American forces this week moved to halt the trickle of foreign fighters still flowing into Iraq – this time hitting them where they’re coming from.
In an apparently first-of-its-kind strike, helicopter-borne special forces on Sunday attacked a Syrian installation five miles beyond the Iraqi border, reportedly killing al Qaeda bigwig Abu Ghadiyah.
That’s one more dead terrorist – and a clear message to Syria that its continued trafficking in Iraq-bound militants bears serious consequences.
Securing the 376-mile Syrian border has long been one of the most vexing challenges of the US counterinsurgency effort, especially as 90 percent of all foreign fighters enter Iraq through Syria.
That volume has slowed considerably since the success of the troop surge depressed recruitment (as of July, only an estimated 20 fighters a month were crossing the border), but the foreigners’ presence is a big reason fighting remains fierce around the northern city of Mosul.
Nor has Syria (which, along with its Iranian patrons, sees a stable, US-allied Iraq as anathema) lifted a finger against them.
Ghadiyah, the head of Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq’s Syrian network, had the run of the country. Indeed, the general responsible for US forces in Anbar province said last week that Syria had become a “sanctuary” for Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq.
Fortunately, striking Syria – a clear, if undeclared, enemy – doesn’t seem to raise the tricky geopolitical dilemmas attending cross-border strikes from Afghanistan into Pakistan.
Apart from whining about American “terrorism,” there’s apparently not much that Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad can do.
Except, maybe, for reassessing the cost of harboring terrorists.