then be called upon to help after then invasion. In reality, all of the units just melted away. Mass desertion was the order of the day, not mass surrender. That was another cultural conceit of ours, I suppose. We thought that we were fighting European armies that would stand in formation and surrender their colors. The problem with conquering an authoritarian society is that when you remove the apparatus of repression and control, things just explode. There are no community-based institutions to step up and maintain control when the state collapses. As we saw in the former USSR, often the only remaining institution capable of large scale, coordinated action is organized crime. I didn't fully understand this before Iraq. It's a hard way to learn. |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2004-04-20 8:58:59 AM |
| #4 OS, I agree with you that we should have secured the Syrian border, but with Coalition forces. I remember very early in the game we knew about the convoys going from Iraq to Syria. WMD were suspected but nothing came of it. We knew there was cross traffic across the border. We had the hardware at the time to literally smash hell out of any border area that didn't look right. I'm sure Gen Meyers/Franks had a reason but I've often wondered why? The war was won early on and those two fine Generals knew it, even though the broke-dicks from the media didn't. Chine |
| Posted by: Chiner 2004-04-20 4:33:49 AM |
| #3 "tribal connections"? -- Pure B.S. "vast desert areas"? -- that's why land mines were invented. Surely a year was enough time to plant several million out there along those hostile borders. |
| Posted by: Tresho 2004-04-20 1:25:13 AM |
| #2 OS, are we sure we could have maintained control of the Iraqi army if we had to remove 2/3 or 3/4 of its officers? And the ones who weren't thoroughly corrupt, I understand, were pretty incompetent. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2004-04-20 12:44:51 AM |
| #1 This, by far, was the biggest mistake we made durign the liberation of Iraq: we disbanded the Iraqi Army instead of sending it to secure the border areas - and we could have vetted the officers and men out in the border areas before we allowed them to retain their positions or return to central Iraq. And we didnt have enough troops to roll up the Sunni triangle area quickly (mainly thanks ot the backstabbing cowardly Turks blocking the 4th ID's move into the area).. Only now are we securing the borders agaions the terrorists from Syria. Hopefully we will soon do the same against the Iranians ant the IRG infiltrators. What would be good is to capture UNIFORMED Syrian military on the wrong side of the border and parade them on TV before we return them to Assad. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2004-04-20 12:27:59 AM |