USCFL - Next, Turn the Screws on Syria

Though Syria was conspicuously omitted from President Bush's "axis of evil," the regime of Bashar Assad has now replaced Saddam Hussein as the Arab world's leading supporter of terrorism and stockpiler of weapons of mass destruction.

Syria is the only Arab country that actively backed Saddam, reportedly encouraging suicide bombers to cross into Iraq, sheltering Iraqi war fugitives and possibly storing nonconventional weapons for Saddam.

By focusing on those provocations, the Bush administration is correcting a serious flaw in its war against terrorism. The region's most vicious terrorist groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, maintain operational centers in Damascus. As one administration insider put it, any taxi driver in the Syrian capital knows the address of half a dozen terrorist groups.

Worse, Syria arms and protects the Lebanese terrorist group Hizbullah. Until 9/11, Hizbullah held the world record in the number of Americans killed through terrorism. In two suicide bombings in the 1980s, Hizbullah murdered 260 American troops stationed in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. No terror organization maintains greater global reach than Hizbullah, whose cells and fund-raising network extend to six continents. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage recently noted that Hizbullah "may be the (terrorists') A-team, while al-Qaida may be actually the B-team."

Syria's support for Hizbullah endangers the entire Middle East. Since Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, Hizbullah has reportedly placed up to 10,000 Iranian-supplied missiles along the Israeli border. Those missiles, capable of reaching every town and industrial center in the Galilee, were delivered through the Syrian army, which controls Lebanon. If another regional Arab-Israeli war occurs, the probable trigger won't be Palestinian terrorism but Hizbullah's missiles.

Whereas Bashar's father, the late Syrian dictator Hafez Assad, maintained tight control over Hizbullah and saw it as an expedient tool to be wielded with caution, Bashar has embraced Hizbullah's romantic self-image as the Arab avant-garde. Hizbullah, he has said, is a "ray of light" for the Arab world.

The "historic relations" between Syria and Hizbullah, he said shortly after the Israeli withdrawal, "will be much stronger and more effective than they were in the past." That is one promise the young Assad has faithfully kept.

It wasn't supposed to happen this way.

When Bashar Assad inherited his father's regime three years ago, much was made in the international media about the new leader's Western education and affinity for the Internet. Some even breathlessly reported that he was a Phil Collins fan. But Assad quickly proved that he was his father's son by suppressing a reformist movement and arresting Syrian dissidents who had written an open letter to him demanding democracy.

With Saddam gone, Bashar Assad is now the Arab world's leading rejectionist of peace with Israel. He recently asserted that Israel's legitimacy would never be accepted by the Arab world.

Syria has opposed every Middle East breakthrough, from the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty to the Oslo process. And now Syria is taking on the United States.

The mufti of Damascus, Syria's highest-ranking religious leader, recently urged Muslims to attack American troops in Iraq. As a government employee in a police state, he would never have issued that call without Assad's tacit approval.

After years of Syrian provocation, Washington is finally responding. The Bush administration is demanding that Syria surrender Saddam's nonconventional weapons - if it has them - and stop providing asylum to his henchmen. The administration is also calling attention to Syria's own stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and its support for terrorist groups.

But Washington needs to go further: It should demand that Syria end its occupation of Lebanon, permit Beirut to disarm Hizbullah and assert control over its own country. An American invasion of Syria most likely will not be necessary to produce results. Unlike Saddam, Bashar Assad has shown that he can be pressured. When the Turks threatened to invade Damascus unless he handed over the Kurdish terrorist leader Abdullah Ocalan, the Syrian leader quickly obliged.

If the United States is serious about uprooting terrorism, it cannot stop with its victory in Iraq. The jihadist war against the West has been actively nurtured by several key Middle East regimes.

Focusing the struggle on Damascus is the inevitable next step of the counteroffensive that began on Sept. 12, 2001.

Yossi Klein Halevi is the Israel correspondent for the New Republic and a senior writer for the Jerusalem Report.

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Article:	Next, Turn the Screws on Syria
Author:	Yossi Klein Halevi
Date:	June 2003