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Syria: North Korea
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Syria's main oil producer is al-Furat Petroleum Co. (AFPC) a joint venture established in 1985 and owned by the Syrian Petroleum Company (SPC), Shell, and PetroCanada. AFPC's fields are located in the northeastern Syria -- particularly the Deir ez-Zour region, where commercial quantities of oil were discovered in the late 1980s -- and are producing about 350,000 bbl/d of high quality light crude.
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Syria has influence with the Sunni Muslim tribes in Iraq - which are merely an extension of Syria's own tribes - as well as the Kurds in the north and the Shiite Muslims in the south. Senior Syrian officials held talks with a delegation of Iraqi tribal leaders over the weekend in an attempt to help bring stability to Iraq, said Syrian Vice President Abdul-Halim Khaddam.
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Syrians are mostly Arab, although about 9 percent are Kurds—living mostly in the northeast corner of Syria. Syria's population is about 90 percent Muslim, mostly Sunni—but the Alawite minority (12 percent of Syrians) is politically dominant. The Alawite-controlled Baath (Renaissance) Party has ruled Syria since 1963.
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Gary Samore, an arms control official in the Clinton National Security Council and CFR’s director of studies, says it remains a mystery whether Syria was working with North Korea to receive nuclear technology. He adds... that it would make sense that Syria would be interested to develop some kind of deterrent, given that its neighbor, Israel, is said to have nuclear weapons.
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On September 6, 2007, Israel bombed a site in northern Syria. News reports have suggested the raid was designed to either interdict a weapons shipment intended for Hezbollah in Lebanon or to destroy a site suspected of containing materials for a nuclear weapons program set up in collaboration with North Korea. The possibility that the site was related to a nuclear program is ... supported by a U.S. intelligence report issued in May 2006 that said Pakistani investigators confirmed reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that the covert Pakistani supplier group headed by A.Q. Khan “offered nuclear technology and hardware to Syria.”Syria was already known to conduct nuclear research at three facilities located at Dayr, Al Hajar and Dubaya. “In 2004, Syria continued to develop civilian nuclear capabilities, including uranium extraction technology and hot cell facilities, which may also be potentially applicable to a weapons program,” the report said. As a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Syria is required to submit to IAEA safeguards and inspections.
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Dr. Craig Lambrecht, a North Dakota National Guardsman, has raised nearly $100,000 in cash and $500,000 in supplies for pediatric burn victims in Iraq, Iran and parts of Syria. The pediatric ER surgeon saw the need for help firsthand when he was deployed to Iraq last year. Now back in the U.S., he secured healthcare for four Iraqi children in America.
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