[LCM Articles] Syria Occupies Lebanon. Again.

[Michel Rbeiz]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118524027324775728.html


   GLOBAL VIEW
By BRET STEPHENS




   *DOW JONES REPRINTS*
 This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order
presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or
customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or
visit:
www.djreprints.com.

• See a sample reprint in PDF
format<http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/Reprint_Samples.pdf>
.
• Order a reprint of this article now <javascript:CopyrightPopUp()>.

     Syria Occupies Lebanon. Again.
July 24, 2007; Page A14

As of this minute, Syria occupies at least 177 square miles of Lebanese
soil. That you are now reading about it for the first time is as much a
scandal as the occupation itself.

The news comes by way of a fact-finding survey of the Lebanese-Syrian border
just produced by the International Lebanese Committee for U.N. Security
Council Resolution 1559, an American NGO that has consultative status with
the U.N. Because of the sensitivity of the subject, the authors have
requested anonymity and have circulated the report only among select
government officials and journalists. But its findings cannot be ignored.
[image: [Map]]

In meticulous detail -- supplemented by photographs, satellite images,
archival material and Lebanese military maps predating Syria's 1976 invasion
(used as a basis of comparison with Syria's current positions) -- the
authors describe precisely where and how Lebanon has been infiltrated. In
the area of the village of Maarboun, for instance, the authors observed
Syrian military checkpoints a mile inside Lebanon. In the Birak al-Rassass
Valley, they photographed Syrian anti-aircraft batteries. On the outskirts
of the village of Kossaya they found a heavily fortified camp belonging to
the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in violation of U.N.
resolutions and Lebanese demands.

This is a story to which I can contribute my own testimony. In May 2005 I
paid a visit to Lebanon, just a month after Syria had announced that it had
fully withdrawn its 14,000 troops from Lebanon in compliance with Resolution
1559. The rumor in Beirut was that a company of 200 or so elite Syrian
soldiers remained encamped within Lebanon near the Druze village of Deir
al-Ashaer. I decided to have a look. After a long drive over rutted roads, I
found it.

Or rather, what I found was a hillside outpost that I was able to enter
without crossing any apparent international border. The man in charge was a
Syrian intelligence officer who "invited" me into a sweltering tent while he
phoned his commanders for instruction. After a few tense minutes of silence
with the soldiers inside, the officer reappeared, explained that the camp
was 50 yards inside Syrian territory, and ordered me to go. From there I
went to the village, where the mayor insisted the camp was several hundred
yards inside Lebanon.

Who was right? Inclined as I was to believe the mayor, it was hard to sort
out contending claims over remote parcels of land. A week later, then
Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced the U.N. had "verified all [Syrian
military units] had withdrawn, including [from] the border area." It seemed
that was the end of the story.

I should have known then that anything "verified" by the U.N. must be
checked at least twice. I should have known, too, that anything to which Mr.
Annan devoted his personal attention would inevitably become worse. Last
September, Mr. Annan paid a visit to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad after the
latter had declared he would treat any attempt by the U.N. to deploy
peacekeepers along the Lebanese-Syrian border as a "hostile act." To defuse
the impasse, Mr. Annan simply accepted Mr. Assad's assurances that Syria
would police its border and prevent arms smuggling. "I think it can happen,"
said the diplomat at a press conference. "It may not be 100%, but it will
make quite a lot of difference if the government puts in place the measures
the government has discussed with me."

What happened, predictably, was the opposite. In May, Fatah al-Islam, a
terrorist group whose leadership was imported from Damascus, attacked
Lebanese army outposts outside the Palestinian refugee camps of Nahr
El-Bared and Biddawi, causing a bloody standoff that continues till this
day. In June, current Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a report citing
numerous instances of arms smuggling from Syria to Hezbollah and the PFLP.
Yesterday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah boasted that he once again has
missiles that can reach Tel Aviv -- missiles he could only have obtained via
Syria. Israel confirms his claims.

Mr. Ban's report is notable for its clarity and seriousness. Taken together
with the border report, it paints an alarming picture. Though the land grabs
are small affairs individually, they collectively add up to an area
amounting to about 4% of Lebanese soil -- in U.S. terms, the proportional
equivalent of Arizona. Of particular note is that the area of Syrian
conquest dwarves that of the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms. The farms, which
Israel seized from Syria in 1967 and which amount to an area of about 12
square miles, are claimed by Hezbollah as belonging to Lebanon -- a useful
pretext for it to continue its "resistance" against an Israeli occupation
that ended seven years ago.

Needless to say, Hezbollah -- which purports to fight for Lebanese
sovereignty -- makes no similar claims against Syria. For his part, Mr.
Assad refuses to agree to a demarcation of his border with Lebanon, just as
he refuses to open an embassy in Beirut. The ambiguity serves him well: He
can seize Lebanese territory without anyone appearing to take notice, supply
terrorist camps without quite harboring the terrorists, and funnel arms to
Hezbollah at will -- all without abandoning the fantasy of "Greater Syria"
encompassing Lebanon, the Golan Heights and Israel itself.

It would, of course, be nice to see the Arab world protest this case of
illegal occupation, given its passions about the subject. It would also be
nice to see the media report this story as sedulously as it has the
controversy of the Shebaa Farms. Don't hold your breath on either score. In
the meantime, the only countries in a position to help Lebanon are France
and the U.S. They could strike a useful blow by closing their embassies in
Damascus until such time as Damascus opens an embassy -- with all that it
implies -- in Beirut.


-- 
Michel Rbeiz
============================
Mail: PO Box 20141, DHCC, New York, NY 10017
Phone: 617.230.8116(c), (212) 446-7246 (o)
Email: mrbeiz at alum.mit.edu
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/lebanon-articles/attachments/20070726/0b58f078/attachment.htm