The Fayez Karam saga

Of course it’s entirely possible that Fayez Karam, the Aounist official arrested earlier this week, was an Israeli spy, as security officials have insisted. In which case we must commend the officials and echo Pogo, by crying out, “We have found the enemy, and he is us!”

Karam is said to have admitted to the charge. However, in these cases it’s always best to be cautious, at least until the accused himself is heard. But there happens to be another version of this puzzling arrest now circulating in Beirut, and it has to do with Syria’s efforts to reassert its dominion over Lebanon, including over Hezbollah.

It didn’t take very much to realize that the Lebanese-Saudi-Syrian summit last week aroused little enthusiasm from Hezbollah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah. In part, to borrow from Walid Jumblatt, that was because Iran was not present; or, more bluntly, because Iran was and is the prime target of the Saudi endeavor to bring Syria back to Lebanon. For King Abdullah, better to hand Lebanon to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad than to allow Hezbollah, and through it Tehran, to rule over the country as it has for four years.

Enter Michel Aoun. The general aligned himself with Hezbollah only months after returning home in 2005. While he did turn a new page with Syria, in domestic politics Aoun remained, above all, a staunch partner of Hezbollah, initially hoping that the party would deliver the presidency to him. Yet as Syria seeks to impose itself on Hezbollah – to remind Nasrallah that Damascus is again the main player in Lebanon, not Iran – Assad may be seeking to draw Hezbollah’s allies away from the party, to better isolate it. Karam’s arrest, this version continues, is just a way of compelling Aoun to choose Syria over Iran.

In recent days Hezbollah has done little to show that it takes seriously the joint statement released by King Abdullah, Assad and Lebanese President Michel Sleiman. First, Nasrallah met with the parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, a noted Syrian ally, to remind him that he had better not take his distance from Hezbollah. Then, where the joint statement was all about calming the game in Lebanon, the Aadaiseh incident and Nasrallah’s speech displayed little consideration for that injunction. And if anyone had doubts, Nasrallah dispelled them by remarking that Lebanon awaited the visit of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the same spirit as it did those of the Arab leaders. In other words, Hezbollah’s reference point remained Tehran.

If this reading of the Karam arrest is correct – that it is a Syrian gambit to draw Michel Aoun away from Hezbollah and more squarely into the Syrian orbit – then what can we expect in the near future? It is widely suspected that Hezbollah has long helped enhance Aoun’s power of patronage. Assuming the information is true, the general would have to begin by scrambling to find alternative funders.

Then we have to ask how Aoun’s fealty would express itself in more practical ways. In order to bolster their comeback, the Syrians need to ensure that they can bring their own people into key administrative posts, particularly in the security and intelligence agencies, above all the General Security directorate and military intelligence. Some weeks ago Damascus, ostensibly at Aoun’s behest, because the general was dissatisfied with his share of posts, blocked a sequence of new appointments. How ironic if Assad now allows these to go through, but presses Aoun to approve pro-Syrian candidates.

And by the way, don’t expect the general to soon threaten to withdraw his ministers from the government if Hezbollah demands this in order to pressure Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri into breaking Lebanese ties with the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. Syria doesn’t want the tribunal any more than Hezbollah does, but Assad evidently prefers to achieve this more quietly, whether through the Saudis or through his own interactions with the prime minister, who, you have to suspect, views his decision as leverage to be used against Hezbollah.

In the coming days we may get a better sense of what is going on with Fayez Karam, and whether the political interpretations of his detention are correct. However, Lebanon is, plainly, moving through a period of major tectonic shifts where nothing is what it seems. Only one thing is certain: A sovereign Lebanon is as distant as ever.