Syria Attempted to Bring Sunni Iraqis "Into the American Fold"

An extraordinary anaysis from Joshua Landis recounts how Syria tried to assist the United States politically in Iraq.

Khaddam organized at least 10 meetings of Iraqi tribal leaders at the Ebla Sham Hotel on the airport road during 2003 and 2004. This may have been Khaddam’s way of trying to make Syria useful to the Americans and to bring Syria into the center of the Iraq political drama. Khaddam’s policy of taming the Sunnis and delivering them to the Americans proved useless, however. Allawi lost out in the power struggle in Iraq. The Iraqi resistance grew at a dizzying pace and America moved ever closer to the Shiites and away from the Sunnis.

Read the analysis, which also discusses Hariri's assassination, here