Illegal Occupations in the Middle East

[Moses]

Lebanon Realignment and Syria

[For history & CIA involvement in rigged elections see link]

....The Christian-dominated system of Lebanon fell apart for a number of reasons. The Israelis expelled 100,000 or so Palestinians north to Lebanon in 1948. The Christians of Lebanon refused to give the Palestinians Lebanese citizenship, since the Palestinians were 80 to 85 percent Muslim and their becoming Lebanese would have endangered Christian dominance. Over time the stateless Palestinians living in wretched camps grew to 300,000. (In contrast, the Maronite elite gave the Armenians who immigrated citizenship so fast it would make your head spin.)

In the second half of the 20th century, the Lebanese Shiites grew much faster, being poor tobacco farmers with large families, than did the increasingly urban and middle class Maronites. Maronites emigrated on a large scale (it is said that there are 6 million Lebanese outside Lebanon and only 3 million inside), to North America (think Danny Thomas and Salma Hayek) and to South America (think Carlos Saul Menem of Argentina and Shakira of Colombia).

By 1975 the Maronites were no longer the dominant force in Lebanon. Of a 3 million population, the Shiites had grown to be 35 percent (and may now be 40 percent), and the Maronites had shrunk to a quarter, and are probably now 20 percent. The Shiites were mobilizing both politically and militarily. So, too, were the Palestinians.

The Maronite elite found the newly assertive Muslims of the south intolerable, and a war broke out between the Maronite party-militia, the Phalange (modeled on Franco's and Mussolini's Brown Shirts) and the PLO. The war raged through 1975 and into 1976 (I saw some of it with my own eyes). The PLO was supported by the Druze and the Sunnis. They began winning against the Maronites.
The prospect of a PLO-dominated Lebanon scared the Syrians. Yasser Arafat would have been able to provoke battles with Israel at will, into which Syria might be drawn. Hafez al-Asad determined to intervene to stop it. First he sought a green light from the Israelis through Kissinger. He got it.
In spring of 1976 the Syrians sent 40,000 troops into Lebanon and massacred the Palestinian fighters, saving the Maronites, with Israeli and US approval. Since the Baathists in Syria should theoretically have been allies of the Palestinians, it was the d**nedest thing. But it was just Realpolitik on al-Asad's part. Syria felt that its national interests were threatened by developments in Lebanon and that it was in mortal danger if it did not occupy its neighbor.

The Druze never forgave the Syrians for the intervention, or for killing their leader, Kamal Jumblatt. Although the Palestinians were sullen and crushed, they declined as a factor in Lebanese politics once they were largely disarmed, since they still lack citizenship and face employment and other restrictions. The UN statistics show almost 400,000 Palestinians in Lebanon, half of them in squalid camps. But some social scientists believe that because of massive out-migration to Europe, there are actually less than 200,000 in the country now.

In 1982 the Israelis mounted an unprovoked invasion of Lebanon as Ariel Sharon sought to destroy the remnants of the weakened PLO in Beirut. He failed, but the war killed nearly 20,000 persons, about half of them innocent civilians. Ziad Jarrah had a long-term grudge about that. The Israelis militarily occupied southern Lebanon, refusing to relinquish sovereign Lebanese territory.
The Shiites of the south were radicalized by the Israeli occupation and threw up the Hizbullah party-militia, which pioneered suicide bombs and roadside bombs, and forced the Israeli occupiers out in 2000.

One foreign occupation had been ended, but the Syrians retained about 14,000 troops in the Biqa Valley. The Israeli withdrawal weakened the Syrians in Lebanon, since many Lebanese had seen the Syrians as a bulwark against Israeli expansionism, but now Damascus appeared less needed.
Over time the Maronites came to feel that the Syrians had outstayed their welcome. So both they and the Druze wanted a complete Syrian withdrawal by the early zeroes.
In the meantime, Syria gradually had gained a new client in Lebanon, the Shiites, and especially Hizbullah. Likewise many Sunnis supported the Syrians.

The Syrians made a big mistake in growing attached to Gen. Emile Lahoud, their favorite Lebanese president. When his 6-year term was about to expire last fall, the Syrians intervened to have the Lebanese constitution amended to allow him to remain for another 3 years. Across the board, the Lebanese public was angered and appalled at this foreign tinkering with their constitution.
Rafiq al-Hariri resigned over the constitutional change. He was replaced as prime minister by another Sunni, Omar Karami of Tripoli in northern Lebanon.

The assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri, the popular multi-billionnaire Sunni prime minister (1992-1998 and 2000-2004), angered a broad swathe of the Sunni community, convincing them it was time for the Syrians to go. Despite the lack of any real evidence for the identity of the assassin, the Lebanese public fixed on the Syrians as the most likely culprit. The Sunnis, the Druze and the Maronites have seldom agreed in history. The last time they all did, it was about the need to end the French Mandate, which they made happen in 1943. This cross-confessional unity helps explain how the crowds managed to precipitate the downfall of the government of PM Omar Karami.

If Lebanese people power can force a Syrian withdrawal, the public relations implications may be ambiguous for Tel Aviv. After the US withdrawal from Iraq, Israeli dominance of the West Bank and Gaza will be the last military occupation of major territory in the Middle East. People in the region, in Europe, and in the US itself may begin asking why, if Syria had to leave Lebanon, Israel should not have to leave the West Bank and Gaza.

I don't think Bush had anything much to do with the current Lebanese national movement except at the margins. Walid Jumblatt, the embittered son of Kamal whom the Syrians defeated in 1976 at the American behest, said he was inspired by the fall of Saddam. But this sort of statement from a Druze warlord strikes me as just as manipulative as the news conferences of Ahmad Chalabi, who is also inspired by Saddam's fall. Jumblatt has a long history of anti-Israeli and anti-American sentiment that makes his sudden conversion to neoconism likely a mirage. He has wanted the Syrians back out since 1976, so it is not plausible that anything changed for him in 2003.

The Lebanese are still not entirely united on a Syrian military withdrawal. Supporters of outgoing PM Omar Karami rioted in Tripoli on Monday. Hizbullah leader Hasan Nasrallah still supports the Syrians and has expressed anxieties about the Hariri assassination and its aftermath leading to renewed civil war (an argument for continued Syrian military presence).

Much of the authoritarianism in the Middle East since 1945 had actually been supported (sometimes imposed) by Washington for Cold War purposes. The good thing about the democratization rhetoric coming out of Washington (which apparently does not apply to Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen, Uzbekistan, and other allies against al-Qaeda) is that it encourages the people to believe they have an ally if they take to the streets to end the legacy of authoritarianism.

But Washington will be sorely tested if Islamist crowds gather in Tunis to demand the ouster of Bin Ali. We'll see then how serious the rhetoric about people power really is.

[Moses]

March 2, 2005
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Don't Rush on the Road to Damascus
By FLYNT LEVERETT

Washington

THE assassination last month of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, has given new life to an old idea: using the issue of Lebanese independence to undermine Syria's strategic position. Drawing on the language of a United Nations Security Council resolution passed last summer, President Bush and senior officials are now calling on "the Syrian regime" to remove its military and intelligence personnel from Lebanon and cede any political role there.

Administration hawks like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (who, as President Reagan's Middle East envoy, oversaw the collapse of America's foray into Lebanon's civil war) and the National Security Council's Elliott Abrams (whose previous involvement in Lebanon policy helped generate the Iran-contra scandal) believe that such a course would allow the establishment of a pro-Western government in Beirut that would accommodate Israel and help to project American influence. They also believe that it would set the stage for the Syrian regime's collapse, removing another Baathist "rogue state."

The turmoil unleashed in Lebanon by the Hariri assassination - which reached a high point this week with the resignation of the Syrian-backedprime minister, Omar Karami - may indeed represent a strategic opening, but not for the risky maximalist course that some in the administration seem intent on pursuing.

For starters, any effort to engineer a pro-Western Lebanese government would be resisted by Hezbollah, the largest party in Lebanon's Parliament, which because of its record of fighting Israel is at least as legitimate in Lebanese eyes as the anti-Syrian opposition. In the face of such resistance, efforts to establish a pro-Western government would fail, creating more instability in the region when the United States can ill afford it.

Does the Bush administration understand that for the foreseeable future, any political order in Lebanon that reflects, as the White House put it, the "country's diversity," will include an important role for Hezbollah? Does the administration feel confident about containing Hezbollah without on-the-ground Syrian management and with the group's sole external guide an increasingly hard-line Iran? Even Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's national security adviser recently said that an overly precipitous Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon could pose a threat to Israel.

Moreover, the sudden end of the regime headed by Bashar al-Assad would not necessarily advance American interests. Syrian society is at least as fractious as Iraq's or Lebanon's. The most likely near-term consequence of Mr. Assad's departure would be chaos; the most likely political order to emerge from that chaos would be heavily Islamist. In the end, the most promising (if gradual) course for promoting reform in Syria is to engage and empower Mr. Assad, not to isolate and overthrow him.

To exploit the current moment wisely, the Bush administration must abandon ideological attachments to a bygone era when Maronite Christian leaders dominated Lebanon or fantasies of a strategically neutered democratic state emerging in Syria over the next few months. We have been down this road before, during Lebanon's civil war; it ends with Americans killed or taken hostage in terrorist attacks, and our credibility damaged by our inability to undergird rhetoric with sustainable policy.

It's smart to take advantage of the current focus on Syria's position in Lebanon to obtain concrete improvements in Lebanon's political environment. With help from international partners and key Arab states, it should be possible to win the redeployment of the last Syrian troops in Lebanese cities either to Syria or to Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, in accordance with the 1989 Taif accord that ended Lebanon's civil war. Mr. Assad's recent statements make clear that it should also be possible to induce the Lebanese and Syrian governments to negotiate a timetable for withdrawing all Syrian forces. During his four and a half years as president, Mr. Assad has already cut the number of Syrian troops in half, setting precedents for further reductions.

By taking up Mr. Assad's call for bilateral dialogue, the administration could also negotiate a freer Lebanese electoral process, monitored by international observers. The United States, however, should recognize that an expansion of political openness will unfold over years, rather than weeks or months; it will need to proceed cautiously to avoid a re-emergence of sectarian violence.

As Syria retrenches in Lebanon, the United States should use the issue to leverage improved Syrian behavior on issues that arguably matter more to American interests in the region, like Syrian support for insurgents in Iraq and for terrorist activity against Israel. Syria's decision to effect the turnover of Saddam Hussein's half brother and other Iraqi Baathists did not come primarily in response to American jawboning over Iraq. Rather, it was prompted by Syria's interest in deflecting the mounting criticism of its role in Lebanon.

The Bush administration can elicit more sustained improvements in Syrian behavior on Iraq and terrorism by using the threat of intensified criticism of Syrian hegemony in Lebanon - including Security Council action - as a badly needed stick in the repertoire of policy options toward Syria. Washington should also not be afraid to spell out for Mr. Assad the carrots it would offer in return for greater cooperation. In so doing, President Bush could more effectively pursue some of his most important objectives for the region while tangibly improving the lives of ordinary Lebanese.

---

Flynt Leverett, former senior director for Middle Eastern affairs at the National Security Council, is senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy and author of the forthcoming "Inheriting Syria: Bashar's Trial by Fire."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[Moses]

    Lebanon, as Complex as Ever
    By Dr. James J. Zogby


    Monday 07 March 2005

    The continuing signs of ferment in evidence in the streets of Beirut are being heralded in the US as signs that "another Middle East domino is falling." The Bush Administration has been quick to latch on to the demonstrations as a validation of the President's democracy campaign.

    But as horrific as the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri was and as inspiring as the mass mobilization of the "cedar revolution" has been, the demonstrations don't tell the whole story of what is happening in Lebanon today. A recent poll of 1,250 Lebanese, representing all religious groupings in the country, establishes that while an emerging consensus exists on some questions, on several key issues a deep sectarian divide still plagues the country. And they must be tended to if Lebanon's unity and internal security are to be insured. The poll was conducted during the last week in February 2005 by a Lebanese polling firm, Information International, in conjunction with Zogby International.

    First, the good news. Hariri, who was large in life, has achieved icon-like status in death. Substantial majorities of Lebanese from every group have been "angered," "sad," or "shocked" by his killing. Large groups from each of Lebanon's communities also now say that even though they previously did not support Hariri's "vision for Lebanon," they now do so and will even now vote for candidates who are "close to former Prime Minister Hariri" in the upcoming parliamentary elections. Speaking of the upcoming elections, three-quarters of all Lebanese want them to proceed as scheduled.

    Most Lebanese polled also believe that the assassination will strengthen the opposition and bring about the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1559. And more than 50% in each group say that the US and international reaction to the killing has had more to do with US enmity toward Syria than with support for Lebanon, per se.

    This appears to be where the consensus ends.
On the critical matter of who they hold responsible for the assassination, there is a deep division. About one-half of Maronites and Druze feel that either Lebanese or Syrian authorities were involved. On the other hand, only 14% of Shi'a Lebanese point their accusing finger in that direction, while more than 70% claim that either Israel or the United States were involved. Hariri's own Sunni community and Orthodox Christians are divided, with equal numbers pointing to Syria/Lebanon and US/Israel as the suspected culprit.

    This may be where the division begins, but it extends into other areas as well. For example, while almost two in five Maronites and Druze believe that the assassination will lead to a Syrian withdrawal, only 7% of Shi'a agree. Almost 60% of Shi'a, on the other hand, now worry that in the wake of this assassination measures will be taken that will result in a deterioration of the Lebanese security situation, an attitude shared by only about 15% of Maronites and Druze.

    How best now to proceed with securing Lebanon? Only Maronites see a Syrian withdrawal as key with one-half agreeing with this as the solution. About one-third of Shia and Sunnis and less than one-fourth of Orthodox agree. Many Lebanese, in particular Orthodox, Sunni, and Shia, see the solution to Lebanon's security in "reinforcement and deployment of the Lebanese army and security forces all over Lebanon." And while 60% of Druze see the disarming of Lebanon's militias as necessary for the country's future, only about one in seven Maronites, Orthodox, and Sunni agree. Not surprisingly, only 5% of Shia agree, since the "disarming" provision of UNSC 1559 specifically has Hizbollah in mind.

    The lesson in all of this is that as important as the demonstrations may be, those not demonstrating and their views must be factored by policy makers into the complex equation of how to move Lebanon forward.

    While it has become clear that the Syrian military presence in Lebanon has run its course, a Syrian withdrawal by itself doesn't solve the Lebanon puzzle. Intense US pressure to implement the other half of 1559 may provoke counter demonstrations that fragile Lebanon may not be able to easily digest.

    A cautionary note: before we being celebrating falling dominos and claiming credit for them, it is important to know where they might fall and what might come after they land.

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