Syria -- the fun begins

AZZenny · May 30th, 2007, 08:08 PM

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What Assad Fears Most Has Come to Pass

by Michael J. Totten

Syria's tyrant Bashar Assad has dreaded nothing so much over the past couple of years as a Chapter 7 United Nations Security Council Resolution establishing a tribunal to put on trial the assassins of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Chapter 7 means the international community will impose enforcement mechanisms on the guilty. Assad worries it will be the first step toward internationally-sanctioned regime-change in Damascus.

Today the Security Council passed a Chapter 7 resolution with no votes against. Fireworks lit up the skies over Beirut as a small bomb was tossed into a church near the Hezbollah dahiyeh.

It takes effect June 10 -- one last chance for Lebanon to agree to the tribunal before the UN takes it completely out of their hands. This is the main reason why Hizbullah's ministers all quit Parliament, why the pro-Syrian speaker of Parliament has refused to convene for months.

Russia reportedly was going to try to block it out of 'concern' that the tinderbox of Lebanon will descend into civil war -- e.g., Syria will turn Hizbullah loose -- OR will have Hizb initiate a severe provocation of Israel to distract the UN, which was believed to be one of the two underpinnings for last summer's kidnapping attack (the other being Iran's first impending sanction date). I guess Russia must have abstained.

After all the fight Assad put up, can anyone wonder if his regime was guilty? But no one except the Lebanese really wants regime change right at the moment.

82CardsGrad · May 30th, 2007, 09:02 PM

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Originally Posted by AZZenny

It takes effect June 10 -- one last chance for Lebanon to agree to the tribunal before the UN takes it completely out of their hands. This is the main reason why Hizbullah's ministers all quit Parliament, why the pro-Syrian speaker of Parliament has refused to convene for months.

Russia reportedly was going to try to block it out of 'concern' that the tinderbox of Lebanon will descend into civil war -- e.g., Syria will turn Hizbullah loose -- OR will have Hizb initiate a severe provocation of Israel to distract the UN, which was believed to be one of the two underpinnings for last summer's kidnapping attack (the other being Iran's first impending sanction date). I guess Russia must have abstained.

After all the fight Assad put up, can anyone wonder if his regime was guilty? But no one except the Lebanese really wants regime change right at the moment.

Zenny - what if... What if at the end of the day regime change actually does occur, who steps in and will it be a positive step or simply a continuation of what have had??

AZZenny · June 3rd, 2007, 04:49 PM

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Fatah al-Islam terrorists in the Palestinian Nahr al-Bared refugee camp (which is an urban ghetto in Tripoli, not a tent city) are, reportedly, mostly not Palestinian. Lebanon’s freshest and most vicious of enemies have, if reports are correct, arrived from battlefields in Iraq via Syria.

The Lebanese Army is clearing the “camp” of terrorists, booby-traps, car bombs, and even domestic animals rigged with explosives. The government says there will be no negotiated truce with the enemy, that their crimes will be punished with the death penalty either in combat or later in prison. It has been years, decades really, since the government and army of Lebanon have shown this kind of resolve.

They had better keep up the resolve. This crisis may be nearing its end, but it could just as easily be merely the opening shots. Jund al-Sham ('The Greater Syrian Army' - a terrorist group) has gone on full alert in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp, Lebanon’s largest, outside the Sunni city of Saida south of Beirut. And Al Qaeda has published a most sinister threat to Lebanon on its Web site.

The speaker addresses a message directly to the Patriarch of the Christian Maronite church in Lebanon: "pull back your dogs from our people, and cease your artillery fire or else, from today onwards, there will be no safe place for any crusader in Lebanon, and as you strike, we will strike... If you do not stop, we will tear your hearts out with explosives, and surround your every post with our bombs. We will target your entire economy, starting with tourism and ending with all the incoming resources you [received when you] launched this new crusader war... We have ignored you previously, but we give you this final warning that from now on, an ocean of blood will be spilled.”

Lebanon is a weak and divided country. It is also, by far, and despite Hezbollah’s presence, the most liberal and democratic of all Arab countries. More than two thirds of the people who live there (Christians, Shias, and Druze) are considered infidels fit for slaughter by the salafist groups. A large percentage of Sunnis, in Beirut especially, are irreligious and bourgeois and modern.

UPDATE: The Lebanese Army foiled so-called Plan 755 which, reportedly, was a plot by Tripoli's salafists to massacre local civilians, sever the city's links to Beirut, and enslave the residents who couldn't get out.
UPDATE: The Lebanese Army says they nailed a Fatah Al Islam cell that would have "caused destruction similar to the 9/11 attacks in the United States." The explosives found were reportedly imported from Syria. Presumably this was to be part of so-called Plan 755, but it involved Beirut as well as Tripoli.

Beirut's Daily Star reports that the military has been given "a green light to deal with the security crisis without state interference."

UPDATE: Fighting has broken out between the Lebanese Army and the Jund Al Sham (the Greater Syrian Army) at the Ain El Hilweh refugee camp.

UPDATE: Fatah Al Islam's "9/11 in Lebanon" attack would have destroyed a large hotel in Beirut with four simultaneous truck bombs, blown up embassies on both sides of the city, and collapsed a tunnel .

Syria's involvement in this particular plan is unclear at this point, but will no doubt be investigated, especially since this entire crisis coincides precisely with the timing of the Chapter 7 UN Tribunal.

Syria threatened to set Lebanon and the region on fire if the tribunal was enacted.

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Zenny - what if... What if at the end of the day regime change actually does occur, who steps in and will it be a positive step or simply a continuation of what have had??

There's a ton of 'ifs' there. Israel and Jordan both actually dread regime change, and Egypt and Turkey won't be pleased either, because if it is a domestic revolution, it almost certainly means either Syrian Muslim Brotherhood takes over, or an overtly Iranian puppet gov't (or possibly they duke it out, Shia vs. Sunni) The Syrian MB has an interesting reputation among other islamists -- sort of like if the Crips said of some gang, 'Now THOSE guys are crazy.'

However, if Assad falls, I imagine the Saudis will try to barrel in there via the Arab League -- they actually have family ties to some of the old ruling elite. (Which our CIA deposed in order to enhance cross-Syrian oil transport pipelines after the very inconvenient creation of Israel.)

If the regime is delegitimized by a UN tribunal, as is now expected, one presumes the UN would somehow try to intervene. Syrians have traditionally been fairly secular, so any of those scenarios other than UN control would be a step backwards, and hard to imagine the UN as a positive.
In short -- it'll be a Syrian cluster-****.