The arrests dealt a blow to an insurgency that some Iraqi officials claim Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan was helping organize and fund from Syria. The U.S. military said two American soldiers were killed Sunday in an ambush in the capital.
Al-Hassan, a former Saddam adviser, was captured in Hasakah in northeastern Syria near the Iraqi border, two senior Iraqi officials told The Associated Press by telephone on condition of anonymity. Hasakah is about 30 miles from Iraq.
They added that al-Hassan was captured and handed over to Iraqi authorities along with 29 other members of Saddam's collapsed Baath Party, whose Syrian branch has been in power in Damascus since 1963.
The Iraqi officials did not specify when al-Hassan was captured, only saying he was detained following the Feb. 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut, Lebanon, in a blast that killed 16 others.
I won't say I called this one a week and a half ago, since I freely admitted it was sheer speculation, but this sure does look like the stab in the back I guessed about:
But what if the Iran alliance and the arms deal are related to a stab in the back aimed at the Iraqi Baathists? What if, after the successful Iraq elections, the Syrians do understand that we will win in Iraq? How then could the two deals be interpreted?Well, what if the Syrians are about to confiscate all the Iraqi Baathist money hidden in Syria and Lebanon and turn on their Baathist brothers from Iraq and the jihadis?
Even if this isn't a full Syrian stab in the back against the Iraqi Baathists, the Iraqi Baathists can't really afford to trust the Syrians any more. Of course, perhaps the Syrians decided they could not trust the Iraqi Baathists to keep fighting given reports of talks to end the insurgency and this is just a tactical measure to gain some goodwill with the US and Iraq while still supporting the jihadis in Iraq.
And even if this is just a tactical move by the Syrians, getting the Baathists to stop fighting has always been the key to winning. Foreign jihadis without the help of Baathists inside Iraq will be hunted down and killed.
