Is Syria Helping or Hurting U.S. in Iraq?

Syrian officials are hoping that the aid they gave in the arrest will help restore them to the good graces of the Bush administration, which has been divided on what to do about Damascus. In recent years, U.S. intelligence officials have praised the assistance they have received from Syria in tracking and nabbing Al Qaeda terrorists. But senior U.S. officials, particularly in the Pentagon, have recently been battering Damascus over Syrian aid to the Iraqi insurgency. And President Bush himself has become increasingly critical of Syria.

NEWSWEEK reported on the arrest last Saturday, before U.S. officials confirmed the identity of Saddam's half brother. However, a U.S. government source has now confirmed to NEWSWEEK that Hassan was first picked up by Syrian forces operating in the Lebanese capital late last week, probably on Friday. Over the next two days he was transported via Syria to the Iraqi border and eventually handed over to U.S. and Iraqi forces either early Sunday or late Saturday.

According to the source, U.S. officials believe that Hassan fled to Syria after the fall of Saddam in 2003 , then moved to Beirut several months ago. Washington believes the Syrians knew about Hassan's presence in Lebanon for at least three months, the source said. Hassan's name was on a list of eight names of wanted Saddam associates given by Richard Armitage to Syrian officials during the outgoing deputy secretary of State's visit to Damascus in early January. Another major backer of the insurgency allegedly harbored by Syria is Gen. Tahir Jalil Habbush, chief of Saddam's intelligence service, who is from Tikrit, the ousted Iraqi leader's home town.

U.S. officials believe that the Syrians had a fairly precise idea of Hassan's whereabouts at the time of the Armitage visit. A U.S. source said the Bush administration believes that the Syrians--historically reluctant to pick up senior Iraqi Baathists and Saddam cronies--only finally decided to arrest Hassan after Damascus was widely accused of being behind the Hariri assassination. According to the U.S. government source, reports that the Syrians recently turned over a total of 29 suspects to Iraq are probably accurate, but Hassan is believed to be the only high-level insurgent leader in that batch. Since the start of the Iraq war, a U.S. official said, the Syrians have turned over around 800 suspects to U.S. or Iraqi officials in Iraq, but few of these were high-level insurgents or Baathists.

Syria also made another apparently conciliatory move toward Washington by announcing earlier this year that the government had frozen the bank account of Sulayman Khalid Darwish, a man designated by the U.S. Treasury in late January as a terrorist financier for his alleged involvement in organizing financial support for Iraqi insurgents. However, intelligence reports have raised questions about the Syrians' handling of Darwish: according to a U.S. source, information reaching Washington indicates that the Syrians at one point arrested Darwish and questioned him, turning up some useful leads on the Iraqi insurgency.

The Syrians later let Darwish go, but, following his designation as a terrorist financier, now have indicated they are trying re-arrest him.

Since the death of Hariri, who was killed by a powerful bomb detonated underneath his Beirut convoy two weeks ago, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recalled America's ambassador from Damascus, citing Syria's "interference in the affairs of Lebanon." Meanwhile thousands of Lebanese have crowded the streets of Beirut, demanding Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, which has long been a client state of Damascus's. Raising the temperature further, The Associated Press reported Saturday that an official from the Syria-based leadership of the Islamic Jihad militant group claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing that killed four Israelis in Tel Aviv. Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz also said that Syria was to blame for the suicide bombing.

Despite the lack of hard evidence linking the Hariri killing to Syria, the bombing is typical of the Syrian intelligence services, experts say. And Hariri had recently returned from a visit to Damascus warning his associates that the Syrians were very nervous about his moves to push Syria out of Lebanese affairs. But Damascus has denied any part in the assassination. Imad Moustapha, the Syrian ambassador to the United States, told NEWSWEEK on Feb. 25 that it would have been "political suicide" for Assad to have authorized such a move. A United Nations panel is currently investigating the assassination.

The abrupt worsening of U.S.-Syrian tensions marks a dramatic decline from the Armitage-Assad meeting on Jan. 2. Armitage had asked Syria to reject political assassinations as a tactic in Lebanon--a demand provoked by an attempt on the life of a former Lebanese minister who had criticized Syria last fall. Armitage, following up on an earlier visit by Assistant Secretary of State William Burns, also asked for Syrian help in carrying out the Iraqi election. Assad agreed to help U.S. efforts and asked, in return, for a higher level of engagement with Washington. According to several sources familiar with the minutes of the meeting, Armitage then banged his fist on the table and said, "You've got it!" But he warned that Washington would not accommodate Syrian efforts to stay in Lebanon.

Moustapha, the ambassador, says that Syria did succeed in helping with the Iraqi election. "We opened our schools, allowed them to be used as voting centers. We put security in charge of protecting Iraqi [expatriate] voters in Syria." Armitage, who stepped down last month and was traveling in Japan, did not immediately respond to a message left with his assistant at Armitage & Associates in Arlington, Va.

Moustapha said he and other Syrian officials were stunned when Bush, in his State of the Union address on Feb. 2, singled out Syria as a sponsor of terrorism along with Iran. "Syria has repeatedly sent gestures of good will to the United States, expecting nothing in return, only to enhance the quality of its engagement," Moustapha said. (Hariri was killed less than two weeks after Bush's speech, though there is no evidence of any connection between the president's snub and the assassination.)

U.S. officials say that despite any assistance Syria might have provided during the Iraqi elections and in the hunt for Al Qaeda, Damascus has continued to aid the Iraqi insurgency. Syria, a Sunni-dominated state that is still nominally run by a Baath Party like Saddam's, was said to have felt threatened by the rise of the Shia in Iraq. That point was driven home last week when, in Baghdad, the interim Iraqi government put on dramatic video that showed some suspected insurgents confessing to links with Syrian intelligence.

But some U.S. intelligence officials remain sympathetic to their counterparts in Damascus. In the last few years Syrian intelligence helped avert two major attacks on U.S. targets-the U.S. embassy in Ottawa, Canada and a Navy base in Bahrain, U.S. officials say. And some U.S. intelligence officials remain skeptical about whether the confessions coming out of Baghdad are real.

Some Syrian officials believe that Syria is being sacrificed to the politics of the second Bush term. French President Jacques Chirac, a friend of Hariri's, has long agitated for Syrian withdrawal under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559. Chirac and Bush found common ground on the issue during the U.S. president's visit to Europe earlier this week.

Some Pentagon hawks, meanwhile, see the new ferment in Lebanon as a further opportunity to remake the Middle East. "We are feeling a bit bitter and disappointed," says Moustapha.