Kerry Spot [ jim geraghty reporting ][ kerry spot home archives email ]
THE STRAIGHT STUFF ON LEBANON AND SYRIA
Last night I spoke to a very smart guy who follows Lebanon-Syria issues closely about the Rafik Hariri assassination and various Middle Eastern issues.
First, a couple of details about the bomb that killed him. It used something in the neighborhood of 650 pounds of TNT – not the kind of bomb that a bunch of amateurs can easily assemble in a basement.
The crater was centered in the middle of the road, indicating the bomb was likely placed under the street and not in a parked car.
The bomb was placed at curve, where the motorcade would have had to slow down. The assassins obviously had to know Hariri’s schedule and the route he would be traveling. The Syrian-backed Lebanese government security forces were ‘responsible’ for Hariri’s safetly, and would have that information.
Hariri’s motorcade included jammers designed to disrupt signals that could detonate a bomb, gadgets that usually interfered with cellular phone reception in the surrounding area. Somehow, the bombers either used a wire-triggered bomb or had gotten their hands on a counter-device placed in a nearby vehicle.
Another interesting observation – look at the photos of the bomb site here, here and here. The surrounding buildings look devastated, correct? And a 650 pound bomb that can destroy a bulletproof limo, goes off on a downtown street in a major city… and the death toll is only 18 people?
It turns out the buildings on either side of the bombing were under construction. The location was the perfect spot for someone who wanted to make a spectacularly high-profile assassination of Hariri and his security forces, without killing hundreds of other Lebanese and/or Syrians walking down the street. (The bombing did injure hundreds, but considering all the other points along the motorcade’s route it could have gone off, this spot appears to be one to result in minimal ‘collateral damage.’)
Add up all of these signs of professional training, and we can pretty much conclude this was state-sponsored, and dismiss Juan Cole’s suggestion that this was a business deal gone bad.
This leaves three potential states that could have been responsible: Syria, Israel, and Iran.
The Iranians, conceivably, could have done this to put the west’s attention and heat on Syria. But my guy is skeptical of this kind of bank-shot skullduggery. The risk doesn’t seem to be worth the reward.
Israel could have pulled it off, but it’s not clear that they would really want to kill Hariri. He was leading an increasingly-impatient Lebanese people who were chafing under de facto Syrian rule. If an independent Lebanon would be more likely to reach a détente with Israel (the Lebanese may not like the Israelis, but they aren’t chomping at the bit for a conflict with them, either), why knock off a guy who could be acting in your long-term interests?
And then there are the Syrians. The strongest argument against Damascus ordering the hit is that they’re too obvious a suspect. On the other hand, Syria clearly feels as if Lebanon is its backyard or colony, and that they can act with impunity there. In fact, they’ve killed more than a few Lebanese political leaders before. Seeing an anti-Syrian Lebanese voice get killed via terrorism is kind of like hearing O.J. Simpson’s latest love interest has been found stabbed to death. Even if you can’t prove it 100 percent, you start to notice a pattern.
Hariri’s assassination came as a shock to my smart guy, not just because he was perhaps the most heavily-protected man in Lebanon, but because of his serious accomplishments in developing Lebanon’s economy. He said that while the Syrians didn’t like Hariri, he was surprised that they were willing to kill the goose that was laying the golden eggs. And the economic importance of Lebanon to Syria can’t be understated. About 1 million Syrians work in Lebanon, earning cash and sending it back home. Sending money transactions through Beirut is an easy way for foreign companies to avoid the notoriety of working with the Syrian regime.
What’s coming next? Well, the Syrians clearly completely misjudged the Lebanese reaction. A people who were previously terrified of even mentioning Hafiz Assad’s name, (instead they would curse the town he was born in) are now protesting in the streets.
Sadly, my guy fears that Walid Jumblatt, the patriarch of the Druze Muslim community and the man quoted in yesterday’s Post as comparing the Iraqi elections to the fall of the Berlin Wall, has to watch his back. There’s no reason that the Syrians couldn’t double their mistakes and make another high-profile assassination to send the signal that they’re still in control.
But it appears that so far, the U.S. and its European allies are on the right track, isolating Baby Assad’s regime and seeking ways to tighten the economic squeeze on the regime. Al-Jazeera is covering Assad’s regime and the assassination critically, so the Syrians really don’t have too many friends right now.
Taking military action would probably be a mistake, turning an “can you believe how evil and dangerous the Assad regime is” discussion into a “there the Americans go again, bombing Arabs again” discussion. Of course, with a lot of U.S. troops patrolling the Iraqi-Syrian border and Iraqi terrorists claiming the Syrians trained them, there are a lot of ways for the U.S. to make its presence known.
With Syria pledging to pull out of Lebanon, the U.S. and its allies have a golden opportunity to hold them to their word and help establish an independent, pluralist, parliamentary democracy in the Middle East.
[Posted 02/24 10:54 AM]
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