This is a guest post by MoreMediaNonsense
There is an interesting on going spat developing between Iraq and Syria re last months car bombs in Baghdad that killed 100 people. Iraq has accused Syria of complicity in the attacks and diplomatic relations are being seriously affected :
“Turkey has begun mediation between Iraq and Syria amid a deepening diplomatic row over insurgency bombings in Iraq.
Iraq accuses Syria of hosting camps to train insurgents and harbouring those responsible for recent bombings. Syria has condemned the violence and has challenged Baghdad to provide evidence for its accusations.
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has arrived for meetings in Baghdad, saying he hopes to re-establish an atmosphere of mutual trust between Iraq and Syria. “If there is trust and goodwill between the two sides, it will be easier to overcome a crisis such as this,” Mr Davutoglu told reporters at Ankara airport.
Confidence in Iraq’s government and security forces was severely shaken by bomb attacks on 19 August at the foreign and finance ministries which killed about 100 people.
On Sunday, Iraqi security officials made fresh accusations about Syria’s alleged role, showing journalists footage of what they said was a Saudi militant confessing he had attended a training camp in Syria. The 29-year-old, calling himself Muhammad al-Shamari, said he then crossed into Iraq and carried out a number of attacks.
“They taught us lessons in Islamic law and trained us to fight. The camp was well known to Syrian intelligence,” he said”
Now this is all a bit murky, but its not impossible that Syria would try to destabilize the fledgling democracy in Iraq .
However what is probably not going on is what the Syrian foreign minister told Cairo paper Al Ahram :
“For his part, Marwan Habash, a member of the national leadership and Syrian foreign minister, says that the chaos of Iraqi statements and their contradictions about the recent attacks in Baghdad “indicated that it had all been fabricated”. Habash suspected many parties of being behind the random bombings in Iraq, and at the top of his list was Israeli intelligence.
Habash told the Weekly : “Everyone knows that the suicide attacks and random bombings that kill Iraqi citizens are carried out by Israeli intelligence [Mossad] in collaboration with some groups in Kurdistan, Al-Qaeda and Iranian intelligence as well as with the collaboration of some armed Shia groups.” And he added that “each group has its own goals. There are those who want instability in Iraq, those who want to kill non-Muslims and those who want to prove the inability of American forces to accomplish their mission in Iraq.””
Sometimes you forget the full jaw dropping absurdity of the anti-Israel paranoia in the ME – but then you read read something like this and your eyes are (sadly) re-opened.