Syria's impatience is leading to mistakes

Syria's impatience is leading to mistakes
By Michael Young
Daily Star staff
Thursday, December 27, 2007

A demoralizing aspect of much international political behavior, commentary, or policy counsel on Syria in the past two years has been the extent to which it has fed off amnesia. Almost nobody, it seems, recalls that the Syrian-Lebanese crisis took a nasty turn following a botched murder attempt in 2004 against Marwan Hamadeh, and reached a point of no return after the 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri. The killings have continued, Syria's efforts to return to Lebanon have escalated, and yet fewer and fewer countries hold this against the Syrian regime anymore.

International relations are often determined by a short attention span that can morph into self-interested indifference; and by self-delusion. With the world's attention elsewhere on most days, Syria has slowly clawed its way back into Lebanon; and it has profited from the illusion that it is striving to be different, that it really wants to change its behavior on Lebanese sovereignty and toward Iran, Hamas and Hizbullah - when that behavior has been successful, so that Syria has no reason to change anything.

The Syrian regime's policies are an endless return to templates created by the late Hafez Assad. What are these? Absolute control over Lebanon, preferably military control, to give Syria regional relevance and leverage in war and peace over Israel; a taste for counterpoint in regional crises, whereby Syria will play both sides in order to place itself at the center of any resolution; a strategy of exporting conflict to ward away domestic threats to the Syrian regime; a desire to impose Syria as an obligatory regional partner of the United States; and a willingness to use violence.

Bashar Assad has been less adept than his father in balancing all these. The Syrian regime's too-frequent resort to violence since 2003, in Lebanon and elsewhere, has alienated Washington while convincing Syria's Lebanese foes that no reconciliation with Damascus is possible. Assad's alliance with Iran has damaged relations with the Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia. And Syria's export of violence remains an obstacle to any serious negotiations with Israel, and has badly backfired in Iraq, where the Sunnis have turned against Al-Qaeda.

While Syria continues to make strides in Lebanon, its clumsiness has created openings for those who want to prevent a Syrian return.

As a starter, Assad has played the French card all wrong. It may take more time for the Sarkozy administration to finally break free of its fondness for masochism and realize that Syria is uninterested in resolving the Lebanese presidential crisis in exchange for improved relations with Paris. The French have displayed astonishing amateurism in their dealings with Damascus in the past two months, reflecting a more general breakdown of their policy-making process. President Nicolas Sarkozy has put his most senior adviser, Claude Gueant, on the Syria case, though Gueant knows little about Syrian affairs. Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has failed repeatedly to make any headway with the Assad regime on Lebanon, and finds himself isolated both from his president and from his own Foreign Ministry bureaucracy. Even Kouchner's main Middle East hand, Jean-Claude Cousseran, is not a Kouchner man, and retains ties to the French foreign intelligence service that he once headed.

This cacophony of voices, much like Sarkozy's reluctance to admit that his Syrian policy is dysfunctional, has delayed a full rapprochement with the Bush administration on Syria. However, unless Damascus gives the French something meatier on Lebanon in the coming months, the US and France will move decisively closer, particularly if Syria remains estranged from Saudi Arabia. Syrian hardball could revive the 2004 partnership that led to passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 (which the French effectively undercut during their recent talks with Syria). If so, Assad might come to regret his gratuitous humiliation of France.

A second mistake is that the Syrians have burned virtually all their Lebanese allies. Hizbullah is strong militarily, but outside the Shiite community its national appeal is at subterranean levels. The party is perceived by most Sunnis, Druze and Christians as a fifth column working on behalf of Iran and Syria. This has severed the broader connections with Lebanese society that Hizbullah worked for years to set up. Similarly, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri is no longer viewed by the majority as credible. He has closed Parliament down on spurious grounds and made promises to Saad Hariri on the presidency that he was later forced by Syria to revoke. Berri is a mailbox for Hizbullah, but worse for the speaker, he probably can only survive politically by remaining so.

Syria's other allies, such as Omar Karami, Suleiman Franjieh, Wiam Wahhab, Abdel-Rahim Mrad, Elie Firzli, and Nasser Qandil, are much more a substantiation of Syrian shortcomings in Lebanon than of Syrian strengths. Proof of this is that Damascus wasn't able to establish a second government using them that would have been taken seriously by the outside world. As for Michel Aoun, Syrian Vice President Farouk Sharaa recently referred to him as a Syrian ally; but even if he isn't one, the general is so polarizing a figure in the context of Syria's counterattack against the 2005 Cedar Revolution that he remains unelectable.

A third mistake is that Syria has utterly failed in its Sunni policy. The Sunni community is the major obstacle to any Syrian return. It is extraordinary that Aoun and an embarrassing number of his followers should be so hostile to Sunnis today, when they spent years accusing the community of not being Lebanese enough. The Aounists won't accept that it was Syrian fear of Rafik Hariri's (therefore the Sunnis') anticipated gains in the 2005 elections that precipitated the former prime minister's assassination; it was mainly Sunni revulsion, locally and regionally, with Hariri's elimination that pushed the Syrians out of Lebanon; it was Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's diplomacy that ensured the deployment of the Lebanese Army to South Lebanon after the Israeli onslaught of 2006 - a step that earned him the loathing of Hizbullah; and it is the Sunnis whom the Syrians now need to silence by any means possible, particularly through pressure on Saudi Arabia, before they can contemplate a return to Beirut.

A fourth mistake is that Syria overplayed its hand by trying to block the Hariri tribunal inside Lebanon. That the former UN investigator, Serge Brammertz, named no names in his various reports on Hariri's assassination is worrisome. Without any names, the legal process could conceivably end up in limbo, even if the tribunal is set up. However, even if we assume the worst about Brammertz's intentions, which may be unfair, Syrian intransigence was instrumental in bringing about the tribunal's establishment under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Manipulation of the tribunal process is now more difficult for Damascus. The Syrians would like to see the tribunal go away, but are probably unable to accept even a deal that would incriminate lower-level officials in a way that could convincingly exonerate their regime. Regardless of whether there is reluctance at the UN to go after the Syrian leadership - and there is - the fact that the tribunal is now mainly in international hands could create momentum that Syria won't be able to control.

The Syrians will likely make their grand final push in Lebanon in 2008. If the Lebanese remain as divided as they are today, the Syrians might succeed. However, Syria's impatience is also, in large part, a recognition of its limitations. Lebanon is trying to break free and Damascus isn't used to that. Consequently, it will make more mistakes, and those Lebanese truly interested in an independent Lebanon should exploit these mistakes.

Lebanon's pact: prelude to a postmortem

Lebanon's pact: prelude to a postmortem
By Michael Young
Daily Star staff
Wednesday, December 19, 2007

What is left of Lebanon's confessional democratic system as the country pursues its cold civil war? At no time in the recent past, even during the conflict years, has the system been so threatened, its foundations so fragile. With the Syrians knocking again at the door, there is a real danger that Lebanon as we know it could disappear, with nothing to replace it.

Lebanon's problems transcend constitutional issues, even if these are central to the country's current problems. In the past year, it is the opposition that has mostly emptied the Constitution of its meaning. The assumption that the Siniora government is unconstitutional because Shiite ministers have resigned from it - although the Constitution says no such thing - has been shorthand for imagining Lebanon as a confederation of sects. That's not how the political order was set up. No system could escape permanent stalemate if it were built on the principle that decisions had to derive from sectarian unanimity.

Michel Aoun applied the same logic when presenting his outlandish scheme to get a president elected several weeks ago. Aoun offered to appoint the president himself, while Saad Hariri was to appoint the prime minister. The idea was that the strongest Christian had the right to bring in the president, while the strongest Sunni could do the same to the prime minister. But such a vision would only transform Lebanon into a loose amalgam of sects somehow stuck in the same place, but never collaborating in a common enterprise. Aoun's abandonment of an election altogether, his view that sectarian leaders should simply name officeholders, revealed how easy it would be for a confederation of sects to descend into sectarian autocracy. Yet the only guarantee of Lebanese democracy, or what remains of it, is the reality of shared participation by all in the state, even if the state remains weak.

The parliamentary majority is hardly innocent either when it comes to chipping away at the foundations of Lebanese sectarian democracy. The abuse done to the Constitution to turn the army commander, Michel Suleiman, into a president will have disastrous repercussions, regardless of Suleiman's merits or demerits. From now on every army commander will consider himself a president in waiting, and will cite the higher interests of the state (just as March 14 has) to lobby for the post. Lebanon, once a country markedly different in the Arab neighborhood thanks to its preference for disposable, usually civilian presidents, now seems incapable of circumventing officers. Surely, the Maronites have better to offer. And if they don't, then this is a damning indictment of their present contribution to Lebanese democracy, which alone has ensured the community's survival.

Social contracts, whatever their value, are useful as formal stepping stones to something better (or worse). The 1943 National Pact, though challenged by politicians from all sides, survived long enough to hand off to the Taif Accord. The problem today, however, is that many in the Shiite community as well as not a few Christians, particularly Aoun's followers, have no liking for Taif. Unhappy Christians see the accord as the source of their marginalization, while unhappy Shiites see it as an obstacle to their greater representation. Both groups are entitled to question Taif's tenets within the framework of a constitutional reform process. But much more disturbingly, they have tended to question the validity of the accord altogether, allowing no possible springboard toward a Taif-II.

On top of that, and in defiance of the principles of sectarian equilibrium, the Shiite community is armed to the teeth - a situation blocking all talk of political reform. Hizbullah will argue that its weapons have never been turned against other Lebanese. This is both historically false and irrelevant. In a society governed by minority paranoia, everything is about perceptions. A gun in the closet is still a gun, and no one will discuss handing the Shiite community more power while the community is so strong militarily.

This creates a paradox: Hizbullah's weapons are the major obstacle to better integration of Shiites into post-Taif Lebanon. And the party has systematically exacerbated and exploited feelings of Shiite alienation to build up a communal wall in defense of its weapons.

Christians are in a more debilitating dilemma. They are so convinced of their terminal decline that they are actually accelerating the process. Most of what the Christians have done to fight irrelevance in the past two years, since the Syrian withdrawal, has been ruinous to their fortunes. In 2005, following the deplorable quadripartite electoral agreement between Walid Jumblatt, Saad Hariri, Hizbullah, and Amal, they put their faith in Aoun, even though the general, along with Samir Geagea, was responsible for the vicious inter-Christian war of 1990 that devastated the community. Christians, particularly Maronites, have also believed that their salvation would come from a new president. Yet the infighting over the presidency has been so divisive that Syria has taken advantage of this to gradually re-impose its hegemony over Lebanon.

For Christians to survive as a community, they must accept that the only way to do so is through reform of the confessional arrangement within the framework of Taif. This means abolishing sectarian quotas in Parliament before this becomes a demand Christians cannot deflect. The community can be compensated through establishment of a Senate on a 50-50 Christian-Muslim basis to deal, as Article 22 of the Constitution specifies, with "major national issues." The presidency, rather than being a safeguard of Christian advantages, now embodies Christian failings. Replace it with a rotating system in which the communities can serve in different senior posts in the state, so that a sense of common purpose is created.

Unless Christians grasp the necessity of deconfessionalizing Parliament, they may find themselves facing a new reality where the Sunni, Shiite and Christian communities are each represented by a third of parliamentary seats. The disadvantages are obvious: Christians would be the ones surrendering the most power; but more significantly national solidarity would be lost. A great deal would be decided on the basis of a two-thirds majority - in other words, by those two communities able to impose their will on the third. The result would be the perpetual estrangement of the loser. What kind of system can long last that is based on resentment?

Resentment is Lebanon's life force these days. The country is in need of overhauling its political relationships, and yet domestic hatreds and Syria's efforts to return with its army make this impossible. Without a new national pact, no pact at all is likely. And that only makes Lebanon unlikely.

A rivalry transcending a nuclear Iran

It's not often that one has the stomach to call on political realists - all too frequently purveyors of foreign policy stalemate and pals of despots worldwide. However, realism was called for last week when American intelligence agencies released a National Intelligence Estimate claiming that Iran had halted work on its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Even halfhearted assessments of the national interest would have produced more insightful responses to the NIE than the ones that we got.

With everyone focusing on the nuclear issue, few noticed that regardless of whether Iran produces atomic weapons or not, its acrimonious rivalry with the United States in the Middle East is bound to escalate. Given that the US went to war in 1991 to prevent Iraq from imposing its hegemony in the Gulf area, does it make sense to assume that Washington would readily allow a threatening Iran to do what the Iraqis failed to?

There were two types of reactions to the NIE, both inadequate for dealing with the real stakes in American-Iranian hostility throughout the Middle East. The first focused on the fact that President George W. Bush as well as Vice President Dick Cheney had in recent months amplified their war rhetoric against Iran, even though Bush was told last August by the director of national intelligence, Michael McConnell, that Iran's nuclear program "may be suspended." This seemed to contradict an earlier statement by the president that McConnell had told him no such thing.

The second reaction was rather different. With the nuclear threat allegedly on hold, politicians and commentators suddenly began advising the administration to engage Iran in some sort of discussion. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called on Bush to do what President Ronald Reagan had done with the Soviet Union and push for "a diplomatic surge necessary to effectively address the challenges posed by Iran." Republican Senator Chuck Hagel asked the administration to show the same flexibility toward Iran that it had shown toward North Korea. Rand Beers, who served as national security adviser to John Kerry's presidential campaign, observed: "Simply put, we have an imminent need for a real dialogue with Iran, not a military confrontation."

It was certainly unsettling that Bush and Cheney were talking about a war with Iran when they knew, or should have known, that their stated justification for war was no longer valid. However, the rush toward advocating dialogue and flexibility was equally incomprehensible.

A dialogue over what? No one seemed particularly clear on that point. Suddenly, it seemed, the problem was not power politics and the thrusts and parries of the US-Iranian quarrel, but the Bush administration's stubborn refusal to be conciliatory. During the 1980s, in the midst of the debate over nuclear missiles in Europe, French President Francois Mitterrand famously declared: "The pacifists are in the West but the missiles are in the East." Of course there were missiles in the West then, just as there are those in Washington now who still favor war against Iran; but it's also undeniable that those wanting to open up to Iran are mostly on the American side, while Iran's leaders continue to relentlessly pursue strategic advantage in their own neighborhood.

The Iranians are playing three-dimensional chess in the Middle East, while the US is playing with its hankie. American policy in the region suffers from a lack of ideas. The administration's disorientation after the release of the NIE showed that in the absence of a war option (and an unpersuasive war option at that), the US remains unsure what to do about Iran. But the Democrats are equally at sea. Even an administration critic, Flynt Leverett, had to admit recently that "regrettably, opposition Democrats are not defining a genuine alternative. Beyond criticism of President Bush's 'saber rattling,' Democratic presidential candidates offer, for the most part, only vacuous rhetoric about 'engaging' Iran."

For example, what is the US doing about Iran's alliance with Syria, and their joint patronage of Hamas and Hizbullah? Hamas is dead set on wrecking American efforts to bring about a settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and several months ago the movement mounted a successful coup against the Fatah movement in Gaza. The Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, lives in Damascus, is a frequent visitor to Tehran, and although Syria will send sporadic signals that it is displeased with the Islamist group, this is chaff designed to keep alive the illusion that Syria and Iran are on different wavelengths. Nothing will divide Syria from Iran when the relationship brings so many foreign supplicants to Damascus with offers of concessions to President Bashar Assad, if only he would consider abandoning Iran. Assad takes the concessions, offers none of his own, and yet the visitors still keep coming.

Iran and Syria are, similarly, putting on a "good cop, bad cop" routine in Lebanon. Damascus is steadily re-imposing its hegemony over its smaller neighbor, neutralizing or assassinating those who oppose a Syrian return. Iran is backing Syria up because Hizbullah will benefit. The Shiite group knows that the stabilization of Lebanon under a sovereign government would force it to surrender its weapons; and without weapons Hizbullah would cease to be Hizbullah. Iran needs the party and its arms to sustain its influence in the Levant, as well as to preserve a deterrence capability at Israel's doorstep. Damascus, in turn, needs Hizbullah to intimidate Syria's Lebanese foes. The Iranians are proving almost as instrumental as the Syrians in reversing the gains of the 2005 Cedar Revolution.

The US, meanwhile, continues to back Lebanon's anti-Syrian March 14 coalition. However, it is increasingly doing so from a distance. The Bush administration has spent much less money than Iran in Lebanon, and has not pressed its wealthier Arab allies to make up for the deficit. In fact it has been remarkably silent as one such ally, Qatar, has played an essential role in bolstering the Assad regime and Hizbullah. Worse, in the run-up to the ongoing crisis over choosing a new Lebanese president, Bush endorsed what would prove to be a disastrous French diplomatic initiative to facilitate an election. The initiative, in practical terms, invited the Syrians back into Lebanese presidential politics, undermining Washington's and Paris' declared aim of defending Lebanese sovereignty.

The Bush administration has also been catatonic in Congress. For example it has done nothing to press for passage of the Syria Accountability and Liberation Act, legislation that would substantially strengthen and widen US sanctions against Syria. The law is blocked in the House Foreign Affairs Committee because of disagreement over wording between the ranking Democrat and Republican members. The reasons for this are mainly domestic and electoral. Yet thanks to parochial politicking, the US government has been denied a valuable stick with which to defend its interests in the Middle East.

So, how does a dialogue look now? Iran would gladly draw the US into a lengthy discussion of everything and nothing, and use this empty gabfest as a smokescreen to advance its agenda. But diplomacy is not an end in itself; to be meaningful it has to achieve specific aims and be based on confidence that both sides seek a mutually advantageous deal. Nothing suggests the Iranians have reached that stage yet.

That's because Iran believes it is winning in the region. The US seems unable to deploy the same array of foreign policy instruments as the Iranians, even if it is vastly more powerful; America's principal Arab allies are anemic, their mostly geriatric regimes illegitimate; and America's attention span abroad often seems so limited that an adversary's favored tactic is to just wait until its officials lose interest and head for the lecture circuit. The Iranians are right: they are winning; at least for the time being.

Syria prepares its grand comeback

To better understand the assassination of General Francois Hajj on Wednesday morning in Baabda, one has to view it against the backdrop of the statement by Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa a day earlier. At a conference of Syria's National Progressive Front, Sharaa declared that "Syria's friends in Lebanon represent a true force on the ground, and no one in Lebanon is able to harm Syria and Lebanon."

One of the things most disturbing to the Syrians about the decision of the March 14 coalition to support army commander Michel Suleiman was that this was apparently preceded by commitments on both sides. One such commitment appeared to have been agreement on a new army commander, or a list of potential army commanders. Hajj, despite the opposition's effort to paint his killing as a blow against Michel Aoun, was actually Suleiman's man and was reportedly one of those on the list.

The message, therefore, was that for Suleiman to become president, he has to, first, renounce all previous commitments reached with March 14 and enter into new arrangements with the "true force on the ground."

The Syrians are accelerating their return to Lebanon, and the disastrous French initiative on the presidency only confirmed to them that the international community would readily engage Syria on Lebanon. As for the United States, it has been comatose - caught between the constraints of the Annapolis process (if a process it is) and the need to reduce pressure on Iran after the release last week of a National Intelligence Estimate affirming that Tehran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003. The French and the Americans have been neutralized in Lebanon, and while this can be reversed, Sharaa's remarks showed the extent of Syrian confidence.

Things are more complicated with regard to the Arab states. Saudi-Syrian hostility continues unabated, and a paramount Syrian objective in imposing a Lebanese presidential vacuum is to gain leverage for Syria's triumphal re-entry into the Arab fold. The intended date is next March, when the Arab League summit is to be held in Damascus. The Assad regime would like the gathering to consecrate its return to regional prominence, and Lebanon is Syria's hostage to bring that about.

For the moment leading Arab states aren't playing ball. At a press conference on Tuesday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu al-Gheit shot down reports that a mini-summit was to be held soon between Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Palestinians. He also downplayed prospects for a regional peace summit in Moscow next year, which the Syrians hope will place the Golan Heights issue back on the table.

But will the Arabs stick to their guns? Syria humiliated the Saudis and Egyptians by undermining their separate efforts to sponsor an inter-Palestinian settlement. Damascus is now blocking Suleiman's arrival in Lebanon, although both Egypt and Saudi Arabia approve of the general. Less clear, however, are the calculations of King Abdullah of Jordan. His apparent engagement of the Assad regime suggests he is willing to be more flexible on a Syrian role in Lebanon if this can help calm the Palestinian front, thereby buying Jordan a measure of domestic stability.

Whichever way you cut it, Lebanon is in for many more months of anxiety. However, the imbroglio over the presidency makes you wonder whether the Syrians have a clear-cut presidential strategy. Syria has impeded the election of a bevy of allies, likely friends, or fellow travelers who were acceptable to March 14, including Robert Ghanem, Michel Edde, and Suleiman. Their treatment of Suleiman in particular reveals that they don't quite trust the Lebanese Army, and that they certainly don't want a new army commander who might reverse pervasive Syrian infiltration of the senior officer corps.

Creating a vacuum is not a strategy; it is a tactic designed to bring someone to power on Syria's terms. Damascus wants exclusivity in the next Lebanese president, but without its armed forces in the country to impose this, a new officeholder might prove too independent. That's why we should doubt Sharaa when he says, as he did on Tuesday, that Syria does not intend to return to Lebanon "militarily or in a security capacity." But it's also why, in believing that they cannot dominate the Lebanese without an armed presence, the Syrians might be overreaching. The Syrian move into Lebanon in 1976 required a regional and international consensus, as well as an Israeli green light, and was formalized by the Arab League. That's unlikely to happen again today. In forcing the issue, doesn't the Assad regime risk provoking a powerful local, regional and international backlash that might ultimately scuttle its plans?

Then again, a direr scenario is just as plausible. What remains of the Cedar Revolution is under mortal threat, with March 14 increasingly disoriented and without imagination. The coalition's Christian policy is a shambles, allowing Michel Aoun to continue conning many of his coreligionists into believing that he best represents their interests, even as he perpetuates the presidential vacuum to undermine Suleiman. Amid such chaos, no wonder the Syrians feel they are but a step away from reversing the losses of 2005. And so repulsive are the divisions within Lebanese society that we must seriously worry that the West and the Arab states will soon quietly agree to subcontract Lebanon to Syria again.

That's what the Syrians are hoping. They are convinced that the logic of the gun will prevail. When a substantial proportion of Lebanese society is either actively or objectively working on Syria's behalf, it's difficult to blame them. Yesterday was the second anniversary of Gebran Tueni's assassination. It is dawning upon us, certainly too late, that he and all the other murder victims of the past two years probably went in vain. That's no surprise when so many Lebanese are taking their country in vain.

Destroying Lebanon for a great sinecure

In late 1994, I interviewed Michel Aoun at his borrowed residence at La Haute-Maison just outside Paris. At the end of our conversation I asked the general why he had not organized his supporters in Lebanon, since the Aounist movement at the time was a disoriented amalgam of people whose principle activity was to be harassed by the authorities. Aoun's answer was remarkable: "Why, so that they all end up with the Syrians?"

Aoun eventually did organize his followers, and he did so rather well. However, his response in those early days of exile provided a window into the man's deeper impulses: Though his supporters were being slapped around for championing him, Aoun's main concern was maintaining authority. That was reasonable, but less so was the fact that the general justified this attitude by casting doubt on the loyalty of the Aounists. Given that they are recklessly following him down the road to communal perdition today, perhaps we can suggest that Aoun apologize to all those people whose devotion he doubted while in France.

Yesterday, the Future Movement suddenly declared its intention to support a constitutional amendment to bring in the army commander Michel Suleiman as president. This came after the French reportedly inquired about the general, and the Russians allegedly expressed sympathy for him. Even the Lebanese Forces leader, Samir Geagea, waffled on Monday when asked about a constitutional amendment to bring the general to power, noting that "all options are being studied."

Aoun will swallow poison before saying yes to Suleiman. It's difficult to believe that Geagea really relishes the idea of bringing to power his warden for nine years. And Walid Jumblatt has already told Suleiman he would not vote in favor of a constitutional amendment, even if he has also indicated he would be willing to accept anybody to avoid a vacuum. But will this be enough to stop the army commander? Hizbullah may be as lost as anyone in gauging what comes next. Having declared its support for Aoun, it knows that shifting its support to Suleiman may mean a divorce with Aoun. Is that one of the main objectives in the Hariri camp's backing for the army commander? Perhaps, but even so, it's difficult to imagine that Hizbullah will oppose Suleiman if Syria backs him.

The Maronite community has split down the middle in the race between its politicians for an office that is fast turning into the sinecure of the Lebanese republic. Whichever way you cut it, the Maronites, and Lebanon's Christians in general, need to overhaul their thinking when it comes to their national political role. Each presidential election, it seems, is further destroying what remains of Christian influence. That's why its time to seriously open a debate within the community on whether Christians actually benefit from the presidency anymore.

Such a debate will be delayed by two things. First, the priority today is, and must be, the consolidation of a Lebanon independent from Syria. Will a President Suleiman, if he is the anointed one, bring this about? Or on the contrary, is he Syria's choice as many people seem to believe? It's a paradox that the Christians, who were always at the forefront of opposition to Syria, are now, through their infighting, the main reason why the Assad regime is finding it so easy to manipulate Lebanese politics for a comeback (even if the 2005 electoral deal between Walid Jumblatt, Hizbullah, Saad Hariri, and Nabih Berri gave the current opposition the oxygen it needed to collect itself and prepare a counterattack). The fact that Suleiman's agenda is so ambiguous, particularly on Syria, is a result of the Christians having lost their bearings on Lebanon's independence.

Second, no discussion over the Christians' future can occur while Hizbullah holds weapons. That's because no national debate on political reform can take place under those conditions. Which community will agree to make concessions when only one community has guns and rockets?

More troubling, however, is the fact that Hizbullah and the Aounists have repeatedly cast doubt on the Taif Accord - when they've paid attention to it at all. For disgruntled Christians to join Hizbullah in an anti-Taif alignment would be a tragedy. Taif is the only legitimate framework for political reform in Lebanon today, and the only protection Christians have if Sunnis and Shiites ever consider a review of communal prerogatives. On the other hand, if Sunnis and Shiites confront each other over such prerogatives, they might find it necessary, in an effort to avert open conflict between themselves, to arrive at an arrangement at the expense of the weaker parties: the Christians and almost certainly the Druze as well.

Since Suleiman is the man of the hour, it might be useful to ask what he thinks of Taif. If he becomes president, the likelihood is that he will draw to him many of the supporters that Michel Aoun had depended upon. Will he reconcile them with Taif? A Suleiman presidency would surely represent Aoun's political elimination. But Aoun's fate is immaterial; the real question is whether Suleiman will help solidify a free Lebanon, one in which the Christian community would be less weighed down by Aoun's sectarian paranoia. Or will Michel Suleiman try to do what Emile Lahoud failed to do and stabilize Lebanon under a new form of Pax Syriana?

Maybe then Michel Aoun would think twice before accusing his followers of wanting to "end up with the Syrians." He tried to play the Syrian game, and may have just lost. For the second time in two decades he drove the Christians into the ground. Now someone else may have the opportunity to save the community, or repeat the same mistake that Aoun did.

Score this round for March 14

Lebanon is looking into the abyss; it is in the throes of a political crisis that everyone has announced might bring on catastrophe. March 14 is on its final feet, wracked by division. If you think all this is true then here’s a less apocalyptic account of what has just happened on the presidency.

March 14 has won this round. Senior leaders of the majority coalition had peddled the idea that a presidential vacuum was what Syria desired the most. As one politician put it to me last week, Syria fooled several gullible French envoys to ensure that no president would be elected, thus leaving a hole at the top that Damascus hoped to exploit to make the security situation more volatile. Indeed, when the official Syrian daily Tishrin last week threatened chaos in Lebanon because of the election, you knew the Assad regime was itching to raise the heat through the instability card.

However, that’s only half the story. The fact that a presidential election did not happen may have been precisely what the majority, or certain leaders in the majority, intended - and justifiably so. They understood that Syria’s priority was not a vacuum, but getting elected a president who would advance its interests. There never was an incentive for March 14 to hand the keys of Baabda over to a weak president, then surrender veto power to the opposition in a new government while Nabih Berri remained speaker of Parliament. The apparent divisions in the anti-Syrian coalition, between a Walid Jumblatt backing Michel Edde, a Saad Hariri backing Robert Ghanem, and a Samir Geagea enthused with neither, were likely not as sharp as they looked. Jumblatt didn’t want Edde. He used him to create a bogus crisis with Hariri (who was perhaps complicit) to help block the reckless French initiative and turn the tables on Syria.

Here is what March 14 has gained. Fouad Siniora remains prime minister of a government without a president to hinder its activities and that the opposition cannot readily remove by force. Why? Because if it were to try doing so, this might lead to a destructive Sunni-Shiite clash that both Hizbullah and the Hariri camp want to avoid. Sunnis and Shiites cannot afford to come to blows over a Christian presidency.

Second, if the opposition were to resort to violence against the Siniora government, not only would this provoke an angry response in the mostly Sunni Arab world, the March 14 majority would be galvanized enough, and would receive the international backing it requires, to elect a president by an absolute majority. As one European diplomat put it: Whichever side fires first in the standoff is bound to be the loser.

March 14 can also rejoice that Emile Lahoud has finally gone, leaving behind a wet firecracker as his last act. Too many people mistakenly interpreted his farewell announcement Friday as a declaration of a state of emergency. It was nothing of the sort. Lahoud’s statement was without effect, and was quickly nullified by the army’s reaction, suggesting that the former president was already calculating that he or his family might pay a price for a reckless decision to leave bedlam behind him. Hizbullah urged him to form a second government, but in the end Lahoud got cold feet, no longer protected by his presidential immunity.

A third gain of March 14 is that, absent a presidential election, a conflict-ridden negotiation over the formation of a new government has been momentarily delayed. None of the majority’s leaders were keen to give up the one branch of government they still control in favor of a protracted dispute over a new government, which would have provoked far more hostility than exists today - at least until they could get a president they consider reliable. There seems to be no middle ground today between Hizbullah and Michel Aoun on the one hand, and the March 14 coalition on the other. A new government would be a pretext for greater discord. That may explain why even the opposition parties, particularly Hizbullah, allowed the Friday deadline to pass without incident: It could be that everybody had an interest in calming the situation before the next phase.

So Lahoud is gone, Siniora is still in, and the opposition has few serious options to alter the stalemate without risking war. Is that so a bad result for the majority coalition? Not if the time gained can be put to good use, because the victory is only tactical. From the March 14 perspective, that time might allow the Hariri tribunal to be set up so that, if the latter gains momentum, it would provide the majority with a context required to gain leverage for the election of a new president closer to its ambitions.

More likely, the majority is banking on the outcome of the Annapolis conference tomorrow. There has been much talk in Beirut that the United States is rewarding Syria by inviting it to the conference. This is too shortsighted a reading. A Syria compelled to make peace is a Syria that must redefine its relationship with Hizbullah. Annapolis may become a trap for Damascus: If there is progress on its track with Israel, Syria might be locked into a process from which one can derive concessions on Lebanon. If, conversely, Syria does nothing to help Annapolis succeed, it will find itself more targeted than ever in the region. Some reports suggest that Jordan’s King Abdullah recently warned President Bashar Assad that the peace conference was his last chance to break out of his isolation.

One thing is certain: The dynamics of the Lebanese presidential election have changed. The status quo is now to the disadvantage of the opposition. Very soon opposition groups will be the ones demanding a presidential election to be rid of Siniora. Once they do so they will be in a position of vulnerability, since March 14 still controls the parliamentary majority and will be inviting the opposition blocs to come down to Parliament for an open vote. At the least, March 14 has greater latitude today to agree to a compromise candidate it feels more comfortable with.

But there is a problem in the argument: The Syrians will not allow such a scenario to be played out if their pre-Annapolis flexibility leads them nowhere. Iranian intentions are also unclear, and quite worrisome. How long can Siniora remain in office before Hizbullah and the Aounists begin raising the heat? Violence, whether assassinations or demonstrations, can intervene to alter the calculations on all sides.

There is also the fact that an indefinite period without a president will rile up the Christians. Whether it is Michel Aoun or Michel Suleiman who takes advantage of this anger is irrelevant: Hariri and Jumblatt have to be careful not to discredit the Christians in their own coalition by leaving the presidency vacant for too long.

Whatever the outcome, March 14 had the last laugh last week, when French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and the other French emissaries offered Syria normalization in exchange for facilitating the Lebanese presidential election. It all came to naught and French diplomacy got burned, so that President Nicolas Sarkozy will now think twice before trusting Assad. The fact is that Syria, until now, has not been able to impose its man as president. Hizbullah’s followers may have to spend another chilly winter in their tents under the gaze of the detested Siniora. Score this round for March 14, then brace for a reaction.

Place the Hariri trial on a fast track

Place the Hariri trial on a fast track
Thursday, November 22, 2007

Those of us who welcomed the naming of Bernard Kouchner as foreign minister of France are wearing a hair shirt in penance. We deserve no better for having believed in a man with a scaffolding of recklessness to prop up a towering ego. Before his latest return to Lebanon - we've lost track of how many - he said this: "I realized that arriving at the last minute would be insufficient and that Lebanon merits more, even if this comes at the expense of my personal rest and my family life."

Super Kouchner to the rescue, and defying France's 35-hour working week on top of it! If only the minister were here to rescue Lebanon from a mess that he and his boss, President Nicolas Sarkozy, have been so instrumental in helping create (bizarrely, with Washington's bland acquiescence). On Monday, Kouchner held back from blaming the Syrians for blocking the French initiative on the presidency, but his government has made two critical mistakes in recent weeks in its dealings with Damascus, which Lebanon will pay dearly for.

The first was to formally bring Syria back into the Lebanese presidential election process, when United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 (which France co-sponsored) was designed to do the exact opposite. France pleaded with Syria to be flexible on the presidency, offering normalized relations in exchange. Syrian President Bashar Assad saw a golden opportunity to jack up his price on the panicking French, and we are where we are today, with Syria not only looking to capitalize on French eagerness, but also working to use that eagerness as leverage to bring in one of their favorites as Lebanese president.

The second mistake remains to be confirmed, but if confirmed it would be very dangerous. According to sources in Paris, when Sarkozy's envoys, Claude Gueant and Jean-David Levitte, met with Syrian officials, including Assad, in Damascus two weeks ago, they reportedly agreed that the Hariri tribunal was one of the issues that could be discussed if Syria fulfilled what was required of it in Lebanon. One version of the story is that the French made no specific commitments on the tribunal, merely affirming that if Syria satisfied certain conditions in Lebanon, including allowing a presidential election and other concessions that were less clear, then the matter of the tribunal would not be off the table. A second version was that the sides were more specific when it came to the tribunal.

The first version may be the more accurate one. By upping the ante on the French initiative, the Syrians have implied that any discussion of the tribunal, and doubtless much else, remained too vague to earn France a Lebanon deal. Nor would Sarkozy risk making commitments on an international tribunal over which he has little real power. However, even if this minimal interpretation of what the French allegedly said is true, it would be alarming, showing Assad that all Syria needs to do is pursue its destabilization of Lebanon to make the international community fold. If the thought of accepting a bargain on the tribunal is taken seriously, even though Syria has conceded nothing on Lebanese sovereignty and independence, then expect a return of Syrian hegemony over Lebanon.

What of the Hariri investigation and tribunal, which will be soon be headed by one Daniel Bellemare? The appointment is welcome but not reassuring. Bellemare has never managed a major international terrorist investigation and you have to wonder whether the UN could not find better than a former Canadian assistant deputy attorney general to handle so highly complex a political crime. That said, Bellemare deserves the benefit of the doubt and might surprise, given that Serge Brammertz passed through the Hariri investigation like a submarine, leaving little behind but an array of dry "technical" reports that, until now, have failed to name names. Why Brammertz agreed this month to become prosecutor of the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia when he should have prosecuted the case he has spent two years investigating may remain a mystery. However, it does make you wonder what the Belgian is all about.

For some time Brammertz has had his critics, while many journalists - present company included - have defended his discretion. It's time to give belated credit to the critics to ensure that Bellemare, whom Brammertz recommended, won't hesitate to name names soon. Rafik Hariri's elimination involved a wide array of means, both local and international, as Brammertz has argued many times. The investigator has implicitly pointed the finger at Syria on dozens of occasions in his reports, not least in his description of the motives for the assassination. Yet he has never mentioned specific states or individuals. But people somewhere did commit the crime and they need to be arrested. This elusiveness cannot continue without grave damage being done to the UN's credibility.

The international lawyer and presidential candidate Chibli Mallat probably put it best in a column written for this newspaper: "After two years of reports, the Lebanese and Syrian publics, and the world, are entitled to know more. Either the investigator has no evidence of the involvement of the Syrian leadership and its Lebanese allies - in which case [former UN investigator Detlev] Mehlis and the initial UN investigator of the case, Peter Fitzgerald, were wrong, and Brammertz should say so publicly ... or Brammertz thinks the conclusions of his predecessors were correct, and he must say so publicly."

However, even more withering is the assessment of a former official involved in the Hariri investigation. Describing the results of the two Brammertz years as "meager," the official noted that "apparently out of lack of professionalism" the current Hariri investigation team has actually fallen much behind what the previous Mehlis commission found. The official is equally critical of the UN (as well as the Lebanese judicial system and media) for "tolerating" Brammertz for so long and fears that there is a lack of international will to see the Hariri case through, as well as a more general absence of international interest in Lebanon.

So severe a verdict hardly implies that Syria is out of the woods. But it is a needed warning shot. The Brammertz reports, while bureaucratically safe, have all pointed at a single overriding culprit. The Belgian may not have wanted to take risks, but Bellemare will find that unavoidable if he prosecutes the case. Mehlis and Fitzgerald made it clear whom they thought were behind Hariri's murder, and nothing in Brammertz's reports has contradicted their findings. If anything, the information from the UN commission in the past two years has confirmed previous assumptions.

That's why the UN must ensure that Bellemare has what it takes to carry the Hariri trial to a satisfactory conclusion. The tribunal's legal framework is such that it can begin operating while the investigation continues, in the event the latter is still not over. There is no need to wait for the investigation to end before handing down formal accusations. No one will stop the tribunal, but it can be delayed and has been; its effectiveness can be watered down and has been; its judges and staff can be swayed or threatened. Hopefully, when it's all over, the international community will not have spent hundreds of millions of dollars just to get something like the Lockerbie deal that exonerated Libya's Moammar Gadhafi.

However, it's difficult to relax when a central player in the final chapter of that international whitewash was Nicolas Sarkozy. Even though Syria has been trashing France's Lebanon plan, Sarkozy called Assad on Tuesday and is still sending his men to Damascus to chat up the Syrian president. Assad is fast learning just how boneless his Western counterparts can be when negotiating with Arab dictators.