What The Syrians Did In Lebanon.

It was immediately after his coup against the civilian wing of the ruling Ba'th in 1970 that Gen. Hafez al-Assad began his latent process of creating the reasons for civil war in Lebanon. He began encouraging various groups among the Lebanese and Palestinians to come out against each other's positions. It was on the side of the Christians, against Muslim Lebanese and Palestinians, that Syrian troops entered Lebanon in April 1976. Since then the history of Syria draining Lebanon's resources has been long and complicated.

After Hafez died in June 2000, Bashar thought he inherited not only Syria, but also the parts of Greater Syria which included the whole of Lebanon, a Syrian-occupied enclave in Jordan and the Palestine cause - as well as the Golan Heights on which negotiations had been suspended since late March 2000, when the Assad father met inconclusively in Geneva with then President Bill Clinton and Israeli PM Ehud Barak. Israel evacuated from south Lebanon in May 2000; there was no longer an excuse for Syrian troops and secret agents to stay in Lebanon.

By then a Syrian-Lebanese mafia had amassed a huge fortune from Lebanon. It functioned freely on the back of an integrated system of security services tying Lebanon to the Ba'thist regime. Syria was accused to having been behind all major assassinations in Lebanon including Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt in March 1977, President Bashir Gemayel in late 1982, PM Rashid Karami in 1987, President Rene Mu'awad in 1989; the wave of 2005 killings of Hariri and 22 others, top journalist Samir Qassir, politician George Hawi and publisher Jebran Tueini, had begun with an attempt to murder Hamadeh in October 2004; and Lebanese TV star May Chidiac was hadly hurt in a car bomb blast.

The World Bank said $5 bn/year worth of wealth used to be pumped from Lebanon to Syria. The draining of Lebanon's resources by Feb. 14, 2005, when Hariri was slain, had reached such an extent that Beirut's debt had mounted to almost $40 bn - 174% of Lebanon's GDP, according to the IMF.

The Syrian members of this mafia, which formally was invisible but whose power was felt everywhere in Lebanon, are said to be led by President Bashar's young brother Maher, head of the Presidential Guard, and included their brother-in-law Gen. Asef Shawkat. Shawkat used to be an aide to Rif'at al-Assad, one of Bashar's belligerent uncles who since mid-2000 has claimed the Syrian throne belonged to him. Shawkat, who became head of military intelligence after Hariri's murder, was said to be implicated in the death of Hafez's first son Basel in 1994. The rumour then was that Basel had vowed to kill Shawkat for having eloped with Hafez's only daughter - the only sister of Basel, Bashar, Maher, etc.

In one of his reports to the UN Security Council (UNSC), the former chief of the UN commission probing Hariri's murder, Detlev Mehlis of Germany, mentioned Maher, Shawkat and several other Syrian leaders as well as the heads of Lebanon's four main security establishments as being among those involved in the Feb. 14, 2005, assassination of the former Lebanese PM - a billionaire who also held a Saudi nationality and was close to the Saudi royal family.

Lebanon's parliament on May 30 formally condemned Syrian judicial moves against two of its members, saying the summonses against Junblatt and Hamadeh violated the Lebanese constitution. In a highly unusual step, a Syrian military court had issued an arrest warrant for Junblatt and Hamadeh for questioning for having made statements hostile to Syria's Ba'thist dictatorship. The two have played a leading role in the campaign to eliminate Syrian influence in Lebanon.

In an equally rare move, the 128-member legislature rebuked Syria, saying its summonses "offended the dignity of parliament and the Lebanese people". Such a motion would have been unthinkable until April 2005. The parliamentary motion, read out by Speaker Nabih Berri, said the Syrian military court's actions on Junblatt and Hamadeh were "rejected both in form and content". Legislators voted in favour by a show of hands. The parliament has an anti-Syria majority, but the "yes" vote was strengthened by the faction of Gen. Michel Aoun, a Christian leader who has left the anti-Syria alliance. Lawmakers from two pro-Syria, Shiite parties, Hizbullah and Amal, abstained. The US has condemned the summonses, with State Department spokesman Sean McCormack calling them a case of Syrian "interference in the Lebanese political process".

Syria has never recognised Lebanon's sovereignty, independence or territorial integrity. This is why there has never been an exchange of ambassadors between the two states. But on May 17, the UNSC passed Resolution 1680 which "strongly encourages" Syria to establish diplomatic relations with Lebanon and demarcate their borders. Syria quickly condemned the resolution as "a form of interference in the countries' internal affairs".

The atmosphere of Syrian-Lebanese tension is worsened by a military build-up since clashes erupted on May 17 between the Lebanese Army and members of the Damascus-based Fatah-Intifada. Since the gun battle, Fatah-Intifada has smuggled reinforcements and military vehicles across the border, and the Syrian government facilitated the flow of weapons across the border to Lebanon. Syria did, however, close a separate border crossing in the north to commercial traffic on May 17, causing delays in delivery of Lebanese exports.

After the UNSC issued its resolution, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Mo'allem made it clear that Damascus was in no rush to establish diplomatic ties or demarcate the borders, saying this would not serve either Lebanon's or Syria's interests. After the killing of two Palestinians including Islamic Jihad's representative in Lebanon, Katyusha rockets were fired against Israel from across southern Lebanon. Israel retaliated by hitting the positions of Syria-backed PFLP-GC in Lebanon and killing a Hizbollah fighter. After a cartoon of Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was aired on the LBC TV network on June 1, young Shi'ite followers rampaged Christian and Sunni Muslim areas, randomly hitting people and destroying cars - in a show of force by the Iran/Syria-backed group.