Syrian Intelligence "Pulls Out of Lebanon"

The news that Syrian intelligence has started pulling out of Lebanon received cheers from the White House, Number 10 Downing Street, and other places that should know better. Taking down a few photos of the Assads and putting a few filing cabinets into a U-Haul doesn't mean Syrian intelligence is leaving. Either the leaders of the west are naive, or they believe their voters are. Mr. Bush is declaring victory because the appearance of Syria's interference in Lebanon is changing. Mr. Assad's Muhabarat is merely doing what the old KGB taught it to do -- switch to an illegal, rather than overt, network.

The literature on KGB activities has expanded since the end of communism in the former Soviet Union, but even in the 1980s, there was the work of John Barron and others laying out the modus operandi of the KGB. Moreover, Syria and other Arab nations worked closely with the Soviets during the last decades of the Cold War; so it should come as no surprise that the Syrian secret police adopted the methods of their comrades from Moscow.

In the old days, a Soviet embassy was an intelligence operation, not a diplomatic one. The Soviet ambassador was usually not the ranking official at the embassy. Someone else, a high ranking member of the KGB, known as the rezident had the job of gathering information. He was an accredited diplomat, and therefore, was known as asset. At the same time, there was another, parallel entity run by an illegal rezident. This was a person whose identity was fake, who had been in place for years, and whose job it would be to run intelligence operations if the embassy were closed or compromised.

Returning to Lebanon in 2005, the Syrians have been very overt in their actions in their protectorate. They have kept a president in power after his constitutional terms has ended, and they have made sure that Hezbollah has all the arms they want in their Beka'a Valley stronghold -- to which, the Syrian troops and intelligence agents have moved. The 500,000 pro-Syrian demonstrators who filled Beirut's streets (in a country of 3.8 million) almost certainly had help from Damascus.

Now that even the Saudis and the Egyptians have told President Assad that Syria needs to leave Lebanon, he will -- and he won't. Syria is bigger and stronger than Lebanon (a nation carved out of the Ottoman Empire to create a Christian enclave by the French); Lebanon's future is the same as Finland's was living next to the USSR -- independent but more than cooperative when necessary.


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