(Published in The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies,

Front Page Magazine, March 24, 2005)

Officially, Syria is making plans to pull back its occupying forces from Lebanon. But according to sources inside the “Cedar Revolution,” the grassroots pro-democratic movement that has sprouted in Lebanon in recent weeks, Syria has no intention of relinquishing power over its puppet state.

 

Working in concert with its counterparts in Iran, Syria has developed what we may call a “Lebanon Plan.” The plan entails pulling out its regular troops while deploying a plethora of terror and intelligence networks inside Lebanon. Through the agency of this network, Syria hopes to orchestrate a series of subversive activities inside Lebanon. Syria's aim in pursuing these activities could not be clearer: the Baathist state hopes to prove to the growing chorus of critics calling for the end of Syrian presence in Lebanon that Syria, far from being a rogue element, is needed to maintain security.

 

This plan is hardly unfeasible. Already in existence is a coordinated network of pro-Syrian groups under the direct command of the Syrian intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, in Damascus. This network includes the Syrian Social-Nationalist Party (SSNP), the Intelligence services of the Lebanese and Syrian regimes, the intelligence network of the Republican Guard and its head, Colonel Moustafa Hamdane.

 

Hamdane is a particularly dangerous figure. Of late, the colonel has been calling all his collaborators in Beirut and supplying them with weapons. In addition, he controls the Lebanese Sunni militia known as “Murabitun Organization.” Formerly commanded by his maternal uncle, Ibrahim Koleylat, the militia was resuscitated by Syria a few years ago and is now an organized network in West Beirut with about 500 fighters. They could be ordered into action at any time.

 

The groups comprising the pro-Syrian network do not work in isolation. They coordinate their activities with the terrorist group Hezbollah as well as various Palestinian terrorist factions. In fact, Syria looks on Palestinian terrorists as its “second reserves.” They are to be deployed in the event that “outside forces”—that is, international troops—enter Lebanon.

The Syrian shadow network is wasting no time putting its destructive plan into action. Last week, it struck in Jdeideh, a popular suburban neighborhood in East Beirut. A massive car bomb tore through the neighborhood last Friday, wounding 11 people and wreaking widespread damage to surrounding homes and shops in the area. Though Lebanese investigators are still searching for the culprits, my sources believe Republican Guard operatives planted the bomb.

 

Their strategy is part of the shadow network's campaign of intimidation: they aim to scare Lebanese youth against taking part in the anti-Syrian sit-ins and demonstrations. They may also be seeking to deter financial institutions from lending support to Lebanon's burgeoning pro-democracy movement.

 

And the Syrian network may just be getting started. Some analysts in Beirut believe that the next item on its agenda is the assassination of anti-Syrian politicians and intellectuals. High-ranking officers in the Lebanese Army may also be in Syria's gun sights—whatever it takes to compel Lebanon to acquiesce to Syrian control. In short, Syria hopes to replicate in Lebanon the terrorist campaign underway in Iraq. That campaign, it is worth noting, is also directed from Damascus.

 

Up to now, the planned withdrawal of Syrian troops has distracted attention from the Syrian campaign to destabilize Lebanon. But a closer inspection of the withdrawal suggests that it may be part of the larger Syrian plan to preserve its grip on Lebanon.

 

At present, less than four regular brigades of the Syrian Army remain in Lebanon. They have received orders to pull out from Lebanon before April 7. According to sources inside Syria, however, these troops won't be going far. Instead, they will be deployed on the border with Iraq to reinforce the two divisions already stationed there. On the pretext of keeping an eye on U.S. naval forces in the Eastern Mediterranean, policy planners within the Syrian regime have abjured a complete pullback.

 

Clearly, Syria intends to keep Lebanon in its fold. Yet as recent events indicate, Lebanon is no longer prostrated before the will of its longtime occupier. In the wake of the Jdeideh bombing, for instance, the Lebanese army immediately moved to shore up Lebanese civil society. The commander of the Lebanese Army, General Michel Sleimane, issued a communiqué stressing “law and order.” Sleimane also emphasized that the army was taking steps to protect freedom of speech in Lebanon. Such measures are unprecedented in Lebanon. Previously, it was Syria who laid down the law. 

 

As the above suggests, the powerful movement for independence presents the Lebanese army with a momentous opportunity. No longer cowed by Syrian armies, Lebanese regular forces may move to fill the void. They may become the defenders of the demonstrators—not their oppressors. 

 

In this, they have already been aided by leaders of the Lebanese Diaspora. Concerned about a potential attack on Lebanese officers by the Syrian Mukhabarat, these leaders have taken their case to the United Nations Security Council. Their demands are simple: they ask for international protection of the only military institution capable of assuming Lebanon's long term security after the Syrian withdrawal. 

 

Their efforts have met with a measure of success. Within the United Nations, Western and Arab diplomats are now drawing a red line around the Lebanese Army. They recognize that by holding the line against Syrian pressure and offering protection to dissidents inside Lebanon, the army will play a necessary role in fostering a peaceful, democratic Lebanon.

Inside Lebanon, pro-Syrian politicians desperately yearn for the demise of the Lebanese independence movement. They hope the “wave will die out,” and the Cedar Revolution will go the way of Prague in 1968. But within Lebanese civil society, students, farmers, school teachers, fishermen, women's groups and religious orders from all communities know that this is their time, that this is their one shot at freedom.

 

Despite the best efforts of Syria's shadow network and its Lebanese apparatchiks, they may yet achieve it.

 

When the blasts rocked Beirut, massacring former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and his companions, history was taking a new turn in Lebanon: In the hours after the barbaric killing, the dice were rolling. Muslim Sunnis were breaking away from Syrian President Bashar Assad's control, and a Sunni-Druze-Christians alliance was rising while reaching out to the Shi'ite community.

 

How is it that the Syrian regime, known to be a shrewd planner and a long term strategist, would commit a political suicide? Execute Hariri in daylight and wait for the funerals to take place and for the international community to react, is not at all an Assad smart move. How could the regime's elite allow such a gigantic mistake to be perpetrated?

All students of Syrian and Lebanese politics, and I have been one since 1975, would concur that something of an apocalyptic nature has occurred inside the Ba'ath Party nomenclature for such a folly to happen. No one in the Sunni community is awaiting any judicial evidence to point the finger toward the East of the Bekaa. And very few among the Christians and Druze have a shred of doubt about the perpetrators, having suffered identical losses from Kamal Jumblat to Bashir Gemayel, both assassinated by the Syrian Ba'athists over the past decades. Even clairvoyant Shi'ites have read the signs in the sands: Syria's command is out of control.

 

Effectively, once an occupier starts eating his past allies, the end is near, even though it would stretch its destiny further in time. Alea jacta est, (what is done is done) by assassinating the most influential politician in Lebanon today, Mr. Bashar's future in the neighboring country is set: It won't have one anymore. The Ba'athist occupation of Lebanon is three decades long. The end of the Cold War didn't remove the Syrian Anchluss from Lebanon. A relic from the Soviet era, the Assad regime systematically annihilated its Christian-Lebanese opponents andpressed Muslim-Lebanese politicians between his own terror and Hezbollah's terrorism. As in Iraq and Syria, a "Republic of Fear" was thriving in Lebanon until September 11. With America waking up to the terror threat worldwide, Ba'athist Syria tried to dodge the new era. It was a terror regime protecting terrorist organizations, but wasn't upgraded to the axis of evil yet. It was given a chance to change, reform and withdraw from Lebanon.

 

It didn't. It maintained its occupation of Lebanon and opened its borders to the anti-Democracy terror in the Sunni Triangle of Iraq. But the world around Damascus was changing as Saddam was removed, his Ba'ath dismantled and 8 million Iraqi voterscolored their fingers in blue a month ago. With the death of Yasser Arafat, Palestinians moved further away from Mr. Assad's diktat, and elected their own president, Mahmoud Abbas. Thesurviving Ba'ath was left with his last two victims: The peoples of occupied Lebanon and oppressed Syria.

 

In September, while the idea was suggested by a vigorous Lebanese diaspora, both Washington and Paris introduced a resolution in the U.N. Security Council calling on Syria to withdraw its troops from its neighbor's territories. Rafiq Hariri saw the opportunity to get loose from the grip. So did Walid Jumblat, the Druze leader. Mr. Hariri resigned, signaling to French President Jacques Chirac that Lebanon's civil society has basically given the green light for the international community to help. Hence, UNSCR 1559 was born in New York, the city of September 11. The Syrian Ba'ath saw it in red, the color of blood.

 

In the fall, a car bomb almost killed former Minister Marwan Hamade, close-ally to Jumblat. The Druze political rebellion was on. Along with the already embattled Christians, the widening opposition reached out to Mr. Hariri, the Sunni tycoon. The troika was forming slowly, and heading toward Lebanon's upcoming legislative elections in May. Damascus predicted a victory for the "allies," and saw the nightmare of a returning Mr. Hariri with a national unity cabinet. Reading well into the future, the Ba'athist mind knew that such a leadership would ask the Security Council to pull Syria out, by force if needed. The Ba'ath cannotabandon the Lebanese prey, becausethe regimewould subsequently collapse inside the "Reich" itself.

 

Hence the Ba'athist mind had made its choice, implacably, to eliminate the pillars of Lebanese liberation as the international campaign was building at the horizon. That is pre-emptive strike. They knew that killing Mr. Hariri would be bad for them, but his freedom was worse. Damascus' plan is apocalyptic. If they go down, they will take everyone with them, or so they plan. Beirut was the Paris of the Middle East. But in contrast, with the survival of the French capital as the Nazis withdrew, the Ba'athists wants chaos and blood to spread if their forces are compelled to flee. They don't want to see reconstruction after their departure, but Hizbollah's wrath, and an endless violence. They want the Lebanese and the world to regret their "iron presence."