WADI RATQEH, Syria, 22 June 2005 — Along a plateau overlooking the Iraqi desert, Syrian Army recruit Ahmad Salem stands by his Russian built mortar in a newly dug trench along sand barriers in the desolate terrain.
Ahmad is among the 7,000 troops manning one of 560 positions along the 650-km border that Syrian officials say have been set up to better secure its border with Iraq.
Washington says the frontier is a major conduit for Arab militant fighters into Iraq, which is wracked with insurgency.
Near a post almost 400 km northeast of the capital Damascus, Syrian commanders do not conceal their annoyance at the US accusations, as they talk on condition of anonymity to reporters who accompanied foreign diplomats on a rare extended tour.
“The responsibility for securing the borders cannot fall on one party, the two sides should be responsible. We have not seen any presence of the Iraqis where are they?” said a senior Syrian border guard official as he looked at the vast desert of Anbar province — nearly a third of Iraq’s territory — which borders Syria and Jordan.
US Marines patrol the nomadic desert but lack the troop numbers to remain in areas after they clear them of insurgents.
In contrast to the heavily fortified Syrian presence, the handful of Iraqi border posts have stood deserted since former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s army crumbled after the US-led invasion of his country in 2003.
The new sand barriers and hundreds of army posts that transformed what used to a serene nomadic border area where Arab Bedouins took their flocks to pasture show how seriously Syria’s Baath rulers are taking the US accusations.
After four days of bombardment and street-to-street fighting, US Marines say they cleared Karabilah — a strategic Iraqi town near the border where the Euphrates River flows in from Syria — of foreign fighters who made it a base.
But some of the Syrian Army officers said it was Washington’s insensitivity to Arab tribal mentality that fueled resentment in such border towns, which have close ethnic and close tribal ties with Syrian towns over the river.
“The tribal nature of border towns where when someone’s father or brother is humiliated means he has lost everything and the reason for living so he will fight to restore his dignity,” said a Syrian Army officer.
Syria would beef up the border to protect the country but not to help America fight insurgents, the border officials said.
“Our mission is not to protect the Americans our task is to protect Syria from infiltrators. It’s not our job to protect the Americans,” said an angry senior intelligence officer.
The Syrians say the latest fortifications may deter militant suicide car bombers but not the determined militants heading on foot to fight US troops and driven by ideology or revenge.
The commanders at the border said the US military wanted to deflect attention from its failure to subdue homegrown Iraqi insurgents by blaming Syria for harboring foreign militant.
“Where are the militants? It’s mostly Iraqi smugglers who are caught. We are always accused of easing the passage of Jihadists to Iraq and this is just an excuse for the Americans who are fighting in Iraq who don’t know how to handle this resistance,” an intelligence officer said.
