Friday, April 22, 2011

Syria's "Borderline" Schizophrenia

I love a good irony, don't you?

Remember when Syria was opening its borders both to let fighters into Iraq as well as to take in weapons from Iraq? Now Syria has some problems with its own borders--and they don't seem to be taking it very well:
Syria long has been accused of stirring trouble in the territories of its neighbors by exporting unwanted people across porous borders — Kurdish separatists into Turkey, Sunni insurgents into Iraq and Palestinian militants and Al-Qaeda sympathizers into Lebanon. But with Syria reeling from the worst internal unrest since the ruling Baath Party took power nearly 50 years ago, it is Damascus' turn to complain about the alleged infiltration of foreign militants seeking to stir anti-regime violence.
Amid President Bashar al-Assad's hard-soft campaign against the unrest (crushing violence against protesters on one hand; lifting the nearly half-century "emergency law" and promising reforms, on the other), the official media in Damascus is focusing on the threat from across its borders.

On Sunday, for example, a refrigerator truck filled with automatic weapons, grenade launchers, sniper rifles, night-vision goggles and ammunition was seized by Syrian customs on crossing into Syria from Iraq, according to Syria's SANA news agency. The driver, the report said, claimed to have been paid $20,000 by an Iraqi to deliver the weapons into Syria.
What!? All of a sudden Syria doesn't want weapons from Iraq???

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