‘GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER’: BUSH-BAKER ENABLE ASSAD TO GO ON SPONSORING INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

(Washington, D.C.): A central tenet in
President Bush’s reelection campaign is
his contention that he has demonstrated
an ability to confront effectively the
foreign policy and national security
challenges facing the United States. He
repeatedly emphasizes his proven capacity
to make the hard calls and to implement
decisions that are necessary to protect
American interests — even if doing so
entails controversy at home and conflict
with foreign powers. For example, at the
Republican convention he stated: “There
will be more foreign policy challenges
like Kuwait in the next four years.
Terrorists and aggressors to stand up to;
dangerous weapons to be controlled and
destroyed….”

Unfortunately, President Bush dismally
fails what would seem to be an ideal
test case
of his willingness to
“stand up to terrorists” and
those amassing “dangerous
weapons”: Syrian dictator Hafez
Assad’s continuing sponsorship of
international terrorism. In fact, his
Administration appears determined to make
the same mistake it previously made with
another Middle Eastern tyrant, Saddam
Hussein, by looking-the-other-way on
state sponsorship of terrorism and the
acquisition of weapons of mass
destruction and other arms in the blind
pursuit of “higher”
geo-political objectives
.

Is Syria About to be Taken
Off the Terrorism List?

Under U.S. law, a nation judged to be
a state sponsor of terrorism must be
identified on the State Department’s
terrorism list. Nations appearing on that
list are statutorily prohibited from
enjoying certain trade, financial and
other benefits of a normal relationship
with the United States. href=”#N_2_”>(2)

There are strong indications that
Messrs. Bush and Baker are determined to
remove Syria from the terrorism list at
the earliest possible moment —
presumably shortly after the November
election. In the meantime, rather than
expose themselves to the torrent of
criticism that accompanied the Reagan
Administration’s March 1982 decision to
remove Iraq from the list, Bush-Baker
have apparently chosen simply to act as
though Syria were not still listed
as a state sponsor of terrorism.

This policy is evidenced in the Bush
Administration’s decisions to improve
Syria’s access to dual-use technologies,
World Bank loans, the Saudi treasury,
etc.

‘See No Evil’

The impetus behind these important
strategic concessions to Syria is the
Administration’s view that Assad has
earned U.S. help with his
“cooperation” in the anti-Iraq
coalition and his “constructive
approach” toward the Middle East
peace process. Before Bush-Baker could do
much to reward the Syrian despot,
however, they had to deal with the natty
problem that he has continued to be an
active supporter of international
terrorism and therefore is legally
ineligible for many such benefits.

The solution: Use sophistry to suggest
that — so long as Syria’s
“direct” participation in
terrorist attacks cannot be established
beyond a reasonable doubt — Syrian
behavior with respect to terrorism is
acceptable. Toward this end, Edward
Djerejian, a former U.S. Ambassador to
Damascus and the current Assistant
Secretary of State for Near East Affairs,
testified before a House Foreign Affairs
subcommittee in late 1991 that,
“Since 1986, we have no evidence
of the Syrian government’s direct
involvement
in any act of
terrorism.”

This statement evokes two comments:
First, it is probably untrue.
There is almost certainly some
such evidence but — as is generally the
case in closed societies run by bad
actors determined to conceal much of
their activities — it is far less than
is needed to “prove,” for
example, Assad’s personal participation
in the planning or at least the approving
of international terrorist operations.

And, second, the Djerejian
statement seems calculated to mislead
.
After all, does it not disserve the truth
to suggest that Syria’s ongoing support
in the form of housing, training,
equipping and financing terrorist
organizations and providing them with
intelligence and logistical assistance is
something other than
“direct involvement” in acts of
terrorism?

Other Administration claims also
appear less than straightforward. These
include assertions to the effect that:
Syrian-backed terrorist groups have
launched no terrorist attacks against the
United States recently; Damascus has
pledged that none would do so; and Syria
actually played an invaluable role in preventing
terrorist attacks against the United
States during the Gulf war.

Just the Facts, Ma’am

In truth, Syria is still — by any
reasonable definition — directly
involved in international terrorism. U.S.
citizens and assets continue to be
targeted by Syrian-backed terrorist
groups just as they were before, during
and subsequent to the Gulf war. Consider
the following relevant facts:

Among the terrorist organizations
headquartered in and operating from Syria
are: the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine-General Command

(PFLP-GC) headed by Ahmed Jibril; the Popular
Struggle Front
; Al-Sa’iga; the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine

(PFLP) headed by George Habash; and the Democratic
Front for the Liberation of Palestine

(DFLP).

Syria also supports factions of the
Shi’ite Hizbullah which
routinely uses the Syrian-controlled
Bekaa valley as a staging ground for
attacks against Israel. One sign of
Assad’s relationship with this terrorist
force is the fact that Hizbullah is the
only militia in Lebanon not required to
turn over their arms to Syrian forces.

Aside from Palestinian
“liberation” groups, Syria also
supports other international terrorist
organizations. The following are
permitted to operate from the
Syrian-controlled Bekaa valley: the Japanese
Red Army
; the Armenian
Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia

(ASALA); German Red Army
Faction (RAF); and the Devrimci
Sol
(Dev Sol) and the Kurdish
Workers Party
(PKK) which are
active in Turkey.

Terrorist Attacks Against
Israel Continue Unabated

Even the most fatuous apologists for
Assad’s role in terrorism would be hard
pressed to deny that Syria is involved in
continuing attacks on Israel. Indeed, the
Syrian despot has brazenly contended that
“Syria does not consider resistance
against Israeli occupation as
terrorism.”

The fact that Hizbullah and PFLP
attacks against Israel have continued
throughout this summer — a reality which
the State Department has been obliged to
acknowledge — demonstrates that the
terrorist organizations enjoying Syrian
patronage are as yet unimpeded in their
operations against U.S. allies. It comes
as no surprise that Syrian-based
terrorist group are among the suspects in
the deadly bombing of the Israeli embassy
in Buenos Aires on 17 March 1992 in which
thirty people were killed and another 250
wounded.

Importantly, several Syrian-based
Palestinian groups, including the PFLP-GC
and the PFLP, were prominent participants
in the 18 October 1991
“rejectionist” conference held
in Iran. This conference issued a call
for new terrorist attacks to disrupt the
peace process. Indeed, Ahmed Jibril, head
of the PFLP-GC, directly threatened the
lives of any Palestinian delegates to a
peace conference.

Subsequently, Syrian-supported
terrorist organizations carried out a
number of violent actions. Islamic Jihad
killed an American soldier in Turkey and
wounded an Egyptian diplomat on the same
day in October 1991. In Israel, the PFLP
claimed credit for killing two Israelis
and wounding six when they fired on a
bus-load of Israeli settlers on the West
Bank on 28 October 1991. According to a
December 1991 Israeli government report, in
the four months leading up to the Madrid
Conference, there were “eighty
attacks by Syrian supported terrorist
organizations in Lebanon.”

Turkey is Another Terrorist
Target

Israel has not been the only U.S. ally
targeted by Syria. Turkey’s security
forces consider the Syrian-backed Kurdish
Workers Party to be among their main
security concerns. In 1991, the PKK was
responsible for over 900 deaths in the
predominantly Kurdish region of
southeastern Turkey. Moreover, in the
aftermath of the Gulf war — even as U.S.
officials were praising Syria’s restraint
of terrorists — the PKK “mobilized
large units against Turkish military and
police outposts.” href=”#N_3_”>(3)
In 1991, the PKK also began imitating
their Syrian-backed Shi’ite terrorist
“brothers” by taking Western
hostages.

Recent Syrian claims that they will
not destabilize Turkey notwithstanding,
the attacks have continued through to the
present day. A mid-August 1992 offensive
launched by the PKK resulted in over 100
killed and hundreds wounded while they
held siege to the southeastern Turkish
town of Sirnak. PKK officials told the
media that they fully intended to
continue on that course. There
is, moreover, no credible basis for
concluding that Syria is withholding
their support from the Kurdish terrorist
organization.

As noted above, Syria also provides
refuge and training for the Turkish
terrorist Dev Sol organization. In 1991,
Dev Sol was responsible for the murder of
about thirty police officials in
Istanbul, the death of four military
officers and approximately thirty or more
bombings. At the same moment Syria was
supposed to be “suppressing”
terrorist attacks during the Gulf war,
Dev Sol was explicitly targeting U.S.
citizens in Turkey. The result was the
murder of 2 American civilian defense
contractors in Istanbul and the wounding
of a U.S. military officer in Izmir. A
British businessman was also assassinated
by Dev Sol.

U.S. Official Complicity in
Syrian Disinformation

If the Bush Administration has not had
the nerve to try to remove Syria from the
terrorism list, it has certainly laid the
groundwork for doing so — despite
undisputed evidence of Assad’s continuing
support for international terrorist
activities — by repeatedly validating
Syrian disinformation. For example, the
State Department has accepted Damascus’
assertion that recent attacks by
Syrian-backed terrorist groups against
Israeli military targets in Southern
Lebanon does not constitute terrorism.

This reflects a view shared by Foggy
Bottom and Syria that Israel has
no business having such targets in
Lebanon and that “military”
units, as opposed to non-combatants,
cannot be considered the victims of
terrorist attack.

Interestingly, this position stands in
sharp contrast to the U.S. government’s
view of such attacks when they were
directed against American
military forces in Lebanon. For instance,
American officials properly condemned
Syria for perpetrating an act of wanton
terrorism when a group it backed killed
241 Marines in their Beirut barracks. At
the very least, the U.S. Administration
is guilty of applying a double standard
to Israeli losses to similar terrorist
actions.

Pan Am 103: There is,
however, an even more egregious example
of the Bush Administration’s complicity
in misrepresenting the true extent of
Syrian involvement in terrorism: the case
of the bombing of Pan Am flight #103.
This civilian airliner was blown up on 21
December 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland,
with a loss of 270 — including 189
American citizens.

According to credible reports, the
investigation into the bombing originally
placed responsibility for this heinous
crime with Iran and the Syrian-backed
PFLP-GC.
Teheran — seeking
vengeance for the accidental destruction
of an Iranian civilian airliner by the
USS Vincennes earlier in 1988 —
“hired” the PFLP-GC to take
“an eye for an eye” by blowing
up an American commercial jet.

The direction of the investigation
began to shift in October 1990, however,
in the midst of the Bush Administration’s
assiduous courting of Syria in connection
with the anti-Iraq coalition. At that
time, the Bush Administration announced
that two Libyans were the prime
suspects in the case. Even so,
investigators continued to maintain that
the Syrians had direct knowledge of the
plan. It was believed that, as a result
of a successful counter-terrorist
operation by Germany in October 1988, the
PFLP-GC cell there — which had been
intended to plant the bomb on an American
airliner — was broken up. The PFLP-GC
then simply “subcontracted” the
job to the Libyans.

Shortly after the Libyan connection
was announced, the Administration’s line
changed again: It claimed that the
Syrian-backed PFLP-GC was never involved.
Instead, the word was put out that Pan Am
103 was considered to have been an entirely
Libyan
operation. Both Syria and
Iran were exonerated; Col. Qadhaafi
became the scapegoat.

There are several nagging problems
with this conclusion, however. Among them
is the fact that nobody denies that the
PFLP-GC was, at one point, commissioned
to blow up an American airliner or that
it would likely have tried to do so had
its operation in Germany not been
disrupted. There reportedly also were
intercepts of communications by senior
officials in Teheran indicating that they
viewed the bombing of Pan Am 103 as
revenge for the U.S. shooting down an
Iranian plane. What is more, there have
been reports that U.S. officials involved
in the investigation continue to believe
that the bombing was perpetrated by the
Libyans only after the mission had been
subcontracted out to them by the PFLP-GC
as the agent for Iran.

Reliable Administration
sources have told the Center for Security
Policy that the investigators were
ordered to concentrate only on putting
together further hard evidence to aid in
the prosecution of the Libyans. There
was to be no pursuit of any PFLP-GC
involvement
, including the
possibility that this Syrian-backed group
had simply handed-off the
“contract” on an American
airliner to the Libyans.
In
keeping with this whitewash of Syria’s
involvement, it is not surprising that
President Bush — in commenting on the
indictment of the Libyan suspects —
opined that “the Syrians got a bum
rap on this one.”

The Bottom Line

The truth of the matter is that Syria
remains a major supporter of
international terrorism and continues to
be actively involved in terrorist attacks
against U.S. personnel and allies
.
As long as Damascus persists in such
behavior, there can be no true peace in
the Middle East and Syria will remain a
threat to American interests — not a
reliable partner in promoting them.

In the Syrian connection as in so
many other areas
, President Bush’s
actions simply do not square with his
rhetoric. The Center for Security Policy
urges Congress promptly to take up this
issue in open hearings. Should it fail to
do so, the Congress is at serious
risk of becoming a party to Bush-Baker
efforts to conceal the truth about
Syria’s support for terrorism
.
The effect could be to embolden the Bush
Administration after the November
election to remove Syria from the
terrorism list or otherwise to encourage
it to accelerate the ongoing effort to
treat with Assad’s Syria — much as it
once foolishly did with Saddam’s Iraq.

– 30 –

1. This
is the third in a series of Center for
Security Policy Decision Briefs
on the Bush Administration’s misbegotten
and potentially recklessly dangerous
policy toward Hafez Assad’s Syria.

2. See
in this regard the Center’s recent Brief
entitled, “Bush-Baker Open a
New Personal Diplomacy Slush Fund: World
Bank to be For Syria What C.C.C. Was For
Iraq, USSR”
, ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=92-D_79″>No. 92-D 79, 9
July 1992).

3. From
Patterns of Global Terrorism, 1991
published by the U.S. Department of
State, April 1992.

Center for Security Policy

Please Share:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *