End the Syrian Occupation of Lebanon

With Saddam Hussein kaput, it's time to address another mess in the Middle East, time for the United States to champion the trampled rights of an oppressed people, time to end the occupation. It's time, in sum, for Syria to get out of Lebanon.

Syria's purloining of an entire neighboring country has helped shore up the Baathist Assad dynasty in Damascus, while serving as a source of violent instability in the region. By almost every measure--totalitarian rule, terrorist sponsorship, double-dealing bad faith--Syria's regime ranks among the chart-toppers worldwide. But ever since Syrian troops rolled into Lebanon as "peacekeepers" in 1976, and Damascus consolidated its domination via the ill-conceived 1989 Taif Agreement, the bizarre operating assumption, even in the democratic West, has been that occupation by Syria is somehow a formula for Lebanese "stability."

Hardly. Two great evils have come of it so far. The first is Syria's subletting of Lebanon to terrorist groups--most notoriously Hezbollah, which ranks number one among terrorist killers of Americans abroad, sends murderers into Israel, and has taken to threatening the United States directly. Hezbollah gets support and arms from Iran and Syria. What its thugs provide Damascus, in return, is the ability to threaten and attack Israel from bases just outside Syria's borders, deflecting blame from Damascus and making chronic trouble between Lebanon and Israel. That, in turn, plays as the chief pretext for Syria to stay in Lebanon, to promote yet more "peace" and "stability."

In truth, Lebanon, along with being a handy financial hub and luscious slice of seaside real estate, is also one of the prime factors that makes impoverished, wretched Syria a player of heft in the region, a colonial power cultivating trouble. If the United States really aims to produce peace in this part of the Middle East, the first road map to unfold would be the one showing the roads that could take Syria's occupation force of soldiers, secret police, and pet terrorists back to Damascus. How Bashar Assad's regime would survive that humiliation, with its accompanying loss of Lebanese tribute, is an interesting question. Maybe it wouldn't, and that, too, would be a step forward for the region.

The second evil of Syria's colonial venture is the internal corrosion of Lebanon, otherwise the most promising candidate in the region for Arab democracy. If you reach back to the days before Yasser Arafat arrived with his wrecking crew in the 1970s and the country descended into civil war, Lebanon held pride of place as the only Arab nation with democratic institutions. It was the Paris--or perhaps we might better say, the London--of the Middle East. That's what allowed a mix of Muslims, Christians, and related sects to work out their differences without killing each other and threatening their neighbors. This is a valuable legacy, deserving of protection it has not received. Lebanon's civil war ended in 1990, but Syria stayed on. The Israelis, who came in to shut down Arafat in 1982, withdrew their last troops in 2000, but Syria is still there--inviting fights over the disputed scrap of land called Shabaa Farms. And the squandering of Lebanon's true assets proceeds apace.

What are those assets? Unlike such carefully guarded gas stations as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, Lebanon is famous for its cosmopolitan culture, liberal heritage, and the enterprise and skills of its people. In recent decades that has counted for little in the backroom barter and Nobel Peace-prize contests of Middle East politics. But one of the great insights of the Bush post-September 11 foreign policy is that stability and peace are built not on oil, but on free societies. By these lights, Lebanon contains treasure in greater abundance than anyplace else in the Middle East; something that for purposes of real progress is more valuable than oil. It's called human capital.

Last December, I visited Beirut, curious to see what kind of democratic opposition could be found. There are many such people--most of them Christian, but not all. Given Syria's ability to meddle in their lives, they were surprisingly outspoken, quite clear about the need for democratic self-rule, and they all warned that it was unwise for Washington to keep tolerating Syria's Baathist infestation of Lebanon. "What is taking place here is the advent of a police state," one lawyer told me. "We don't understand why the U.S. is accepting that Lebanon would vanish as an example of pluralism." They warned that all the trends were in the wrong direction. "You allow Syria to dominate the country in such a way as to create, later, monsters," a scholar told me.

On one particularly interesting evening, I met with half a dozen college students. They came from a number of schools and a variety of backgrounds. They all understood the value of democratic institutions; they all wanted to see Lebanon restored to the roster of free nations. And all but one wanted to leave. They saw no hope of liberation, and no future in a Lebanon occupied by Syria. One compared the situation to the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe. Another noted, "Before the Israeli withdrawal, they said Syria was necessary to protect us from the Israelis. Then the Israelis withdrew, and the Syrians are still here." Yet another remarked, "We don't have any problems with the people of Syria. It's their government."

Good points, all. Syria's government, even for most of its own 17 million people, is a horror, both repressing and beggaring them to an extent that has driven more than 1 million of them into Lebanon in search of work, overwhelming Lebanon's much smaller population of just under 4 million. In fact, there are two classes of Syrians in Lebanon. There are Assad's select squads of thugs, who pull the strings, bully dissidents, and anoint the local politicians. And there are the impoverished Syrian migrant workers, who last December were selling bottled water and Santa Claus hats in traffic. One of the odder moments of my stay came at a pleasant outdoor café, where I was interviewing a dapper member of the Lebanese parliament. He was explaining why he believed Syria had something to offer in the way of stability and progress, when a thin man in frayed clothes stopped at our table, a street peddler, selling walnuts. My café companion dismissed him from our presence with a wave, and a scornful aside to me--"a Syrian."

One of the most notable effects of Syrian rule is the demonization of Israel. Even among the more vocal opposition, people turned deeply cautious about even touching on Israel. This subject, more than any other, can land Lebanese in prison. They are not only forbidden all contact with Israelis; it is a crime even to possess books, films, or toothpaste from Israel. Given half a chance, the Lebanese and Israelis would make natural trading partners. These are two peoples given to commerce, which is one of the great catalysts for achieving functional relations between nations. Syria, in imposing upon Lebanon its own no-contact policy, permits only ignorance and distance. Into that vacuum come fear and hate.

I spoke with one man from southern Lebanon who, on charges of having fraternized with Israelis, spent years in jail--in Syria. I will skip his name. He was detained when he went to Damascus on business, Damascus being the place most Lebanese must perforce transit in order to deal with the outer world. Before the Syrians threw him in prison, he was hung by his wrists, beaten, burned with cigarettes, and told he would die in Syria. He showed me his scars. Eventually he was released, but he counts himself now among the living dead--his life gone, his family estranged, with no way out of a country run by his former jailers.

The United States has plenty on its hands right now in Iraq, and much to attend to in other terrorist-sponsoring nations such as Iran and Saudi Arabia. But in delivering to Syria the message that the Middle East's era of tyrants and terrorists must end, it is vital to start repeating loudly and often a word that Secretary of State Colin Powell actually uttered last month, in a rare moment of candor on the matter of Syria's role in Lebanon: "occupation"--as in, this occupation must end.

Blame Syria - The present Senior member of the Axis of Evil

Male Saddamites dressed as WOMEN went to Syria.

======== Cowardly Baathist fleeing from Baghdad to Syria========

Possible upper leader of Saddam's HQ pretending to be a "lady"
in the middle of these women going on a "humanitarian" visit to Syria.
He has loose bizarre shoes, weapons on his chest, and appears to be no lady at all.
The real women wear flats, look normal and at the camera,
are more concerned with the family around them,
and do not carry a weapon or vest as the male terrorist Baathist does.

In Damascus, Syria, guess who arranged for Syrians and Palestinians to kill Americans?
Answer: the Syrian Law University.

========= Syria =========

In Syria, Baathist Iraqis protected by Syria covert doomed Iraqi currency to jewelry.

The marine barrack bombing was the first time that suicide bombing was used on such a scale. When the marines pulled out because of it, the use of suicide bombings was declared to be a fantastically effective tool and exploded (pun intended) into use. This is just another example how important it is not to show any signs of weakness in that region.

America helping Lebanon is a wise investment. Lebanon has had democracy before, and therefore it is the place where democracy in the Middle East is most likely to take root and spread. That's what I call a great investment for the US.

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