USCFL - Syria’s Lebanese Challenge

One occupier, Israel, quit Lebanon this week. In the view of many Lebanese, another occupier, Syria, remains. And a quarter-century after Syrian troops arrived, responding to pleas from Lebanese Christians during the civil war, its overwhelming presence here is being challenged as rarely before.

In Beirut, university students chanting "Lebanon first! The Syrian army out!" were bloodily suppressed last month. The country's leading newspaper, Al Nahar, published a front-page editorial in March blasting the role of Syria and its 35,000 troops in Lebanon, which it said many Lebanese "detest and reject." And as Lebanon's economy nose-dives, grumbling about the presence of 1 million Syrian workers here--an army of construction workers, busboys and street peddlers--has grown louder.

"The Israelis said, 'We're your enemy,' and they occupied us," a student at Beirut's St. Joseph University said recently. "The Syrians said, 'We're your friends,' but they also occupied us. To Syria we're just a card in the negotiations with Israel. And it's us, not them, who end up paying the price."

The timing of the rising public challenge to Syria's dominance is not coincidental. It intensified this spring, as Lebanese gradually understood that the Israeli occupation, a fixture on the political landscape for more than two decades, was ending. Now, some Lebanese are asking: If Israel has left the country, what justification remains for the continued presence of 35,000 Syrian troops, plus a vast network of informers and spies?

In the calculus of Middle East geopolitics, the challenge to Syria's domination of Lebanon is important. Squeezed between Syria and Israel, Lebanon has been the proxy battlefield where the two powers face off in what remains the most volatile rivalry in the Middle East.

To date, Lebanon has not even pretended to have its own policy toward Israel, bending instead to Syria's will. As Lebanese celebrate Israel's departure in the streets, government officials have stressed that there can be no real peace between Lebanon and Israel until several further conditions are met--including the return to Syria of the Golan Heights captured by Israel in 1967.

Some Lebanese fear that even after the Israeli pullout, Lebanon will continue to be used as a staging ground for Syrian-inspired attacks against the Jewish State.

"For a long time, Lebanon has been held hostage to Syria's priority, which is recovering the Golan Heights and no normalization with Israel," said Michael Young, a Lebanese political analyst.

Beyond strategic considerations, many Lebanese resent Syria's heavy hand in running their country.

For instance, few Lebanese have ever met Gen. Ghazi Kanaan, although most know enough to be afraid of him. Kanaan, Syria's chief of military intelligence in Lebanon and a close confidant of Syrian President Hafez Assad, is widely believed to pull every string worth pulling in Lebanon's government, army and economy. Lebanese refer to him, unsmilingly, as "the viceroy."

Kanaan, who holds no public office here, grants no interviews, gives no speeches and only rarely appears in public. By turns charming and brutally direct, Kanaan, 57, a general who prefers business suits to olive drab, is the personification of Syria's domination of Lebanon's domestic affairs.

Lebanese Presidents, Prime ministers and candidates for parliament must deal with Kanaan, and by extension with Syria's will. They are vetted by Syria, serve at Syria's pleasure and cooperate or compete to advance Syria's agenda--at times, say critics, at the expense of Lebanon's own.

Syria's troops in Lebanon control the movement of legal and illegal goods crossing the border, including weapons and ammunition for Hezbollah, the Shiite guerrilla army that forced Israel's army out of southern Lebanon. Cheap Syrian goods and produce are frequently dumped in Lebanon, yielding little or no tariff income for the Lebanese State and undercutting Lebanese farmers and tradesmen.

Those inequities, on top of Israel's imminent withdrawal, have fed the public unease at Syria's presence. And they appear to have yielded at least cosmetic results.

Following the student protests of Damascus's role last month, more than a dozen Syrian army checkpoints disappeared from around Beirut and the main Beirut-Damascus highway in early May. Although the troops are believed to remain in Lebanon, perhaps farther to the east in the Bekaa Valley, the move was seen as an attempt by Damascus to lower its profile.

Nonetheless, Syria is unlikely to loosen its grip on Lebanon any time soon. The overt opposition to Syrian influence remains limited, and springs predominantly from the country's Christian minority, just a third of the population. Many Lebanese say their tiny country, with 3.1 million people, can ill afford to alienate its 18.5 million neighbors in Syria. Divided into feudal camps, Lebanon's Christian and Muslim leaders have often sought Syrian allies in jockeying for advantage against their sectarian rivals.

The Lebanese government, beholden to its patrons in Damascus, is loath even to acknowledge opposition to Syria's presence.

"There is a large consensus that we need the Syrians," Lebanese Prime Minister Salim Hoss said in an interview earlier this year. "I don't want to discuss the Syrians."

Still, discussion of Syria is virtually unavoidable in Lebanon. Enormous billboards of Assad, his arms outstretched, pepper the streets of Lebanese cities and the highway to Damascus. An obelisk in Beirut, inscribed to "loyalty and brotherhood" between the two nations, inspires off-color jokes. Earlier this month, when a larger-than-life bronze statue of Assad was unveiled in Douris, a town in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanese notables competed with one another to pay homage to the great man--his unyielding resolve, his admirable manhood.

"No one can hold a candle to President Assad," said Mahmoud Abu Hamdan, a Bekaa Member of Parliament. "This man possesses a very male virility."

Elsewhere, and in private, many Lebanese are less effusive about the Syrians. One former provincial governor who balked at taking orders from the Syrians said Kanaan simply went around him. "He issued orders to my subordinates," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. A short while later, the governor was removed.

Some Lebanese who have resisted Syrian influence have died messily. One prominent figure was Kamal Jumblatt, leader of Lebanon's small Druze minority, who was assassinated in 1977, about a year after Syria intervened in Lebanon's civil war. The murder was widely seen as the work of Damascus. But Jumblatt's son, Walid, who took over as Druze leader on his father's death, chose not to resist Syria's overwhelming strength.

"On the 40th day after my father's assassination, I went to Damascus to make my peace," he said in an interview. "I had to, by conviction and by necessity . . . . All my weapons, my ammunition, my support came from Syria."

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Article:	Syria’s Lebanese Challenge
Author:	Lee Hockstader
Date:	May 2000