IN A garden café on the airport road into Damascus clusters of young men gather to drink coffee, smoke shisha and hear some awe-inspiring accounts of death and glory that will lead many on a journey to certain death in the battle raging across the border in Iraq.
The owner, a former Mujahidin fighter, openly boasts of his exploits and those of his comrades still fighting the war against US forces. Like many veterans he is eager to recount his adventures in the hope of persuading others to join the cause.
A Syrian mother said that her son, a taxi driver, had succumbed to the call to arms last month and set off with a friend on the trail to Iraq, never to be heard of again.
Like thousands of other young men, drawn from across the Arab world and from Muslim communities as far away as Spain, France and even Sheffield, his final point of departure was Syria.
“It’s an individual decision. Once you’ve decided, you go to a mosque to make the initial contact. Then you are sent to a private home and from there for a week’s intensive training inside Syria,” she said. According to former fighters who spoke to The Times in Damascus, volunteers are given a crash course in using Kalashnikov rifles, firing rocket-propelled grenades and the use of remote detonators. The training takes place at secret camps in the Syrian desert, near the Iraqi border. Some attacks are even planned in advance in Damascus and Aleppo. Once the team is ready, a guide leads them across the rugged border into Iraq where they are taken to a safe house.
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Most are filtered down the Euphrates river valley to join the insurgency’s combat cells, others crossing in the north head for the town of Tal Afar and the northern capital, Mosul.
Once dismissed as a small and insignificant part of the insurgency in Iraq, the US military now concedes that the threat posed by foreign fighters is one of the most dangerous they face.
If the might of the US military was humbled in South East Asia thanks in large part to the Ho Chi Min Trail, the jungle supply route that fed insurgents in South Vietnam, then American forces in Iraq today face no less a challenge from the fanatics who cross into Iraq from Syria.
Over the past few weeks US Marines have carried out a series of offensives in the western Iraqi province of Anbar to try to smash the Euphrates supply line, yet most of the towns along the river valley remain in rebel hands. The main border town of al-Qaim is even nicknamed the “jihad superbowl” by US forces.
“The way ahead is not going to be easy,” President Bush conceded yesterday, after meeting Ibrahim al- Jaafari, the visiting Iraqi Prime Minister, at the White House. “The enemy’s goal is to drive us out of Iraq before the Iraqis have established a secure, democratic government. They will not succeed.” General John Abizaid, the commander of the US Central Command, which is responsible for Iraq, told Congress on Thursday that he believed that more foreign fighters were entering the country now than six months ago.
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Exact figures are hard to come by, but it is believed that several thousand fighters are in the country. Some are remnants of the thousands who poured in during the US-led invasion of Iraq. According to Lieutenant-General JohnVines, the commander of coalition forces in Iraq, 150 foreign volunteers now cross into the country from Syria every month.
This week US forces raiding a hideout near the Syrian border found passports from Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Algeria and Tunisia. There was even a return airline ticket from Tripoli to Damascus.
They represent only a fraction of the estimated 20,000-strong insurgent force and it is the most potent weapon in the rebel arsenal. Led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian fugitive who heads al-Qaeda in Iraq, most of the foreigners are used as volunteers for suicide car bomb attacks. Since the handover of sovereignty in Iraq a year ago, there have been 479 car bombers killing 2,174 people and wounding 5,520. In the latest incident, 6 US soldiers were killed and 13 Marines were wounded yesterday in a suicide attack in Fallujah, a town that was supposed to be under complete US military control.
Instead of confronting the foreign fighters inside Iraq, the Bush Administration is now turning up the pressure on Syria to stop the Mujahidin trail passing through its country.
“It is a fact that terrorists come across the Syrian border. It is also a fact that Syria is a dictatorship with a very large intelligence community. And one has to assume they know it is going on in their country,” Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, said.
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It is widely accepted that the Syrian authorities actively encouraged foreign fighters and their own people to cross into Iraq before and during the US-led invasion, when thousands of Arab Mujahidin fought alongside Saddam’s troops.
But Syria insists that it is now trying to stop Islamic extremists using its country as a springboard for attack.
Farouk al-Sharaa, the Foreign Minister, challenged the country’s accusers to provide evidence of collusion. He insisted that the country was doing what it could to stop the smuggling of foreign fighters and that America should co- operate with Syria rather than threaten it.
He said that Syrian border guards needed special equipment, such as night-vision goggles, to secure the border. Syria claims to have detained more than 1,200 foreigners trying to cross into Iraq in the past few months. Some remain under detention, others have been deported.
A recent inspection of the border by Colonel Julian Lyne-Pirkis, the British military attaché in Damascus, disclosed that the Syrians have tried to tighten the border. They have constructed a 12ft-high sand berm along the 360-mile frontier, deployed 7,000 guards and built 540 border posts.
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But Colonel Lyne-Pirkis described the efforts as fairly basic. He said: “They are making progress, but they can still do more on the border to improve it.”
Seen from Baghdad, however, the border control efforts are missing the point. To the minds of Iraq’s new leaders, Damascus is the hub of antiIraqi activity where former members of Saddam’s Baathist regime are allowed to order operations, raise finance and spread the message of jihad.
At a recent meeting in a third country, an Iraqi minister handed over to his Syrian counterpart a list of more than a dozen insurgent suspects living in Damascus. The list included names, addresses and their role in planning attacks.
“What did the Syrians do with this information? Nothing. They allowed these people to continue their work,” the Iraqi minister said. Part of the problem is persuading Syria and other Arab countries to crack down on their citizens who volunteer to fight.
Many Arab countries are only too pleased to see potential troublemakers set off for Iraq, where it is hoped that they will be killed or captured.
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This week Abdullah Mohammed Rashid al- Roshoud, one of Saudi Arabia’s most wanted militants, was reportedly killed in Iraq in a US airstrike near al-Qaim, on the Syrian border.
Al-Zarqawi, Jordan’s most wanted fugitive, is also in Iraq with a special team of American troops on his tail.
“We learnt our lesson from the war in Afghanistan,” a senior Arab intelligence official said. “We will not allow fanatics to return from Iraq and cause trouble. Anybody who leaves to fight in Iraq will not be allowed back home. If he does come back he will be arrested.”
But this attitude could well backfire. A classified CIA report produced last month and leaked this week predicted that foreign fighters, trained in guerrilla warfare in Iraq over the past two years, could indeed return home with combat skills that would be used in a new wave of terrorist attacks.
Like the veterans of the war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, who went on to form al-Qaeda and mastermind the September 11 attacks, those schooled in the bloody streets of Baghdad, Mosul and Ramadi may one day return to Syria, Saudi Arabia and even Western countries to begin the next phase of their jihad.
MEN AT THE HEART OF SPREADING TERROR
THE LEADERS
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
Age: 39
Born: Zarqa, Jordan
Career: Iraq’s most wanted terrorist has a $25 million price on his head for numerous attacks by his al-Qaeda-affiliated group, including a bombing that killed 23 people at a Baghdad kebab shop on June 19. He recently appealed on his website for young radicals living in Europe to join the ranks of “lions” in his “martyrs brigade”. Reported to have left Iraq, possibly for Iran, for surgery after being wounded by shrapnel in May
Abdullah Muhammad Rashid al-Rashoud
Age: 37
Country: Saudi Arabia
Career: One of Saudi Arabia’s most wanted militants, reported killed this week by a US air strike in al-Qaim after entering Iraq in April. One of the top names on Saudi Arabia’s list of 26 most-wanted terror leaders, of whom only two are still at large. Issued statements on the internet calling young men to take part in jihad
Abu Maysara al-Iraqi
The name under which al-Zarqawi’s group has signed several announcements posted on the internet about insurgent fighting, including the death of al-Roshoud and news about the kidnapping and killing of British and American hostages
THE FOOT SOLDIERS
Wail al-Dhaleai
Age: 22
Country: Britain
Career: Died bombing a US military checkpoint in Iraq in May 2004. He travelled there from Sheffield where he had arrived in 2000 as an asylum-seeker from Yemen
Idris Bazis
Age: 41
Country: France
Career: The French-Algerian moved last June from France to Manchester, then travelled via Syria to Iraq. He is thought to have carried out a suicide bombing in Hilla on February 28
Mohammed Afalah
Age: 28
Country: Spain
Career: The Moroccan-born stallholder from Madrid helped to organise the train bombings in March 2004. He is believed to have died in a suicide bombing in Baghdad on May 19
Boubaker El Hakim
Age: 21
Country: France
Career: Tunisian-born Muslim based in Paris travelled to Syria and later Iraq. Sent back to France last September after being jailed in Syria for trying to re-enter Iraq without papers. Arrested again in France on June 18 on terrorist charges