By Lennox Samuels 

About a mile from the western town of Al Qaim, a larger-than-life picture of President Bashar al-Assad marks the line where Iraq ends and Syria begins. Vans and pickup trucks lumber across the border and stop at the customs depot on the Iraqi side, laden with fruit and vegetables to be sold there. It is one of the ironies of both the Iraq war and American foreign policy that Assad’s Syria, a target of sanctions by the Bush administration, is helping Iraq return to normality. The border here has reopened, and people on both sides are ready to do business again, part of a normalization that American and Iraqi leaders are cautiously optimistic will spread across the country.

It is quite a change for Al Qaim. The town, situated in Anbar province near the Euphrates River about 200 miles northwest of Baghdad, was taken over in April 2005 by insurgents who forced the Iraqi army and police to leave. Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi was believed to have taken refuge in the town. (He was eventually killed near Baghdad in June 2006.) The U.S. drove the militants from Al Qaim after Operation Matador, a huge military offensive that May.

Today piles of rubble still dot the desolate landscape, but construction crews are busily working on fallen structures and shepherds tend their flocks openly. On a recent visit to the town by Marine Corps Maj. Gen. John Allen, the number two U.S. commander in western Iraq, and Anbar governor Maamoun Sami Rashid al-Alwani, Mayor Farhan Tekan Farhan eagerly discussed redevelopment plans. He showed off the site of a planned free-trade zone in the desert just outside town. Allen, who says Al Qaeda in Iraq “as an organized tactical entity has largely been defeated,” was impressed and promised American redevelopment help.

The visit to Al Qaim followed a stop in Ramadi, the provincial capital, where Alwani and other leaders announced the formation of the Al-Anbar Higher Committee, “which takes it upon itself to designate the policies of the province in security, administration, economy and political sectors.” “We will unify the rebuilding efforts of Anbaris,” said Col. Amine Sami Rashid, head of security for Anbar. Allen regularly shuttles the governor and tribal and local leaders to meet with each other in an effort to strengthen ties between provincial and local officials, who can then present a united front in dealings with the central Baghdad government. His staff calls the practice “helicopter governance.”