"You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria.” -- Henry A. Kissinger On October 26 2008, four U.S. helicopters flew 8

kilometres into Syria from Iraq, and attacked a farm compound in Eastern Syriaxi. The operation led by US Special Forces killed eight people including four children and Al Qaida operative Abu Ghadiya. Immediately after the raid, the Syrian regime vehemently denounced the attack as a violation of its sovereignty and carried out a series of retaliatory measures in protest. This included the removal of Syrian troops from the Iraqi border, mobilization of crowds to vent anger against America, closure of the American school and the US cultural centre. Additionally, Al-Assad’ s regime demanded an official apology and compensation for the victims. However, beyond the fiery rhetoric, new details have emerged that suggest Syria’ s complicity in the attack.

On November 2 2008, the English newspaper, The Times revealed that Syria had given permission for the raid to go ahead and when the operation was bungled, Syria’ s notorious secret intelligence services flooded the region to clear up the mess and muzzle local villagers. The paper further disclosed that the farm area was a heaven for jihadi fighters who were free to train and move across the Iraqi border. Some spoke with thick Iraqi accents. The revelations are not new and confirm long standing suspicions that Syria is covertly assisting America to stabilize Iraq.

After the fall of Saddam, many Iraqis fled Iraq and sought refuge in Syria. At present their numbers stand at approximately 1.5 million. Under American auspices, Syria set up militant training camps to recruit and train the Iraqi refugees into fighters with the explicit purpose of infiltrating the Iraqi resistance, providing real-time intelligence to US officials, and executing covert operations in Iraq, especially those that encourage sectarian discord. Syria also established checkpoints every 4 kilometres along the border that abuts Iraq. Through such endeavours the Syrian regime was able to monitor and keep track of jihadi fighters moving across the border. This arrangement resulted in the arrest of several thousand independent resistance fighters as well as the elimination of several high value targets— latest addition being Abu Ghadiya.