LCCC NEWS BULLETIN
APRIL 8/2003

Exclusive: Syria’s Bashar Can’t Have It Both Ways
Adrienne McPhail, worthington90@cybernet.it

Syria is showing two different faces to its Arab neighbors and to the world; they are playing a perilous game. This past week Syrian President Bashar Assad said that he hoped US forces would fail to oust Saddam Hussein. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Syria now faces a critical choice. It could continue direct support for terrorist groups or embark on a more hopeful course. Either way, he said, Syria bears the responsibility for its choices.

One face of Syria is its membership of the UN Security Council that voted in favor of Resolution 1441. During the 1990s it became involved in the peace process between Palestine and Israel, a result of the Madrid conference.

It strengthened its diplomatic ties with the US and other Western countries and in June 2002 it arrested Mohammed Haydar Zammar, a suspected Al-Qaeda member. In addition, Syria has provided what it refers to as “valuable information” to the US regarding Al-Qaeda, which they claim saved the lives of “many American soldiers.” Yet President Bashar has complained that the United States still has his country on its list of countries that support “state-sponsored terrorism.”

The other face of Syria is the reason it is still on the list. Syria has a history of flirtation with terrorism, both as a weapon and a political tool. Under the long rule of President Bashar’s father, Hafez Assad, open support of terrorist organizations was part of the Syrian policy both internally and externally.

His Baath Party used the technique of playing one group against another until the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni group, threatened his power.

This resulted in his killing over 10,000 people and the destruction of the better part of the city of Hama. Subsequently, Syria changed from open support to “terrorist subcontractors.”

Another important change was in the very description of “terrorism.” Damascus now differentiates between Sunni Muslim fundamentalists like Al-Qaeda and groups that it sees as national liberation movements, such as Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

In an interview shortly after taking office Bashar explained that his Baath Party, the only political party in Syria, represented an ideology that was moving toward a pan-Arab awakening, especially after the Palestinian intifada. This could explain why both the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad are headquartered in Damascus. Hezbollah’s military operations began in the suburbs of Beirut and in the Beqa’ Valley of Lebanon. This valley has served as a training ground for Hezbollah and similar groups.

It is supported by both Syria and the Iranian “Revolutionary Guards.” Syria sees Hezbollah as the necessary tool to control Israeli aggression into Lebanon. The pattern that seems to emerge in this scenario is that President Bashar is trying to establish his own personal image as a “regional leader” who defends some Arab causes without yielding to pressure from Israel, the United States and other Western countries. Yet this does not explain why he withdrew his military troops from Beirut in 2001 after Israel had withdrawn its forces the previous year, but then, in 2002, redeployed 20,000 troops back into Lebanon.

The Lebanese are divided on this occupation. Some of their leaders believe that the Syrian presence helps to stabilize this fragile country that is still confronting Israel. Others believe that Syria has visions of incorporating Lebanon into its borders permanently.

The United States has adopted an uncompromising position that will require Syria and Lebanon to begin to dismantle the military, political, logistical and propaganda apparatus of the terrorist organizations in both countries. The dissociation of states from terrorism is the cornerstone of American war policy. The question is, which face will Syria show?

If it complies with the US and international policies and starts a program of destroying the very organizations it has long supported, the message from Damascus would have to be that President Bashar has decided to abandon the policies of his father and a number of his close advisors and to begin instead to lead the Syria of the peace talks and the UN Security Council. Can he evolve from this situation as the “Arab leader” he wants to project?

If he chooses to ignore the warnings from the US and continues to give a haven to these terrorist groups, then he will place his country and Lebanon in danger of economic sanctions and great international political pressure.

President Bashar’s only way out is to push for a final peace settlement between the Palestinians and Israel, together with a conclusion to the problem of the Golan Heights between his country and Israel. He then needs to withdraw his troops from Lebanon and close down the terrorist camps and headquarters in both countries.

With a free state of Palestine and the resolution of the Golan Heights issue, there can be no further need for the terror weapon or the terror political tool, and Syria will emerge as the symbol of an Arab nation that knew when these methods had outlived their usefulness and was wise enough to set them aside.

(Adrienne McPhail is a freelance journalist based in Riyadh.)

Arab News Features 6 April 2003


 

From Baghdad to Damascus Can Bush justify invading Iraq but not Syria?
04 April 03
By William Saletan
SLATE.COM -After Baghdad, what next? Here’s an idea: Invade Syria. Lebanese newspaper editor Talal Salman brought up the idea in an interview with Syrian President Bashir Assad, published on March 27. “It has been said that war plans against Iraq were hatched before 9/11,” Salman asserted. “The list of countries included Afghanistan, then Iraq, Syria, and Iran. In the new plan of aggression, Syria is on one of the lists.” RATHER THAN demand evidence, Assad replied, “Even if they had not included Syria in this plan, the probability was always there. That means that we are not going to wait until they include Syria in the plan and declare that or not. … Some Arab capitals will stand beside Baghdad. When I talk about some Arab capitals, it does not make sense to exclude Syria.”
Was Assad pledging to fight the United States? On March 28, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned him, “We have information that shipments of military supplies have been crossing the border from Syria into Iraq, including night-vision goggles. These deliveries pose a direct threat to the lives of coalition forces. We consider such trafficking as hostile acts and will hold the Syrian government accountable for such shipments.” When asked whether he was “threatening military action against Syria,” Rumsfeld refused to answer.
CRITERIA FOR REGIME CHANGE
Last Sunday, Rumsfeld predicted that after his warning to the Syrians, “My guess is that they’ll be more careful.” But on Thursday, when asked whether he had seen any signs of change, he replied, “Syria is continuing to conduct itself the way it was prior to the time I said what I said.” Last year, I noted that Syria met seven of the eight criteria cited by then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, as reasons to invade Iraq. DeLay’s speech, reportedly vetted by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, essentially summarized President Bush’s arguments for war. According to reports by the CIA, State Department, and other agencies, Syria supported terrorism, possessed weapons of mass destruction, violated human rights, thwarted democracy, had invaded its neighbors, and had violated a biological weapons treaty.
On Monday, the State Department issued a new report reaffirming Syria’s status as an abuser of human rights. Syrian security forces operate “outside the legal system” and commit “serious human rights abuses,” said the report. “Continuing serious abuses included the use of torture in detention; poor prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; [and] prolonged detention without trial.” I’m not advocating an invasion of Syria. I’d distinguish it from Iraq on three grounds:
1) Its worst offenses took place under the father of its current dictator;
2) it hasn’t used its WMD in battle;
and 3) it has evaded international WMD agreements far less extensively, flagrantly, and persistently than has Iraq. But I’d like to know whether Bush would draw the same distinctions — or, if not, how he would justify invading one country but not the other. In his State of the Union message two months ago, Bush said of Saddam Hussein’s torture methods, “If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning.” That’s a good way to put the Syrian question to Bush. If your doctrine of changing evil regimes doesn’t apply to Syria, Mr. President, what meaning does your doctrine have?

 

Will lessons from Beirut be applied to Baghdad? Suicide bombings in Lebanon 20 years ago drove U.S. forces from country

 

 

05 April 03 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc PAUL ADAMS

 

BEIRUT -- Sami Awad was the first cameraman on the scene that early morning in Beirut 20 years ago. "There were bodies of marines all over the street," he recalled this week. "Those who were still alive were in shock for a while, for a long while." The date was Oct. 23, 1983. It was just after dawn. A man drove a yellow Mercedes-Benz truck loaded with 550 kilograms of dynamite into the front door of the U.S. Marines headquarters at Beirut airport. Lance-Corporal Eddie Difranco was the only sentry to get a glimpse of the driver. "He looked right at me," LCpl. Difranco said later, "and smiled." The explosion was immense, killing 241 U.S. servicemen in the blast and the ensuing fires. Just a few months later, the U.S. troops who had been sent to help make peace in Lebanon abandoned their mission, leaving the country to its fate. When U.S. forces enter central Baghdad in the coming days, it will be their first venture into a Middle Eastern city under arms in all the years since. There will be differences. In Beirut, the Americans had come in relatively small numbers to make peace among many warring factions. In Baghdad, they have the more conventional job of conquering an opposing army and pacifying the populace. But there are similarities, too, some of which are sobering and instructive. Even today, the Beirut cityscape is testimony to the pitiless realities of urban warfare: the charred, pockmarked, gap-toothed remains of buildings eviscerated during long years of battle. Many of the elegant hotels along Beirut's famous seaside Corniche, the Phoenicia and the Palm Beach, which were once quite literally the scenes of room-to-room fighting, have been rebuilt in imitation of their former glory. But where the Marine headquarters once stood and at the site of the U.S. embassy, which was also destroyed by a suicide bomber, today there are just parking lots. Fouad Ali Jaber, 48, still runs a grocery store not far from what was once the Green Line separating Christian forces in Beirut from Muslim militiamen such as himself during Lebanon's decades-long civil war. "We would sometimes try to cross the Green Line, but the Phalangists [Christians] would spot us, and start to shell our homes," he recalled, standing among the neighbourhood's still-battle-scarred apartment blocks. "When they tried to come into our area, fighters came from all over West Beirut to help us." More than 100,000 people were killed or injured during the civil war, many of them at the hands of militias that changed their alliances with bewildering speed. But there were also armies thrown into the fighting from Israel, Syria and the United States. What they discovered was that in the close quarters of a city, the advantages of better technology and training could often be neutralized by lightly armed and loosely organized militias who knew the terrain. In the years since the Beirut attack -- and the Mogadishu ambush a decade later -- some U.S. forces have received specialized training in urban warfare, in the incongruous settings of California and Guam. The U.S. military has also studied Israel's tactics in battling Palestinians in the built-up areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But none of that makes the prospect more appetizing. Although the military has not revealed its tactics for taking Baghdad in detail, it seems likely that the Americans will try to avoid street-to-street fighting. The preference seems to be to peel away segments of the population. In particular, the U.S. military is banking on the sympathies of Iraq's large Shia Muslim community, which has long chafed under the leadership of the Sunni Saddam Hussein. But in the south of Iraq, most Shiites have yet to greet the U.S. forces as liberators. In Beirut this week, one former militiaman who asked to be called only by his nickname, Abu Ali, gave a clue as to why that might be. He said that it was neither ideology nor leadership that motivated many of the Lebanese fighters. Abu Ali is greying now, and he has made a new life for himself. He works as a commercial representative for a U.S. firm. As a young man of 17, he said that his motivation and that of many of his comrades was simply to defend their neighbourhood from outsiders. "You are defending your street, your house," he said. Abu Ali is a Sunni Muslim, but he lived in a predominantly Shia area of Beirut, and in the course of the civil war, he fought alongside both Shiites and Druze. "Imperialism, neocolonialism; these were empty slogans to us," he said. "We also knew at the time that the leader of our area was an inhumane pig. But we were not fighting for him. It was about belonging, that's all." Even when outsiders were welcomed as liberators during Lebanon's civil wars, it usually did not last. It seems incredible to imagine now, but in the 1980s, Lebanon's long-suffering Shia population initially cheered American forces, and even Israeli troops, when they rolled over some of their adversaries. As they tried to stabilize Lebanon, the United States forged an alliance with the Christian-dominated government, however, and in doing so alienated all their rivals. No one knows who dispatched the suicide bombers who chased the Americans out of Lebanon, but one popular bet is the Shia militias. Thomas Friedman, The New York Times correspondent in Beirut at the time, later wrote that the U.S. Marines were eventually transformed by the intensity of local rivalries "from peacekeepers into just another Lebanese faction." The challenge that guerrilla tactics -- especially suicide bombings -- pose to a conventional army such as that of the United States is that they sharpen the contradiction between the roles of conqueror and liberator. "The ultimate military outcome is not in doubt [in Iraq]," retired U.S. General Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander, recently wrote in The Times of London. "But if you think suicide bombings will not change the nature of the conflict, think again." The threat of such attacks will make it harder for the Americans to break down the barrier of fear with the civilian population, Gen. Clark wrote. Soldiers will keep their distance, and keep their rifles on hairtriggers. That has already been demonstrated several times in recent days when U.S. troops have killed unarmed Iraqi civilians out of misplaced fear. "This is why terrorism is being used by the weaker side when rifles, tanks and artillery do not enable them to win a conventional fight," he wrote.