22 February 2007
Learning nothing and forgetting nothing
Earlier this week, two statements neatly summarized the crisis in Lebanon.
The first came from the EU's representative
in Beirut, Patrick Laurent; the
second from Syria's official Al-Thawra
daily. Both reaffirmed in their own separate ways
that the Syrian regime, since its army
was forced out of Lebanon in 2005, has chosen to behave like the
exiled Bourbons: learning nothing and forgetting
nothing.
In
an exchange with journalists, Laurent had this to say about Syrian behavior in Lebanon, and about European efforts to "engage" President
Bashar Assad: "We tried everything,
as did many others, employing both gentle means
and pressure," but nothing
seemed to work. As if confirming Laurent's doubts, Al-Thawra, in an editorial
Tuesday, called for talks between Damascus and the US covering
Lebanon, Palestine, the
Golan Heights, and Iraq.
"Syria insists on a serious and profound
dialogue on all subjects without
exception," the newspaper
asserted.
Precisely where this extraordinary statement came from was unclear.
Syria is a declining power, capable only of spreading instability in its neighborhood to ward off irrelevance. However, this game,
which the late President Hafez al-Assad played to perfection, no
longer works. By allying itself
with an Iran that Saudi Arabia regards as an
existential threat, Syria is in no position to make demands of the Arab states, let alone of the United States. The Syrians recently
tried to take control of the Iraqi Baath Party, and failed.
They tried to midwife a Fatah-Hamas deal in Damascus, and failed
again. Assad has even managed to alienate Egypt, by thwarting its peace
efforts on the Palestinian
front and by ensuring that Arab League
Secretary General Amr
Moussa's mediation in Lebanon
would go nowhere. And in Lebanon, Assad has so angered
the Sunni community that the prospect of a Syrian military return seems fanciful.
Most
alarming from a Lebanese perspective, the Al-Thawra article showed that Syria has yet to grasp that
the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1559 in 2004. In
insisting on Syria's having
a say in Lebanon's future, the
newspaper disregarded that the resolution
specifically asked Damascus to end its interference in Lebanese affairs.
Assad may have come out
of his summit in Tehran last week invigorated by a sense that the Iranians
need him in their confrontation with the Bush administration. It was always naive
to assume that Iran would
pressure Assad on the
Hariri tribunal at a time when
the nuclear issue was on the verge of reaching a climax at the UN - with more steps possibly coming at the
Security Council to impose
new sanctions on Tehran.
However, it is precisely because of this that Syria should
be careful. Iran's ultimate guarantee against an American attack isn't the
comradeship of Damascus,
but a broad Arab consensus behind the benefits
of a dialogue with Iran and
the undesirability of an American military response to the nuclear standoff. Iran views its talks
with the Saudis as the best means to avoid a war, but also to hinder approval of new UN
sanctions and avert a Sunni-Shiite conflict that would cripple
Iranian initiatives in the
Middle East. In this context, Assad could emerge as a burdensome ally.
The Bush administration is more subtle than it
has been given credit for. It authorized the
Saudi-Iranian dialogue, realizing
that this reflected the central Sunni-Shiite fault line dividing the Middle East. There are some in Washington who would love to bomb Iran, but there is no domestic
traction for war, leaving
room for diplomacy. This is
where the Saudi-Iranian talks fit in. That Bandar bin
Sultan, the former ambassador
to the US, was named point man on the Saudi side surely
reassured the Bush
administration, particularly Vice President
Dick Cheney.
As
the Syrians look on, what is going
through their minds? Their agenda can be reduced
to a single item: undermining the
Hariri tribunal. Neither in Iraq nor
in the Palestinian areas is Assad indispensable. In Lebanon, Syria presumably faces Iranian "red lines" limiting the kind
of intimidation it can employ, which is
why the Syrian-Iranian
compromise is for more stalemate,
punctuated by controlled Hizbullah escalations. The latest scheme
is for a civil-disobedience
campaign. Yet this may end
up backfiring like other opposition efforts did. Shiites
would suffer as much as anyone from obstruction of the country's public administration.
Iran
and Syria can agree over
raising the heat in Lebanon to squeeze the Saudis. But beyond that the
situation becomes more complicated.
The Iranians want an advantageous deal in Lebanon, but not a civil war. They also don't
want to break with the Saudis, because there will be
more friction with the US and the Arab
world in the coming months. An Arab League summit is
to be held in Saudi Arabia in March, and there is
nothing Iranian leaders would like less
than for the predominantly Sunni Arab states to use that event to warn against
the "Persian peril." This explains why the Syrians
are so eager to act now in Lebanon,
to ensure they can get something
on the tribunal before eventual progress in the Saudi-Iranian relationship pushes their aims to the
backburner. A Saudi-Iranian
rapprochement would make it much tougher
for Assad to kill the tribunal, whose passage the Saudi leadership considers non-negotiable.
Assad senses that the window of opportunity
is closing. His last card is
a Lebanese civil war, but
it's not one that Iran and Hizbullah seem willing to play. However, the tribunal won't disappear. At best, if Syria aborts formal
Lebanese endorsement of the institution, this will make the
move toward Chapter VII of the UN Charter
more likely. Only when Assad truly
accepts Resolution 1559 and embraces Lebanon's sovereignty and independence, will he persuade anyone that his regime
is worth saving.
Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY
STAR.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=5&article_id=79745#