U.S. base near Syria border aimed at blocking bombers

BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. troops have established the first long-term military base along a major smuggling route near the Syrian border in a new effort to block potential suicide bombers from reaching targets in Baghdad and other major Iraqi cities.

A force of 1,800 U.S. troops, responding to continuing concerns that foreign fighters are crossing the Syrian border into Iraq, recently began an operation that includes setting up a base 3 miles from the crossroads town of Rawah.

By creating for the first time a base north of the Euphrates River along the strategic route that connects the Syrian border to roads leading north toward Mosul and east to Baghdad, military strategists hope to prevent foreign jihadists they say are aligned with al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi from reaching their targets.

"Religious extremists entering Iraq are a threat to the government. They're being used to do to Iraqis what they are unwilling to do to themselves — commit mass murder of innocents. AMZ [Zarqawi] is trying to use them to foment civil war," said Lt. Gen. John Vines, the top ground commander for the coalition in Iraq.

"So in addition to assisting the Iraqis in re-establishing control of the borders," Vines said, "we need to deny areas that are being used to train, indoctrinate and coordinate the movement of these religious extremists into areas where they're being used as suicide murderers in the eastern provinces, including Baghdad and Mosul."

The U.S. forces began arriving on July 16 in the area, where they occasionally have come and gone over the past two years. The region has long been viewed as a key staging area for insurgent activities, but U.S. intelligence suggests that the problem has increased in recent months as foreign fighters have used it to smuggle an increasingly lethal variety of explosives.

The new offensive comes at a time when Vines and Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, have been talking openly about the possibility of substantial reductions in U.S. troop levels in Iraq beginning next year.

The new operation illuminates the difficulty of trying to seal off a lengthy border. Some U.S. military officials concede that even with the base, they would never be able to fully close off the border.

At the same time, the operation is deemed vital to efforts aimed at reducing insurgent violence before an October Iraqi national referendum. U.S. officials hope that as a permanent Iraqi government is established in coming months, order can be better restored, thus allowing for American forces to begin pulling out.

U.S. military officials in Iraq say the Rawah operation is currently their top-priority mission. The base, where the military has been building structures the past two weeks, has been set up far enough from town so that insurgents seeking to launch mortar and rocket attacks would have to do so from the open desert, where the U.S. forces are more likely to see them.

A military mission statement states the goal is to disrupt al-Zarqawi's organization and establish Iraqi government control of the border, driving a wedge between al-Qaida and the Iraqi population and eliminating a "safe haven" for insurgents. The battle plan calls for U.S. troops to launch a series of raids, secure the area and bring in Iraqi security forces. Iraqi Defense Minister Saadoun al-Duleimi referred briefly to the operation after meeting with President Jalal Talibani on Thursday.

"Our forces will start from the Syrian border ... until we reach Ramadi, then to Fallujah," he said. "We have taken precise measures on the ground and acquired the president's approval to start the operation."

As in Fallujah, the western Iraqi city where U.S. forces waged a bloody battle in November to wrest control from insurgents, U.S. military officials have asked the Iraqi government to issue emergency laws that could include a curfew and a travel ban.

Foreign fighters are believed to have been crossing into Iraq along the Syrian border since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Since a recent crackdown along the rocky northern border near Mosul, they have been forced to enter farther south, U.S. officials said. Rawah is of strategic importance for insurgents because it is just north of a Euphrates River bridge that links the area to the road to Baghdad.

Smugglers who for years trafficked in black-market cigarettes, gasoline and sheep are now being paid to bring foreign fighters, explosives and weapons across the Syrian border, according to senior military officials.

The 2nd Army Division's Stryker Brigade is leading the operation and is the first to take up a permanent presence in the area. Officials say it has been difficult, if not impossible, for U.S.-led forces to control the region without such a commitment.