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Since July, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, set up to try the assassins of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, has occupied all the political space in Beirut. That won't end soon, as the indictment process, once it begins, could take months, after which the tribunal will prepare for the trial - probably in autumn.
Until now, the prosecutor of the tribunal Daniel Bellemare has yet to present draft indictments to the pre-trial judge Daniel Fransen, who must confirm them in writing. Mr Bellemare is on vacation, and once he returns to The Hague, presumably he will need more time to finalise his case before sending draft indictments on. If, and here we are being optimistic, he does so by the middle of January, officials at the tribunal do not expect confirmations before March or April.
During this period, an important development is likely to take place. The bylaws of the tribunal allow Mr Fransen to accelerate the confirmation phase by transmitting legal queries he might have to the appeals chamber for discussion. The hearings are public, and even if none of the indicted will be named, observers will get a sense of the tenor of the case through the subjects debated. Lebanese actors, like states involved in Lebanon's affairs, will be watching carefully to stake out their political positions before formal indictments are released.
Throughout the latter part of this year, the special tribunal has become a crucial instrument in a wider power game for control of Lebanon. This has principally affected, and been shaped by, the intricate triangular relationship between Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia. The divided Lebanese, their allegiances offered to one or several of these states, have been turned into, or rather have turned themselves into, a political football, their destiny defined by outsiders.
During the past year, Saudi Arabia has sought to ease Syria's political return to Lebanon in the hope that this would contain Iran's growing influence in the country, and that of Hizbollah. Last summer, King Abdullah flew to Beirut with Syria's President Bashar Assad in a clear message along these lines to the Iranians. Hizbollah was visibly displeased, and soon thereafter the party appeared to play a key role in provoking a military confrontation between friendly units of the Lebanese army and Israeli soldiers along the southern border, as if to show that the party had the final say on Lebanon's stability.
Mr Assad was delighted to be brought into the mix by the Saudi king, as it allowed him to exploit Saudi-Iranian disagreements to Syria's advantage. The Syrian president will not break with Tehran or allow Hizbollah to be decisively weakened by the tribunal, but he wants to regain the paramount role that Syria had in Lebanon before 2005, when the Hariri killing forced its army out of the country. To do that, Mr Assad needs to take back political and security levers held by Iran, which, through Hizbollah, controls the ground in Lebanon.
In October, Iran organised its rejoinder to the Assad-Abdullah visit, when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Lebanon. The symbolism of the trip left no doubt that Tehran regarded itself as the dominant actor on the Lebanese scene. This confidence was echoed by Iran's ambassador in Beirut the following month, in an interview with the daily Al Hayat. He was asked in a roundabout way whether Syria was not more entitled than Iran to have the greater say in Lebanon. The ambassador evaded the question, before pointing out that the relationship between Lebanon and Iran was an ancient one.
The tribunal is at the heart of this interplay of interests. Iran and Hizbollah want the Lebanese government to discredit the institution and terminate cooperation with it. Syria concurs, fearing the tribunal might undermine Hizbollah and perhaps point the finger at Syrian officials. But just as Mr Assad does not want to lose the Hizbollah card, he does not want Hizbollah to cripple Lebanon's prime minister, Saad Hariri, politically, since Damascus gains by playing the Lebanese parties off against one another. This has injected an unstable equilibrium in Beirut.
In late December, Syria and Saudi Arabia were still reportedly negotiating an accord to end the impasse over the tribunal, which has led to Hizbollah and its allies' refusal to attend Lebanese cabinet sessions unless ministers first agree to the transfer of the so-called "false witnesses" file to the Lebanese judiciary. Hizbollah has claimed that the special tribunal's evidence will be based on manipulated witness testimony, and has insisted that the matter be dealt with by Lebanon's Judicial Council. In fact, this is a red herring. There is no evidence that the tribunal will hear such testimony at all. Hizbollah's real objective is to create a parallel legal route inside Lebanon that would delegitimise the tribunal in The Hague.
Last week, an unidentified American official issued a warning in an Al Hayat interview that any Syrian-Saudi effort to impair Lebanese support for the tribunal would constitute "blackmail". This seemed directed primarily at Riyadh, which has considerable sway over Mr Hariri, who would be called upon to lead any assault on the tribunal approved by Syria and Saudi Arabia. The American statement could have a freezing effect on Syrian-Saudi discussions, whose results Iran must first endorse to become effective.
For now, Lebanon is caught up in a stalemate, despite claims that a breakthrough on the "false witnesses" front may come in the new year. The conflicting aims of the parties make broad agreement difficult, after which the dynamics of the tribunal may take over. There are no guarantees that Mr Bellemare will win his case or even prepare persuasive indictments. However, the legal avenue may be less important today than the political manoeuvring attached to it, with the Lebanese subordinate decision-makers in their own narrative.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
A White House clueless on Syria
Barack Obama did it. With Congress in recess, the United States president confirmed the appointment of several ambassadors, including the ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, whose approval had been held up by the Senate. The decision is not only bound to anger Republicans, who now hold a majority in the House of Representatives, it also happens to be remarkably foolish.
Let’s go back to one of the leaked American diplomatic cables to bring home why. The cable, dated February 2009, was prepared by the US Embassy in Paris, and recounted a meeting with the French diplomatic troubleshooter, and former ambassador to Syria, Jean-Claude Cousseran, in which he discussed engaging Syria.
The meeting took place a year after Cousseran and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner sought to facilitate the election of a Lebanese president once Emile Lahoud’s term ended. The mediation effort failed because of Syrian intransigence, and Cousseran offered this advice to the Americans, according to Mark Pekala, the deputy chief of mission, who signed the cable: “[He] urged that Washington should ‘get something tangible’ from the Syrian regime. He cautioned that the Syrians were masters of avoiding any real concessions and were adept at showering visitors with wonderful atmospherics and delightful conversations before sending them away empty handed.”
This was very sound counsel, which Obama has basically ignored by dispatching Ford to Damascus for nothing tangible. The administration has yet to explain convincingly why it would willingly risk congressional ire in order to ram through an appointment that is bound to leave Washington empty-handed.
In the cable, Pekala went on to report that Cousseran also cautioned Washington against over-reaching: “If the U.S. were to aim for something too difficult, such as urging Syria to sever its ties to Hamas or Hizballah, than [sic] it would get nowhere,” the diplomat said.
No doubt the French envoy was correct. There is a structural difficulty hindering better American-Syrian relations: Washington wants to engage Syria so that it will give up on alliances that the Syrians will never willingly surrender, because doing so would so weaken Damascus politically that it would defeat the very purpose of engagement. Syrian President Bashar Assad always wanted Obama to yield, but refused to offer anything substantial in return. By sending Ford, the president fell magnificently into the Syrian leader’s trap.
Against congressional opposition, the administration offered a lukewarm defense of Ford’s appointment, with officials stating that it would allow Washington to get its message to Damascus more clearly. Nonsense. There are plenty of ways to transmit messages to Syria without legitimizing the fact that in the five years since the previous ambassador was withdrawn, following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the Assad regime has not budged on issues the US considers important—whether Lebanon, inter-Palestinian affairs, Iraq, Syrian cooperation with Iran and Hezbollah, and negotiations with Israel.
But worse, if Cousseran is right, namely that the US must not overreach by asking Syria to cut its ties to Hezbollah and Hamas, that only begs the question: What is the Obama administration entitled to ask of Syria? No explicit answer whatsoever has come out of the White House and State Department. And with uncertainty filling the thick Potomac air, what is Washington’s broader Syria strategy anyway? If Ford is a mailbox, what specific ideas will he be relaying?
There really are none. Obama has a wish list. He still hopes for a breakthrough in Arab-Israeli negotiations, and wants someone in Damascus to ease the process. But the president has done things in reverse. He should have sent Ford to Syria in exchange for a solid concession from Assad—perhaps Syrian acceptance of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections, which Damascus has refused to sanction; or maybe Syrian consent to the return of direct negotiations with Israel; or at least participation in a high-profile event that would help inject life into the Syrian-Israeli talks. The problem is that neither Syria nor Israel is keen to engage in bilateral moves, because the Syrian-Israeli track is moribund. Alive or dead, it made no sense for Obama to throw away a card he should have made Syria pay for.
It is not as if the US is unaware of Syrian intentions. Last week, an American official issued a pointed warning to Syria and Saudi Arabia that they should not reach any accord over Lebanon that might undermine the tribunal formed to indentify and punish Rafik Hariri’s killers. Syria has fought tooth and nail to obstruct the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which Washington supports, and recently intensified those efforts. And yet at the same moment, Obama sends Ford to Damascus, as if to say that whatever the Assad regime does, even taking measures that America opposes, it will be rewarded.
Obama would answer that he had a small window of opportunity in which to put Ford on a flight to Syria, before Congress reconvened, so he took his shot. A laudable rationale for an important decision: Let time pressures, and sneakiness, guide your foreign policy. Here’s a wager: Ford will cool his heels in Damascus without achieving much, because Assad got what he wanted, and is now in a position to stall Washington interminably. He won’t have to forfeit anything, because Obama has not a clue about what he really expects from Syria.
Let’s go back to one of the leaked American diplomatic cables to bring home why. The cable, dated February 2009, was prepared by the US Embassy in Paris, and recounted a meeting with the French diplomatic troubleshooter, and former ambassador to Syria, Jean-Claude Cousseran, in which he discussed engaging Syria.
The meeting took place a year after Cousseran and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner sought to facilitate the election of a Lebanese president once Emile Lahoud’s term ended. The mediation effort failed because of Syrian intransigence, and Cousseran offered this advice to the Americans, according to Mark Pekala, the deputy chief of mission, who signed the cable: “[He] urged that Washington should ‘get something tangible’ from the Syrian regime. He cautioned that the Syrians were masters of avoiding any real concessions and were adept at showering visitors with wonderful atmospherics and delightful conversations before sending them away empty handed.”
This was very sound counsel, which Obama has basically ignored by dispatching Ford to Damascus for nothing tangible. The administration has yet to explain convincingly why it would willingly risk congressional ire in order to ram through an appointment that is bound to leave Washington empty-handed.
In the cable, Pekala went on to report that Cousseran also cautioned Washington against over-reaching: “If the U.S. were to aim for something too difficult, such as urging Syria to sever its ties to Hamas or Hizballah, than [sic] it would get nowhere,” the diplomat said.
No doubt the French envoy was correct. There is a structural difficulty hindering better American-Syrian relations: Washington wants to engage Syria so that it will give up on alliances that the Syrians will never willingly surrender, because doing so would so weaken Damascus politically that it would defeat the very purpose of engagement. Syrian President Bashar Assad always wanted Obama to yield, but refused to offer anything substantial in return. By sending Ford, the president fell magnificently into the Syrian leader’s trap.
Against congressional opposition, the administration offered a lukewarm defense of Ford’s appointment, with officials stating that it would allow Washington to get its message to Damascus more clearly. Nonsense. There are plenty of ways to transmit messages to Syria without legitimizing the fact that in the five years since the previous ambassador was withdrawn, following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the Assad regime has not budged on issues the US considers important—whether Lebanon, inter-Palestinian affairs, Iraq, Syrian cooperation with Iran and Hezbollah, and negotiations with Israel.
But worse, if Cousseran is right, namely that the US must not overreach by asking Syria to cut its ties to Hezbollah and Hamas, that only begs the question: What is the Obama administration entitled to ask of Syria? No explicit answer whatsoever has come out of the White House and State Department. And with uncertainty filling the thick Potomac air, what is Washington’s broader Syria strategy anyway? If Ford is a mailbox, what specific ideas will he be relaying?
There really are none. Obama has a wish list. He still hopes for a breakthrough in Arab-Israeli negotiations, and wants someone in Damascus to ease the process. But the president has done things in reverse. He should have sent Ford to Syria in exchange for a solid concession from Assad—perhaps Syrian acceptance of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections, which Damascus has refused to sanction; or maybe Syrian consent to the return of direct negotiations with Israel; or at least participation in a high-profile event that would help inject life into the Syrian-Israeli talks. The problem is that neither Syria nor Israel is keen to engage in bilateral moves, because the Syrian-Israeli track is moribund. Alive or dead, it made no sense for Obama to throw away a card he should have made Syria pay for.
It is not as if the US is unaware of Syrian intentions. Last week, an American official issued a pointed warning to Syria and Saudi Arabia that they should not reach any accord over Lebanon that might undermine the tribunal formed to indentify and punish Rafik Hariri’s killers. Syria has fought tooth and nail to obstruct the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which Washington supports, and recently intensified those efforts. And yet at the same moment, Obama sends Ford to Damascus, as if to say that whatever the Assad regime does, even taking measures that America opposes, it will be rewarded.
Obama would answer that he had a small window of opportunity in which to put Ford on a flight to Syria, before Congress reconvened, so he took his shot. A laudable rationale for an important decision: Let time pressures, and sneakiness, guide your foreign policy. Here’s a wager: Ford will cool his heels in Damascus without achieving much, because Assad got what he wanted, and is now in a position to stall Washington interminably. He won’t have to forfeit anything, because Obama has not a clue about what he really expects from Syria.
Ahead, a Syrian-Saudi obstacle course
The Syrian-Saudi initiative is like the abominable snowman. Some people claim to have seen it; some can even describe it. But proceed to the frozen wastelands where the creature was supposedly spotted last, and you only find snow, nothing more substantial.
There is no doubt that the Syrians and the Saudis are exchanging ideas on a new modus vivendi in Lebanon. We know this from the fact that an unidentified American official took the trouble last week, through the Saudi-owned daily Al-Hayat, to warn against any steps the two countries might take to undermine the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. But what are the particulars of their discussions?
Here and there we will get useful sound-bites. An Arabic diplomatic source told The Daily Star, in remarks published Wednesday, that Damascus and Riyadh were discussing a package deal. The pact would encompass the special tribunal, Syrian arrest warrants against Lebanese considered close to Prime Minister Saad Hariri, as well as a possible change in government with Hariri remaining in office, and an overhaul of Lebanon’s security and judicial hierarchies.
This seems awfully close to a Syrian interpretation of the talks to be entirely convincing. Here is why. Most revealing is the last thought, namely transformation of the security services and the judiciary. Even with a glass eye one can easily discern which party controls the major security posts. It is equally useful to recall that the Syrians have played a crucial role in blocking administrative and diplomatic appointments during the past year. The reality is that any changes in the military and in the major security agencies – the top leadership posts of the army and military intelligence, as well as of the General Security directorate, airport security, and so on – would principally affect individuals close to Hizbullah. And for Syria and Saudi Arabia to take from Hizbullah, Iran would first have to approve.
In public, pro-Syrian Lebanese spokesmen offer a slightly different reading. They will agree that a change in government is in the air, but will not admit to any divergences with Hizbullah. They will suggest that the political momentum is in Syria’s and Hizbullah’s favor, and that the government and the security services and other parts of the public administration must reflect this balance. Some will go so far as to hint that a complete revamping of the Lebanese political system is needed, one which grants the Shiite community more power.
Such ideas do not a Syrian-Saudi agreement make. In fact quite the contrary. Whatever Damascus and Riyadh consent to will not only have to pass Iranian muster, but also gain American approval. And if there are any doubts about the impediments, the deputy secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, Ali Bagheri, remarked Monday in Damascus that it was Hizbullah that would decide how to react to indictments issued by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. This seemed a careful way of stating that the Syrians and Saudis would be given latitude to cripple the tribunal, but that Tehran’s patience had limits.
Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, is engaged in a delicate balancing act. He is happy to gain from Saudi-Iranian tensions, but he also needs to ensure that he will not alienate either side. Assad is impatient to damage the special tribunal’s legitimacy, since he doesn’t want the institution to weaken Hizbullah or point the finger at Syrian officials. But he cannot allow Hizbullah to humiliate Hariri, as it did in May 2008, as this would harm Assad’s relationship with the Saudis, deny Syria the valuable Lebanese Sunni card it has spent years reclaiming, and only reinforce Iran’s role as the dominant actor in Beirut.
Assad probably believes that the Saudis will push Hariri some of the way, which is why he has reportedly urged them to approve measures to scuttle Lebanese cooperation with the tribunal. However, many of the recent leaks indicating that Hariri would soon agree to renounce the tribunal were really no more than disinformation, efforts to pressure the prime minister into bending in Syria’s direction. Yet for all these pressures, the rickety Hariri government remains standing and Syria’s allies have not yet seriously threatened to withdraw.
Then there is the United States. The Syrians and Saudis must not only consider how Iran views their deliberations, but also the way Washington will respond. Assad’s expectations for a breakthrough on the Syrian-Israeli front may be low, but that doesn’t mean the Syrian president can be reckless with regard to the Obama administration or Israel. For Assad, repairing Syria’s ties with Washington is necessary to provide him with options beyond his profitable, but also frequently demeaning and constraining, alliance with Iran. And Damascus needs to protect itself against the Israelis if they come to view Hizbullah as a strategic menace, leading to a Lebanon war that draws in Syria.
If Assad pushes too hard against the tribunal, to Hizbullah’s advantage, both the United States and Israel will begin fretting. Washington will not readily give up on an institution that might soon accuse Hizbullah (which is different than saying that the Americans are manipulating the indictments). Israel, in turn, will not look kindly on Lebanese measures shielding the party from a trial, thereby implicitly strengthening its military capacity, therefore Iran’s.
Here is the dizzyingly complicated context for the Syrian-Saudi talks, and such complexity seems a good reason to lower expectations about a breakthrough anytime soon. For what we have now are negotiations between two parties that have significant sway over Lebanese affairs, but not necessarily the final say. Whatever decisions they reach must still clear several hurdles, not one of which will be easy.
There is no doubt that the Syrians and the Saudis are exchanging ideas on a new modus vivendi in Lebanon. We know this from the fact that an unidentified American official took the trouble last week, through the Saudi-owned daily Al-Hayat, to warn against any steps the two countries might take to undermine the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. But what are the particulars of their discussions?
Here and there we will get useful sound-bites. An Arabic diplomatic source told The Daily Star, in remarks published Wednesday, that Damascus and Riyadh were discussing a package deal. The pact would encompass the special tribunal, Syrian arrest warrants against Lebanese considered close to Prime Minister Saad Hariri, as well as a possible change in government with Hariri remaining in office, and an overhaul of Lebanon’s security and judicial hierarchies.
This seems awfully close to a Syrian interpretation of the talks to be entirely convincing. Here is why. Most revealing is the last thought, namely transformation of the security services and the judiciary. Even with a glass eye one can easily discern which party controls the major security posts. It is equally useful to recall that the Syrians have played a crucial role in blocking administrative and diplomatic appointments during the past year. The reality is that any changes in the military and in the major security agencies – the top leadership posts of the army and military intelligence, as well as of the General Security directorate, airport security, and so on – would principally affect individuals close to Hizbullah. And for Syria and Saudi Arabia to take from Hizbullah, Iran would first have to approve.
In public, pro-Syrian Lebanese spokesmen offer a slightly different reading. They will agree that a change in government is in the air, but will not admit to any divergences with Hizbullah. They will suggest that the political momentum is in Syria’s and Hizbullah’s favor, and that the government and the security services and other parts of the public administration must reflect this balance. Some will go so far as to hint that a complete revamping of the Lebanese political system is needed, one which grants the Shiite community more power.
Such ideas do not a Syrian-Saudi agreement make. In fact quite the contrary. Whatever Damascus and Riyadh consent to will not only have to pass Iranian muster, but also gain American approval. And if there are any doubts about the impediments, the deputy secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, Ali Bagheri, remarked Monday in Damascus that it was Hizbullah that would decide how to react to indictments issued by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. This seemed a careful way of stating that the Syrians and Saudis would be given latitude to cripple the tribunal, but that Tehran’s patience had limits.
Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, is engaged in a delicate balancing act. He is happy to gain from Saudi-Iranian tensions, but he also needs to ensure that he will not alienate either side. Assad is impatient to damage the special tribunal’s legitimacy, since he doesn’t want the institution to weaken Hizbullah or point the finger at Syrian officials. But he cannot allow Hizbullah to humiliate Hariri, as it did in May 2008, as this would harm Assad’s relationship with the Saudis, deny Syria the valuable Lebanese Sunni card it has spent years reclaiming, and only reinforce Iran’s role as the dominant actor in Beirut.
Assad probably believes that the Saudis will push Hariri some of the way, which is why he has reportedly urged them to approve measures to scuttle Lebanese cooperation with the tribunal. However, many of the recent leaks indicating that Hariri would soon agree to renounce the tribunal were really no more than disinformation, efforts to pressure the prime minister into bending in Syria’s direction. Yet for all these pressures, the rickety Hariri government remains standing and Syria’s allies have not yet seriously threatened to withdraw.
Then there is the United States. The Syrians and Saudis must not only consider how Iran views their deliberations, but also the way Washington will respond. Assad’s expectations for a breakthrough on the Syrian-Israeli front may be low, but that doesn’t mean the Syrian president can be reckless with regard to the Obama administration or Israel. For Assad, repairing Syria’s ties with Washington is necessary to provide him with options beyond his profitable, but also frequently demeaning and constraining, alliance with Iran. And Damascus needs to protect itself against the Israelis if they come to view Hizbullah as a strategic menace, leading to a Lebanon war that draws in Syria.
If Assad pushes too hard against the tribunal, to Hizbullah’s advantage, both the United States and Israel will begin fretting. Washington will not readily give up on an institution that might soon accuse Hizbullah (which is different than saying that the Americans are manipulating the indictments). Israel, in turn, will not look kindly on Lebanese measures shielding the party from a trial, thereby implicitly strengthening its military capacity, therefore Iran’s.
Here is the dizzyingly complicated context for the Syrian-Saudi talks, and such complexity seems a good reason to lower expectations about a breakthrough anytime soon. For what we have now are negotiations between two parties that have significant sway over Lebanese affairs, but not necessarily the final say. Whatever decisions they reach must still clear several hurdles, not one of which will be easy.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Daniel Bellemare’s Christmas message
We didn’t get draft indictments as a Christmas gift from Daniel Bellemare, the prosecutor of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), but we did get a video. In a document posted on the tribunal’s website, Bellemare once again insisted that his work was not politicized, and that his only guide was the evidence available to him.
However, plainly there are others in Beirut and elsewhere in the Middle East who now view the tribunal as a political bargaining chip. Day in and day out, the prime minister, Saad Hariri, is pushed to deny or play down some media report or other claiming that he has given up on the institution, or is about to do so. Here is a sure sign that the haggling is continuing between the Syrians and the Saudis to finalize a formula that would end the Lebanese impasse over the tribunal.
These developments beg the question: Is there a political understanding that can be reached between the Lebanese, the Syrians and the Saudis that might undermine the special tribunal?
The question was at the heart of several notable pronouncements this week. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed all eventual decisions taken by the tribunal as “null and void.” The Syrian ambassador in Beirut, Ali Abdul Karim Ali, after saying that Syrian-Saudi contacts were continuing, added, “[but] the results should come from the parties in Lebanon through the responsiveness and consensus they reach between themselves, away from the media.”
An unidentified US official told Lebanese daily Al-Hayat in comments published on Thursday that Washington had received no news of a Syrian-Saudi deal, but added that if such a deal were reached at the tribunal’s expense, it would constitute “blackmail.” The official observed that the tribunal was “an international mechanism that could not be eliminated or subjected to political bargaining,” before pointedly describing it as “Lebanon’s best hope to garner international support to transcend its tragic and bloody history of political violence.”
The statements from the US official seemed an implicit warning to the Saudis, based on the fear that some arrangement was being negotiated. Nor would the statement this week by Hezbollah MP Mohammad Raad have reassured Washington. Raad said his party would be willing to compromise in the “false witnesses” dispute, after he confirmed Syrian-Saudi efforts to resolve the political deadlock.
What does all this mean? If the Americans are subtly raising the heat against their allies in Beirut and Riyadh, that may imply they smell a rat. That Mohammad Raad has offered to be flexible might be a signal that progress is being made between Syria and Saudi Arabia, explaining why Hezbollah is willing to offer concessions of its own to find a consensus – the same consensus the Syrian ambassador has urged the Lebanese to achieve through compromise. Or this brouhaha could be maneuvering because Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has left hospital, and all sides expect Syrian-Saudi negotiations to resume in earnest.
The bottom line, however, is that Bellemare’s assurances that the tribunal is not politicized does not signify that politics cannot get the better of the court. Lebanon will try to avoid taking the drastic measures required to cripple the tribunal – withdrawing the Lebanese judges, cutting funding and cooperation, and denouncing the institution as politicized — since the international repercussions would be severe. But even lesser measures agreed between the Lebanese parties under foreign sponsorship, for example casting doubt on essential aspects of the tribunal’s work, could hinder the trial process.
For instance, once the trial begins, the willingness of new witnesses to come forward and the readiness of the Lebanese security forces to arrest suspects, uncover new leads, or simply assist tribunal investigators when interviewing witnesses, will be substantially shaped by the prevailing mood among the Lebanese authorities. If the government appears increasingly lukewarm to tribunal affairs, this would have a negative bearing on how the Lebanese respond to the possibilities opened up by the new dynamics the trial will release.
It’s no great secret what serious Syrian-Saudi negotiations represent to each side. The Saudis hope to strengthen Damascus’ power in Lebanon to better contain Iran and Hezbollah. The Syrians want that too, of course, and something substantial from Saad Hariri in the way of denting the tribunal’s integrity. Hezbollah has demanded the same, in exchange for unblocking the cabinet. Damascus and Riyadh may fail to come to an accord, one that Iran must first approve anyway for it to work, but there is little doubt what the bottom line is for each side.
Daniel Bellemare should be conscious of what is taking place around him. No one can blame the prosecutor for avoiding political skirmishing; his focus is on the legal dimensions of his case. But given a happening as fundamentally political as the Hariri assassination, the prosecutor cannot be blind to politics. To strengthen his hand, he will have to help ensure that Beirut remains squarely on the tribunal’s side.
However, plainly there are others in Beirut and elsewhere in the Middle East who now view the tribunal as a political bargaining chip. Day in and day out, the prime minister, Saad Hariri, is pushed to deny or play down some media report or other claiming that he has given up on the institution, or is about to do so. Here is a sure sign that the haggling is continuing between the Syrians and the Saudis to finalize a formula that would end the Lebanese impasse over the tribunal.
These developments beg the question: Is there a political understanding that can be reached between the Lebanese, the Syrians and the Saudis that might undermine the special tribunal?
The question was at the heart of several notable pronouncements this week. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed all eventual decisions taken by the tribunal as “null and void.” The Syrian ambassador in Beirut, Ali Abdul Karim Ali, after saying that Syrian-Saudi contacts were continuing, added, “[but] the results should come from the parties in Lebanon through the responsiveness and consensus they reach between themselves, away from the media.”
An unidentified US official told Lebanese daily Al-Hayat in comments published on Thursday that Washington had received no news of a Syrian-Saudi deal, but added that if such a deal were reached at the tribunal’s expense, it would constitute “blackmail.” The official observed that the tribunal was “an international mechanism that could not be eliminated or subjected to political bargaining,” before pointedly describing it as “Lebanon’s best hope to garner international support to transcend its tragic and bloody history of political violence.”
The statements from the US official seemed an implicit warning to the Saudis, based on the fear that some arrangement was being negotiated. Nor would the statement this week by Hezbollah MP Mohammad Raad have reassured Washington. Raad said his party would be willing to compromise in the “false witnesses” dispute, after he confirmed Syrian-Saudi efforts to resolve the political deadlock.
What does all this mean? If the Americans are subtly raising the heat against their allies in Beirut and Riyadh, that may imply they smell a rat. That Mohammad Raad has offered to be flexible might be a signal that progress is being made between Syria and Saudi Arabia, explaining why Hezbollah is willing to offer concessions of its own to find a consensus – the same consensus the Syrian ambassador has urged the Lebanese to achieve through compromise. Or this brouhaha could be maneuvering because Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has left hospital, and all sides expect Syrian-Saudi negotiations to resume in earnest.
The bottom line, however, is that Bellemare’s assurances that the tribunal is not politicized does not signify that politics cannot get the better of the court. Lebanon will try to avoid taking the drastic measures required to cripple the tribunal – withdrawing the Lebanese judges, cutting funding and cooperation, and denouncing the institution as politicized — since the international repercussions would be severe. But even lesser measures agreed between the Lebanese parties under foreign sponsorship, for example casting doubt on essential aspects of the tribunal’s work, could hinder the trial process.
For instance, once the trial begins, the willingness of new witnesses to come forward and the readiness of the Lebanese security forces to arrest suspects, uncover new leads, or simply assist tribunal investigators when interviewing witnesses, will be substantially shaped by the prevailing mood among the Lebanese authorities. If the government appears increasingly lukewarm to tribunal affairs, this would have a negative bearing on how the Lebanese respond to the possibilities opened up by the new dynamics the trial will release.
It’s no great secret what serious Syrian-Saudi negotiations represent to each side. The Saudis hope to strengthen Damascus’ power in Lebanon to better contain Iran and Hezbollah. The Syrians want that too, of course, and something substantial from Saad Hariri in the way of denting the tribunal’s integrity. Hezbollah has demanded the same, in exchange for unblocking the cabinet. Damascus and Riyadh may fail to come to an accord, one that Iran must first approve anyway for it to work, but there is little doubt what the bottom line is for each side.
Daniel Bellemare should be conscious of what is taking place around him. No one can blame the prosecutor for avoiding political skirmishing; his focus is on the legal dimensions of his case. But given a happening as fundamentally political as the Hariri assassination, the prosecutor cannot be blind to politics. To strengthen his hand, he will have to help ensure that Beirut remains squarely on the tribunal’s side.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Defining success in the Lebanon tribunal
In an effort to be more transparent, this week officials responsible for outreach at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon sought to clarify for journalists the probable timeframe leading up to the formal issuing of indictments in the assassination of the former prime minister, Rafik Hariri. The Lebanese should not hold their breath.
You might have already noticed, but the prosecutor of the tribunal, Daniel Bellemare, took his end-of-year vacation without transmitting draft indictments to Daniel Fransen, the pretrial judge. The assumption at the institution is that he will do so soon. However, one must be realistic: If Bellemare failed to hand anything over before heading home for Christmas, it is not likely he will do so right after his return. Let’s assume optimistically, therefore, that the prosecutor gives Fransen draft indictments in mid-January, what happens then?
The estimation at the tribunal is that the pretrial judge will take at least 6-10 weeks, perhaps longer, to confirm the indictments in writing. That means we will not see anything final with respect to the accusations before March, or even April, if Bellemare meets a mid-January deadline. Fransen has the latitude to dismiss all or certain charges, or to ask for more evidence, which could add to the time needed for the tribunal to present confirmed indictments.
During the period when he is considering the draft indictments, Fransen has the option of accelerating proceedings by asking the appeals chamber to consider certain matters of law pertaining to the case. The pretrial judge will quite possibly take advantage of this rule, which involves holding public hearings. While no one would be named in these hearings, something would inevitably be revealed by the tenor of the legal discussions, which would provide the first real hint of the direction and substance of the prosecution’s case.
Until the formal confirmation of the indictments by Fransen, the contents will remain confidential. Once the confirmed indictments are issued, the names of the indicted will probably be made public, although in exceptional circumstances the prosecution or the defense might request that an indictment be sealed. Lawyers believe that naming the indicted publicly would become unavoidable if the tribunal has to take steps to conduct the trial in absentia, as the Lebanese authorities will, first, have to be notified of their identities.
Although Hizbullah and its allies have accused the court of being “politicized,” spokespersons for the institution insist that the only timetable employees are working on is a legal timetable. The continued delay in Bellemare’s finalization of draft indictments would seem to confirm that point. It was obvious months ago that the president of the tribunal, Antonio Cassese, was seeking to push the prosecutor to complete his preliminary indictments before the end of the year. He was forced to backtrack, doubtless at Bellemare’s insistence. In this context it is legitimate to wonder where and why there is a holdup. Does the prosecutor have evidence strong enough to prepare indictments that can pass Fransen’s muster?
Some experienced observers ask another pointed question. What happens if none of the indicted are in court once the trial begins? The expectation was always that somebody would be standing in the dock, even if not all the accused were. However, how can the tribunal function effectively, and credibly, if the entire trial is conducted in absentia? How would the defense coordinate its actions on behalf of the accused? And how might the absence of the indicted impact on Bellemare’s case, if he relies substantially on circumstantial evidence?
There is a risk the trial could become a virtual exercise, its proceedings detached from the reality of the Hariri assassination. Not only would that damage the tribunal’s integrity, it would undermine a principal purpose justifying the establishment five years ago of a Lebanese-international investigative and legal mechanism: bolstering Lebanon’s judiciary and ending impunity for political killings.
If I were related to someone killed or injured in the succession of murders and bomb attacks during and after 2005, I would have to start questioning whether the special tribunal will ever give me satisfaction. For some lawyers, the legal process itself is the measure of its own success. In other words a tribunal was set up, following an international investigation; the proper norms and regulations were respected; and the accused will be granted due process. Whether or not the trial leads to the guilty, and punishes them, is less vital than the fact that the institution fulfilled the role it was set up to fulfill.
From a strictly legal standpoint, that is perfectly defensible. Ultimately, tribunals are not formed under the condition that someone must necessarily be found guilty, except perhaps in totalitarian systems. Due process allows for the alternative that someone who stands accused might be declared innocent.
However, does that apply if the investigation leading up to the trial was flawed? In other words, if the United Nations inquiry was intentionally stalled, or simply conducted incompetently at a given stage, can we still take so detached, so academic, a view that only the good conduct of the trial matters? The investigation and the trial were always organically related; shortcomings in the first were necessarily going to impact the second. One cannot artificially separate the two.
And what of the human cost? Trials are not intellectual competitions, particularly criminal trials. People were killed by other people and many have suffered. It was always the right of the families of the victims to expect that everything would be done to ensure that the guilty would be identified and punished. Has everything been done to achieve that outcome? Only an affirmative answer should be the benchmark for success when the special tribunal eventually closes its doors; not the issuing of indictments or scholastic pride in a remote legal process that ends up in a cul-de-sac before an empty courtroom.
You might have already noticed, but the prosecutor of the tribunal, Daniel Bellemare, took his end-of-year vacation without transmitting draft indictments to Daniel Fransen, the pretrial judge. The assumption at the institution is that he will do so soon. However, one must be realistic: If Bellemare failed to hand anything over before heading home for Christmas, it is not likely he will do so right after his return. Let’s assume optimistically, therefore, that the prosecutor gives Fransen draft indictments in mid-January, what happens then?
The estimation at the tribunal is that the pretrial judge will take at least 6-10 weeks, perhaps longer, to confirm the indictments in writing. That means we will not see anything final with respect to the accusations before March, or even April, if Bellemare meets a mid-January deadline. Fransen has the latitude to dismiss all or certain charges, or to ask for more evidence, which could add to the time needed for the tribunal to present confirmed indictments.
During the period when he is considering the draft indictments, Fransen has the option of accelerating proceedings by asking the appeals chamber to consider certain matters of law pertaining to the case. The pretrial judge will quite possibly take advantage of this rule, which involves holding public hearings. While no one would be named in these hearings, something would inevitably be revealed by the tenor of the legal discussions, which would provide the first real hint of the direction and substance of the prosecution’s case.
Until the formal confirmation of the indictments by Fransen, the contents will remain confidential. Once the confirmed indictments are issued, the names of the indicted will probably be made public, although in exceptional circumstances the prosecution or the defense might request that an indictment be sealed. Lawyers believe that naming the indicted publicly would become unavoidable if the tribunal has to take steps to conduct the trial in absentia, as the Lebanese authorities will, first, have to be notified of their identities.
Although Hizbullah and its allies have accused the court of being “politicized,” spokespersons for the institution insist that the only timetable employees are working on is a legal timetable. The continued delay in Bellemare’s finalization of draft indictments would seem to confirm that point. It was obvious months ago that the president of the tribunal, Antonio Cassese, was seeking to push the prosecutor to complete his preliminary indictments before the end of the year. He was forced to backtrack, doubtless at Bellemare’s insistence. In this context it is legitimate to wonder where and why there is a holdup. Does the prosecutor have evidence strong enough to prepare indictments that can pass Fransen’s muster?
Some experienced observers ask another pointed question. What happens if none of the indicted are in court once the trial begins? The expectation was always that somebody would be standing in the dock, even if not all the accused were. However, how can the tribunal function effectively, and credibly, if the entire trial is conducted in absentia? How would the defense coordinate its actions on behalf of the accused? And how might the absence of the indicted impact on Bellemare’s case, if he relies substantially on circumstantial evidence?
There is a risk the trial could become a virtual exercise, its proceedings detached from the reality of the Hariri assassination. Not only would that damage the tribunal’s integrity, it would undermine a principal purpose justifying the establishment five years ago of a Lebanese-international investigative and legal mechanism: bolstering Lebanon’s judiciary and ending impunity for political killings.
If I were related to someone killed or injured in the succession of murders and bomb attacks during and after 2005, I would have to start questioning whether the special tribunal will ever give me satisfaction. For some lawyers, the legal process itself is the measure of its own success. In other words a tribunal was set up, following an international investigation; the proper norms and regulations were respected; and the accused will be granted due process. Whether or not the trial leads to the guilty, and punishes them, is less vital than the fact that the institution fulfilled the role it was set up to fulfill.
From a strictly legal standpoint, that is perfectly defensible. Ultimately, tribunals are not formed under the condition that someone must necessarily be found guilty, except perhaps in totalitarian systems. Due process allows for the alternative that someone who stands accused might be declared innocent.
However, does that apply if the investigation leading up to the trial was flawed? In other words, if the United Nations inquiry was intentionally stalled, or simply conducted incompetently at a given stage, can we still take so detached, so academic, a view that only the good conduct of the trial matters? The investigation and the trial were always organically related; shortcomings in the first were necessarily going to impact the second. One cannot artificially separate the two.
And what of the human cost? Trials are not intellectual competitions, particularly criminal trials. People were killed by other people and many have suffered. It was always the right of the families of the victims to expect that everything would be done to ensure that the guilty would be identified and punished. Has everything been done to achieve that outcome? Only an affirmative answer should be the benchmark for success when the special tribunal eventually closes its doors; not the issuing of indictments or scholastic pride in a remote legal process that ends up in a cul-de-sac before an empty courtroom.
Friday, December 17, 2010
The diplomatic warrior
The death this week of US diplomat Richard Holbrooke has provided some instructive lessons about the transformation in American foreign policy during the last decade and a half.
I still recall the galvanizing scene in 1994 being broadcast from Dayton, Ohio, where the Clinton administration had just put the finishing touches to a peace deal for Bosnia-Herzegovina. This was more than anything else Holbrooke’s triumph, as he succeeded in bludgeoning hard men like Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic and Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman (as well as the leader of the Bosnian Muslims, Alija Izetbegovic) into accepting an American-sponsored accord.
At one point there was a commotion, as Holbrooke stood on the rostrum announcing the results. It was European envoy Carl Bildt, co-chairman of the Dayton conference, walking away from the stage in a huff, clearly fed up with Holbrooke for stealing the show. No one could ever accuse the late American diplomat of missing such an opportunity, but the scene spoke volumes of the Europeans’ failure to bring about peace in their own back yard. The termination of the ruinous war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was very much America’s doing.
Cut to Holbrooke’s final assignment, as special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. There, the diplomat seemed mislaid in a policy that remains a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. US President Barack Obama has sought a victory in Afghanistan, but would be satisfied with a draw, which may well lead to a defeat. And to prove his long-term commitment to the Afghans, the US president is dedicated to begin withdrawing troops by as soon as next summer. And though the fight may be in Afghanistan, the victory lies in Pakistan, but success is proving so difficult in Pakistan, that America’s determination to stick it out in Afghanistan is waning rapidly.
You get the point. Or perhaps not.
You could say many things about the former US president, Bill Clinton, but when he finally, and very reluctantly and shamefacedly, sank his teeth into resolving the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He gave Holbrooke and the US military the latitude they needed to bring home a solution. With Obama, however, Holbrooke was one among what usually seemed to be too many cooks – between the US ambassador in Kabul, Karl Eikenberry (with whom Holbrooke clashed), General David Petraeus, the military commander in Afghanistan, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose briefs all involve blending politics with military policy.
Holbrooke was too experienced not to know a stumbling thing when he saw it. Obama’s Afghan-Pakistan plan was surely too hazy for a man of sharp angles, and it seems he was less and less convinced by his mission. Near the end, after being rushed to the hospital, a doctor told him to relax. He allegedly joked that it was difficult to relax given his worries about the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan – one of those smart-alecky answers that probably revealed genuine concern.
To get a sense of the foreign policy Holbrooke felt most comfortable with, we should recall that he helped the late Clark Clifford, an advisor to numerous Democratic presidents, write his memoirs during the 1980s. Clifford was among the smoothest mandarins of the postwar American empire – a lawyer who could make the big deals and clean up the small messes. But he was also the personification of American foreign policy pragmatism during the Cold War, of the famed bipartisan consensus, someone who could glide effortlessly between Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, between money and political authority. Inherent in such individuals was a conceit that the United States could place its rationalism and goodwill at the service of power; that while idealism may have been an illusion, there were certain ways of doing things overseas – calm, collected ways – and that they, as individuals, were best equipped to recommend those ways.
There was certainly smugness here, but also considerably less confusion about what the United States represented. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, Clinton had wanted to steer away from the conflict, but the brutish siege of Sarajevo and the butchery in Srebrenica had brought him around. He couldn’t resist the public condemnation that his unresponsiveness to human suffering was bringing down on his shoulders. So, politically, he changed tack; but he also did so because he had to satisfy an ambient sense of what the US stood for.
You have to ask whether Barack Obama, in his haste to accelerate the American departure from Iraq, while outlining a similar process in Afghanistan, has such a sense? Holbrooke was no romantic naïf standing against Obama’s heartlessness when it came to foreign matters. The president is facing difficult times. But Obama does frequently look like a vicar counting his alms, when Holbrooke was made of larger, more combustible material. His fire was a sense of what America could get right, not what America has done wrong.
I still recall the galvanizing scene in 1994 being broadcast from Dayton, Ohio, where the Clinton administration had just put the finishing touches to a peace deal for Bosnia-Herzegovina. This was more than anything else Holbrooke’s triumph, as he succeeded in bludgeoning hard men like Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic and Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman (as well as the leader of the Bosnian Muslims, Alija Izetbegovic) into accepting an American-sponsored accord.
At one point there was a commotion, as Holbrooke stood on the rostrum announcing the results. It was European envoy Carl Bildt, co-chairman of the Dayton conference, walking away from the stage in a huff, clearly fed up with Holbrooke for stealing the show. No one could ever accuse the late American diplomat of missing such an opportunity, but the scene spoke volumes of the Europeans’ failure to bring about peace in their own back yard. The termination of the ruinous war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was very much America’s doing.
Cut to Holbrooke’s final assignment, as special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. There, the diplomat seemed mislaid in a policy that remains a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. US President Barack Obama has sought a victory in Afghanistan, but would be satisfied with a draw, which may well lead to a defeat. And to prove his long-term commitment to the Afghans, the US president is dedicated to begin withdrawing troops by as soon as next summer. And though the fight may be in Afghanistan, the victory lies in Pakistan, but success is proving so difficult in Pakistan, that America’s determination to stick it out in Afghanistan is waning rapidly.
You get the point. Or perhaps not.
You could say many things about the former US president, Bill Clinton, but when he finally, and very reluctantly and shamefacedly, sank his teeth into resolving the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He gave Holbrooke and the US military the latitude they needed to bring home a solution. With Obama, however, Holbrooke was one among what usually seemed to be too many cooks – between the US ambassador in Kabul, Karl Eikenberry (with whom Holbrooke clashed), General David Petraeus, the military commander in Afghanistan, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose briefs all involve blending politics with military policy.
Holbrooke was too experienced not to know a stumbling thing when he saw it. Obama’s Afghan-Pakistan plan was surely too hazy for a man of sharp angles, and it seems he was less and less convinced by his mission. Near the end, after being rushed to the hospital, a doctor told him to relax. He allegedly joked that it was difficult to relax given his worries about the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan – one of those smart-alecky answers that probably revealed genuine concern.
To get a sense of the foreign policy Holbrooke felt most comfortable with, we should recall that he helped the late Clark Clifford, an advisor to numerous Democratic presidents, write his memoirs during the 1980s. Clifford was among the smoothest mandarins of the postwar American empire – a lawyer who could make the big deals and clean up the small messes. But he was also the personification of American foreign policy pragmatism during the Cold War, of the famed bipartisan consensus, someone who could glide effortlessly between Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, between money and political authority. Inherent in such individuals was a conceit that the United States could place its rationalism and goodwill at the service of power; that while idealism may have been an illusion, there were certain ways of doing things overseas – calm, collected ways – and that they, as individuals, were best equipped to recommend those ways.
There was certainly smugness here, but also considerably less confusion about what the United States represented. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, Clinton had wanted to steer away from the conflict, but the brutish siege of Sarajevo and the butchery in Srebrenica had brought him around. He couldn’t resist the public condemnation that his unresponsiveness to human suffering was bringing down on his shoulders. So, politically, he changed tack; but he also did so because he had to satisfy an ambient sense of what the US stood for.
You have to ask whether Barack Obama, in his haste to accelerate the American departure from Iraq, while outlining a similar process in Afghanistan, has such a sense? Holbrooke was no romantic naïf standing against Obama’s heartlessness when it came to foreign matters. The president is facing difficult times. But Obama does frequently look like a vicar counting his alms, when Holbrooke was made of larger, more combustible material. His fire was a sense of what America could get right, not what America has done wrong.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
The canard of regime change in Syria
Recently, the Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, offered up an interpretation that he has frequently repeated since moving closer to Syria and taking his distance from the United States.
Jumblatt was responding to my column last week on a WikiLeaks cable mentioning that in 2006, Serge Brammertz, the second UN commissioner investigating the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, had basically admitted to the US ambassador in Beirut, Jeffrey Feltman, that he was focusing on Syrian participation in the crime. For the Druze leader, that mention was a return to the “tone of Condoleezza Rice and others and the neoconservatives [favoring] regime change,” by which he meant regime change in Syria. “The Syrian people and Syria decide what they want,” Jumblatt added.
That’s no doubt true, however it is equally true, with the benefit of hindsight, that the Bush administration never sought regime change in Damascus. Some in Beirut did, but Washington never seriously pursued such a foolhardy project, nor did it indicate the contrary.
How would the US have changed the regime of President Bashar Assad anyway? Presumably, it would have had to send into Syria the American armed forces, namely those stationed in neighboring Iraq. But as we now know from countless sources, including Bob Woodward’s 2006 book “State of Denial,” the thinking at the Pentagon went in precisely the opposite direction. From the start, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld saw Iraq as a short-term venture for the armed forces – a matter of a few months, no more. That is why the secretary resisted for so long an expansion in the number of troops that might have stabilized the Iraqi situation much sooner.
The military hierarchy knew that President George W. Bush’s declaration of an end to combat operations in Iraq was a farce. Therefore, it also grasped that there was a hard slog ahead. Not only was there no appetite in Washington to expand the war to Syria, there was no intention from the military in Baghdad to permit such a slide. In fact even when it came to controlling the open Iraqi-Syrian border, through which suicide bombers were passing, the Americans were surprisingly unobtrusive. Aside from a few high-profile operations, the military didn’t have the manpower to exert sustained local pressure on Syria, let alone conceive of something more ambitious.
Proponents of the regime-change theory might respond that even if the Bush administration was not plotting to overthrow Assad through force, it was looking to set up the conditions for a domestic upheaval, perhaps a coup. Possibly. The US would not have saved the Assad regime had it fallen from the weight of its own ills. But that doesn’t qualify as regime change. Nor does it take into account the strangely resilient conviction in Washington that, for all its shortcomings, Assad’s rule is better than a Sunni-led Islamist alternative. Assad, quite effectively, has played on this line, and although nothing makes an Islamist regime in Damascus inevitable, American officials have bought into that fear, because it is what they witnessed in Iraq.
According to those who argue that the US supported regime change indirectly, by weakening Syria elsewhere, events in Lebanon between 2004 and 2005 take on central importance. Passage of Security Council Resolution 1559, which called for a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, is Exhibit A in this contention. However, it only tells us half the story. While the US and France did seek to get the ball rolling on a Syrian pullout from Lebanon in 2004, and while Assad read this as a potential threat to his leadership at home, and responded in kind by extending Emile Lahoud’s mandate in Beirut, one key item is missing.
As Feltman once explained in an interview, “[T]hose of us working most closely on the Lebanon file focused on not letting the perfect become the enemy of the good.” If the US could not force the Syrians out of Lebanon in one stage, it would not hinder this effort by avoiding doing so in several stages, the primary aim being to allow relatively free and fair elections in 2005 without the Syrians present. “And this desire for better parliamentary elections led to what was the real focus in late 2004 and early 2005: persuading the Syrians to pull back their occupying troops deep into the Bekaa Valley, so that elections in most of Lebanon could have been relatively free and fair.”
This was a return to what had been agreed at Taif on the future of the Syrian military presence, though with deeper Syrian redeployments. One of the advocates of a step-by-step Syrian movement away from Lebanon’s populated areas was Jumblatt. The Syrians were well aware of American thinking – of the Bush administration’s willingness to allow a continuation of their presence in Lebanon, albeit on the country’s periphery. That helps explain their calculations when deciding what to do about Hariri. But one thing it also did was reassure Assad that he could maneuver. Rather than assuming that his regime was under threat, he grasped by early 2005 that the US and France were willing to cut him some slack in Beirut.
Which leads us to the investigation of Hariri’s murder and the subsequent establishment of a tribunal to judge the guilty. It is odd that those who believe the US hoped to bring about regime change in Damascus through the investigative process would, for example, point to the Brammertz-Feltman meeting to bolster their argument. The reality is that Brammertz did not substantially move ahead in the Hariri investigation, as numerous sources now confirm. Whether he did this on purpose is an open question, but the US never twisted the commissioner’s arm to speed up his work. If anything, Washington was painfully respectful of Brammertz’s independence, even though there was growing evidence that he was getting nowhere.
Jumblatt has described the diplomatic information released by WikiLeaks as proof of the failed US policies in the Middle East. In retrospect, we now know that the Americans had more pressing goals in the region than replacing Syria’s leadership. Jumblatt, who says he is relieved to be with Syria again, should thank them for their failure.
Jumblatt was responding to my column last week on a WikiLeaks cable mentioning that in 2006, Serge Brammertz, the second UN commissioner investigating the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, had basically admitted to the US ambassador in Beirut, Jeffrey Feltman, that he was focusing on Syrian participation in the crime. For the Druze leader, that mention was a return to the “tone of Condoleezza Rice and others and the neoconservatives [favoring] regime change,” by which he meant regime change in Syria. “The Syrian people and Syria decide what they want,” Jumblatt added.
That’s no doubt true, however it is equally true, with the benefit of hindsight, that the Bush administration never sought regime change in Damascus. Some in Beirut did, but Washington never seriously pursued such a foolhardy project, nor did it indicate the contrary.
How would the US have changed the regime of President Bashar Assad anyway? Presumably, it would have had to send into Syria the American armed forces, namely those stationed in neighboring Iraq. But as we now know from countless sources, including Bob Woodward’s 2006 book “State of Denial,” the thinking at the Pentagon went in precisely the opposite direction. From the start, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld saw Iraq as a short-term venture for the armed forces – a matter of a few months, no more. That is why the secretary resisted for so long an expansion in the number of troops that might have stabilized the Iraqi situation much sooner.
The military hierarchy knew that President George W. Bush’s declaration of an end to combat operations in Iraq was a farce. Therefore, it also grasped that there was a hard slog ahead. Not only was there no appetite in Washington to expand the war to Syria, there was no intention from the military in Baghdad to permit such a slide. In fact even when it came to controlling the open Iraqi-Syrian border, through which suicide bombers were passing, the Americans were surprisingly unobtrusive. Aside from a few high-profile operations, the military didn’t have the manpower to exert sustained local pressure on Syria, let alone conceive of something more ambitious.
Proponents of the regime-change theory might respond that even if the Bush administration was not plotting to overthrow Assad through force, it was looking to set up the conditions for a domestic upheaval, perhaps a coup. Possibly. The US would not have saved the Assad regime had it fallen from the weight of its own ills. But that doesn’t qualify as regime change. Nor does it take into account the strangely resilient conviction in Washington that, for all its shortcomings, Assad’s rule is better than a Sunni-led Islamist alternative. Assad, quite effectively, has played on this line, and although nothing makes an Islamist regime in Damascus inevitable, American officials have bought into that fear, because it is what they witnessed in Iraq.
According to those who argue that the US supported regime change indirectly, by weakening Syria elsewhere, events in Lebanon between 2004 and 2005 take on central importance. Passage of Security Council Resolution 1559, which called for a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, is Exhibit A in this contention. However, it only tells us half the story. While the US and France did seek to get the ball rolling on a Syrian pullout from Lebanon in 2004, and while Assad read this as a potential threat to his leadership at home, and responded in kind by extending Emile Lahoud’s mandate in Beirut, one key item is missing.
As Feltman once explained in an interview, “[T]hose of us working most closely on the Lebanon file focused on not letting the perfect become the enemy of the good.” If the US could not force the Syrians out of Lebanon in one stage, it would not hinder this effort by avoiding doing so in several stages, the primary aim being to allow relatively free and fair elections in 2005 without the Syrians present. “And this desire for better parliamentary elections led to what was the real focus in late 2004 and early 2005: persuading the Syrians to pull back their occupying troops deep into the Bekaa Valley, so that elections in most of Lebanon could have been relatively free and fair.”
This was a return to what had been agreed at Taif on the future of the Syrian military presence, though with deeper Syrian redeployments. One of the advocates of a step-by-step Syrian movement away from Lebanon’s populated areas was Jumblatt. The Syrians were well aware of American thinking – of the Bush administration’s willingness to allow a continuation of their presence in Lebanon, albeit on the country’s periphery. That helps explain their calculations when deciding what to do about Hariri. But one thing it also did was reassure Assad that he could maneuver. Rather than assuming that his regime was under threat, he grasped by early 2005 that the US and France were willing to cut him some slack in Beirut.
Which leads us to the investigation of Hariri’s murder and the subsequent establishment of a tribunal to judge the guilty. It is odd that those who believe the US hoped to bring about regime change in Damascus through the investigative process would, for example, point to the Brammertz-Feltman meeting to bolster their argument. The reality is that Brammertz did not substantially move ahead in the Hariri investigation, as numerous sources now confirm. Whether he did this on purpose is an open question, but the US never twisted the commissioner’s arm to speed up his work. If anything, Washington was painfully respectful of Brammertz’s independence, even though there was growing evidence that he was getting nowhere.
Jumblatt has described the diplomatic information released by WikiLeaks as proof of the failed US policies in the Middle East. In retrospect, we now know that the Americans had more pressing goals in the region than replacing Syria’s leadership. Jumblatt, who says he is relieved to be with Syria again, should thank them for their failure.
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