US Raids Ignore International Law
http://www.truthout.org/102808R
Washington - While US officials continue to avoid discussing the
weekend strikes that killed eight people in eastern Syria, Middle
East
experts have condemned the attacks as a violation of international
law
that threatens to further destabilize US-Syria relations.
Sunday, special operations forces carried out a cross-border raid
from Iraq into Syria. Press reports quote one unnamed US official who
claims that the strike was successful in killing Abu Ghadiya, a
terrorist leader in the region. Details of the strike have not yet
been released by the US government.
However, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said the attack
killed eight unarmed civilians in a farming village. Ahmed Salkini,
spokesman for the Syrian Embassy in Washington, DC, condemned the
strike, calling it a "criminal terrorist attack" that "intentionally
targeted innocent civilians."
According to Princeton international law scholar Richard Falk,
neither the US nor Syria presented sufficient evidence to back up
their claims. Regardless of the intent of the raid, Falk called the
US
action "a serious violation of international law," which allows for
the use of violence only in self-defense.
Yet, Falk does not predict that any enforcement action will be
taken, because international laws regulating the use of military
force
have been so undermined by the US and other countries in recent
years.
Falk called the raid "the latest display of Washington's disregard
for
the restraints of international law on the use of force.
"We are witnessing a unilateral expansion of the scope of the
right of self-defense [by the Bush administration]," Falk told
Truthout. "This is a suspension of the rule of law in the name of
counter-insurgency or homeland security. It is an extension of
executive authority and the imperial presidency."
Falk pointed to a recent escalation in unauthorized and illegal
cross-border attacks, calling the raid in Syria and similar US
actions
in Pakistan "a type of very dangerous diplomacy," which threatens to
spark an international crisis and "further expand the war zone" in
the
region.
Violations of territorial sovereignty by the US military have
stoked anti-American sentiment among civilians in the Middle East,
leading to increasingly dire predicaments for political leaders
trying
to balance domestic circumstances with pressure from the US.
Resistance to US raids in Pakistan has escalated to the point of
actual exchanges of fire between Pakistani and US forces, causing the
US to roll back plans to expand military operations into the lawless
Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.
Sunday's raids mark a significant step backward in the US's
relations with Syria, hindering counterterrorism efforts instead of
helping them, according to Erik Leaver, policy outreach director for
Foreign Policy In Focus.
"This does further damage to US-Syrian relations, which have been
very shaky over the past few years," Leaver told Truthout. "This
attack will strain relations further, making it more difficult to
track terrorist movement, not easier."
The US attacks come at an odd time, because Syrian border control
has been improving recently, according to Leaver. Salkini even
pointed
to recent encouragement from the Bush administration.
"A few weeks ago we had a positive meeting with Secretary Rice
and
the Syrian foreign minister," Salkini told Truthout. "They talked
about positive steps forward; they complimented our efforts in the
region."
Salkini called this contradictory approach a "recurrent theme" of
the Bush administration.
The strange timing of the attacks may be politically calculated,
according to Joshua Landis, co-director of the Center for Middle East
Studies.
"Politically, it is safer now because Syria is constrained from
retaliation due to its desire to get off to a new and better start
with a new US administration," Landis told Truthout. "Damascus may
feel that it has to swallow this aggression if it doesn't want
deteriorating relations to bleed into the next administration."
The Syrian media have roundly condemned the raids, with the top
national newspaper, Tishrin, calling them "cold-blooded murder."
According to another main media outlet, the Syrian Arab News
Agency, the Syrian government has sent a letter to the United
Nations,
requesting that the UN hold the US accountable for its actions and
prevent similar attacks in the future.
However, according to Salkini, Syria's anger at the raids won't
translate into military aggression.
"We are not interested in a war with the United States," Salkini
told Truthout. "Their policies in our region ... have brought enough
war and anguish."
The Syrian raids come at a critical time in the US's relationship
with Iraq. The two countries are negotiating a status of forces
agreement (SOFA) that would establish a long-term US presence in
Iraq.
According to the most recent draft of the SOFA, supplied to Truthout
by American Friends Service Committee Iraq consultant Raed Jarrar,
the
agreement permits the US to continue "conducting operations against
al-
Qaeda and other terrorist groups." It does not lay down a firm
deadline for withdrawal, nor does it bar cross-border attacks into
surrounding nations.
"This attack on Syria is yet another reason to oppose the long-
term agreement, because it shows that the US presence is not just
destabilizing Iraq - it's destabilizing the entire region," Jarrar
told Truthout. "With Iraq as a military base, the US can easily
attack
any other country in the region."
The Iraqi constitution prohibits the use of its land as a
military
base for launching cross-border strikes, according to a statement by
Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh on Tuesday. The statement
condemned the attack on Syria.
Syria has consistently opposed the US-Iraq SOFA throughout
negotiations. Now, according to Landis, the raids present an imminent
motivation to prevent its passage.
"You can be sure that Syria will do everything possible to
pressure Iraq not to pass the SOFA," Landis said.
Meanwhile, Congress is out of session for the campaign season and
has not yet stepped into the debate about the legality of the raids
in
Syria. Attempts to contact all twenty-one members of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee and the majority of the House Foreign
Relations Committee went unanswered by press time.
Even while in session, Congress has been hesitant to take on the
issue of national-sovereignty violations in the so-called war on
terror, because politicians fear voters may react negatively if they
oppose military action against potential terrorist targets.
"Congress has been very passive in relation to its own authority
with regard to warmaking, including Democrats, even with the mandate
of the 2006 elections," Professor Falk said. "Congress hasn't been
willing to insist that the government adhere to international law and
the US Constitution."
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