'Black Saturday' in Damascus

Quoting the British actor Claude Rains and his famous line from the eternal Hollywood classic, Casablanca, when a crime is committed, one has to "round up the usual suspects".

In Syria's case, rounding up the usual suspects won't be easy, after a car bomb went off in Damascus on September 27, killed 17 people and injured scores of civilians. Shortly before 8am on a weekend, a car loaded with 200kg of explosives exploded on the road leading to Damascus International Airport, sending shockwaves throughout Syria, which has not witnessed such a blast since the days of confrontation between the Syrian government and the Muslim Brotherhood, in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

On Monday, early investigations proved that the attack was in fact a suicide bombing, carried out by a takfiri (Islamic fundamentalist) in a burgundy-coloured GMC automobile that came into Syria from a neighbouring country (in reference to Iraq).

While world leaders from France's President Nicolas Sarkozy to Russia's President Dimitry Medvedev condemned the blast as an act of terrorism, experts are busy analysing what the 'target' actually was.

No senior Syrian official was killed in the blast, unlike the February 2008 bombing in Damascus, which killed Emad Mughniyeh, a top Hezbollah commander. And the scene of the crime is not one frequented by officials or important people, since it lies off the airport road, in a relatively poor neighbourhood.

One theory says that the real target of the blast is a neighbouring Shiite shrine, the Sayideh Zeinab, which is packed with thousands of Shiite pilgrims who flock there daily from Lebanon, Iraq and Iran. That too is difficult to digest, since all of those killed were ordinary Syrians, and not Shiite pilgrims from the Muslim world.

The perpetrator of such an attack, supporters of this theory claim, is a Sunni from Iraq who is channelling the sectarian strife from Baghdad to Damascus. A proper terrorist attack, however, with 200kg of explosives would have had a driver pull up to Sayideh Zeinab, where security is mediocre, and detonate the dynamite while surrounded by a crowd of pilgrims, killing hundreds.

Another theory says that the target was a nearby security complex. This is more probable and brings back memories of terrorist attacks on government buildings in the early 1980s, like a military conscription office or Army Headquarters. That resulted in huge cement walls surrounding all important government agencies, which made streets seem tight and look ugly and were only lifted after President Bashar Al Assad came to power in 2000.

A third theory says that there was no single target in the blast and that it was aimed at just spreading sheer terror throughout Syria and sending a message to the Syrian government.

If one were to cross out the Muslim Brotherhood - for now - another "usual takfiri suspect" would certainly be Al Qaida, or Islamist organisations such as Ghuraba Al Sham or Jund Al Sham, that have been trying to strike at Syria since 2003, with little luck at major success.

Important role

The US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 played an important role in reviving Syrian militant Islam. It comes now as a surprise that the attack on September 27 was carried out by an Islamist. In 2004, terrorists struck at a UN building in the Mezzeh neighbourhood, killing a policeman and a schoolteacher. Shortly after, a group of terrorists was apprehended - after a shooting that caused panic among picnickers, in July 2005 on Mount Qassiun.

Earlier in the summer of 2005, Syria announced that it had arrested one man and killed another who had been planning an attack in Damascus on behalf of Jund Al Sham, believed to be directly linked to Syrian Al Qaida member Abu Musaab Al Souri, who is a former member of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

Al Assad acknowledged in an interview with The New York Times in 2005 that authorities had apprehended a terrorist wanting to carry out an attack at the Palace of Justice. Emad Yarkas, for example, was sentenced by a Spanish court for providing logistic support to Al Qaida and conspiracy to commit murder on September 11, 2001.

Yarkas was accused by a Spanish court of having organised a meeting in Tarragona, Spain, in July 2001, attended by Mohammad Atta, the man who crashed one of the airplanes into New York's twin towers. It was also believed that Yarkas helped set September 11 as the date for the attack. Prosecutors wanted to jail him for 25 years for each of the 2,973 victims who died, meaning, a symbolic 74,325 years behind bars.

Instead, he received 15 years for conspiracy and 12 years for leading a terrorist organisation, a total of 27 years. Since September 11 the names of several Syrians have appeared in the hunt for Al Qaida in Europe and the Middle East. Among the Syrians accused are Yarkas, the businessman Ma'mun Al Darkazanli and the deadly Abu Musaab Al Souri, believed to be the man behind the March 11, 2004 attacks in Madrid and possibly involved in the brutal July 7 attacks in London. All of these terrorists still have ties and connections in Syria, and might be linked, one-way-or-another, to what happened on September 27.

All this, raises the question: Was Syria bluffing when it loudly repeated after September 11 that it had a common enemy with the US in international terror? Did it take 17 dead and over 14 injured to prove to the world that Syria was not bluffing and that literally, the wolf was at the doors of Damascus?

The Algerian model should be a good reminder to the Syrians of how chaotic the street can become if angry Islamists are on the loose. In the 1990s, Algeria was plunged into civil war after the the Islamic Salvation Front, was prevented from taking power following the country's first multiparty elections. More than 100,000 people were killed, many civilians in grotesque massacres.

Not in our wildest dreams would we want that to happen in Syria. September 27, or what some Syrians have already described as "Black Saturday" should be a wake-up call for everybody: Terror has put Syria on the map and what used to happen in Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan, is now happening in Syria.

Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.