Lebanon Is on the Brink
Syria Begins Arming its Supporters
DEBKAfile Special Report (Tel Aviv)
February 19, 2005
Lebanon’s climate has been charged with latent violence since the
assassination Monday, February 14, of Lebanese former prime minister
Rafiq Hariri, and his funeral two days later. Sparks began flying
when the opposition unveiled their “peaceful democratic uprising for
independence” Friday, February 18, and, as revealed by DEBKAfile’s
intelligence sources, Syrian forces began distributing weapons to
groups supporting Damascus and the 1.4 million expatriate laborers
in the country.
The resignations of president Emil Lahoude and the Karame government
were forcefully demanded by the opposition leader, Walid Jumblatt,
head of the Lebanese Druses who speaks for a rare multiethnic coalition
made up of his own community, Christian factions endorsed by Maronite
Catholic Archbishop Nasrallah Sfeir, and Sunni Muslims led by the
dead billionaire’s oldest son, Bahaa Hariri, with the blessing of
the Sunni Muslim Mufti of Lebanon.
Saturday, February 19, Omar Karame, who succeeded Rafiq Hariri as
prime minister, accused this group of attempting a coup d’etat.
The belligerent Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned (or
threatened) that “popular agitation against Syria’s grip on the country
following the killing of Rafiq Hariri could plunge Lebanon into civil
war again. Backed solidly from Damascus and Tehran, he exhorted the
100,000 Shiites massed in Beirut to mark the Ashura festival not to
forget the real enemy. “Death to Israel!” they roared after him.
All three uprisings launched in the Middle East in five years were
steeped in violence. In 1991, after the first Gulf War, Iraq’s Shiites
rose up against the Saddam regime. Thousands were savagely mowed down
by his tanks. Syria’s Kurdish community challenged Assad in 2003,
only to lose thousands of dead and many more thrown into Syria’s
prisons. The Palestinian confrontation with Israel has left 5,000
Palestinian and 1,300 Israelis dead since 2000.
The sparks will fly in earnest when government and Syrians move into
aggressive mode to crush the opposition, which will become increasingly
inflamed by multiplying leads to Syria and its Lebanese minions as
Hariri’s assassins.
Our sources report that US, French and Israeli intelligence have
already gathered solid evidence that General Rostum Ghazallah of
Syrian military intelligence orchestrated the murder on orders from
Damascus with the aid of Lebanese general intelligence and its chief
General Jamil al-Sayad.
The Damascus-backed government in Beirut and its masters has no
intention of going quietly. Bashar Assad desperately needs the
political and economic benefits he extorts from Lebanon to prop up
his regime.
Monday, February 21, presidents George W. Bush and Jacques Chirac
meet in Paris. With Lebanon at the forefront of their agenda, they
will have to look hard at some tough questions. How to handle the
situation if Assad orders his Syrian troops in Lebanon to march on
Beirut in defense of his puppet government? And worse still, what
if the full weight of the Syrian army is sent across the border to
squash the uprising? Will the two Western leaders dispatch a joint
US-French force to repulse the Syrian onslaught?
If they did, it would be the most drastic event to hit the Middle
East since the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. The second American
invasion of an Arab land might this time be partnered or endorsed by
a European power.
To force the hands of the American and French presidents, the leaders
of the Lebanese uprising are preparing a spectacular event to coincide
with their summit. One proposal is for a hundreds of thousands of
protesters to march through Beirut’s streets and seize the parliament
building.
Other “intifada” events in the planning:
1. Giant rallies to strangle normal life in the capital.
2. A human chain from Hariri’s tomb to government headquarters on
the seam-line dividing the Hizballah-dominated southern district from
the Christian-controlled West that would aim to paralyze government
activity
Opposition leaders have notified Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri,
head of the Shiite Amal, that the only session they will allow to
be held is an open debate on the murder of the former prime minister
that produces the formation of a state inquiry commission.
3. This commission’s mandatory guideline must be to call General
Rostum Ghazallah as its first witness.
4. The mobilization of Lebanese expatriate communities in the United
States and Europe for synchronized street rallies to generate broad
international popular sympathy on the same lines as Ukraine’s Orange
Revolution.
5. Armenian Christians in Lebanon and Western countries will be asked
to join the struggle.
The campaign waged by this anti-Syrian coalition faces three major
challenges:
First, to keep a tight rein on the uprising so that it does not run out
of control and degenerate into a bloodbath and all-out civil strife.
Second, to divide the hitherto pro-Syrian Shiite community against
itself. If parliament speaker Berri can be won over to the opposition
side against the government, the Shiites will be split between Amal and
Hizballah. This will sunder the entire pro-Syrian front and seriously
shake the government.
DEBKAfile’s Lebanese sources report that most Karame cabinet ministers
have departed Beirut to avoid the sound and fury following the
assassination; the tourism minister has resigned. President Lahoud
has not so far uttered a word on the crisis, no doubt waiting for
his script to be written in Damascus.
Third, The opposition must prove it can get the masses out on the
streets for long, sustained rallies. Its failure to muster sizeable
popular backing would foredoom the intifada to failure. If the struggle
peters out, Syria will tighten its grip on Lebanon and go from strength
to strength, with adverse effect on America’s strategic position in
the region and a setback for Israel too.
With the old Levant under their jackboots, the Syrians will quickly
expand their role as main crossroads for international terrorists
moving back and forth among their targeted arenas – whether into Iraq
or over to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.