Background
Throughout the Iraq War, Syria has reportedly served as a conduit for foreign fighters intending to enter Iraq to fight US, coalition, or Iraqi military and police forces. US officials have complained that militants and their reinforcement and logistics networks have been able to operate openly in Syria, and that the Syrian government has not made sufficient effort to stop it. The US says that militants fly into Damascus and then, with the help of emplaced networks, travel across the Syrian border into Iraq, mainly through the city of Ramadi. According to the US military, the foreign militants were responsible for 80% to 90% of the suicide attacks in Iraq, mainly targeting Iraqi civilians.
In the summer of 2007, a US military raid on a suspected al-Qaeda in Iraq house in the Iraqi town of Sinjar, near Syria, yielded documents containing information about alleged Syrian smuggling networks used to move foreign fighters into Iraq. The documents included al-Qaeda in Iraq records of more than 500 foreign fighters who had entered from Syria, according to the Combating Terrorism Center at the US Military Academy, where civilian analysts are examining the documents. A July 2008 report on what the documents contained indicated that at least 95 Syrian "coordinators" were involved in facilitating the movement of the foreign fighters into Iraq. The report stated that many of the coordinators were from smuggling families in Bedouin clans and other Syrian tribes.
Since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, there have been a few reported incidents of the US military firing across the border at targets in Syria. US General David H. Petraeus stated in October 2008 that efforts by US and Iraqi forces, as well as by the Syrian government, had cut the number of militants crossing into Iraq from Syria from about 100 a month to 20 a month. Petraeus, however, stated that more needed to be done to halt the flow of militants. In 2008, the US blamed violence in Mosul on foreign fighters from Syria.
Read more about this topic: 2008 Abu Kamal Raid
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)