[Marxism] US alliance -- US, Britain, France, Israel, UN -- targets Syria as foes' weak link in Middle East

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

New Statesman
 
The secret state 
Cover story
Patrick Seale
Monday 5th June 2006 

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Authoritarian and anti-western, Syria stands alongside Iran, Hezbollah
and Hamas in defying US ambitions for the Middle East. But a UN report
on the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, due out this month, could bring
the regime to its knees. Patrick Seale on the linchpin to the battle for
a region in turmoil 
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One nation, American hawks believe, holds the key to subduing and
pacifying a Middle East that is giving Washington a severe headache. But
it is not Iraq, Iran, or even the increasingly turbulent Palestinian
territories. It is a prickly, defiant and repressive state apparently in
the grip of its security services: Syria. 

Syria is the linchpin in the battle raging for the region. On one side
of the conflict stand the United States and its Israeli ally. They bully
their opponents, and are swift to resort to threats or brute force.
Ranged against them is a motley anti-western alliance - the
Tehran/Damascus/south Lebanon axis - with an extension to Hamas, the
Islamic resistance movement that, having won the Palestinian elections
in January and formed a government, is now under international siege. 

Four men represent this alliance: President Mahmoud Ahmad-inejad of
Iran, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, head
of Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, and the Palestinian prime minister,
Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas. None of these men is a saint and all have
resorted to questionable tactics, but together they form the main
resistance to US-Israeli hegemony over the region. 

Big issues are at stake: whether the US will remain the unchallenged
power in the Middle East, whether Israel can suppress the Palestinians
by force and, most importantly, whether small powers can hold their own
against a bellicose superpower. 

The struggle is particularly ferocious because it is being waged in a
context of international anarchy. The flames were fanned by the illegal
western invasion of Iraq, which has distorted every political
relationship in the Middle East and given a great boost to its most
violent and lawless elements. 

Amid this chaos, Israeli and American strategists see Syria as the
region's weak link. Bring the country to heel, runs their argument, and
the whole Tehran/Damascus/Hezbollah/Hamas axis would collapse. An
isolated Iran could then be forced to shut down its nuclear programme;
Iraqi insurgents would be deprived of jihadi reinforcements; Hezbollah
could be disarmed and Lebanon brought into the US-Israeli orbit; and
Israel could make short work of Hamas. 

In Washington, this thinking produced the Syria Accountability Act 2003,
which freezes key assets in the US. President Bush explained that
sanctions against Damascus were needed "to deal with the unusual and
extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy and
economy of the United States constituted by the actions of the
government of Syria in supporting terrorism, interfering in Lebanon,
pursuing weapons of mass destruction and missile programmes, and
undermining United States and international efforts with respect to the
stabilisation and reconstruction of Iraq". Little wonder that Syria
feels it is in America's gunsights. 

The challenges that the country faces are vast, and demand a leader of
stature. On that matter, the jury is still out. Bashar al-Assad, a
mild-mannered, UK-trained ophthalmologist, was placed in power by the
nation's barons on the death of Hafez al-Assad in June 2000. But while
the father was a master of realpolitik, the son's record has so far been
marred by diplomatic blundering, painfully slow domestic reforms and
human-rights abuses, which hit a new low in recent weeks with the
arbitrary arrest of some three dozen pro-democracy activists. 

This raises fundamental questions about Assad's political instincts. Is
all-out repression the best strategy for rallying the home front against
external enemies? Would the president not be wiser to curb the powers of
the dreaded secret police, check the greedy excesses of his immediate
entourage, allow the population some genuine freedoms and even co-opt
into his government the "patriotic opposition" of human-rights
campaigners and civil-rights activists, who are as opposed to accepting
the diktat of the US and Israel as he is himself? 

President Assad would no doubt argue that if the regional environment
were less hostile - if Syria were not caught between the danger of
overspill from the war in Iraq on one border and Israel's cruel
oppression of the Palestinians on the other - he could afford to become
more liberal, as he briefly attempted to do when he took over. Yet his
actions present an enigma. Is he, at heart, a reformer manqué, faced
with deadly threats to his country and to himself? Is he a reluctant
figurehead manipulated by ruthless placemen and relatives? Or has he
simply acquired a taste for absolute power on his father's model? 



One of the greatest tests that Assad as a leader and Syria as a nation
now face is the attempt to strip Damascus of its remaining influence in
Lebanon. The challenge has been mounted by the US and France, which have
jointly sponsored a United Nations Security Council resolution (number
1680, of 17 May) calling on Syria to establish full diplomatic relations
with Lebanon "as a significant step towards asserting Lebanon's
sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence". 

Temporarily allied but in reality in competition, France and the US are
hoping to step into the vacuum in Lebanon that Syria's ejection would
create. Syria has rejected the UN resolution as interference in its
internal affairs, signalling that it will not give in without a fight. 

This is no mere sideshow to the bigger regional contest. Lebanon is of
immense importance to Syria. With Damascus less than 20 kilometres from
the Lebanese border and the heart of Syria vulnerable to a thrust up the
Beka'a Valley, a basic principle of Syrian policy has for decades been
to prevent any hostile power establishing itself in Lebanon, or mounting
hostile operations against it from Lebanese soil. 

Syria has striven to keep Lebanon away from any relationship with
Israel, and firmly within its own sphere of influence. Israel invaded
Lebanon not once but twice - in 1978 and again on a larger scale in
1982, when it killed roughly 17,000 Lebanese and Palestinians and
besieged and bombarded Beirut. One of its aims was to drive out the
Syrians and bring Lebanon under its control, though the attempt failed
when Syria managed to abort a US-brokered peace deal between Israel and
Lebanon in 1983. 

A focal point of the present "struggle for Lebanon" is the investigation
into the murder, in February 2005, of Rafiq Hariri, the billionaire
former Lebanese prime minister, architect of Lebanon's post-civil-war
revival and close personal friend of President Jacques Chirac of France.
Hariri was emerging as a potential challenger to Syria's dominance over
Lebanon, and Syria has been widely blamed for his killing. 

Although it insists it is innocent, the government in Damascus is
anxiously awaiting the report of the UN's Belgian investigator Serge
Brammertz, due out this month. Chirac, who strongly supported Bashar
al-Assad when he first came to power, is now an implacable enemy, and
wants the killers brought to justice. 

If Brammertz produces hard evidence implicating top Syrian officials,
international and domestic pressure on the Assad regime will reach
critical levels. The recent wave of arrests of government opponents was
a warning to dissidents that the regime is still firmly in charge. But
these may well prove to be empty gestures. Should the Brammertz report
condemn Assad's inner circle, Syria is likely to face punishing
sanctions, which would gravely weaken the Middle East's anti-US and
anti-Israeli stance. 

Patrick Seale is a Middle East analyst 
SS


 
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