Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0360/03600.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 28KB | 439 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03600}
$Pretitle{247}
$Title{Syria
Chapter 5D.   Sponsorship of Terrorism}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Robert Scott Mason}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{security
syrian
military
intelligence
syria
law
state
forces
armed
government}
$Date{1987}
$Log{}
Country:     Syria
Book:        Syria, A Country Study
Author:      Robert Scott Mason
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1987

Chapter 5D.   Sponsorship of Terrorism

     In the mid-1980s, much media attention was paid to Syria's alleged use of
terrorism to achieve diplomatic, military, and strategic objectives in the
Middle East and elsewhere. Although the exact Syrian role was murky, in the
mid-1980s, Syria's intelligence and security networks were strongly implicated
in the support of Middle Eastern and other international terrorist groups in
Western Europe. In fact, Syria was one of the countries on the terrorism list
issued by the United States government, first compiled in 1979.

     Within Syria's intelligence and security services, sponsorship of
terrorism reportedly was conducted by air force intelligence, of which Major
General Muhammad al Khawli, an air force officer, has served as chief since
1970. Khawli, an Alawi, was considered Assad's most important adviser, and his
office was adjacent to Assad's in the presidential palace in Damascus, where
he was presidential adviser on national security and head of the National
Security Council. Since 1976 Khawli has been the architect of Syria's policy
in Lebanon. He also was credited with crushing the uprising by the Muslim
Brotherhood in Hamah in 1982, and, according to the Times of London, under his
command air force intelligence operatives had directed at least twenty-nine
terrorist operations as of late 1986. These intelligence operatives reportedly
worked in the offices of Syrian Arab Airlines abroad and also as military
attaches in Syrian embassies. Thus, Syria had a formidable intelligence
network with which to direct and fund terrorist groups and provide them such
assistance as explosives and weapons, false passports and official Syrian
service passports, diplomatic pouches, safe houses, and logistical support.
Lieutenant Colonel Haitham Sayid, deputy chief of air force intelligence and
its operations director, was second in command to Khawli. In Lebanon, Khawli's
power was exercised by Brigadier General Ghazi Kanaan, head of Syrian
intelligence in Lebanon.

     Military intelligence services were headed by General Ali Duba, an Alawi,
who was, in effect, the country's chief of internal security. Military
intelligence was headquartered in the Ministry of Defense complex in the
center of Damascus and reputedly exercised immense authority because it
operated from within the military establishment. Reportedly, military
intelligence services handled radical Palestinian terrorist groups, such as
Ahmad Jibril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine--General Command.
General Khawli and Lieutenant Colonel Sayid were allegedly also the paymasters
of the Abu Nidal terrorist organization, also called the Fatah--Revolutionary
Council. According to the United States Department of State, Syria provided
the Abu Nidal organization with logistical support and permission to operate
facilities in Damascus (the Syrian government asserts the facilities were
limited to cultural and political affairs). It is also claimed that the Syrian
government helped the Abu Nidal organization maintain training camps in
Lebanon's Biqa Valley, an area controlled by Syrian armed forces, and supplied
travel documents permitting Abu Nidal operatives to transit freely through
Damascus when departing on missions.

     Western government and intelligence sources admit that they cannot pinpoint
Assad's complicity in planning terrorist operations but consider it unlikely
that he was not informed in advance of major terrorist acts. If these reports
are true, it was equally unlikely that Major General Khawli would act without
clearing a potentially risky operation with Assad.

     Various news organizations have claimed that, as part of its overall
support network, in the 1980s Syria provided training camps for Middle Eastern
and international terrorists. There were reportedly five training bases near
Damascus and some twenty other training facilities elsewhere, including the
Biqa Valley. In late 1986, U.S. News and World Report stated that since
October 1983, when Israel withdrew from Beirut, large numbers of international
terrorists known to Western intelligence sources have turned up in Damascus.
These include members of radical Palestinian and Lebanese terrorist groups,
which depended on Syria for refuge and logistical and financial support, as
well as other free-lance terrorists. Other sources report that a number of
other terrorist groups have received training in Syrian camps or in
Syrian-controlled areas in Lebanon including such West European terrorists
groups as the Red Army Faction (also known as Baader Meinhof) and the Action
Directe, as well as the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia,
the Japanese Red Army, the Kurdish Labor Party, the Pakistani Az Zulfikar, the
Tamil United Liberation Front of Sri Lanka, the Moro National Liberation Front
for the Philippines, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman, the
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Somalia, and the Eritrean Liberation
Front. Furthermore, the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Faction (LARF) was based
in the Lebanese village of Qubayat, within the area of Syrian control. Syria
also permitted Iran to operate training camps in eastern Lebanon for the Shia
Party of God (Hizballah) organization.

     Syria's goal was to employ as surrogates terrorists whose operations left
few traces to Syria. In June 1986, the Washington Post reported that Middle
East analysts had noted three distinct kinds of relationships between Syria's
intelligence and security services and terrorist groups. In the first kind of
relationship, there was direct Syrian involvement because Syrian intelligence
created new radical Palestinian factions, such as As Saiqa, which were, in
effect, integrated components of the Syrian armed forces and hence direct
Syrian agents. The radical Palestinian Abu Musa group, which was almost
totally dependent on Syria, was another example of such a relationship. In the
other two kinds of relationships, Syria used terrorists as surrogates to avoid
direct blame. In the second relationship, Syria collaborated with and provided
logistical and other support to terrorist groups that maintained independent
organizational identities but were directed by Syrian intelligence, which
formulated general guidelines as to targets. Reportedly, Abu Nidal's
Fatah--Revolutionary Council and the LARF were examples of such collaboration.
The third kind of relationship involved selection of free lance terrorists,
mainly Palestinians and Jordanians, to carry out a specific operation.
Examples of this kind of relationship included the convicted Lebanese assassin
of Bashir Jumayyil, Nizar Hindawi, convicted in 1986 of trying to blow up an
Israeli commercial airliner in London; and Hindawi's half-brother, Ahmad Hasi,
convicted of bombing the German-Arab Friendship Society office in West Berlin.

     The firmest proof of Syrian sponsorship of terrorism occurred at the trials of
Hindawi in Britain and Hasi in West Berlin. Evidence introduced in Britain,
and other information not made public, linked Hindawi with the Syrian
intelligence services. Because of the evidence, the British government severed
diplomatic relations with Syria. Hasi's case implicated Haitham Sayid, deputy
chief of Syrian Air Force intelligence, for whom an international arrest
warrant was issued by West Berlin authorities. After Hasi's conviction, the
West German government downgraded its relations with Syria.

     A series of terrorist explosions in Paris in September 1986 were linked to a
Marxist Maronite terrorist group, the LARF. LARF was implicated in