Syria Blamed for Assassination of Former Lebanese PM

Rafik Hariri was prime minister of Lebanon from 1992-98 and again from 2000-2004. He made a billion dollars abroad and returned to what was a country rebuilding from a destructive and insanely stupid civil war. Yesterday, a suicide bomber killed him along with at least 14 others. A little known, and possibly fictitious group, called “Victory and Jihad in Greater Syria” claimed (ir)responsibility. The world blamed the Syrian government, though, because Mr. Hariri was a big opponent of Syria’s occupation of Lebanon, and elections are on the way.

Before the stupidity that destroyed it, Lebanon was the Middle East’s answer to the French Riviera, and a very good answer indeed. After the destruction ended, the rebuilding began, and the Financial Times earlier this year printed an entire supplement on just how far the country had come since those awful days. While a few buildings remained in Dresden-like disrepair, much of Beirut had started to gets its swing back.

However, throughout all of this, around 14,000 Syrian troops have occupied Lebanon. Damascus intervened in the Lebanese Civil War in 1976 and has been there ever since. This got a little tricky when the Israelis went after the PLO and took Beirut in 1982, but when they withdrew to the south, the Syrian army wound up as the main pillar of security. It has turned a blind eye to the Shi’ite militia in the Beka’a Valley and has let them attack Israel from this sanctuary. While Syria can point to the withdrawal of its troops from Beirut in 2000, it kept President Lahoud in office beyond his constitutional six-year limit because it was convenient to Damascus.

It is possible that the Victory and Jihad wankers are independent of Syria’s Ba’athist regime (ideologically, the same as the Saddamites of Baghdad, but like all ideologues, they hated one another for decades). Old Man Assad, before he died, occasionally massacred Muslim fundamentalists. His son, Bashir Assad, the current president, has not lived up to hopes of being a more forgiving or liberal leader than his father, but there is no sign he likes the Al Qaeda crowd either.

However, this gives the Bush administration an opportunity to further muck about in the Middle East. The American ambassador to Damascus has been recalled for consultations, which is just a step shy of severing diplomatic ties. One could expect calls for further sanctions. There are US troops right next door in Iraq. If the idea was to set Washington and Damascus at each other, the assassination worked. If not, someone really screwed up.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.

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