Thirty Years of Syrian Involvement in the Lebanese Crisis

Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center

at the Center for Special Studies (C.S.S)

October 24, 2005

Thirty years of Syrian involvement in the Lebanese crisis: Lebanon’s transformation from a strategic asset in the days of Hafez Assad to a burden and a source of weakness in the days of his son, Bashar Assad

by Reuven Erlich, Ph.D. 1

Bashar Assad (right) with his brother Maher (left) and brother-in-law Assef Shawkat (center) during President Hafez Assad’s funeral (June 13, 2000). Bashar Assad’s brother and brother-in-law are now suspected of involvement in the murder of Rafik Hariri, Lebanon’s former prime minister, an opponent of the “Syrian order” in Lebanon (Photo: Khaled al- Hariri, Reuters)

1 Reuven Erlich, Ph.D. (Avi-Ran) is a lecturer on Syrian and Lebanese affairs at the school of government of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, as well as the author of the book The Syrian Involvement in Lebanon Since 1975 (Westview Press, 1991).

Overview

During the past months, a mounting avalanche has been threatening the stability of Bashar Assad’s regime. The avalanche started its downward slide with the murder of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, and continued on with the appointment of an international investigation commission headed by Detlev Mehlis, a highly-regarded German jurist. The avalanche gathered speed with the publication of the (non-final) Mehlis commission report on October 20 and the passing of UN Security Council Resolution 1636 (October 31). The resolution calls for Syria’s full cooperation with the investigation into Hariri’s murder and threatens additional measures should Syria not cooperate (possibly hinting at sanctions).

The Mehlis report, which implicated Syria in Hariri’s murder, referred (in its unexpurgated version) to Bashar Assad’s closest associates as those who had taken part in planning Hariri’s murder (Assef Shawkat, chief of Military Intelligence and Assad’s brother-in-law, and Maher Assad, Bashar Assad’s brother). About a week before the release of the report, Ghazi Kanaan, Interior Minister of Syria, who had shaped and put to practice the “Syrian order” in Lebanon for the past twenty years, “committed suicide”.

What is the “Syrian order” that Hafez Assad systematically enforced upon Lebanon, cleverly turning the Syrian hegemony in Lebanon into a source of power for Syria and the Syrian regime? Why is it that the “Syrian order” collapsed during the reign of his son, Bashar Assad, and turned the Syrian involvement in Lebanon into a source of weakness? Why is Bashar Assad having difficulties maintaining the “Lebanese dowry” bequeathed to him by his father?

The historical roots of Syrian involvement in Lebanon

In Arab-Muslim historical geography, today’s Syria and Lebanon, alongside Jordan and Israel, are all part of Greater Syria, known in Arabic as Bilad al- Sham. Ever since its foundation by the French mandate authorities, the Syrian nationalists refused to acknowledge Lebanon as an independent political entity, considering it the western part of Greater Syria.

A prime example of Syria’s unwillingness to acknowledge Lebanon’s independence was its continuing refusal to establish diplomatic relations with Lebanon, as customary between independent countries, or to acknowledge its borders with Lebanon as international borders with an independent country (the border region of the Har Dov mountainside, called by the Lebanese the Shebaa Farms, was never demarcated, allowing Lebanon’s claims on this area2 and serving as an excuse for Hezbollah’s activity).

However, the roots of Syria’s striving to take over Lebanon in Hafez Assad’s era lie not only in nationalist pan-Syrian ideology or historical aspirations. Instead, it is based on a range of vital interests in the Syrian regime’s view, key among which are:

2 In contrast to the position of the UN and the international community. 3

7 From the military point of view: preventing the Lebanese army’s weakness from being used by Israel to outflank the Golan Heights through the Lebanon Valley (the Bekaa), as Israel did in 1982, or, alternatively, taking advantage of Lebanon’s territory for military activities against Israel (Syrian forces acted from Southern Lebanon in Israel’s War of Independence in 1948) or for engaging in terrorist activities against Israel.

7 Improving Syria’s regional position vis-à-vis the US, the Arab world, and Israel by attaching Lebanon to the coattails of Syrian policy and preventing the former from being influenced by other Arab countries. This concept had been part of Assad’s aspirations to turn Syria into a regional power, challenging Egypt and Iraq.

7 Preventing the formation of opposition to the Syrian regime: Lebanon, because of its political openness and relatively free press, has traditionally served as a convenient hotbed for the formation of opposition groups against the Damascus regime. Assad’s regime sought to suppress the opposition groups operating from Lebanon, as he had done in Syria.

7 Economic interests: hundreds of thousands of Syrians are employed in Lebanon, transferring hundreds of million dollars to Syria a year. Water resources are another major constituent of Syria’s interests (making use of the water of the Asi river, the Orontes, whose headwaters are located in the Lebanon Valley), as are maintaining the profits from oil exports to Lebanon, drug smuggling, and mafia and corruption business.

Syria’s takeover of Lebanon: taking advantage of a strategic window of opportunity

Since gaining independence up to the mid-1970s, Syria avoided trying to take over Lebanon by military force due to a number of restraints: Syria’s internal weakness, the survivability of Lebanon’s traditional regime, the Israeli deterrence factor, and the Western sponsorship.

The first half of the 1970s saw the erosion of those restraints: for the first time in its history, a stable regime, led by Hafez Assad, arose in Syria; Lebanon’s traditional regime, built on the foundations of the National Pact (1943), collapsed after the outbreak of the civil war (1975); Israel’s deterrence factor, which prevented a Syrian invasion of Lebanon, weakened as a result of the Yom Kippur War; the American sponsorship turned out to be problematic as well (because of the implications of the Vietnam War).

A window of opportunities was opened for the Assad regime in the mid- 1970s, with the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war in 1975, which drew Syria as well. Egypt’s termination of its Yom Kippur War alliance with Syria and the Syrians’ unwillingness to move forward with the peace process also served to increase the Syrian regime’s motivation to transfer the focus of its efforts to the Lebanese scene. In the second half of the 1970s, a temporary strategic change therefore occurred in Syria’s national list of priorities, and the struggle to achieve hegemony in Lebanon rose to the top spot (at the expense of the conflict with Israel) for a long period of about fifteen years.

In the beginning of that period, Syria embarked on a process of taking over Lebanon. It was not long before it realized, however, that Lebanon was easier to “swallow” than to “digest”. It was only in the early 1990s, after a lot of setbacks, that the “Syrian order” was stabilized (by means of the 1989 Taif Accord). Syria completed the process of Lebanon’s “digestion” and entered a decade of a peace process vis-à-vis Israel (the Madrid process) from an improved position.

Main stages in the process of Syria’s takeover of Lebanon

Syria’s takeover of Lebanon and turning it into an asset was a prolonged process that involved numerous difficulties and failures. It began in 1975 and lasted for 16 years. Six main stages of the process may be identified:

7 Stage 1: involvement in the Lebanese civil war and the military invasion of Lebanon (1975-1976).

Ù Against the backdrop of failures it experienced in its involvement in the Lebanese civil war, Syria dispatched a reinforced division to Lebanon at the height of the civil war (1976) to help the Christian camp in its battle with the Palestinian and Lebanese left-wing militias. This followed on the heels of a tacit, indirect understanding achieved with Israel (through US mediation) in the spring of 1976 which laid out the rules of the game on the Lebanese scene.

Ù Within the basis of this tacit understanding, in Syrian view, was the aspiration not to be dragged into armed conflict with Israel, following the lesson Hafez Assad had learned from the events of Black September in 1970. Central among those rules of the game was the so-called “red line”. This imaginary line, extending from Saida to the east, marked the southern boundary of the Syrian army’s area of activity, prohibiting Syria from acting and deploying its forces in South Lebanon.

Ù Israel, during Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s first tenure, avoided getting involved in the Lebanese conflict, and embraced a policy of “helping the Christians help themselves”. The Syrians, on their part, followed the rules of the game, in practice acknowledging South Lebanon as a region of Israeli interests.

7 Stage 2: the Syrian failure to turn its military takeover into political assets (1977-1981). The Syrians, having seized with their military forces (retrospectively given inter-Arab legitimacy and termed “Deterrent Force”) most of Lebanon’s territory, were not successful in imposing their authority on the Palestinian terrorist organizations and the Christian militias. Starting 1977, a violent confrontation gradually evolved between Syria and the Christian camp, the Syrian’s former allies. The Christian camp, led by Bashir Gemayel (the son of Pierre Gemayel, the Lebanese Phalanges leader) and Camille Chamoun (Lebanon’s former president) sought to liberate Lebanon from the burden of Syrian occupation. That conflict eventually drew Israel into a direct involvement in the Lebanese crisis at the Christian camp’s side.

7 Stage 3: Syria’s embarking on a path of direct confrontation with Israel (1981-1982). During this period, the rules of the game set down in the spring of 1976 were scrapped in the wake of the violent confrontation between Syria and the Christian militias. A prominent example was the “missile crisis” (April 1981), when Syria introduced SA-6 ground-to-air missiles into the Lebanon Valley after the Israeli Air Force had shot down two Syrian helicopters. Syria thus created an actual threat to the Israeli Air Force’s freedom of flight in Lebanon, and a source of continuing tension with Israel until the outbreak of the Lebanon War.

7 Stage 4: direct clash between the IDF and the Syrian army in the early days of the Lebanon War, followed by an indirect confrontation between the two (1982-1985).

Ù During the first week of the Lebanon War, the IDF and the Syrian army were engaged in a direct large-scale military confrontation in the Lebanon Valley, during which the IDF breached the Syrian line of defense. However, Israel agreed to a ceasefire, preferring to focus not on destroying the Syrian army in Lebanon but rather on the original objective of destroying the infrastructures of the Palestinian terrorist organizations. That enabled the Syrians, after a period of regrouping, to use Lebanese terrorist organizations (primarily Hezbollah, formed at that time in the Syrian-dominated Lebanon Valley with Iranian assistance). They were operated against Israel, the US, France, and Syria’s Lebanese opponents.

Ù The use of the “terrorism weapon” achieved success (in Syrian view) and enabled Syria to recover and turn its military defeat into a political

victory. Syria’s main successes: the murder of Bashir Gemayel, the termination of the Israeli-Lebanese agreement (signed on May 17, 1983), the removal of the multi-national force, the derailing of the security talks between Israel and Lebanon in Nakurah, and ultimately— the IDF’s withdrawal from Lebanon (1985) under pressure of terrorist attacks and with no political agreement with Lebanon to provide peace and security to Israel’s North Galilee residents.

7 Stage 5: The stabilization and reinforcement of Syrian control in Lebanon (1985-1991). Following the Lebanon War, the Syrians succeeded in suppressing the Christian opposition to their rule, removing Michel Aoun and his supporters, who had declared a “war of liberation” against them, turning the Taif Accord (1989) into an instrument of further entrenching their domination, choosing Syria’s yes-men as Lebanon’s presidents (Elias Harawi, Emile Lahoud), taking over the Christian enclave around Junya (called “Marounistan”), and forcing Lebanon into signing mutual cooperation and defense agreements (1991).

7 Stage 6: stabilizing and entrenching the “Syrian order”, or “Taif regime”, in Lebanon (1991-2000). In the last decade of Hafez Assad’s rule, Lebanon turned from a liability to a strategic asset. In practice, Lebanon became a sort of a Syrian province, overseen by General Ghazi Kanaan, chief of military intelligence, who was called by the Lebanese the “high commissioner” (a notion taken from the French mandate period). During that time, the Christian camp’s opposition to Syrian rule was almost completely neutralized, and Syria installed its Lebanese yes-men over the state, thus leading to Lebanon’s actually losing its independence.

As a result of imposing its domination on Lebanon, Syria’s regional and international position improved, and it could turn aside from its intensive occupation with Lebanon’s problems and enter the Madrid process (the peace talks with Israel) from an improved power position.

The weakening of the “Syrian order” in Bashar Assad’s time

During the first five years of Bashar Assad’s rule, Syria, Lebanon, and the entire region saw dramatic changes that toppled the “Syrian order” in Lebanon. These were primarily expressed in:

7 Loss of fear of the Syrian regime since the death of Hafez Assad and the rise of his son, Bashar, to power. Hafez Assad installed a reign of fear and terror in Syria and Lebanon through the use of brutal force and terrorist methods (the Hama massacre is a prime example). Bashar, however, is not a charismatic figure and has neither his father’s leadership abilities nor his skill in making decisions. As a result, the fear the Lebanese and Syrians had for the Damascene ruler gradually lessened, thus weakening one of the key foundations of his rule. It was this lack of fear that allowed Lebanese of all ethnic groups, including those who had not dared to “speak up” in the days of Hafez Assad, to oppose the “Syrian order” publicly and strive to restore Lebanon’s independence.

7 The IDF’s withdrawal from Lebanon (May 24, 2000) accelerated the anti-Syrian awakening, rendering obsolete a primary “justification” for the Syrian military presence in Lebanon. The traditional Christian opposition was this time joined by the Druze (led by Walid Junblat) and Sunni Muslims (led by the late Rafik Hariri), forming an unprecedented combination of anti-Syrian forces. The Hezbollah organization, the prime beneficiary of the “Syrian order”, lost to a great extent its legitimacy within Lebanon. Nevertheless, it continues to retain its primacy vis-à-vis Lebanon’s other rivaling forces, seeing as it is the only organization with an extensive military infrastructure and due to the strategic backing it receives from Syria and Iran.

7 The new strategic situation formed in the Middle East after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the US takeover of Iraq, and Syria’s designation by the US as one of the members of the “axis of evil”. Uncharacteristically, the US and France joined forces in a united diplomatic move against Syria, in which Resolution 1559 was passed in the Security Council (September 2, 2004). The decision calls for the withdrawal of the Syrian forces, the disarming of the Lebanese and Palestinian militias, and the enforcement of the sovereignty of the central Lebanese regime. A report submitted by a commission appointed by the UN Secretary General, headed by Terje Larsen, asserts once again that Resolution 1559 has been implemented only in part (the withdrawal of the Syrian forces). The report criticizes Syria and Lebanon over the fact that Hezbollah (which remains one of Syria’s primary leverages in Lebanon) and the Palestinian militias have not been disarmed.

Under Bashar Assad’s rule, Syria refused and refuses still to internalize these regional and international changes and relinquish its hold over Lebanon. It attempts to engage in a fighting retreat to maintain its influence in Lebanon, which exposes it to escalating pressure by the US, France, the UN, and the international community.

Bashar Assad’s hesitant conduct and his refusal to understand the new realities stood in the background of two dramatic events that occurred in the past six months: the first, the withdrawal of the Syrian forces and security apparatuses from Lebanon at the end of some thirty years; the second, the Syrians’ attempt to turn back time and deepen their rule in Lebanon by eliminating former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a key opponent of the “Syrian order”, by using the all too familiar method of a car bomb (February 14, 2005).

These two events well demonstrate the roundabout and inconsistent conduct of Bashar Assad’s regime: on the one hand, his agreement to withdraw the Syrian forces from Lebanon as a response to international and intra-Lebanese pressure; on the other, the murder of Hariri, a move that intended to keep the Syrian influence – but actually intensified the pressure exerted on the Syrian regime.

In summary, Hariri’s murder, which brought about furious reactions by the international community (led by the US and France), did not improve Syria’s position in Lebanon. On the contrary, it broadened the base of its opponents on Lebanon’s internal scene and quickened de-Syrization processes currently under way in Lebanon. The murder even resulted in the formation of an international investigation commission whose findings threaten to harm Syrian top officials, as 12

well as Bashar Assad’s close associates and relatives. Lebanon therefore turned from an asset in the later days of Hafez Assad to a burden in the era of his son, Bashar, and from an internal and regional source of power to a source of weakness that projects not only upon Syria’s position in Lebanon but also on the stability of the Syrian regime.