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101st Tackles Arab Tribes Helping Guerrillas
Another long DEBKA article, salt to taste, EFL:
DEBKA-Net-Weekly (September 19) first revealed that troops of the US 101st Airborne Division had embarked on a cleansing operation against the Arab nomadic tribes ranging through the Iraqi-Syrian and Iraqi-Saudi border regions, who abet and shield the influx of fighters from Syria. The operation began after US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld wound up his Baghdad visit on September 14. This week, the sheikhs sent a delegation post haste to Damascus to demand that Bashar Assad obtain the immediate release of the paramount chief of the Anaza, Sheikh Ibrahim Hanjari, who was captured by 101st troops with his entire court.
Yeah, he’s got a lot of pull with the 101st.
In his encampment, the troops discovered a large arsenal of weapons, ammunition, landmines, rocket-propelled grenades and explosives, packed ready for shipment into Iraq, as well as dozens of Saudi suitcases crammed with millions of dollars.
Millions + munitions = Saudi.
In one hideout, US troops turned up $1.6 million in $100 bills. Eighty Saudi fighters, along with 48 armed Syrians, Yemenis, Egyptians, Pakistanis, Sudanese and Palestinians, were rounded up, together with documents and mail proving that the Anaza – from chiefs down to the lowliest Bedouin – run the pipeline smuggling Arab and Al Qaeda fighters of various nationalities through Syria into Iraq. Since the Saudi royal family traces its origins to the Anaza, the US action has touched an extremely sensitive regional chord that may well provoke broad guerrilla action and reprisals in the form of the abductions of American personnel to obtain the sheikh’s release.
Remind the Saudis abductions work both ways.
On the other hand, such kidnappings are already threatened by Iraqi guerrilla forces and their allies. Furthermore, the US authorities were shocked into action when they realized the scale of the incoming traffic in the last few weeks, estimated now in tens of thousands. From Saudi Arabia alone, US intelligence has put together a list of 15,000 armed Wahhabist fundamentalists with military training and al Qaeda terrorists, who are either in Iraq or on their way there to join the campaign against the Americans.
Hummm, we got a list of 15,000 names? Has somebody been careless about deleting his hard drive again?
As they were gathered, the names were forwarded to Riyadh with a request to detain potential guerrillas and terrorists or otherwise prevent them from reaching the Iraqi border. The Saudis have so far made no response, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in the Gulf.
Well, unless that request the Saudi government made a while ago asking families to report their missing sons was their way of checking the names on the list.
US troops also came up with evidence that Syrian President Bashar Assad had not acted in good faith when he promised Washington to direct the three Syrian divisions deployed along the Iraqi frontier to block the outflow of men and arms.
Tap, tap.....nope, didn’t budge.
Instead, he ordered them to afford every assistance to Hanjani’s men in speeding the traffic on its way. In view of these discoveries, 101st Airborne troops have broadened their area of operation in western Iraq to include the Iraqi city of Anah on the banks of the Tigris River between the Syrian border city of Abu Kamal, and the key Iraqi city of al Hadithah. After Anah was placed under curfew for house-to-house searches, the town was found to be the Anaza’s primary base and hideout for intruders. Anti-American gunmen and smuggled weapons were turned up in hiding places around the city, in the dense undergrowth lining both banks of the Tigris and in other places in the al-Qaim region. The operation is still under way and is destined to move south to al Hadithah.
We have never heard much about what’s been going on along the Syrian/Iraq border.
As for the threat of sanctions, the Syria Accountability Act and Lebanon Sovereignty Restoration Act – if enacted by the US Congress - could impose a virtual trade embargo on Syria. However, no legislation is necessary for the most painful measure already in motion. The American civil administration in Baghdad is withholding instructions to reactivate the Kirkuk-Banias oil pipeline which before the war carried 300,000 barrels a day of Saddam Hussein’s smuggled oil exports to Syria’s Mediterranean terminal, earning Syria $1bn per annum.
No oil for blood.
DEBKAfile’s sources report that, while disregarding the American grievances against him, the Syrian president has been bombarding Washington with demands to restore the flow of oil through the Syrian pipeline under joint American-Syrian military protection.
Guess he doesn’t understand cause & effect yet.
Posted by: Steve 2003-09-23
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=19003