The Syria-Iran Factor.

PM Nuri al-Maleki on Aug. 18 went to Damascus where he met with President Assad and PM Muhammad Naji al-Utari. He also met with the leaders of predominantly Sunni Arab tribes, including the head of the huge Shammar confederation of tribes whose areas extend from southern Turkey and north-eastern Syria bordering with Nineveh to major parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The Shammar, mainly Sunni Arab, includes fairly large Shi'ite Arab tribes - as in the case of several other Arab confederations in Iraq.

The main issues Maleki discussed there were mutual border security, the sharing the Euphrates River waters and bilateral trade. Maleki and fellow Shi'ite Arab members of his coalition government have been upset by a Syrian-US border security arrangement tentatively reached in Damascus during an Aug. 12-13 visit there by a Pentagon team. At the time, the US and Syria called on the Maleki government to take part in their talks. Maleki preferred direct Iraqi-Syrian talks.

The Pentagon has been particularly focused on ending Syrian co-operation with Iran's ruling Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its external branch known as Quds Force in de-stabilising Iraq and Lebanon and keeping the Palestinians divided. The US and Saudi Arabia have been especially apprehensive about the IRGC externalising its crisis within Iran by using its trouble-making cards in Iraq (see rim2IrqIRGC-Aug17-09) and Lebanon - in the latter case, through Hizbullah.

The US-Syrian arrangement focuses on Syrian moves to curb infiltration into Iraq by Neo-Salafi insurgents. An APS source in Baghdad on Aug. 15 said an agreement was on Aug. 13 reached for a series of joint steps against the insurgents. This was one of the reasons behind Assad's Aug. 19 visit to Tehran (see above).

The Pentagon then said these insurgents were operating from Syria; and the visiting team pressed Damascus to take tangible steps to halt their flow to Iraq, as well as end their Syria-based operations and stop co-ordinating with Iran against Iraqi and Lebanese stability. The Obama administration wants to make sure Iraq's stability will not be undermined after the US military withdrawal from the country. This is a main goal of the US rapprochement with Assad's regime, which has led to American support for resuming peace talks between Syria and Israel through Turkish mediation and an announcement that Washington would send back an ambassador to Damascus after a four-year break.

Reuters on Aug. 13 quoted a diplomat as saying: "The Americans have presented the Syrians with names of main [Neo-Salafi and Ba'thist] facilitatorsthey want captured". That visit was the second since June and the team was headed by a ranking general of the US Central Command (CentCom) which is charge of much of the GME and the Horn of Africa. Included in that team were an official from US Defence Secretary Robert Gates' office and State Department diplomat Frederick Hoff, who is responsible for bridging differences on territorial issues between Israel and Syria which contributed to the break-down of previous peace talks.

A State Department spokesman had earlier said the visit, which came as a resurgence of Neo-Salafi and Ba'thist attacks in Iraq, was "to focus on continuing our dialogue in more detail concerning opportunities for co-operation on regional security matters". Syria this year had already expelled Muhammad Younes, a main figure in the outlawed Iraqi Ba'th Party, who is wanted by the Baghdad government.

Odierno then said Neo-Salafi insurgent groups led by al-Qaeda were taking advantage of the fissures between Baghdad and the KRG to attack largely unprotected towns and villages near Mosul in an effort to spark violence between Arabs and Kurds.

Kurd-Arab tensions are viewed as a next potential flash-point for broader conflict in Iraq after a sharp decline in the sectarian violence between Sunni and Shi'ite Arabs sparked off by the 2003 US-led invasion.

Odierno on Aug. 17 said that, if given approval to deploy tripartite forces in disputed areas, most of the work would be carried out by Iraqi troops and KRG's Peshmerga fighters. US troops would largely play a supervisory role. Odierno said: "We're not making any decision that this disputed territory belongs to the KRG or it belongs to the government of Iraq".

Maleki may have to grant US troops an exemption from the SOFA under which US troops retreated to rural bases at end-June and which sets an end-2011 deadline for a full US withdrawal. Odierno said he had discussed his proposal with Maleki and Kurdistan's recently re-elected President Barzani and both had asked him to have a look at the idea. A committee would start discussing the proposal in September.

Odierno said: "I have been encouraged. I didn't sense any initial resistance to having joint trilateral check-points, Iraqi army, KRG and US soldiers in oversight. Some of this [tension] is people blaming different people and frankly this will also help with that problem as we'll all be in there together. We can't blame one side or the other side for why these attacks occurred".

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