HERE WE GO AGAIN: AFTER IRAQI DEBACLE, WILL SYRIA BE LET OFF THE STATE SPONSORS OF TERRORISM LIST?

(Washington, D.C.): Articles in
today’s New York Times and Washington
Post report that Secretary of State
Warren Christopher is prepared to offer
Syria a major concession — in exchange
for little more than a Syrian commitment
to return to the negotiating table with
Israel. Specifically, Secretary
Christopher is said to have pledged that
Syria would be removed from the official
U.S. government list of state sponsors of
terrorism, a status that
precludes listed nations from receiving
certain preferential trade benefits and
access to sophisticated, militarily
relevant technologies.

A Reprise of the 1982
Concession to Iraq?

Such an initiative bears an appalling
resemblance to an earlier, misbegotten
decision by the U.S. government. In 1982,
the Reagan Administration decided — at a
time when it was legitimately concerned
that Islamic revolutionary Iran might
prevail over Iraq — to tilt toward
Saddam Hussein. Central to the
implementation of that decision was the
removal of Iraq from the list of state
sponsors of terrorism, despite
Baghdad’s continued, vigorous support to
international terrorist organizations.

The rest is history: Saddam exploited
the opportunity thus afforded to him to
acquire state-of-the-art manufacturing
technology and componentry critical to
his efforts to obtain weapons of mass
destruction, advanced conventional
armaments and other dangerous
capabilities.

Ultimately, the United States and its
allies wound up having to go to war to
undo the damage thus done — damage that
flowed directly from the short-sighted
and expediency-driven decision to corrupt
the state sponsors of terrorism list. The
Clinton Administration now appears poised
to make the same mistake with respect to
an even more dangerous actor: Hafez
Assad.

This is all the more ironic since the
Clinton-Gore campaign roundly condemned
the Reagan-Bush administrations for the
initial decision to favor Iraq and the
subsequent policy errors that greatly
exacerbated the ultimate costs of that
“tilt.” As then-Sen. Gore said
on 29 September 1992: “…For
strategic reasons, the Reagan/Bush
Administration would overlook virtually
any unpleasant reality in Iraq and
apparently subvert U.S. laws in
order to prop up Saddam’s brutal
regime.”

Syria Remains a State
Sponsor of Terrorism

Damascus is still very much in the
business of supporting international
terrorism. Some twenty-six terrorist
organizations have headquarters or other
facilities in Syria or in
Syrian-controlled Lebanon. Assad — and
his apologists in the Clinton State
Department (i.e., the Bureau of Near East
and Asian Affairs) and elsewhere — try
to finesse this inconvenient fact by
averring that Syria’s hospitality toward
the likes of Ahmad Jabril, George Habash
and Carlos “the Jackal” does
not constitute support for terrorism — as
long as these organizations do not target
Americans. href=”#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾

Whether Syrian-based terrorist groups
have, in fact, plotted or engaged in
attacks against U.S. citizens in recent
years is a matter of lively debate. What
is indisputable, however, is that
terrorist organizations enjoying direct
support from Damascus remain actively
engaged in attacks against U.S. interests
and allies overseas. To cite but
a few examples:

• Syrian-backed terrorist
  organizations have been routinely
  used to intensify pressure on
  Israel, notably through last
  summer’s attacks on the Israeli
  security zone in Southern Lebanon
  and the increasingly violent
  campaign being mounted against
  Jewish settlers in the disputed
  territories.

Importantly, in connection with
the latter, Assad explicitly told
PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat that
he would support the actions of
Palestinian factions — like the
Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine-General Command and
the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas
— that are determined to oppose
the Israeli-PLO accord.

• Syria is simultaneously
  supporting a deadly campaign of
  terror against another critical
  U.S. ally in the region —
  Turkey. “Apo”
  Ocalan, the leader of the Marxist
  Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) has
  long been based in the Syrian
  controlled Bekaa Valley and Syria
  itself. Turkey has also announced
  that Syrian transports are
  ferrying PKK terrorists to
  Armenia from which they make
  their way to Turkey via Iran.

The Turks’ understandable fury
over such blatant support for
forces waging war against the
Turkish state has prompted Ankara
to threaten direct retribution
against Syria:

“If Syria persists
in supporting PKK
terrorism, then Turkey
will as a first step
cut-off her water supply.
As a second stage of the
operations, military
activities will be
undertaken against PKK
concentrations in
Syria.” href=”#N_2_”>⁽²⁾

Turkey has also proposed to
conclude an agreement on
cooperation with Israel against
terrorism. Such pressure has
prompted Syria in recent days to
make some conciliatory noises
about expelling Ocalan and
otherwise constraining PKK
operations. Such promises have
been heard before, however, and
their value this time very much
remains to be seen.

• Assad also recently hosted the
  Commander of Iran’s Revolutionary
  Guards, General Mohsen Rezaei, in
  Damascus — fresh evidence of the
  malevolent strategic alliance
  that he has forged with Teheran.
  General Rezaei reportedly met
  with Ahmad Jibril and other
  terrorist leaders while in Syria.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy
believes that the Clinton
Administration’s apparent willingness to
rehabilitate Hafez Assad’s regime by
removing it from the list of state
sponsors of terrorism is no more prudent,
responsible or consistent with U.S. law
than was the earlier U.S. decision to
ignore the terrorist activities of Saddam
Hussein and his friends. The
United States is already in significant
danger of dignifying and facilitating the
spread of terrorism as a result of its
confusing stance with respect to the
terrorist/peace-making Palestine
Liberation Organization; it should not
make matters worse by ignoring Assad’s
continuing use of terrorism and support
for its perpetrators.

The U.S. government must in particular
not repeat its earlier mistake of
allowing narrow, tactical objectives to
blind it to the larger, strategic
complexities involved in Middle East
diplomacy. Syria responds constructively
only to pressure, not blandishments. The
sole basis upon which it should be
removed from the state sponsors of
terrorism list is if it ceases to be
such a sponsor — in every sense of
the word. Doing otherwise will
not only make a further mockery of U.S.
law; it will also embolden Syria to
believe it can have its cake and eat it,
much as Saddam Hussein did throughout
most of the 1980s.

– 30 –

1. Importantly,
the relevant law — the Export
Administration Act of 1979, Section
(6)(j) does not stipulate that sponsors
of terrorism need only be listed if the
terrorists’ targets are Americans.
Instead, it uses universal terms:
“[A country must be listed if the
Secretary of State determines that] such
country has repeatedly provided support
for acts of international
terrorism.”

2. Cited
in the Turkish Press Review, 27 October
1993.