FITTING THE NOOSE:

'Something was going to happen – it was going to be me or him': An investigation by The Times finds clear evidence that Syria assassinated Rafik Hariri, the Lebanese politician (Nicholas Blanford, Richard Beeston and James Bone, 3/18/05, Times of London)

DAYS before Rafik Hariri’s assassination last month, the Lebanese politician had played host to Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader, at his mansion in west Beirut. Mr Hariri had a warning for his old friend: the Syrians were after them.

“He told me that in the next two weeks it was either going to be me or him,” Mr Jumblatt told The Times. “Clearly he thought something was going to happen.”

Something did. On February 14 Mr Hariri was killed when 600lb of explosives apparently buried in the road outside St George’s Hotel in Beirut blew up beneath his car.

The blast has echoed round the world. Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have demonstrated in Beirut, the world has united in demanding Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon and the drive for democracy in the Middle East has been given a huge boost.

Syria has repeatedly protested its innocence and no irrefutable evidence of its involvement has yet emerged. But a reconstruction of events leading to Mr Hariri’s murder, and interviews with at least a dozen Western, Lebanese and even Syrian officials, leave not the slightest doubt that the plot was hatched in Damascus.

The Times has learnt that Mr Hariri had enraged the Syrians by inspiring a UN resolution demanding that Syria stop interfering in Lebanon. US and UN officials repeatedly warned Syria not to harm Mr Hariri in the months before his death.

In mid-January, under pressure from Damascus, the Lebanese Government withdrew his 70-strong security detail, and immediately after his death the scene of the bombing was swept to remove any evidence of Syrian complicity.

“There does seem to be no other scenario,” a senior Western diplomat said.

The murder of Mr Hariri, an immensely wealthy Lebanese businessman who had rebuilt his country after a 15-year civil war, followed the collapse of his relations with President Assad of Syria last summer.

As with Saddam's WMD, it doesn't much matter if he's guilty if you can use it to get rid of him.

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Syria's regime survives but centrifugal forces remain (Jim Quilty, March 18, 2005, Lebanon Daily Star)

Syria has no such opposition. In 2000, during the early days of Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime, an opposition of sorts arose in the form of "salons" of secular intellectuals, academics and businessmen, encompassing a broad range of figures from free marketers like independent parliamentarian Riyad Seif to opposition communists like Riyad Turk.

These figures coalesced into a civil society movement. The Syrian regime's initial response was tolerant. Following the late Hafiz Assad's policy of co-optation, some opposition intellectuals were brought into the state - for example erstwhile parliamentarian and critic Mahmoud Salameh, who was made editor of the official Al-Thawra newspaper. Those who remained outside published critical articles against the state's policies - particularly relating to economics - with few repercussions.

Syria's economy did open up somewhat, if only to a few well-positioned gatekeeper capitalists. However, the state's security apparatus soon grew impatient with the dissent and a crackdown ensued in autumn 2001. Many prominent figures in the civil society movement were arrested and though some were subsequently released, the movement has remained largely quiescent.

The movement's conundrum was most recently illustrated on March 10, when 100-200 demonstrators held a sit-in outside Damascus' central courthouse. This included human rights activists and representatives of political parties, some of them Kurds. The protestors called for an end to the state's emergency laws (which overrode the Syrian constitution in 1963), democracy and the release of political prisoners. Around noon, the group was attacked by hundreds of flag-bearing youths chanting pro-regime slogans, forcing the human rights activists to disperse.

Syria's Baath Party has little to fear today from a colorful Kiev-modeled popular "revolution." It does have other concerns, however, that should be shared by anyone toying with ideas of regime change in Syria. On February 12, the Syrian authorities released 55 political prisoners, among them members of the Muslim Brotherhood who had been in detention for anywhere between three and 20 years. Human rights lawyer Anwar Bunni told the press that the released men included 46 Syrians, five Palestinians, two Lebanese, an Iraqi and a Tunisian.

The release received little coverage, though Assad has released hundreds of political prisoners since 2000 - a previous group of 112 having been freed last December 7. Local analysts explained the releases within the context of the state's co-optation policies. Some saw a short-term tactic in the move, noting that in the days before his 2001 arrest for a second time, the charismatic Turk was seen to be making common cause with the brother of the former Muslim Brotherhood leader.

Others explained the decision as part of a long-term policy of releasing older Brotherhood members before they become "martyrs." Under Assad, the state has kept an eye on the Brotherhood while allowing it to pursue its social welfare activities. The Syrian Brotherhood is no Al-Qaeda and, in pragmatic terms, its charities help assuage the social dislocations accompanying the bankrupt Syrian state's migration from a command economy to crony capitalism. Also, there has been little evidence that political Islam is waiting in the wings to take advantage of a crumbling Baathist state. There are other centrifugal forces in Syria, though.

In November 2001, bloody clashes broke out near the town of Suweida, in the south. The conflict was over land rights, with Druze villagers accusing Bedouins of cutting in on their land. Badly outgunned by the Bedouins, whose access to rocket-propelled grenades was explained as a dividend of their smuggling activities, the Druze came out on the losing end. Some analysts at the time evaluated the events in terms of Syrian-Lebanese relations - in particular Damascus' (temporary) falling-out with Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. But the conflict between Druze and Bedouins had been simmering for some time, and had been checked by state intervention.

Similar ethnic tension was seen in the Jazeera region of northeastern Syria in spring 2004, when a football match between Kurds and Arabs turned bloody. It took several days for the security services to calm things down. This was followed by the widespread arrest of Kurds by the intelligence apparatus.

Such regional-ethnic conflict is rare in Syria, or at least rarely reported. In the context of crumbling state authority, however, fears that it will become more frequent are magnified by the fact that the regime is dominated by the Alawite minority. It is best not to oversimplify complex social and political dynamics in what is still a predominantly secular country, but there are those among the largely Sunni urban Syrians for whom the shortcomings of the regime's policies are intimately connected to the origins of its leadership.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 17, 2005 9:39 PM