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Michel Aoun can cut the Gordian knot
By Michael Young
Daily Star staff
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Lebanon is locked in stalemate as the majority and opposition remain encamped behind their red lines. But there is a way out, and the solution lies in the hands of that volatile man in Rabieh. Michel Aoun can break Lebanon's debilitating impasse, and would gain because of it. Here's how.
For months, Aoun's strategy has been to impose himself as the Maronite no one can circumvent. Until recently, the general sustained himself thanks to Christian frustration with the 2005 election law and the subsequent quadripartite agreement that left Christian politicians and groups either marginalized or playing a secondary role.
That beef was justifiable, but things began to disintegrate when Aoun found himself in the same camp as Syria's allies, even as the bombings and assassinations continued. The events of last January 23, when Aoun's supporters prevented people from getting to work, was a political disaster, only compounded by the ongoing fiasco of the Downtown sit-in, which has proven to be a trap for everyone - opposition and majority alike.
With this in mind, it is plain that Michel Aoun will not be president. He cannot be elected by Hizbullah alone, though the party will use Aoun until the last minute as a bargaining chip to slip in someone else. The majority has no incentive to vote for Aoun because he has spent the past months alienating its leaders. And there is no prospect that the general - who distils polarization like no other - will be a compromise candidate, as even Aoun's own ally Elie Skaff recognized publicly several weeks ago.
However, if Aoun's ambition to be president has been dashed, his ability to play a leading role in selecting someone else for the job remains stronger than ever, thanks to the general's control over a sizable parliamentary bloc. Aoun holds the balance of power allowing him to effectively be the kingmaker of any new president. Moreover, by distancing himself from the predominantly Shiite opposition, he would force Hizbullah's leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri to overhaul their strategy, as neither man wants the current standoff to appear like it is the Shiites against the rest.
This could even force Berri to open the doors of Parliament. More importantly, if Aoun joins with Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea and Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir, the three could together ensure that Christians have a leading say in who will be elected, and what his or her agenda will be.
Aoun and his followers insist that their main objective is to return the Christian community to its rightful place. If so, the general should bite the bullet and fight the lesser battle he can win in helping select a credible successor to President Emile Lahoud, rather than scrape though a nasty presidential try of his own that Aoun is sure to lose.
Why should this matter? Partly because Aoun's failure to reach Baabda will have a negative impact on the Christian community, whose interests the general claims he wants to advance. If Aoun plays all-or-nothing politics, Christians will react in one of two ways, or a combination thereof: they will abandon Aoun and blame him for his recklessness; or they will embrace his loss as their own, and internalize his lament that Christians no longer have a say in Lebanon. In both cases the result will be that the weight of the largest Christian bloc in Parliament is wasted, and Christians will lose any voice they might have on the presidency.
Many Aounists, when you scratch below the surface, are aware that Hizbullah will never agree to disarm and fully integrate into the political system. By the same token, Hizbullah has no deep sympathy for Aoun or his aims, which fundamentally contradict those of the party. Aoun may argue today that Hizbullah's weapons are defensible, at a time when, as he sees it, there is a power vacuum at the level of government; but it is doubtful that a President Aoun could coexist with a party presiding over a state within a state, defended by an Iranian-funded private army.
There are no legs in that alliance, and for the moment Aoun and Hizbullah are merely using each other. The thing is, Nasrallah intends to sell Aoun out at the appropriate moment to get something in exchange on the presidency; but Aoun will get nothing from Hizbullah. If anything, his partnership with the party has doomed his presidential chances.
So here's a plan Aoun might want to consider. He should start by holding a far-reaching dialogue with Geagea under the auspices of the Maronite patriarch. This would aim to reach a common set or principles that any future president would have to adhere to - at least if he wants the approval of his coreligionists. Aoun would have to sacrifice his ambition to be elected to the highest office himself, but he would also be in the driving seat to impose a preferred alternative.
Geagea's advantage would be that he could buy himself a wider margin of maneuver in his alliance with Saad Hariri and the Future movement. This would not imply breaking that relationship, which remains a foundation for any effort to establish an independent post-Syrian Lebanese state; but it would enhance the Lebanese Forces' credibility as a more autonomous organization.
Once that happens, Aoun would formally ditch the Hizbullah alliance, though he needn't break definitively with the party. On the contrary, he could put himself forward as the prime mediator with Nasrallah. Aoun would then ask for an "acceptable" share of portfolios in the government. This could either reflect his parliamentary weight, or there could be a tradeoff between the number of ministers and the nature of the ministries offered the Aounists.
This would be a tricky stage, and would require agreement with Geagea and Sfeir beforehand on Christian representation. In exchange, Aoun would endorse an early timetable for parliamentary approval of the Hariri tribunal. He would then announce his decision to abandon the Downtown protests and fold his tents.
A vital ingredient would be Aoun's formally giving up his demand for early elections. The general still believes that such elections are his ticket to the presidency. Because the opposition might get a greater number of seats in Parliament, he feels, his presidential chances would improve.
But Aoun's calculation is based on the erroneous assumptions that Lebanon is capable of organizing elections at this divisive time, or even of uniting around an election law; that the opposition is sure to gain under any new law; and that the Aounists still retain the popular support they enjoyed in Mount Lebanon in 2005. Aoun would do better to use his bloc more creatively instead of gambling on an election that nobody wants, and that Hizbullah is only setting as a condition for a settlement in order to keep Aoun on board and obstruct agreement on the tribunal.
With his bloc the swinging vote in Parliament, Aoun would be in a very powerful position as gatekeeper to the president. And with Geagea and Sfeir on his side, he could write a good part of the presidential program. More significantly, Christian unanimity would mean that any new head of state could not easily ignore Aoun once in office (the obsession of all Lebanese kingmakers), since this would only isolate him in the Maronite community. But first, Aoun must take the toughest decision of all: embrace modesty and accept that Baabda is his paradise lost.
Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Michel Aoun can cut the Gordian knot
Lebanon is locked in stalemate as the majority and opposition remain encamped behind their red lines. But there is a way out, and the solution lies in the hands of that volatile man in Rabieh. Michel Aoun can break Lebanon's debilitating impasse, and would gain because of it. Here's how.
For months, Aoun's strategy has been to impose himself as the Maronite no one can circumvent. Until recently, the general sustained himself thanks to Christian frustration with the 2005 election law and the subsequent quadripartite agreement that left Christian politicians and groups either marginalized or playing a secondary role. That beef was justifiable, but things began to disintegrate when Aoun found himself in the same camp as Syria's allies, even as the bombings and assassinations continued. The events of last January 23, when Aoun's supporters prevented people from getting to work, was a political disaster, only compounded by the ongoing fiasco of the Downtown sit-in, which has proven to be a trap for everyone - opposition and majority alike.
With this in mind, it is plain that Michel Aoun will not be president. He cannot be elected by Hizbullah alone, though the party will use Aoun until the last minute as a bargaining chip to slip in someone else. The majority has no incentive to vote for Aoun because he has spent the past months alienating its leaders. And there is no prospect that the general - who distils polarization like no other - will be a compromise candidate, as even Aoun's own ally Elie Skaff recognized publicly several weeks ago.
However, if Aoun's ambition to be president has been dashed, his ability to play a leading role in selecting someone else for the job remains stronger than ever, thanks to the general's control over a sizable parliamentary bloc. Aoun holds the balance of power allowing him to effectively be the kingmaker of any new president. Moreover, by distancing himself from the predominantly Shiite opposition, he would force Hizbullah's leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri to overhaul their strategy, as neither man wants the current standoff to appear like it is the Shiites against the rest. This could even force Berri to open the doors of Parliament. More importantly, if Aoun joins with Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea and Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir, the three could together ensure that Christians have a leading say in who will be elected, and what his or her agenda will be.
Aoun and his followers insist that their main objective is to return the Christian community to its rightful place. If so, the general should bite the bullet and fight the lesser battle he can win in helping select a credible successor to President Emile Lahoud, rather than scrape though a nasty presidential try of his own that Aoun is sure to lose.
Why should this matter? Partly because Aoun's failure to reach Baabda will have a negative impact on the Christian community, whose interests the general claims he wants to advance. If Aoun plays all-or-nothing politics, Christians will react in one of two ways, or a combination thereof: they will abandon Aoun and blame him for his recklessness; or they will embrace his loss as their own, and internalize his lament that Christians no longer have a say in Lebanon. In both cases the result will be that the weight of the largest Christian bloc in Parliament is wasted, and Christians will lose any voice they might have on the presidency.
Many Aounists, when you scratch below the surface, are aware that Hizbullah will never agree to disarm and fully integrate into the political system. By the same token, Hizbullah has no deep sympathy for Aoun or his aims, which fundamentally contradict those of the party. Aoun may argue today that Hizbullah's weapons are defensible, at a time when, as he sees it, there is a power vacuum at the level of government; but it is doubtful that a President Aoun could coexist with a party presiding over a state within a state, defended by an Iranian-funded private army. There are no legs in that alliance, and for the moment Aoun and Hizbullah are merely using each other. The thing is, Nasrallah intends to sell Aoun out at the appropriate moment to get something in exchange on the presidency; but Aoun will get nothing from Hizbullah. If anything, his partnership with the party has doomed his presidential chances.
So here's a plan Aoun might want to consider. He should start by holding a far-reaching dialogue with Geagea under the auspices of the Maronite patriarch. This would aim to reach a common set or principles that any future president would have to adhere to - at least if he wants the approval of his coreligionists. Aoun would have to sacrifice his ambition to be elected to the highest office himself, but he would also be in the driving seat to impose a preferred alternative. Geagea's advantage would be that he could buy himself a wider margin of maneuver in his alliance with Saad Hariri and the Future movement. This would not imply breaking that relationship, which remains a foundation for any effort to establish an independent post-Syrian Lebanese state; but it would enhance the Lebanese Forces' credibility as a more autonomous organization.
Once that happens, Aoun would formally ditch the Hizbullah alliance, though he needn't break definitively with the party. On the contrary, he could put himself forward as the prime mediator with Nasrallah. Aoun would then ask for an "acceptable" share of portfolios in the government. This could either reflect his parliamentary weight, or there could be a tradeoff between the number of ministers and the nature of the ministries offered the Aounists. This would be a tricky stage, and would require agreement with Geagea and Sfeir beforehand on Christian representation. In exchange, Aoun would endorse an early timetable for parliamentary approval of the Hariri tribunal. He would then announce his decision to abandon the Downtown protests and fold his tents.
A vital ingredient would be Aoun's formally giving up his demand for early elections. The general still believes that such elections are his ticket to the presidency. Because the opposition might get a greater number of seats in Parliament, he feels, his presidential chances would improve. But Aoun's calculation is based on the erroneous assumptions that Lebanon is capable of organizing elections at this divisive time, or even of uniting around an election law; that the opposition is sure to gain under any new law; and that the Aounists still retain the popular support they enjoyed in Mount Lebanon in 2005. Aoun would do better to use his bloc more creatively instead of gambling on an election that nobody wants, and that Hizbullah is only setting as a condition for a settlement in order to keep Aoun on board and obstruct agreement on the tribunal.
With his bloc the swinging vote in Parliament, Aoun would be in a very powerful position as gatekeeper to the president. And with Geagea and Sfeir on his side, he could write a good part of the presidential program. More significantly, Christian unanimity would mean that any new head of state could not easily ignore Aoun once in office (the obsession of all Lebanese kingmakers), since this would only isolate him in the Maronite community. But first, Aoun must take the toughest decision of all: embrace modesty and accept that Baabda is his paradise lost.
For months, Aoun's strategy has been to impose himself as the Maronite no one can circumvent. Until recently, the general sustained himself thanks to Christian frustration with the 2005 election law and the subsequent quadripartite agreement that left Christian politicians and groups either marginalized or playing a secondary role. That beef was justifiable, but things began to disintegrate when Aoun found himself in the same camp as Syria's allies, even as the bombings and assassinations continued. The events of last January 23, when Aoun's supporters prevented people from getting to work, was a political disaster, only compounded by the ongoing fiasco of the Downtown sit-in, which has proven to be a trap for everyone - opposition and majority alike.
With this in mind, it is plain that Michel Aoun will not be president. He cannot be elected by Hizbullah alone, though the party will use Aoun until the last minute as a bargaining chip to slip in someone else. The majority has no incentive to vote for Aoun because he has spent the past months alienating its leaders. And there is no prospect that the general - who distils polarization like no other - will be a compromise candidate, as even Aoun's own ally Elie Skaff recognized publicly several weeks ago.
However, if Aoun's ambition to be president has been dashed, his ability to play a leading role in selecting someone else for the job remains stronger than ever, thanks to the general's control over a sizable parliamentary bloc. Aoun holds the balance of power allowing him to effectively be the kingmaker of any new president. Moreover, by distancing himself from the predominantly Shiite opposition, he would force Hizbullah's leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri to overhaul their strategy, as neither man wants the current standoff to appear like it is the Shiites against the rest. This could even force Berri to open the doors of Parliament. More importantly, if Aoun joins with Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea and Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir, the three could together ensure that Christians have a leading say in who will be elected, and what his or her agenda will be.
Aoun and his followers insist that their main objective is to return the Christian community to its rightful place. If so, the general should bite the bullet and fight the lesser battle he can win in helping select a credible successor to President Emile Lahoud, rather than scrape though a nasty presidential try of his own that Aoun is sure to lose.
Why should this matter? Partly because Aoun's failure to reach Baabda will have a negative impact on the Christian community, whose interests the general claims he wants to advance. If Aoun plays all-or-nothing politics, Christians will react in one of two ways, or a combination thereof: they will abandon Aoun and blame him for his recklessness; or they will embrace his loss as their own, and internalize his lament that Christians no longer have a say in Lebanon. In both cases the result will be that the weight of the largest Christian bloc in Parliament is wasted, and Christians will lose any voice they might have on the presidency.
Many Aounists, when you scratch below the surface, are aware that Hizbullah will never agree to disarm and fully integrate into the political system. By the same token, Hizbullah has no deep sympathy for Aoun or his aims, which fundamentally contradict those of the party. Aoun may argue today that Hizbullah's weapons are defensible, at a time when, as he sees it, there is a power vacuum at the level of government; but it is doubtful that a President Aoun could coexist with a party presiding over a state within a state, defended by an Iranian-funded private army. There are no legs in that alliance, and for the moment Aoun and Hizbullah are merely using each other. The thing is, Nasrallah intends to sell Aoun out at the appropriate moment to get something in exchange on the presidency; but Aoun will get nothing from Hizbullah. If anything, his partnership with the party has doomed his presidential chances.
So here's a plan Aoun might want to consider. He should start by holding a far-reaching dialogue with Geagea under the auspices of the Maronite patriarch. This would aim to reach a common set or principles that any future president would have to adhere to - at least if he wants the approval of his coreligionists. Aoun would have to sacrifice his ambition to be elected to the highest office himself, but he would also be in the driving seat to impose a preferred alternative. Geagea's advantage would be that he could buy himself a wider margin of maneuver in his alliance with Saad Hariri and the Future movement. This would not imply breaking that relationship, which remains a foundation for any effort to establish an independent post-Syrian Lebanese state; but it would enhance the Lebanese Forces' credibility as a more autonomous organization.
Once that happens, Aoun would formally ditch the Hizbullah alliance, though he needn't break definitively with the party. On the contrary, he could put himself forward as the prime mediator with Nasrallah. Aoun would then ask for an "acceptable" share of portfolios in the government. This could either reflect his parliamentary weight, or there could be a tradeoff between the number of ministers and the nature of the ministries offered the Aounists. This would be a tricky stage, and would require agreement with Geagea and Sfeir beforehand on Christian representation. In exchange, Aoun would endorse an early timetable for parliamentary approval of the Hariri tribunal. He would then announce his decision to abandon the Downtown protests and fold his tents.
A vital ingredient would be Aoun's formally giving up his demand for early elections. The general still believes that such elections are his ticket to the presidency. Because the opposition might get a greater number of seats in Parliament, he feels, his presidential chances would improve. But Aoun's calculation is based on the erroneous assumptions that Lebanon is capable of organizing elections at this divisive time, or even of uniting around an election law; that the opposition is sure to gain under any new law; and that the Aounists still retain the popular support they enjoyed in Mount Lebanon in 2005. Aoun would do better to use his bloc more creatively instead of gambling on an election that nobody wants, and that Hizbullah is only setting as a condition for a settlement in order to keep Aoun on board and obstruct agreement on the tribunal.
With his bloc the swinging vote in Parliament, Aoun would be in a very powerful position as gatekeeper to the president. And with Geagea and Sfeir on his side, he could write a good part of the presidential program. More significantly, Christian unanimity would mean that any new head of state could not easily ignore Aoun once in office (the obsession of all Lebanese kingmakers), since this would only isolate him in the Maronite community. But first, Aoun must take the toughest decision of all: embrace modesty and accept that Baabda is his paradise lost.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Deal with Syria, but first impose Lebanese sovereignty
Add Belgian Foreign Minister Karel de Gucht to the list of dignitaries who have left Damascus biting their fists in frustration. After meeting with his Syrian counterpart, Walid al-Moallem, on Tuesday, de Gucht said he was "disappointed" that Syria would not surrender its nationals to a mixed tribunal being set up to try suspects in Rafik Hariri’s assassination. Moallem added: "If the United Nations wants anything of Syria, then it must talk to Syria and base the statutes of the tribunal on Syrian law."
That’s revealing coming from a regime that supposedly had nothing to do with Hariri’s murder, and that often affirms its "non-involvement" in the resultant judicial process. Thanks to Syria’s continued refusal to concede anything on the tribunal, the Lebanese crisis continues. This coming weekend the Syrians will get a chance to practice more of their brand of diplomacy when Iraq’s neighbors meet in Baghdad to discuss the country’s future. The United States should not give Syria an opportunity there to break free from the tribunal, which provides the only real leverage over President Bashar Assad to change his regime’s behavior.
It is perhaps understandable that a number of policymakers and analysts in the US feel the Bush administration’s present policy of isolating Syria is going nowhere. Their framework for saying so is Iraq. My friend David Ignatius expressed this view in the commentary published above, pointing out that the "administration should also start a real dialogue with Syria - and in the process shelve any half-baked ideas about regime change that may be lurking in the Old Executive Office Building. The Syrians pose a deadly threat in Lebanon, which is all the more reason to be talking with them." Isolation, the argument goes, also isolates the US. If Washington negotiates, it can use its weight to bring about desirable outcomes.
There are several problems with this assumption when it comes to Syria. The first is that opening a new page with Syria is premature. If the aim of negotiations is to advance one’s aims, then Syria has shown no willingness to consider those of the US and the UN - who told Syria in late 2004 that it was time to end its interference in Lebanon’s affairs and recognize Lebanese sovereignty. To talk now, while the Syrians threaten Lebanon on a daily basis, would validate their claim that threats work, and that Syria can bring envoys to its door by spawning instability in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories. That’s precisely the wrong message to send. The right message is that Syria can only put an end to its isolation once it accepts international law - which in Lebanon means accepting the tribunal and giving up on the dream of reimposing its hegemony over the country.
That’s why defending the Hariri tribunal is so essential. The body has international backing, which means that the credibility of the five permanent members of the Security Council is tied into its success. By initiating a dialogue with Syria, by therefore implying that the crime the tribunal is seeking to punish shouldn’t reflect badly on relations with Damascus, the US would empty the tribunal of its meaning. Why give up this weapon when it can make future negotiations more successful?
The quid pro quo demanded of Assad would be a simple one, and the Saudis and the Egyptians have already floated it in one way or another: Any effort to narrow the Hariri tribunal’s statutes, or even to improve relations between Saudi Arabia and Syria, requires that Syria first change its conduct in Lebanon. Nor is isolation of Syria necessarily failing. Even Syrian allies like Iran and Russia can see that Assad’s stance on the tribunal is untenable and might cost them politically. Iran is said to have agreed with Saudi Arabia on the principle of establishing the tribunal, even if it won’t take a position that might alienate Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin allegedly told the Saudis that if the tribunal were blocked in Lebanon, Russia might abstain in a Security Council vote to place it under the authority of Chapter VII of the UN Charter.
A second problem with the invitation to dialogue with Assad is that there is no evidence Syria will get the message and alter its behavior. Here is the Catch-22: If you engage Syria, Assad will assume this is due to his intransigence, which will encourage him to remain intransigent in the expectation that this will bring more rewards. The Saudis and Egyptians know the pitfalls of this logic, but also see the Syrians caught in a more sinister vicious circle: Because Assad is weak he must export instability, which is only isolating him further in the region, making him even weaker.
The Europeans, never shy about engaging Syria for the sake of engagement, particularly with so many troops deployed in South Lebanon, are also beginning to see the light. De Gucht’s regrets echoed those of the European Union’s representative in Beirut, Patrick Laurent. He recently admitted that the EU had "tried everything [with Syria], as did many others, employing both gentle means and pressure." To no avail.
A third reason to be wary of engaging Syria is that Assad doesn’t have the confidence to carry through on many of the demands that would be made of him. The Syrian president can intimidate his domestic foes, but his authority rests on a narrower power base than his father’s. He can talk to the Israelis, but it’s doubtful that he can reach a final deal with them, since peace would mean substantially dismantling the security apparatus that keeps him in office. He can pretend to help stabilize Iraq, but knows that actually doing so would mean that Syria becomes less relevant. He can claim to have played a positive role in the Mecca accord between the Palestinian factions, but he knows that this only came after he failed to sponsor such an agreement himself. Today, Assad fears a Hamas exit from the Syrian orbit, which is one reason why he has been trying to place pro-Syrian groups in a Palestinian national unity government.
And, most important, Assad knows that if he were to give up on Lebanon finally and unconditionally, he might face the wrath of those within his own regime who silently blame him for the debacle of 2005. But this all begs the question: Why, therefore, should Syria abandon Lebanon at all, or capitulate in Iraq and in the Palestinian territories, if nothing is to be gained from these concessions?
The reason is that Assad, though weak, would thus be able to win his long-term political survival. Such steps would buy him Arab and international forbearance. A new attitude would mean less resistance to a narrowing of the Hariri tribunal’s statutes, more vital investment in Syria, a beneficial Syrian relationship with the US and the EU; and, once Assad can broaden his power base, peace with Israel. But building up Assad’s confidence and then expecting him to relinquish his cards makes no sense. If a power struggle with Syria is unavoidable, so be it. With major Arab states, the US, the UN and the Europeans on the same wavelength, it will be tough for Assad to impose his will - unless the bell of dialogue saves him first.
That’s why the US should remind Syria at the Baghdad conference that deeper contacts remain undesirable. Dealing with Iran on Iraq may be inevitable; dealing with Syria is not, particularly after Assad burned more bridges to the Sunnis by trying and failing to seize control of the Iraqi Baath Party. The Syrians have to be made to realize that their regime can only last if they make fundamental concessions in the region. Assad is too brittle to demand more than recognition of his survival.
That’s revealing coming from a regime that supposedly had nothing to do with Hariri’s murder, and that often affirms its "non-involvement" in the resultant judicial process. Thanks to Syria’s continued refusal to concede anything on the tribunal, the Lebanese crisis continues. This coming weekend the Syrians will get a chance to practice more of their brand of diplomacy when Iraq’s neighbors meet in Baghdad to discuss the country’s future. The United States should not give Syria an opportunity there to break free from the tribunal, which provides the only real leverage over President Bashar Assad to change his regime’s behavior.
It is perhaps understandable that a number of policymakers and analysts in the US feel the Bush administration’s present policy of isolating Syria is going nowhere. Their framework for saying so is Iraq. My friend David Ignatius expressed this view in the commentary published above, pointing out that the "administration should also start a real dialogue with Syria - and in the process shelve any half-baked ideas about regime change that may be lurking in the Old Executive Office Building. The Syrians pose a deadly threat in Lebanon, which is all the more reason to be talking with them." Isolation, the argument goes, also isolates the US. If Washington negotiates, it can use its weight to bring about desirable outcomes.
There are several problems with this assumption when it comes to Syria. The first is that opening a new page with Syria is premature. If the aim of negotiations is to advance one’s aims, then Syria has shown no willingness to consider those of the US and the UN - who told Syria in late 2004 that it was time to end its interference in Lebanon’s affairs and recognize Lebanese sovereignty. To talk now, while the Syrians threaten Lebanon on a daily basis, would validate their claim that threats work, and that Syria can bring envoys to its door by spawning instability in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories. That’s precisely the wrong message to send. The right message is that Syria can only put an end to its isolation once it accepts international law - which in Lebanon means accepting the tribunal and giving up on the dream of reimposing its hegemony over the country.
That’s why defending the Hariri tribunal is so essential. The body has international backing, which means that the credibility of the five permanent members of the Security Council is tied into its success. By initiating a dialogue with Syria, by therefore implying that the crime the tribunal is seeking to punish shouldn’t reflect badly on relations with Damascus, the US would empty the tribunal of its meaning. Why give up this weapon when it can make future negotiations more successful?
The quid pro quo demanded of Assad would be a simple one, and the Saudis and the Egyptians have already floated it in one way or another: Any effort to narrow the Hariri tribunal’s statutes, or even to improve relations between Saudi Arabia and Syria, requires that Syria first change its conduct in Lebanon. Nor is isolation of Syria necessarily failing. Even Syrian allies like Iran and Russia can see that Assad’s stance on the tribunal is untenable and might cost them politically. Iran is said to have agreed with Saudi Arabia on the principle of establishing the tribunal, even if it won’t take a position that might alienate Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin allegedly told the Saudis that if the tribunal were blocked in Lebanon, Russia might abstain in a Security Council vote to place it under the authority of Chapter VII of the UN Charter.
A second problem with the invitation to dialogue with Assad is that there is no evidence Syria will get the message and alter its behavior. Here is the Catch-22: If you engage Syria, Assad will assume this is due to his intransigence, which will encourage him to remain intransigent in the expectation that this will bring more rewards. The Saudis and Egyptians know the pitfalls of this logic, but also see the Syrians caught in a more sinister vicious circle: Because Assad is weak he must export instability, which is only isolating him further in the region, making him even weaker.
The Europeans, never shy about engaging Syria for the sake of engagement, particularly with so many troops deployed in South Lebanon, are also beginning to see the light. De Gucht’s regrets echoed those of the European Union’s representative in Beirut, Patrick Laurent. He recently admitted that the EU had "tried everything [with Syria], as did many others, employing both gentle means and pressure." To no avail.
A third reason to be wary of engaging Syria is that Assad doesn’t have the confidence to carry through on many of the demands that would be made of him. The Syrian president can intimidate his domestic foes, but his authority rests on a narrower power base than his father’s. He can talk to the Israelis, but it’s doubtful that he can reach a final deal with them, since peace would mean substantially dismantling the security apparatus that keeps him in office. He can pretend to help stabilize Iraq, but knows that actually doing so would mean that Syria becomes less relevant. He can claim to have played a positive role in the Mecca accord between the Palestinian factions, but he knows that this only came after he failed to sponsor such an agreement himself. Today, Assad fears a Hamas exit from the Syrian orbit, which is one reason why he has been trying to place pro-Syrian groups in a Palestinian national unity government.
And, most important, Assad knows that if he were to give up on Lebanon finally and unconditionally, he might face the wrath of those within his own regime who silently blame him for the debacle of 2005. But this all begs the question: Why, therefore, should Syria abandon Lebanon at all, or capitulate in Iraq and in the Palestinian territories, if nothing is to be gained from these concessions?
The reason is that Assad, though weak, would thus be able to win his long-term political survival. Such steps would buy him Arab and international forbearance. A new attitude would mean less resistance to a narrowing of the Hariri tribunal’s statutes, more vital investment in Syria, a beneficial Syrian relationship with the US and the EU; and, once Assad can broaden his power base, peace with Israel. But building up Assad’s confidence and then expecting him to relinquish his cards makes no sense. If a power struggle with Syria is unavoidable, so be it. With major Arab states, the US, the UN and the Europeans on the same wavelength, it will be tough for Assad to impose his will - unless the bell of dialogue saves him first.
That’s why the US should remind Syria at the Baghdad conference that deeper contacts remain undesirable. Dealing with Iran on Iraq may be inevitable; dealing with Syria is not, particularly after Assad burned more bridges to the Sunnis by trying and failing to seize control of the Iraqi Baath Party. The Syrians have to be made to realize that their regime can only last if they make fundamental concessions in the region. Assad is too brittle to demand more than recognition of his survival.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Sy Hersh: the dark side of spun a lot
It’s become a habit to greet whatever journalist Seymour Hersh writes with reverence. However, after his ludicrous claim last summer that Israel’s war in Lebanon was a trial run for an American bombing of Iran - an accusation undermined by postwar narratives showing the confused way Israel and the United States responded to the conflict - my doubts hardened. In his latest New Yorker piece, Hersh maintains that he has unearthed more dirt on the Bush administration: The US is involved in containing Iran by directly or indirectly "bolstering Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda."
The broad tropes of Hersh’s arguments are correct. The US has indeed abandoned the neoconservative approach to the Middle East (which Hersh so loathed), to return to political "realism" based on imposing a balance of power. Much like the US did during the 1980s when it supported Iraq in its war against Iran, the Bush administration is today using Sunnis against Shiites (though in Iraq it is mainly using Shiites against Sunnis). The policy is risky - fiddling with sectarianism may ultimately backfire - but the problem with Hersh is that he offers little hard evidence for many of his controversial assertions. In fact his discussion of Lebanon in particular and his broader charge that the administration is engaging in clandestine activities without proper legislative approval are ill-informed or partial. The New Yorker has signed off on a piece shoddily constructed, often tendentious, and driven almost entirely by Hersh’s sources (most of the more significant ones left unnamed), rather than his own independent confirmation of the details.
Let’s start with Lebanon, where the American and Saudi effort to counter Iran and its allies is in full swing. Today, the US and the kingdom, but also much of the international community and the Muslim world, are shoring up the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, which has for the past three months been facing a serious challenge to its authority from the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hizbullah. We learn from Hersh that, in the context of this struggle against Hizbullah, "representatives of the Lebanese government" have supplied weapons and money to a Palestinian Sunni extremist group called Fatah al-Islam, which allegedly broke off from its pro-Syrian parent group, Fatah al-Intifada, before moving to North Lebanon. Fatah al-Intifada was created by the Syrian regime in the early 1980s to oppose Yasser Arafat. Hersh also points out that "the largest" of the Sunni groups, Esbat al-Ansar, located in the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in Sidon, in South Lebanon, "has received arms and supplies from Lebanese internal-security forces and militias associated with the Siniora government."
What is Hersh’s evidence for these extraordinary statements? Which "militias" is he referring to? In the ongoing Lebanese standoff, Hizbullah has used the term to describe pro-government supporters, without ever substantiating that such militias even exist. The Fatah al-Islam story is based entirely on a quote by one Alistair Crooke, a former MI6 agent, who, we learn, "was told" that weapons were offered to the group, "presumably to take on Hizbullah." The passage on Esbat al-Ansar is not even sourced.
The Fatah al-Islam story is instructive, because it shows a recurring flaw in Hersh’s reporting, namely his investigative paralysis when it comes to Syria. In articles past, Hersh has acted as a conduit for those defending the post-9/11 intelligence collaboration between the US and Syria, and lamenting the Bush administration’s subsequent isolation of Damascus in the run-up to and aftermath of the Iraq invasion. Most Lebanese analysts believe that Fatah al-Islam, far from being aided by the Lebanese government, is in fact a Syrian plant, deployed to Lebanon to be used by the Assad regime to destabilize the country and prevent formal endorsement by the Siniora government of a court to try suspects in the February 2005 assassination of the former prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Syria is the main suspect in the crime.
Nowhere does Hersh mention two items that were all over the Beirut media: that the Lebanese authorities have arrested several of the group’s members, and that the Lebanese and Palestinian security services have collaborated in opposing Fatah al-Islam in the northern Palestinian refugee camps of Nahr al-Bared and Baddawi. The mainstream Palestinian leadership in Lebanon has criticized the entry of such groups into the country, fearing this will provoke tension between Palestinians and the Lebanese state. Fatah al-Islam’s leader, Abu Khaled al-Amleh, is said to be under house arrest in Damascus, but for a number of Lebanese analysts who closely follow Palestinian affairs the story is bogus, designed only to provide Syria with plausible deniability.
As for Hersh’s Esbat al-Ansar allegation, so little is said that it’s difficult to know where to begin a refutation. The history of Esbat al-Ansar is convoluted, but the group was, as French researcher Bernard Rougier notes in a book on the rise of militant Islam in Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps, "the first armed group to claim a Salafist-Islamist orientation in ... Ain al-Hilweh." Where Hersh stumbles is in his lack of knowledge of Lebanese-Palestinian relations. First of all, it’s not clear to whom he’s comparing Esbat al-Ansar when describing it as "the largest" Sunni Islamist group. According to Palestinian sources, the group includes no more than 70-80 men. If the Lebanese government, and Sunnis in particular, were to collaborate with anyone in the camps, it would be with the main Palestinian organizations, particularly Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement, which are more powerful militarily and represent far more people than Esbat al-Ansar.
Second, in its dealings with the Palestinians, the Lebanese government tends to work through the mainstream Palestinian parties, given that the camps are largely autonomous areas. This may vary depending on the region, but the idea that Lebanon’s internal security forces would directly arm Esbat al-Ansar, which is hostile to Fatah, is not credible. The Lebanese would not spoil their relationship with Fatah over Esbat al-Ansar, and it is utterly implausible that Esbat al-Ansar could or would "take on Hizbullah," with which the group was close in the mid-1980s, before it moved away from Iran, toward Salafist-Islamism. Nowhere does Hersh prove his point; worse, nowhere are readers given a larger context that would affirm how weak his contentions are.
Hersh errs in trying too hard to somehow tie the Bush administration in with the most militant groups. In fact, it is true that the Lebanese government is allied with Sunni Islamists - most notably Al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya, the Lebanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It may indeed have allowed "some aid," as Hersh writes, to end up in the hands of "emerging" Sunni militant groups, though this is very imprecise language. The reality is that amid the sectarian polarization in Lebanon today, most Sunnis have rallied to the government’s side, against the Shiite Hizbullah. Al-Jamaa is close to Saudi Arabia, and in 2005 the Saudis intervened prior to parliamentary elections that followed the Syrian withdrawal to ensure the group would not vote against candidates in North Lebanon backed by Saad Hariri, Lebanon’s most powerful Sunni leader who enjoys American and Saudi backing. However, Al-Jamaa is nothing like Esbat al-Ansar or Fatah al-Islam; it has integrated into the state and has had members in Parliament. Doubtless it holds views of Israel and the West that the Bush administration would find distasteful, but so too do the Saudi, Jordanian, and Egyptian clergy. Is Hersh suggesting that the US end ties with Riyadh, Amman, and Cairo?
What is going on today is power politics at their most essential. While Hersh may consider his disclosures news, he must make a better case that the American shift to a Sunni-centric policy against Iran is strengthening violent Islamists. The evidence he presents is scant.
What about Hersh’s belief that the Bush administration is illegally hiding aspects of its pro-Sunni regional strategy? "The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution of the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process." The administration’s point man in this endeavor is purportedly Vice President Dick Cheney.
This revelation is noteworthy, but when we turn to the final part of Hersh’s text in which he addresses congressional oversight issues, we find little meat. Unexplainably, the piece jumps from Hersh’s interview with Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah to a flashback on how the Iran-Contra affair undermined the oversight process. That’s because two of those involved in the mid-1980s arms-for-hostages deal, Elliott Abrams, a senior official in the US National Security Council, and Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the US who heads his country’s National Security Council, are key players in the tilt toward the Sunnis.
But Iran-Contra was then. When it comes to now, all Hersh can tell us is that "the issue of oversight is beginning to get more attention from Congress." Is that it? Other than quoting unnamed skeptical sources, Hersh doesn’t enlighten us on specific instances where the administration broke laws. He does mention, not for the first time, that US military and special operations teams "have escalated their activities in Iran to gather intelligence" and to pursue Iranian operatives from Iraq. This merits more investigation, but it is not directly related to his more disturbing point that the US is somehow bolstering extreme Sunni Islamists.
Hersh goes on to remind us that any administration, in order to engage in clandestine activities, "must issue a written finding and inform Congress." The argument is a fair one, if the Bush administration has failed to do so. But in that case why does Hersh not mention a Daily Telegraph report published in January, which suggested that "senators and congressmen have been briefed on [a] classified ’non-lethal presidential finding’ that allows the CIA to provide financial and logistical support to the [Lebanese] prime minister, Fouad Siniora" to oppose Hizbullah? Did The New Yorker’s fact checkers miss that one? If Bush is so keen to hide his hand in Lebanon and elsewhere, then this news item implies that the picture is more complicated. And if Hersh disagrees with the Telegraph, shouldn’t his editors have asked him to place a rebuttal in his article?
But the editors, I suspect, weren’t really looking. Sy Hersh has written some remarkable pieces in the past, but his latest is not one of them. It is badly argued, displays shaky knowledge of the details, and seems mainly propelled by antipathy for the Bush administration. When there are serious political repercussions in the Middle East from Hersh’s much-read pieces, it would help for him to know better what he’s talking about.
The broad tropes of Hersh’s arguments are correct. The US has indeed abandoned the neoconservative approach to the Middle East (which Hersh so loathed), to return to political "realism" based on imposing a balance of power. Much like the US did during the 1980s when it supported Iraq in its war against Iran, the Bush administration is today using Sunnis against Shiites (though in Iraq it is mainly using Shiites against Sunnis). The policy is risky - fiddling with sectarianism may ultimately backfire - but the problem with Hersh is that he offers little hard evidence for many of his controversial assertions. In fact his discussion of Lebanon in particular and his broader charge that the administration is engaging in clandestine activities without proper legislative approval are ill-informed or partial. The New Yorker has signed off on a piece shoddily constructed, often tendentious, and driven almost entirely by Hersh’s sources (most of the more significant ones left unnamed), rather than his own independent confirmation of the details.
Let’s start with Lebanon, where the American and Saudi effort to counter Iran and its allies is in full swing. Today, the US and the kingdom, but also much of the international community and the Muslim world, are shoring up the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, which has for the past three months been facing a serious challenge to its authority from the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hizbullah. We learn from Hersh that, in the context of this struggle against Hizbullah, "representatives of the Lebanese government" have supplied weapons and money to a Palestinian Sunni extremist group called Fatah al-Islam, which allegedly broke off from its pro-Syrian parent group, Fatah al-Intifada, before moving to North Lebanon. Fatah al-Intifada was created by the Syrian regime in the early 1980s to oppose Yasser Arafat. Hersh also points out that "the largest" of the Sunni groups, Esbat al-Ansar, located in the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in Sidon, in South Lebanon, "has received arms and supplies from Lebanese internal-security forces and militias associated with the Siniora government."
What is Hersh’s evidence for these extraordinary statements? Which "militias" is he referring to? In the ongoing Lebanese standoff, Hizbullah has used the term to describe pro-government supporters, without ever substantiating that such militias even exist. The Fatah al-Islam story is based entirely on a quote by one Alistair Crooke, a former MI6 agent, who, we learn, "was told" that weapons were offered to the group, "presumably to take on Hizbullah." The passage on Esbat al-Ansar is not even sourced.
The Fatah al-Islam story is instructive, because it shows a recurring flaw in Hersh’s reporting, namely his investigative paralysis when it comes to Syria. In articles past, Hersh has acted as a conduit for those defending the post-9/11 intelligence collaboration between the US and Syria, and lamenting the Bush administration’s subsequent isolation of Damascus in the run-up to and aftermath of the Iraq invasion. Most Lebanese analysts believe that Fatah al-Islam, far from being aided by the Lebanese government, is in fact a Syrian plant, deployed to Lebanon to be used by the Assad regime to destabilize the country and prevent formal endorsement by the Siniora government of a court to try suspects in the February 2005 assassination of the former prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Syria is the main suspect in the crime.
Nowhere does Hersh mention two items that were all over the Beirut media: that the Lebanese authorities have arrested several of the group’s members, and that the Lebanese and Palestinian security services have collaborated in opposing Fatah al-Islam in the northern Palestinian refugee camps of Nahr al-Bared and Baddawi. The mainstream Palestinian leadership in Lebanon has criticized the entry of such groups into the country, fearing this will provoke tension between Palestinians and the Lebanese state. Fatah al-Islam’s leader, Abu Khaled al-Amleh, is said to be under house arrest in Damascus, but for a number of Lebanese analysts who closely follow Palestinian affairs the story is bogus, designed only to provide Syria with plausible deniability.
As for Hersh’s Esbat al-Ansar allegation, so little is said that it’s difficult to know where to begin a refutation. The history of Esbat al-Ansar is convoluted, but the group was, as French researcher Bernard Rougier notes in a book on the rise of militant Islam in Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps, "the first armed group to claim a Salafist-Islamist orientation in ... Ain al-Hilweh." Where Hersh stumbles is in his lack of knowledge of Lebanese-Palestinian relations. First of all, it’s not clear to whom he’s comparing Esbat al-Ansar when describing it as "the largest" Sunni Islamist group. According to Palestinian sources, the group includes no more than 70-80 men. If the Lebanese government, and Sunnis in particular, were to collaborate with anyone in the camps, it would be with the main Palestinian organizations, particularly Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement, which are more powerful militarily and represent far more people than Esbat al-Ansar.
Second, in its dealings with the Palestinians, the Lebanese government tends to work through the mainstream Palestinian parties, given that the camps are largely autonomous areas. This may vary depending on the region, but the idea that Lebanon’s internal security forces would directly arm Esbat al-Ansar, which is hostile to Fatah, is not credible. The Lebanese would not spoil their relationship with Fatah over Esbat al-Ansar, and it is utterly implausible that Esbat al-Ansar could or would "take on Hizbullah," with which the group was close in the mid-1980s, before it moved away from Iran, toward Salafist-Islamism. Nowhere does Hersh prove his point; worse, nowhere are readers given a larger context that would affirm how weak his contentions are.
Hersh errs in trying too hard to somehow tie the Bush administration in with the most militant groups. In fact, it is true that the Lebanese government is allied with Sunni Islamists - most notably Al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya, the Lebanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It may indeed have allowed "some aid," as Hersh writes, to end up in the hands of "emerging" Sunni militant groups, though this is very imprecise language. The reality is that amid the sectarian polarization in Lebanon today, most Sunnis have rallied to the government’s side, against the Shiite Hizbullah. Al-Jamaa is close to Saudi Arabia, and in 2005 the Saudis intervened prior to parliamentary elections that followed the Syrian withdrawal to ensure the group would not vote against candidates in North Lebanon backed by Saad Hariri, Lebanon’s most powerful Sunni leader who enjoys American and Saudi backing. However, Al-Jamaa is nothing like Esbat al-Ansar or Fatah al-Islam; it has integrated into the state and has had members in Parliament. Doubtless it holds views of Israel and the West that the Bush administration would find distasteful, but so too do the Saudi, Jordanian, and Egyptian clergy. Is Hersh suggesting that the US end ties with Riyadh, Amman, and Cairo?
What is going on today is power politics at their most essential. While Hersh may consider his disclosures news, he must make a better case that the American shift to a Sunni-centric policy against Iran is strengthening violent Islamists. The evidence he presents is scant.
What about Hersh’s belief that the Bush administration is illegally hiding aspects of its pro-Sunni regional strategy? "The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution of the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process." The administration’s point man in this endeavor is purportedly Vice President Dick Cheney.
This revelation is noteworthy, but when we turn to the final part of Hersh’s text in which he addresses congressional oversight issues, we find little meat. Unexplainably, the piece jumps from Hersh’s interview with Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah to a flashback on how the Iran-Contra affair undermined the oversight process. That’s because two of those involved in the mid-1980s arms-for-hostages deal, Elliott Abrams, a senior official in the US National Security Council, and Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the US who heads his country’s National Security Council, are key players in the tilt toward the Sunnis.
But Iran-Contra was then. When it comes to now, all Hersh can tell us is that "the issue of oversight is beginning to get more attention from Congress." Is that it? Other than quoting unnamed skeptical sources, Hersh doesn’t enlighten us on specific instances where the administration broke laws. He does mention, not for the first time, that US military and special operations teams "have escalated their activities in Iran to gather intelligence" and to pursue Iranian operatives from Iraq. This merits more investigation, but it is not directly related to his more disturbing point that the US is somehow bolstering extreme Sunni Islamists.
Hersh goes on to remind us that any administration, in order to engage in clandestine activities, "must issue a written finding and inform Congress." The argument is a fair one, if the Bush administration has failed to do so. But in that case why does Hersh not mention a Daily Telegraph report published in January, which suggested that "senators and congressmen have been briefed on [a] classified ’non-lethal presidential finding’ that allows the CIA to provide financial and logistical support to the [Lebanese] prime minister, Fouad Siniora" to oppose Hizbullah? Did The New Yorker’s fact checkers miss that one? If Bush is so keen to hide his hand in Lebanon and elsewhere, then this news item implies that the picture is more complicated. And if Hersh disagrees with the Telegraph, shouldn’t his editors have asked him to place a rebuttal in his article?
But the editors, I suspect, weren’t really looking. Sy Hersh has written some remarkable pieces in the past, but his latest is not one of them. It is badly argued, displays shaky knowledge of the details, and seems mainly propelled by antipathy for the Bush administration. When there are serious political repercussions in the Middle East from Hersh’s much-read pieces, it would help for him to know better what he’s talking about.
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