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The shadow of another Iraq

The upheaval in Lebanon and the pressure for Syria to withdraw now threaten the survival of the Assad regime

David Hirst in Damascus
Friday March 4, 2005
The Guardian

A velvet revolution, Ukrainian style, that will set an example for the whole Middle East? That is how Lebanon's so far peaceful "democratic uprising" likes to see itself. Certainly, something new and profound is under way.
Lebanon's strength - and weakness - was always the multiplicity of religious sects on which its whole political system is based. When the system worked, it did so far better than any of its neighbours'; when it broke down, it did so disastrously. During its 16-year civil war Walid Jumblatt, the same Druze chieftain who now leads the opposition, warned the interfering Arabs: "One day the fire will spread to you." It didn't. What he leads today has a better chance of doing so.


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It is, if anything, a triumph over confessionalism. Not complete, not invulnerable. Thanks in part to Hizbullah, Syrian-backed but domestically popular, it is the country's Shias who are chiefly reticent. Yet, in impressive measure, the people now stand in one trench, the regime in another. And that, not sectarian antagonism, is the faultline that will principally define the course of events.
If assassinations sometimes accelerate history, Rafiq Hariri's brutal, spectacular but popularly unifying demise is surely one of those. Many Syrians just don't believe their government was behind it: it couldn't be so stupid. But diabolical plot, or massive self-inflicted injury, the outcome is the same. For the Lebanese, their Syrian overlord was instantly guilty until it proved itself innocent.

At a stroke the assassination unleashed, in a great and public torrent, all the anti-Syrian sentiment that had been surreptitiously building down the years. "Our Lebanese brothers have come to hate us," lamented a dissident intellectual. "Our government never consulted us when, 29 years ago, it took the fateful step of going in. It won't consult us when it leaves. And leave it must."

But leaving is precisely what the Ba'athist regime is likely to resist to the very end. Quite simply, because it fears that to do so would be its own end, too. "Total defeat in Lebanon," said another dissident, "is total defeat at home." First, that is because of Lebanon the strategic asset. For historical, geographical and political reasons Syria instinctively strives to be a regional power greater than its own resources alone can make it.

And today it is in a Syrian-controlled Lebanon that the last major cards lie - such as Hizbullah - in an eroding regional hand, cards by which its current rulers seek to secure their very survival in any new, American-dominated Middle Eastern order. Their ultimate trump is, perhaps, to withdraw. For if they did that, an intelligence chief once explained, Lebanon would become a hotbed of assorted militants, Islamic and Palestinian, in effect a kind of Iraq. And the Americans and Israelis would soon come begging them to return.

Second, there is the potential domino effect inside Syria itself, of Lebanese "people power". After the example of elections, however flawed, in occupied Iraq and Palestine, has come this new, unscheduled outbreak of popular self-assertion in a country where a sister Arab state, not an alien occupier, is in charge. It is a manifestly authentic movement, greatly encouraged, no doubt, by America and the west, but far from being inspired or engineered by it.

It is a fundamental blow to all that historic Syria, as the "beating heart" of Arabism, and all that Ba'athism and its pan-Arab nationalist credo have ever stood for. For the leading Lebanese columnist Samir Qassir, it means that "the Arab nationalist cause has shrunk into the single aim of getting rid of the regimes of terrorism and coups, and regaining the people's freedom as a prelude to the new Arab renaissance. It buries the lie that despotic systems can be the shield of nationalism. Beirut has become the beating heart of a new Arab nationalism".

The Syrians aren't going to rise up like the Lebanese - not yet anyway. Long repressed, they don't have the organised opposition, the strong residue of democratic traditions that the "Syrianisation" of Lebanon was gradually stifling.

What Lebanon has done is to add a whole new dimension to popular discontent with all those long accumulating domestic woes - the fruits of a decadent, outmoded, sclerotic ruling order - which they have endured for the past 40 years. It has added to the pressure for reform and democratisation, reform that is surely the only way the regime can hope to survive. For Syria, indeed, Lebanon is so intimate a neighbour that what happens there is hardly a "foreign" issue at all. And everyone knows that those who block reform in Syria - the so-called "old guard", shadowy centres of power in the army and intelligence services - are the same people who brought the Syrian presence in Lebanon to its current pass.

It is a pass now suddenly made all the more threatening in that the Lebanese "uprising" dovetails so nicely with President Bush's crusade to bring "freedom and democracy" to the Middle East. This is not to mention the fact that Syria has always loomed large in the long-standing designs of the administration's pro-Israeli, neoconservative hawks for "regime change" in the Middle East. Hariri's murder could hardly have rendered them a greater service.

What now for a badly shaken regime? As graceful a retreat from Lebanon as possible? Or more defiance, of both the Lebanese opposition and its international friends? To President Assad it must look like a choice between Scylla and Charybdis. He has hinted at withdrawal in a few months. This is a far cry from the immediate one the opposition demands, and even that would depend, he said, on what happens in Lebanon. But what happens in Lebanon still very much depends on what Syria - or those power centres possibly beyond presidential control - make happen. Their last trump: another Iraq?

· David Hirst reported from the Middle East for the Guardian from 1963 to 2001


http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,...1430242,00.html

Why Blair's trip will not succeed

The US is too partisan to see that the Palestinians cannot give more

David Hirst in Damascus
Tuesday December 21, 2004
The Guardian

Since Yasser Arafat's death, international attention has turned away from Iraq to the other, older, most imperishable of Middle East crises. Tony Blair, who arrives in Ramallah tomorrow to talk to Arafat's successors, has urged President Bush to revitalise the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, "the single most pressing political challenge in our world today". Then, in a report contradicting administration orthodoxy, the Pentagon's defence science board said the two were malignantly linked; America's problems in Iraq and elsewhere arose not from Muslims' hatred of its freedoms, but of its policies and "what they see as one-sided support in favour of Israel and against Palestinian rights".
To Arabs and Muslims, the Palestine problem, still a virulent legacy of western colonialism, was always the greatest single source of anti-western sentiment in the region. So if Islamist terror is now the greatest threat to global order and Iraq its most profitable arena, Palestine has a lot to do with the political climate in which it took root.

For Arabs and Muslims, the remarkable thing is the way the west has repeatedly ignored or overridden the centrality of Palestine in their psyche, with Iraq the latest, most blatant example. True, most Iraqis wanted to be rid of Saddam. But the more strategically or economically self-serving, badly managed, arrogant and bloody this US-led "liberation" has turned out to be, the more it is seen as another quasi-colonial western aggression in the region: another Palestine, in fact.

There were plenty of warnings, pre-invasion, that something like this would happen. Blair saw it would have been a very good idea to pave the way with a serious attempt to persuade the Palestinians that redress was at hand. But the US administration's pro-Israel neo-conservative hawks insisted that the road to peace in the Holy Land lay through Baghdad. So what, for Blair, would have been prudent risk-avoidance before the war now, in his post-war revival of it, looks more like a desperate bid to salvage what he can from a grim predicament.

Bush did promise to invest "political capital" in the other Middle East crisis. But the history of Israeli-Palestinian peace-seeking suggests that of all US presidents, he is just about the last to listen to what Blair - or even his own Pentagon advisory board - have to say.

It is not that US presidents have ever underestimated the importance of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The trouble is that, thanks to the partisanship noted in the Pentagon, they can never acknowledge the real nature of the problem: essentially one of decolonisation. So, far from opening up new opportunities, Arafat's death will almost certainly reconfirm that congenital inability - though this time because of Iraq and al-Qaida in more critical circumstances than ever. If the Palestinians were to secure the redress that other colonised peoples have, there would either be no Israel - as there is no Algérie Française - or a bi-national state, like South Africa, in which it would lose its exclusively Jewish character.

But the Palestinians are not demanding that. They have committed themselves, via Oslo, to the loss of 78% of their original homeland. If there ever is a settlement, this concession will rank as the greatest single contribution to it. It was under Arafat's auspices that they made it. Yet the US called him an "obstacle" to peace who had to be replaced by a "moderate" leadership that would persuade its people to give yet more.

But a new Palestinian leadership won't do that, least of all if it is clean and democratic, because, reflecting the popular will, it simply couldn't. That Sharon is no less an obstacle to peace than Arafat ever was, and Israeli "moderation" as necessary as Palestinian, is a thought that might occur to Bush, but it isn't one which, as similar thoughts in his first term taught him, he will find politic to act upon. US Middle East policies have always been shaped more by domestic politics than realities on the ground, and never more distortingly than today.

Arabs wonder anxiously whether the re-elected Bush will embark on more of the Iraq-like enterprises envisaged in the neo-cons' grand design for the region. Continued partisanship in Palestine, combined with deterioration in Iraq, will make it more likely. For, to America's growing exasperation, Iran has two "colonial" situations to exploit at its expense: the old one in Palestine, and the new, better one in Iraq; and it makes it clear that, if it is targeted by Bush-era pre-emptive force, it will exploit them to the hilt.

Any showdown will almost certainly come over the belief that Iran is about to get nuclear weapons. That would be very dangerous mainly because Israel has them, is determined to preserve its monopoly, and intimates that, if the US doesn't do something about it, it will - an act liable to reduce Iraq to a case of merely moderate turbulence compared with the regional tempest that would ensue.

· David Hirst reported from the Middle East for the Guardian from 1963 to 2001

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Battlefield in a larger conflict

Lebanon is used by and against Syria in this struggle for power

David Hirst in Beirut
Tuesday February 15, 2005
The Guardian

There is one broad certainty about the highly professional assassination of Rafik Hariri, the billionaire former prime minister who has dominated Lebanese politics since the end of the civil war in 1991. He fell victim to the hapless role this small, politically fragile and religiously divided country is once again playing: the battleground of international conflicts larger than itself. It played that role in the 16-year war; and while few really expect it to be plunged once more into such fratricidal strife, conflict has, with this murderous deed, reached a dangerous new level of intensity. And everyone fears there will be worse to come.
Some key actors in the civil war, such as the Palestinian guerrilla movement for which Lebanon had become the main base, are barely present today. But one of them, Syria, is, as before, at the very heart of Lebanon's quickly deepening crisis. Syria, the main external "victor" of the war and virtual overlord of Lebanon ever since, is pitted against a disparate array of forces, ranging from the US, France and Israel to all those within Lebanon who line up more or less openly in the anti-Syrian camp. As ever these are mainly, but far from exclusively, Christian. The pro-Syrians are mainly Muslim.

It is Syria, with only one real ally left in the world, Iran, that is on the defensive. So are its Lebanese allies, inside and outside the regime. The conflict is an outgrowth of American strategies in the Middle East, from the war on terror to regime change, democratisation and the invasion of Iraq. Syria is not a member of President Bush's "axis of evil", but, with Iran, it is increasingly targeted as a villain. It is regularly charged, for example, with aiding and abetting the insurgency in Iraq, interfering with the Arab-Israel peace process and sponsoring the Hizbullah militia in Lebanon. The Hizbullah are in turn accused by Israel of aiding and abetting Hamas.

For decades now Syria has been losing card after card in a steadily weakening strategic hand. Its domination over Lebanon is one of the last and most vital of them. Ultimately it will perhaps be a bargaining counter in some grand deal to be struck with America that secures the Ba'athist regime's future in the evolving new Middle East order.

Conversely, however, Lebanon, as a platform that Syria's adversaries exploit against it, is liable to turn into a source of great weakness, if not an existential threat. The Ba'athists, now under siege in so many ways, feel that they are struggling desperately to keep their grip on Lebanon.

But the methods Syria uses, such as political intimidation and backstage manipulation by its intelligence services, seem, if anything, only to be backfiring against it. The recent arbitrary extension to a Lebanese president's constitutionally permitted six-year term enabled General Emile Lahoud, seen as an out-and-out Syrian loyalist, to stay in office for another three years.

That was seen as a Syrian diktat, and triggered a rising tide of opposition, domestic and international, to Syria and its Lebanese proteges. Not just the US, but also France, a traditional "friend of the Arabs", were moving spirits behind UN resolution 1559, which calls on Syria to do a whole array of very unwelcome things in Lebanon, such as withdraw its troops in accordance with the 1991 Tayif accord that ended the civil war, stop meddling in domestic politics and dismantle Hizbullah and some Palestinian militias.

On the domestic front, the unkindest, and most damaging, cut has been the desertion of its former ally, the Druze chieftain Walid Jumblatt. He is also a stout Lebanese nationalist and pillar of its multi-confessional "democracy", rebelling not against Syria as such, but against what he sees as the rule of the Syrian security services. He has joined, and effectively now leads, the mainly Christian opposition: a trans-confessional desertion that carries great weight.

With the tide moving strongly, internationally and domestically, Rafik Hariri, too, had been showing strong signs recently of moving with it. He it was who, as prime minister, got his parliamentary bloc vote to extend the term of his bitter enemy, President Lahoud. But he did so under immense Syrian pressure and with a manifestly heavy heart. He had been losing Syrian favour ever since and last week, in an ominous escalation, the Syrian newspaper al-Ba'ath made a scathing attack on him.

Down the years the Lebanese have attributed many political assassinations to Syria, but never dared say so publicly. This time, they have. The opposition - and, what makes it so serious, the full-spectrum multi-confessional opposition including Christians, Druze, and Muslims - have come together and solemnly blamed it on President Lahoud's regime

الولايات المتحدة والعرب والديمقراطية







ديفيد هيرست

خلال المؤتمر المناوئ للحرب الذي عقد في القاهرة الشهر الماضي شجب المندوب المصري كمال خليل بشدة “التعذيب والفقر والبطالة والفساد والطغيان” في مصر. وأضاف “ان تحرير القدس يبدأ من هنا، مع تحرير الشعب في القاهرة”. وقد عبّر ربط الاصلاح الداخلي بالعدو الخارجي عن المأزق الذي ينتظر حملة الرئيس الأمريكي جورج دبليو بوش الرامية لتحقيق “الحرية والديمقراطية”. فالحقوق التي منحها الله تعالى للشعوب كافة، والتي يرى أنها شديدة الأهمية في الشرق الأوسط ايضاً وانها الدواء العام الذي سيؤدي من بين أشياء أخرى الى انهاء الارهاب الدولي وتحفيز العرب لإبرام سلامهم مع “اسرائيل”. إذاً، وفي عهد الدبلوماسية والمصالحة هذا الذي ترعاه أمريكا، ما الذي يمكن أن يكون قصده هذا الديمقراطي بعودته الى هذا الخطاب ذي النبرة القتالية التي تعود الى العام الماضي؟

يناقش العرب بحماس مدى مساهمة بوش في رياح التغيير التي تهب الآن عبر آخر منطقة في العالم توجد بها أنظمة طغيان، ويشعرون على نحو محير انهم يواجهون امريكتين احداهما جديدة مبشرة وهي أمريكا فترة رئاسة بوش الثانية، والأخرى قديمة وهي القوة العظمى غير النادمة على ما فعلت. وان فكرة أمريكا كداعية للديمقراطية ليست جديدة، ولكن الجديد هو النطاق والتوهج والتوقعات الكبيرة التي استثمرها بوش في الفكرة. ولكن، وفي الوقت ذاته، لم يسبق لأمريكا “الامبريالية” التي ترتبط بها أمريكا المبشرة على نحو لا فكاك منه، ان كانت هائجة ومكروهة الحد الذي نشهده اليوم. فالرئيس بوش لم يشرع في تنفيذ هذه المرحلة التي تنطوي على تدخل سافر وتتبع اساليب شبه استعمارية في علاقات أمريكا مع الشرق الأوسط، من أجل تطبيق الديمقراطية فيه فقط. لقد فعل ذلك لأسباب اخرى لها صلة اكبر بالتوجه التقليدي نحو الهيمنة الاستراتيجية والاقتصادية وب “اسرائيل” التي وصل نفوذها وتأثيرها في السياسة الامريكية، عبر مساعدي بوش من المحافظين الجدد، الى مستويات غير مسبوقة. وفي الواقع، ان الأساس المنطقي للديمقراطية العربية يأتي من “اسرائيل” ذاتها ممثلة في شخص اليهودي المتعصب ناتان شارانسكي الذي يقول بوش عن تفكيره انه “جزء من جيناتي الرئاسية”، وهو التفكير الذي يقول انه ما دامت الديمقراطيات سلمية بطبيعتها فإن دولا عربية ديمقراطية فقط هي التي ستقبل ب “اسرائيل” بين ظهرانيها.

وتغذي هذه الأمريكا المتناقضة التناقض بين معسكرين عريضين في العالم العربي هما المعسكر القديم الذي يضم الوطنيين والإسلاميين الذين حلوا محلهم في الفترات الاخيرة في التمتع بالقبول لدى الجماهير من ناحية، والمعسكر الجديد الذي يضم القوى الديمقراطية الناشئة التي تلوم الأنظمة الوطنية التي تولت الحكم في فترة ما بعد الاستقلال، ويرى انها تسببت بما مارسته من استبداد في جميع المشكلات التي تعاني منها المنطقة. وكما جرت العادة، يعطي الوطنيون والاسلاميون الأولوية للمشكلة الخارجية أي أمريكا الامبريالية و”اسرائيل” في حين يعطي الديمقراطيون الأولوية للمشكلة الداخلية والى الطرق التي يمكن من خلالها استغلال امريكا “المبشرة” لأغراضهم الاصلاحية.

كلما ألهبت أمريكا الأكثر امبريالية مشاعر الوطنيين خدم ذلك مصالح الأنظمة التي يبدو عليها أنها تقف في وجه أمريكا، وصعبت مهمة الديمقراطيين في العمل ضد تلك الأنظمة. ويستطيع الجميع ان يروا بعد الذي حدث للعراق ان سوريا أصبحت الآن هدفاً جديداً رئيسياً لأمريكا الامبريالية. وربما تكون سوريا الهدف المغري أكثر من غيره لأنها وكما يقول البعض في واشنطن “الثمرة الجاهزة للقطف” ويمكن، خلافاً للعراق، جنيها بسهولة بوسائل سياسية وليست عسكرية. وأتاحت “انتفاضة لبنان الديمقراطية” فرصة عظيمة جديدة لإضعاف النظام البعثي السوري وإسقاطه.

وكإجراء طبيعي، يرفع البعثيون راية الوطنية دفاعاً عن أنفسهم. ولكن، وكلما أصبح الدافع للتغيير الديمقراطي محلياً وجديراً بالتصديق وليس موحى به من الأمريكيين، تسارع تداعي الوطنية كذريعة للمحافظة على النظام الاستبدادي القائم. ويقول الديمقراطيون ان الوطنية مقابل الديمقراطية تضاد زائف اذا كان المعنى هو ان تطلع المرء الى ان يكون ديمقراطياً، وسعيه للاستفادة من شيء تريده الولايات المتحدة ظاهرياً على الاقل، لا يعني ان يكون غير وطني. وعلى العكس، كما يقول شبلي ملاط، وهو مستشار قانوني للمعارضة اللبنانية “ان الديمقراطية تخدم المصلحة الوطنية دائماً على نحو أكثر كفاءة وفعالية من الاستبداد في اي وقت من الأوقات. ويمكن للمرء ان يتخيل فقط السلطة السياسية التي ستتمكن مصر ولبنان وسوريا من خلالها من معارضة سياسات الاحتلال “الاسرائيلية” متى وجدت فيها حكومات ديمقراطية”.

وبالتالي، وحتى في حال كانت أول انتخابات عامة عراقية خلال خمسين عاماً من صنع أمريكا المبشرة، إلا أن النقطة الأساسية هي ان هذه الانتخابات، ومهما كانت معيبة، إلا أن أغلبية العراقيين أقبلوا عليها بحماس في تأكيد جماعي للكبرياء والهدف الوطنيين. وصحيح ان الولايات المتحدة ما بادرت بدعم لبنان إلا لأسباب استراتيجية خاصة بها. ولكن ذلك لا يقلل من صدقية الحركة التي تمكنت ان تحشد في تظاهرة واحدة ربع سكان البلاد في ميدان الشهداء ببيروت، ولا يخفى السبب الأساسي لتهديد لبنان للنظام البعثي ونقصد به تأثير الدومينو لقوة الشعب داخل سوريا. وهل يعجز أي سوري عن إدراك ان ما هب اللبنانيون ضده هو امتداد ما يتحملونه داخل سوريا الى لبنان؟ وتحديداً، هو قمع نظام كان يوماً ما ثورياً وفقد شرعيته كما حدث “لجمهوريات الشعب” على الطريقة السوفييتية الذي أقيم النظام على غرارها، وأصبحت وطنيته لا تعدو كونها اداة خطابية لقمع الديمقراطية.

وبالنسبة لدعاة التجديد العلمانيين والمثقفين الرافضين والناشطين في مجال حقوق الإنسان فهم يقفون في المقدمة في المطالبة بإنهاء “دولة الاستخبارات” المدعومة من سوريا في لبنان، ويرفضون احتكار البعثيين للسلطة في سوريا. ولكن الاسلاميين في كل مكان سيكونون أول من يستفيد من نجاحهم. وسيحتفظ حزب الله دون شك بمكانة ما في النظام الطائفي اللبناني. وقد انضم الاخوان المسلمون في مصر الآن الى التظاهرات المؤيدة للديمقراطية باعتبارهم القوة المعارضة الأكثر شعبية والافضل تنظيماً في البلاد. واما نظراؤهم في سوريا الذين يعانون من قمع شديد، فقد أحسوا بدنو الفرصة وأبلغوا البعثيين في الاسبوع الماضي رسالة مفادها: بوجود أمريكا على الباب عليكم إما أن تدعو الى مؤتمر وطني تشترك فيه جميع الأحزاب السياسية يقيم جمهورية ديمقراطية وإما أن تواجهوا دماركم وربما لا سمح الله دمار سوريا ايضاً.

وان جزيرة عربية ديمقراطية من هذا القبيل ستشكل سريعاً تحدياً للجزيرة العربية الحالية، التي ساندتها امريكا في وقت من الأوقات، بشعارات مثل “تحرير القدس عن طريق تحرير القاهرة”. وسيدرك الأمريكيون و”الإسرائيليون” قريباً ما قاله معلق “إسرائيلي” مخالف لشارانسكي حين اعترف بأن “عداء العرب” ل “إسرائيل” لم تكن له أي علاقة بافتقارهم للديمقراطية بل بحقيقة أن “إسرائيل”، في تعاملها مع الفلسطينيين، أبعد ما تكون عن الديمقراطية.
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