In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [22]
Syria’s change in policy elicited a corresponding change in Washington’s approach to Syria. Under Washington’s constructive engagement policy, the State Department had eschewed criticizing Syrian policy in public in favor of private but frank discussions. But when battlefield reports came in of Syrian-supplied Russian Kornet antitank missiles and night-vision goggles being used to attack US forces, the Department of Defense adopted a new, harder line with Damascus. On March 28, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters that the United States had information regarding the shipment of military supplies from Syria to Iraq that pose “a direct threat to the lives of coalition forces.” When asked if the regime itself was responsible for the shipments, Rumsfeld simply replied, “They control their border.”11
Two days later, Powell hardened the State Department’s line on Damascus as well. Since Bashar had taken the reigns of power in 2000, the State Department’s assumptions were that the young president was not fully in charge of the regime he had inherited from his father and that certain rogue elements were able to carry out security-related activities without the knowledge of the presidential palace. With evidence piling up of Syrian support for resistance to the US invasion, however, Powell laid blame directly at Assad’s doorstep. “Syria faces a critical choice,” Powell told an audience at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “Syria can continue direct support for terrorist groups and the dying regime of Saddam Hussein, or it can embark on a different and more hopeful course. Either way, Syria bears the responsibility for its choices, and for the consequences.”12
On April 2, Bouthaina Shaaban, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, gave the world an indication of how Syria’s support for resistance would work, at least rhetorically, for years to come. On the one hand, the regime would continue to exercise the Arab world’s most liberal visa policies for Arab nationals. On the other, the regime did not accept responsibility for patrolling its border with a US-occupied Iraq. “If anybody is going, it is beyond our control as the government,” she said. “We have long borders with Iraq and we can’t put a policeman on every single meter.”13
As American forces continued their assault on Baghdad, the war of words escalated between Washington and Damascus. On April 11, President Bush warned Syria not to offer safe haven to Iraqi officials. The warning was based on US intelligence that convoys of vehicles had crossed from Iraq to Syria in the first week of the war, possibly carrying members of Saddam Hussein’s family and key members of the regime. US forces later fired on a Russian diplomatic convoy from Baghdad to Syria that reportedly had been carrying Iraqi officials as well. On April 14, Powell said that the United States “will examine possible measures of a diplomatic, economic or other nature as we move forward.”14 In the days that followed, US special forces shut down the last Iraqi pumping station on the Kirkuk-Banias pipeline, cutting off the flow of sanctions-busting oil flowing from Iraq to Syria.15 They also bombed the Syrian Trade Center in Baghdad. This kicked off speculation that the Department of Defense was drawing up contingency plans for a US attack on Syria.16
The Syrian leadership’s comments resonated not only with Syrians opposed to the invasion but also with a lot of people across the Arab world. At a rally in Egypt’s al-Azhar Mosque, a center for Islamic jurisprudence, protestors shouted, “Bashar, Bashar, set the world on fire!”17 For anyone familiar with Syrian history, Assad’s turn away from the United States and toward jihadists and Salafists—who hated the Syrian regime—was surprising to say the least. Many Islamists in the Arab world regarded the minority Assad regime as apostates, especially after the regime’s bloody suppression of the