Vice-President Lieberman Writes: "The United States is at last making significant progress against a

Al Qaeda's Travel Agent

Damascus International Airport is a hub for terrorists.

BY JOSEPH LIEBERMAN

Monday, August 20, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010496

The United States is at last making significant progress against al

Qaeda in Iraq--but the road to victory now requires cutting off al

Qaeda's road to Iraq through Damascus.

Thanks to Gen. David Petraeus's new counterinsurgency strategy in

Iraq, and the strength and skill of the American soldiers fighting

there, al Qaeda in Iraq is now being routed from its former

strongholds in Anbar and Diyala provinces. Many of Iraq's Sunni Arabs,

meanwhile, are uniting with us against al Qaeda, alienated by the

barbarism and brutality of their erstwhile allies.

As Gen. Petraeus recently said of al Qaeda in Iraq: "We have them off

plan."

But defeating al Qaeda in Iraq requires not only that we continue

pressing the offensive against its leadership and infrastructure

inside the country. We must also aggressively target its links to

"global" al Qaeda and close off the routes its foreign fighters are

using to get into Iraq.

Recently declassified American intelligence reveals just how much al

Qaeda in Iraq is dependent for its survival on the support it receives

from the broader, global al Qaeda network, and how most of that

support flows into Iraq through one country--Syria. Al Qaeda in Iraq

is sustained by a transnational network of facilitators and human

smugglers, who replenish its supply of suicide bombers--approximately

60 to 80 Islamist extremists, recruited every month from across the

Middle East, North Africa and Europe, and sent to meet their al Qaeda

handlers in Syria, from where they are taken to Iraq to blow

themselves up to kill countless others.

Although small in number, these foreign fighters are a vital strategic

asset to al Qaeda in Iraq, providing it with the essential human

ammunition it needs to conduct high-visibility, mass-casualty suicide

bombings, such as we saw last week in northern Iraq. In fact, the U.S.

military estimates that between 80% and 90% of suicide attacks in Iraq

are perpetrated by foreign fighters, making them the deadliest weapon

in al Qaeda's war arsenal. Without them, al Qaeda in Iraq would be

critically, perhaps even fatally, weakened.

That is why we now must focus on disrupting this flow of suicide

bombers--and that means focusing on Syria, through which up to 80% of

the Iraq-bound extremists transit. Indeed, even terrorists from

countries that directly border Iraq travel by land via Syria to Iraq,

instead of directly from their home countries, because of the

permissive environment for terrorism that the Syrian government has

fostered. Syria refuses to tighten its visa regime for individuals

transiting its territory.

Coalition forces have spent considerable time and energy trying to

tighten Syria's land border with Iraq against terrorist infiltration.

But given the length and topography of that border, the success of

these efforts is likely to remain uneven at best, particularly without

the support of the Damascus regime.

Before al Qaeda's foreign fighters can make their way across the

Syrian border into Iraq, however, they must first reach Syria--and the

overwhelming majority does so, according to U.S. intelligence

estimates, by flying into Damascus International Airport, making the

airport the central hub of al Qaeda travel in the Middle East, and the

most vulnerable chokepoint in al Qaeda's war against Iraq and the U.S.

in Iraq.

Syrian President Bashar al Assad cannot seriously claim that he is

incapable of exercising effective control over the main airport in his

capital city. Syria is a police state, with sprawling domestic

intelligence and security services. The notion that al Qaeda recruits

are slipping into and through the Damascus airport unbeknownst to the

local Mukhabarat is totally unbelievable.

This is not the first use of the Damascus airport by terrorists. It

has long been the central transit point for Iranian weapons en route

to Hezbollah, in violation of United Nations Security Council

sanctions, as well as for al Qaeda operatives moving into and out of

Lebanon.

Now the Damascus airport is the point of entry into Iraq for most of

the suicide bombers who are killing innocent Iraqi citizens and

American soldiers, and trying to break America's will in this war. It

is therefore time to demand that the Syrian regime stop playing travel

agent for al Qaeda in Iraq.

When Congress reconvenes next month, we should set aside whatever

differences divide us on Iraq and send a clear and unambiguous message

to the Syrian regime, as we did last month to the Iranian regime, that

the transit of al Qaeda suicide bombers through Syria on their way to

Iraq is completely unacceptable, and it must stop.

We in the U.S. government should also begin developing a range of

options to consider taking against Damascus International, unless the

Syrian government takes appropriate action, and soon.

Responsible air carriers should be asked to stop flights into Damascus

International, as long as it remains the main terminal of

international terror. Despite its use by al Qaeda and Hezbollah

terrorists, the airport continues to be serviced by many major non-

U.S. carriers, including Alitalia, Air France, and British Airways.

Interrupting the flow of foreign fighters would mean countless fewer

suicide bombings in Iraq, and countless fewer innocent people murdered

by the barbaric enemy we are fighting there. At a time when the al

Qaeda network in Iraq is already under heavy stress thanks to American

and Iraqi military operations, closing off the supply line through

which al Qaeda in Iraq is armed with its most deadly weapons--suicide

bombers--would be devastating to the terrorists' cause.

Simply put, for the U.S. and our Iraqi allies, defeating al Qaeda in

Iraq means locking shut Syria's "Open Door" policy to terrorists. It

is past time for Syria to do so.