Guarding Whose Border?

• On the one hand, Syria maintains an open border that allows al Qaeda and associated “foreign fighters” to infiltrate into Iraq where their goal is to kill American soldiers and the Bush administration approves the sale of advanced dual-use computers to Syria for border surveillance.
• On one hand, Syria undermines Lebanon and supports Fatah al Islam in the Palestinian refugee camps and Hezbollah elsewhere in Lebanon, and the Bush administration approves the sale of advanced dual-use computers to Syria for border surveillance.
• On one hand, Syria and North Korea were doing
  
  • On the one hand, Syria maintains an open border that allows al Qaeda and associated “foreign fighters” to infiltrate into Iraq where their goal is to kill American soldiers and the Bush administration approves the sale of advanced dual-use computers to Syria for border surveillance.
  • On one hand, Syria undermines Lebanon and supports Fatah al Islam in the Palestinian refugee camps and Hezbollah elsewhere in Lebanon, and the Bush administration approves the sale of advanced dual-use computers to Syria for border surveillance.
  • On one hand, Syria and North Korea were doing something in the Syrian desert that prompted Israel to destroy it and the United States to approve the destruction, and the Bush administration approves the sale of advanced dual-use computers to Syria for border surveillance.
  • On one hand, the United States lists Syria as a terrorism-supporting country, subject to the same sanctions as Iran and North Korea, and the Bush administration approves the sale of advanced dual-use computers to Syria for border surveillance.

  On the other hand… no wait, as Tevye the Dairyman said, there is no “other hand.”

  Middle East Newsline (MENL) cites a FOX report that the Commerce Department provided a license for the sale of advanced computers for a Syrian “border surveillance and customs” program under the auspices of the UN Development Program (UNDP, the same people who were funneling cash to North Korea). The “Modernization of the Syrian Customs Directorate” includes more than $2.1 million worth of computers, servers, local and wide area networking equipment, networked surveillance cameras and other high-tech goods. Cisco is providing the networking capability.

  According Fox, the EU had the lead on the UNDP program. “Since 2004… the EU has been dangling a strategy of enhanced trade relations with countries on the southern edge of the Mediterranean as part of a ‘European Neighborhood’ policy… The big stumbling block was Syria. Due to Syrian human rights violations, intrusiveness in Lebanon and support for terrorist activity in Iraq and elsewhere, EU officials have been unable to complete bilateral agreements with Syria… (so) they have apparently proceeded piecemeal. UNDP officials told FOX News that their own customs project was designed to be ‘complementary’ to an even costlier – roughly $11 million – EU customs modernization package for Syria.”

  Timing is everything. The “customs modernization program” was going on precisely as Syria and North Korea were doing whatever they were doing in the desert that Israel, with America’s blessing, destroyed. So the EU was helping Syria better control what was coming in and going out at precisely the moment the United States and Israel REALLY needed to control what was coming in and going out.

  It isn’t the first time the EU has worked at cross-purposes with the United States and Israel on security-related trade issues. But the Administration should never have been complicit in helping the Syrians exercise greater control over their dictatorship. If anything, we should be supplying surveillance technologies to our friends Lebanon and Iraq – and helping THEM control THEIR borders with Syria.