Photo Gallery The Secret Helpers
What role did the neighboring states play in the Iraq war? According to classified US military reports, evidence repeatedly indicated that helpers from Syria and Iran were also involved in the fight by insurgents against the American occupier in Iraq. In February 2007, officers with the US Army (shown here) presented grenades, rockets, mortar bombs and materials used in the construction of bombs, which they said had been confiscated during a raid by the US Army and Iraqi police in Baqouba. The Army alleges that the material originated from Iran.
The US also claimed that these materials originating from Iran were smuggled over the border and intended for Shiite militias in Iraq. The materials could be used to build deadly bombs that not even armored cars could protect a person from.
A vehicle goes up in flames in Baghdad during September 2004 clashes: US forces and Iraqi insurgents exchanged fire, and the Americans would later also arrest suspected fighters from Syria, Sudan and Egypt.
US soldiers discovered explosives in this car in October 2003 in Baghdad that they claimed had been rigged by a Syrian man.
According to the Americans, this Syrian prisoner (2003 photo) infiltrated Iraq through the Syrian border and then joined Iraqi insurgents in the region fighting the Americans. The man is said to have been captured with weapons. According to classified US Army war logs, numerous suicide attackers received training and equipment from Syria before entering Iraq.
In October 2008, the Americans staged an air strike -- allegedly their first -- against targets in Syrian territory, according to the documents. Eight people, including four children, were killed in the attack. The American fighters were hunting down a terrorist named Abu Ghadiya, who was believed to be one of the key traffickers of suicide bombers into Iraq. The Syrian government issued a sharp protest, stating that the Americans knew perfectly well that Damascus was trying to secure its border with Iraq.
A US Army soldier monitors the border between Iraq and Syria in this December 2009 archive photo. Here he is taking a retinal scan of a man at a border crossing point at Rabiya.
