Iraq-Syria relations become strained

By Francesca Lo Basso
Collegian Editor
February 7, 2007

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blames Syria for the heightened attacks on Iraq over the past week. According to CNN.com, estimates by the Iraqi Interior Ministry are that 1,000 people have been killed in Iraq since last Sunday from a combination of gun battles, drive-by shootings and car bombs. The suicide truck bomb Feb. 3 injured over 300 people and killed 130 in the fifth major bombing to occur in less than a month targeting mainly Shia areas of Baghdad.

According to BBCNews.com, Senior Iraqi official Ali al-Dabbagh told al-Arabiyah television that half of all insurgent attacks in Iraq are carried out by Syrian militants who are still loyal to Saddam Hussein. Syria maintains that it has taken proper action against terrorists entering its borders and that it is up to America and Iraq to do more. Damascus, the Syrian capital, also claims that America is trying to topple its regime.

Ties between Iraq and Syria have been strained since 1982, when both countries were ruled by competing branches of the pan-Arab Baathist movement. Also, Damascus and Baghdad have suffered years of hostility after Syria supported Iran during the Iran-Iraq War. Relations were restored for the first time in almost 25 years when a high-ranking Syrian official visited Iraq in November.

Iraqi president Jalal Talabani arrived in Syria for peace talks in January, becoming the first Iraqi president to do so in nearly 30 years. The visit came just days after President Bush announced his plan for a surge of 21,500 troops to be deployed to Iraq. In the same speech, Bush also accused both Syria and Iran of fuelling Iraq’s violence.

Syria has become a refuge for civilians fleeing Iraq during the course of the war. BBCNews.com estimates that over two million civilians have escaped from Iraq since 2003, three-quarters of a million entering Syria alone, with the rate of arrival increasingly higher than that of the month before. The desert border between Iraq and Syria is dotted with hundreds of tents, as Palestinians leaving Iraq cling to survival. As Palestinians, they do not have proper passports – meaning Syria will not allow them in – and the escalating level of violence in Iraq makes it too dangerous to return.

People seeing what is happening in Iraq are beginning to draw their own conclusions. Refugees claim that if this is what the promise of Western-style democracy brings, they would rather choose the stable authoritarianism of Syria. One refugee in Syria told a BBC news correspondent, “No one’s helping. Not the Arab countries, nor the Western countries. It’s all lies. The whole thing is lies.”

lobassof1@lasalle.edu