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by M B Naqvi, 

KARACHI (IPS) With the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime under his belt, would U.S. Gen Tommy Franks' juggernaut roll on farther afield? People around the world have been discussing it, in anguish or jubilation, whether the next U.S. target is Baathist Syria.

U.S. President George W Bush has himself confirmed that Syria is what is occupying his attention.

On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told a media briefing that Syria's attention has been called to its ''support for terrorist activities'', allowing Iraqi officials into its territory, and weapons of mass destruction. ''There is no list, no war plans to attacking other countries' leadership or imposing democratic values,'' he said. ''But we hope Syria understands that there is a new environment in the region.''

Still, these confirm the assessment that U.S. campaign for regime change has attained a momentum of its own. Syria and Iran openly fear that America's war on Iraq was an opening battle and sooner or later their turn would come.

High U.S. officials are deliberately vague about how they would put further pressure on Syria: would it be a military campaign for regime change, after accusations of helping the Saddam regime, or would the Bush administration choose sanctions and other non-military means?

It is remarkable that Washington has not mentioned the United Nations or even the so-called 'coalition of the willing' while dealing with Syria's alleged misdeameanours, which the United States says includes hiding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The Syrian regime is as tyrannical as Saddam's was. Like the Saddam regime, Syrian Baathists also stand for a secular Arab nationalism and have been as steadfast in supporting Palestinians as Iraq has been from the days the two constituted the Rejectionist Front in the 1960s with Libya and the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

This was against the U.S.-supported idea of a mini-Palestine, which is still supposedly the aim for the U.S. road map to come.

What the western media is not emphasising is the human and political cost of U.S. success so far. People in Middle East and elsewhere, including Pakistan, are deeply concerned with the many-sided human catastrophe that is taking place in Iraq.

Some say that it is the easy bit of completing the military occupation by re-establishing law and order in the major cities of Iraq that has been achieved. Governing it through a U.S. viceroy, to be later assisted by Iraqi civilian nominees of the United States, will have to face the really difficult job of running a multinational, rather ersatz, state originally created by foreigners for their own purposes.

This raises the question: why did the United States undertake the regime change campaign unilaterally?

The United States began by accusing Iraq of having weapons of mass destruction. None have been found. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair returned to the massive violations of human rights by Saddam Hussein.

The final stated aim of Iraq campaign had thus become the liberation of Iraq from a monstrous dictatorship.

That convinced few even in the United States and Britain. The U.S. history of sponsoring and supporting murderous dictators around the globe is well-known. A near consensus has emerged that the name of the game is oil, though not exclusively.

In addition to controlling the oil resources of the Middle East there are two other major objectives in the United States' gun sights.

The first of these is enhancing Israel's security. Saddam's Iraq was the biggest thorn in Israel's side. It has been removed. There will be so much less support, including cash, for the widows or orphans of those Palestinian suicide bombers or those who get killed by Israeli guns.

Israel's security figures high in the far right caucus around Bush. But that again raises the question: Is Syria, whose support of Hamas and Lebanese Islamic militants is all too known, next?

Insofar as the Bush administration regards Israel's security as a priority for its Middle East policy, after Iraq other regimes must go. Among these are Syria's and Iran's. In this the Syrian regime should be as "easy" to overthrow as Saddam's has been. Logically, a regime change programme would involve - and the U.S. government accepts - redrawing the whole political map of the Middle East.

Whatever benefits may have suggested themselves to the advisers of Bush, one adverse consequence is obvious: the whole region is sure to be destabilised, including staunch supporters like Saudi Arabia and others of the kind.

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