Syria, Lebanon and Flying Pigs
The Times of London reports that Syria has agreed to remove its 14,000 troops from Lebanon “soon” as it had agreed to do in the 1989 Taif Accord, prompting one wag to post the story online topped by a flying pig.
The Times of London reports that Syria has agreed to remove its 14,000 troops from Lebanon “soon” as it had agreed to do in the 1989 Taif Accord, prompting one wag to post the story online topped by a flying pig.
The announcement, made by the Arab League president, and not confirmed in Damascus, might have something to do with the unified Franco-American front against the continuing Syrian occupation. It might have something to do with the increasingly stiff spine the UN has shown. It might have something to do with the tens of thousands of Lebanese protesters out in the streets of Beirut since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who had become increasingly anti-Syrian in the months before his death. If, in fact, Hariri was killed by Syrian agents or with Syrian complicity, it appears to have had the opposite of the intended effect – bringing people together as Lebanese citizens rather than splitting them along confessional lines. Some protesters were said to be holding a Koran in one hand and a cross in the other. All of them were anti-Syrian.
The purported Syrian announcement might have something to do with all of those things, or it might not. It might be one of those moves that has more on the surface than under it. Hence the pig.
The 14,000 Syrians referred to are the ones in uniform. But there are more than 100,000 OTHER Syrians in Lebanon, contributing to the occupation in ways both legal and illegal.
Some are simply working at jobs that don’t exist at home. Lebanon has a productive, free-market economy and Syria has a leftover 1960s militaristic socialism that sucks the economy dry – particularly now that the coalition has cut off the illegal oil that was flowing through Syria from Iraq. Syria needs that safety valve of sending workers outside the country to help ensure domestic tranquility. Some of the Syrians are related to the drug and counterfeiting trades in the Bekka Valley that provide hard currency earnings to Damascus. Some are intelligence officers and plainclothes security forces, the undercover eyes and ears of the Syrians and liaison for the Iranians and their Hizballah protege troops in Lebanon.
There are more questions than answers here: Can the Lebanese people assert their independence from not only the uniformed Syrians, but the plainclothes leeches as well? At the same time, can Lebanon be freed from Iranian interference, and the Iranian support of Hizballah and the rockets in Lebanon aimed at Israel? The newly announced Syrian-Iranian military alliance makes any “Syria-only” deal ineffectual at best. Will the Russians pull back the newly announced deal to sell Syria SS-26 missiles? Will the EU stop treating Syria as an adjunct member? What is the U.S. role? Can President Bush extend to Beirut the “arc of freedom” of which he spoke?
Only if the whole scope of illegal Syrian/Iranian occupation activities in Lebanon can be shut down and Syrian belligerence curbed will the Lebanese be free. Or pigs fly.