Self-Defense Sans Frontières
By backing terrorists, Syria defies even the U.N.

By Ruth Wedgwood
October 8, 2003 
Opinion Journal, Wall Street Journal
Original Source: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110004129

If you can't enjoy a good laugh, you shouldn't serve as a diplomat at the United Nations. One source of amusement is Syria's current membership on the U.N. Counter-Terrorism Committee. 
There are, of course, widely circulated reports that Syria has offered safe haven and training camps to groups such as the Islamic Jihad, Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command. 
Any succor to terror groups that seek out noncombatant civilians for mayhem and maiming for political purposes might seem to be inconsistent with the Counter-Terrorism Committee's program. The post-September 11 legal standard set by the Security Council requires that all member states refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts. 
The U.N. Security Council has extended the lesson taught to the Taliban in Afghanistan. States are no longer at liberty to serve as a landlord or a supply house in aiding terrorist groups. Under the mandate of Security Council Resolution 1373, they must shut down terrorist financing and training, and arrest or exclude the actors who seek to maim and kill civilians as a political technique. 
Unembarrassed by its obligations of membership on the Security Council, Syria has announced a rather different standard. In a little-remarked September 2002 Counter-Terrorism Committee filing, Syria reported that it could not regard as terrorism any acts committed in a legitimate struggle against foreign occupation. 
More particularly, Syria has elevated the Arab League convention on terrorism, adopted in Cairo in April 1998, above its obligations to the United Nations. The 1998 convention says that all cases of struggle by whatever means, including armed struggle, against foreign occupation and aggression for liberation and self-determination, in accordance with principles of international law, shall not be regarded as an offense. 
Yet Syria and the Arab League are in a legal cul-de-sac. The international law of armed conflict does not permit the deliberate targeting of civilians by suicide bombings, no matter what the occasion or cause for struggle. 
The unwillingness of the Arab world to acknowledge this limit to their grievances may explain Israel's recent decision to mount a pinprick attack on a training camp northwest of Damascus. Syria's ambassador to Washington insisted after the attack that there could be no terrorist groups afoot in his country, under the watchful eye of President Bashar Assad. (In the same BBC broadcast, when asked if Syria had chemical weapons, the ambassador said he couldn't hear the question.) One supposes that once again Syria has founded its idiosyncratic definition of terrorism on the Arab League's political dictionary. 
Fighting terrorism in a purely reactive way won't work. That view was embraced, at least intellectually, by President Clinton, who understood early on that terrorist training camps should not be permitted to flourish. In August 1998, after al Qaeda destroyed our embassies in East Africa (killing hundreds of civilians and wounding 4,000), the United States mounted a limited air strike against al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the U.S. action was largely symbolic, and we did not succeed in dislodging al Qaeda from its Afghan rookery in time to prevent the devastating September 11 attacks. 
In the wake of Israel's strike against the Ain Saheb military training camp, the U.S. has now asked both Syria and Israel to avoid actions that could heighten tensions. On Monday, however, President Bush told reporters that Israel must not feel constrained in defending the homeland. Damascus must understand that it is not safe or sane to allow guerrilla leaders to set up command posts or training camps on its territory. Sovereign borders will not serve as a one-way valve for guerrilla attacks abroad. September 11 has changed the standards of state responsibility, and pro forma denials will not suffice. 
To seize higher ground, Syrian President Bashar Assad should lead the Arab League by acknowledging that all civilians, Israeli and Palestinian alike, deserve protection against suicide attacks. Terrorism is the deliberate use of force against protected persons. It is not defined by the political objectives of the actor. 
The standards of international humanitarian law and the law of armed conflict are set by treaty and international custom. They make no exception for passionate liberators who wish, for an instrumental purpose, to target seaside cafes crowded with Arab and Jewish civilians. The identity of the suicide bomber points out the tragedy of this intellectual and moral confusion. The bomber was a young Palestinian woman, with a life ahead of her. She was also a lawyer. 
Ms. Wedgwood is a professor of international law and diplomacy at Johns Hopkins and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.