[LCM Articles] Out of Patience, How Lebanese Drive To Oust the Syrians Finally Caught Fire

[Walid Georges Chamoun]

            PAGE ONE 
            
     
      Out of Patience
      How Lebanese Drive
      To Oust the Syrians
      Finally Caught Fire

      Killing of Ex-Prime Minister
      Capped Events With a Link
      To U.S. Mideast Initiatives
      A Nearly 30-Year Presence
      By BILL SPINDLE 
      Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
      February 28, 2005; Page A1

      BEIRUT, Lebanon -- The giant bomb blast that took the life of a towering political figure here two weeks ago shattered more than this city's calm. It also unleashed a deep-seated anger over Lebanon's occupation by a foreign power: Syria.

      "It's been building for a long time," said Samir Kassir over the din of chanting in downtown Beirut last week. Mr. Kassir, once a lonely public critic of Syria's role in Lebanon, looked jubilant as he walked with a panorama of religious and ethnic groups in a huge demonstration against Syrian domination. "What's amazing is that everyone is mixed together."

      The vocal surge, so sudden it astonished even those who helped stir it, is the biggest challenge to the Syrian presence in Lebanon since the occupation began three decades ago. How it happened shows the way more-aggressive U.S. policies in the Middle East -- from the invasion of Iraq to President Bush's rhetoric about fostering democracy -- are mingling with local politics to jostle once-unquestioned realities in the region. Just this weekend, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said that competing political parties will participate in September presidential elections in Egypt for the first time in decades. (See related article.1)

       
      In Lebanon, the opposition has been able to draw international support from a U.S. eager for examples of democratic change and new ways to squeeze Syria. Increasingly, Lebanese opposition figures frame their battles as part of a larger democratic trend in the region. "The Syrians don't want to understand that there's no more place for dictatorships," says Gebran Tueni, publisher of the An Nahar newspaper and a strong critic of Syrian involvement in Lebanon. "If you want a new Middle East based on democracy, it is Lebanon."

      Syria has a population nearly five times Lebanon's, a far bigger army and a history of regarding its tiny neighbor as a part of itself. Lebanon was shaped by the French after World War I as a Christian-majority state next to largely Muslim Syria. Today, Christians are a minority in Lebanon but have an outsize role in politics.

      In 1976, as Lebanon's religious factions sank into bloody civil war, waves of Syrian troops marched in to try to stabilize the place. Though the war finally ended 15 years ago, almost 15,000 Syrian troops remain. Through them and an army of intelligence and security agents, Syria holds a tight grip on Lebanese economic and political life.

      The U.S. and Syria have clashed on a number of issues in recent years. They include Syria's support for violent anti-Israeli groups such as Hezbollah, a Lebanese group the U.S. classifies as terrorist. More recently, the U.S. has angrily accused Syria of supporting the insurgency in Iraq. Syria denies those charges and occasionally has made goodwill gestures to the U.S. Yesterday, Iraqi officials said that Syrian authorities captured Saddam Hussein's half-brother in Syria and handed him over to Iraq.

      Syria also strenuously denies having anything to do with the Feb. 14 Beirut bombing that killed Rafik Hariri, a billionaire businessman who was Lebanon's prime minister off and on for 10 years. Syrian President Bashar Assad has condemned the slaying. Regardless, many in Lebanon blame Syria. That's because the late Mr. Hariri had increasingly thrown his weight behind the get-Syria-out-of-Lebanon movement.

       
      To many, Mr. Hariri, a friend of French President Jacques Chirac, also appeared to be the link between the local opposition and an international initiative to shine a spotlight on the occupation.

      That initiative began last year, when Mr. Bush visited France to mark the 60th anniversary of D-Day. Mr. Chirac was eager to retain France's historical sway in Lebanon. The U.S. wanted to pressure Syria any way it could. Despite U.S.-French tensions over Iraq, Messrs. Chirac and Bush agreed to work together to push for a United Nations resolution demanding a Syrian pullout.

      The resolution was timed to coincide with a struggle inside Lebanon just then reaching its peak. It was over a plan to let Lebanon's pro-Syria president serve a third term, despite the constitution. For then-Prime Minister Hariri -- although he'd always sought good relations with Syria -- this was too much. He privately made clear he opposed the extension.

      Two days before a parliamentary vote on it, Mr. Hariri visited Syrian President Assad in Damascus at Mr. Assad's request. The meeting lasted just minutes. Back in Beirut, say people close to Mr. Hariri, he told associates he had no choice but to support a third term for the pro-Syria president, Émile Lahoud -- but that he would resign as prime minister afterward in protest.

      The next day, Sept. 2, the U.N. Security Council demanded the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Lebanon.

      And the day after that, Lebanon's parliament did extend the term of President Lahoud. The move effectively locked in the status quo in the Syrian-Lebanese relationship: a Syrian presence sanctioned by a supportive government in Beirut.

      Despite a 1990 civil-war settlement that envisioned Syria moving its troops back near its own border, Syria has kept them well into Lebanese territory. The pro-Syria Lebanese government warns that a rapid and complete pullout could result in another round of sectarian fighting. "A direct withdrawal of Syria is a very dangerous step," says Lebanon's information minister, Elie Ferzli.

      The extension of Mr. Lahoud's presidential term struck even some supporters of Syria as the most blatant manipulation yet by the Assad regime. As the extension vote approached, Walid Jumblatt, a member of one of Lebanon's most prominent families, publicly swung into the opposition camp. With him came his political group, the Druze, a sect with a key role in Lebanese politics.

       
      Mr. Jumblatt, whose father was assassinated during the civil war in 1977, says he told Syrian representatives, "I have been with you for 30 years, but I am against this extension." The arm-twisting to keep Mr. Lahoud in power "was the breaking point," he says.

      Mr. Hariri resigned his prime-minister post. But what really set Lebanon's political landscape trembling last fall was when politicians allied with Mr. Hariri began attending opposition meetings. The gatherings, at Beirut's Bristol Hotel, formulated a set of demands that included a full Syrian withdrawal.

      Mr. Hariri himself didn't attend. But Christian politicians close to him did. And then Sunni Muslims started going, at the behest of Mr. Hariri, a Sunni. "When he sent the Muslim representatives, we knew he was committed," says Nasib Lahoud, a longtime opponent of Lebanon's pro-Syrian government.

      Then on Oct. 2, a bomb went off next to the car of a Druze politician close to Mr. Hariri. It badly injured the politician, Marwan Hamadeh. Opposition leaders blamed Syria, which denied any role.

      Two months later, the recovering Mr. Hamadeh held a meeting with Mr. Hariri and Mr. Jumblatt. Mr. Hamadeh says that while the talk wasn't overtly about opposition activities, it was clear Mr. Hariri now was with them. He recalls Mr. Hariri asking, as he looked at Mr. Jumblatt, "Who will be next, you or me?"

      By then, the Bristol Hotel group was preparing to mount a challenge in coming parliamentary elections based on an independence-from-Syria theme. The rumor mill buzzed with talk that Mr. Hariri would come out in full support of it. That would have caused a political earthquake, because Lebanon's quarrelsome religion-based factions had never cooperated on that scale, much less united behind a leader with the stature of Mr. Hariri.

      Then, two weeks ago, came the explosion that killed Mr. Hariri and seven of his bodyguards. It detonated in Beirut's seaside hotel district as his armored convoy whisked through, heading to his palatial downtown home.

      Mr. Jumblatt was across town, where the Druze leader easily heard the gigantic blast. He went directly to the hospital. Soon Mr. Hariri's oldest son, Bahaa, arrived. Mr. Jumblatt, who had been filled in by doctors, was the one to tell him, "The news is bad."

       
      The two went to the Hariri mansion. While crowds gathered outside, political and religious leaders poured in. Soon the entire Bristol Hotel group of some 60 people sat shoulder-to-shoulder around a long table in the formal dining room. It was the first time parliamentarians from Mr. Hariri's faction had ever sat together with the opposition.

      Within an hour, the group issued a statement demanding the resignation of the Lebanese government, international monitors for this spring's elections and full withdrawal of Syrian forces.

      Two days later, a huge crowd, a cross-section of Lebanese, gathered for Mr. Hariri's funeral. It turned into the largest anti-Syrian rally anyone could remember seeing in Lebanon.

      Days later, pro-Syrian Shiite Muslim groups used equally large gatherings for a religious holiday to shout their support for Syria. Still, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrullah called for dialogue with the opposition and seemed to go out of his way to avoid inciting the crowd.

      At a second big opposition rally a week after the bombing, marchers waved signs saying "Syrial Killer" and banners reading "Independence 2005." Students organized a tent-city protest, mimicking a tactic Ukrainians used this winter to help push out a Russian-backed regime.

      As the protests have grown, Syria has said it will withdraw if Lebanon's government asks it to. Syria has also said it would begin moving some of the troops nearer to its border, as the 1990 civil-war settlement stipulates. It hasn't given a timetable, however.

      As pleased as the Bush administration is at the surge of Syrian opposition in Lebanon, that opposition could present hard choices for U.S. policy in the future. Nearly all in the opposition say a Lebanon free of Syria would need to acknowledge an important role for Hezbollah in the country -- though they want to see it disarm as other militias have. The U.S. and Israel view the prospect of a central role for Hezbollah role as anathema.

      And reducing Syrian influence in Lebanon won't be easy. Syria, with a moribund economy and the loss of its onetime patron the Soviet Union, leans on Lebanon to stay afloat. Tens of thousands of Syrian laborers have worked on the rebuilding of Beirut, sending home cash.

      In addition, Lebanon remains key to Syria's hopes of regaining the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in 1967. That's because the Syrian-backed Hezbollah militia is one of Syria's main means of pressuring Israel and remaining a player in the Middle East power game.

      For reasons such as these, even those demanding Syrian withdrawal say ways must be found to do it without undercutting Mr. Assad's regime. "We have to find a way to convince the Syrians that a healthy relationship is in their own interest," says Riad Tabbarah, a close adviser to Mr. Hariri and onetime Lebanese ambassador to the U.S.

      Mr. Lahoud's Lebanese government has welcomed a U.N. team to help with the probe of the Hariri murder, but rejects an opposition demand for an outside investigation. The government also has called talks with the opposition and with Syria to reduce tensions.

      President Bush has been citing the invigorated Lebanese opposition as an example of democracy flowering in the region. Some Lebanese with scant faith in U.S. policies also embrace the opening as historic. The late Mr. Hariri was no fan of Mr. Bush, but Hariri allies were thrilled last week to see the U.S. president put Lebanon's situation at the center of his statements as he toured Europe.

      Then there's Mr. Jumblatt. Sixteen months ago, when a rocket hit the Baghdad hotel of visiting U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Mr. Jumblatt said it was too bad the U.S. official escaped. The U.S. government was so angry it revoked the Druze leader's visa.

      Mr. Jumblatt remains cool to the administration, but now he's directing his ire toward Syria. "We're broken the hold of fear," he says. "Either we will get them out, or they will kill us one by one."

      Write to Bill Spindle at bill.spindle at wsj.com
     



1. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110941459798165038,00.html
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