Praise for Iraqi Resistance

The day after Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari visited Damascus, the official newspaper Tishreen praised insurgent groups in Iraq.



The state news agency SANA reported that Zebari and Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Moallem discussed the raid carried out by United States forces last month. Damascus reported that the attack killed eight civilians, while US officials said the raid targeted an al-Qaeda leader accused of smuggling weapons and fighters into Iraq.



In an editorial on November 12, Tishreen’s editor-in-chief Issam Dari described “resistors” against the United States occupying forces in Iraq as a "young generation that believes in its Arab identity and freedom and independence". He added that the resistance was not restricted to suicide attacks.



Dari went on to imply that the Iraqi insurgents had much in common with the ideology of pan-Arabism.



Drawing an analogy with the history of Palestinian militancy, he said the Israelis had hoped that Arabs born after 1948 would forget about the Palestinian cause, yet it was this generation which created the “intifada” uprising in the Palestinian territories and defeated Israeli forces in Lebanon.