Syria’s Tangled Web In Lebanon

By: Matthew RJ Brodsky

Submitted by Brodsky on Thu, 12/04/2008 - 11:28

The following is a blog I wrote for the American Foreign Policy Council.  The original is available here on their website.

Although the last Syrian troops left Lebanon on April 26, 2005, Syria still has countless horses in the Lebanese race. The Syrian regime - along with Iran - supports Hezbollah and Amal, and it backs various secular Sunni groups, in addition to the largely Christian Free Patriotic Movement headed by General Michel Aoun. Along with the Syrian Ba’ath Party, Syrian Social Nationalist Party, and the Nasserite Popular Movement, these groups form the nucleus of Lebanon’s March 8 coalition.

Together, they have posed a serious challenge to the pro-Western, anti-Syrian March 14 coalition. That group includes the Future Movement headed by Sa’ad Hariri, the son and political heir of the slain nationalist politician Rafiq Hariri; Druze leader Walid Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party; the Democratic Gathering Bloc, and; Samir Ja’ja’s Lebanese Forces.

Adding to this unstable political mix are over 400,000 Palestinians confined to refugee camps throughout Lebanon, who remain largely outside of state authority. There are currently some 15 active Palestinian factions, which range politically from the Marxist far left to the Islamist and jihadist far right - many of whom operate with the support and encouragement of Damascus.

By supporting so many hostile players, the Syrian regime has itself become a target. Since 2006, there has been a rash of small scale attacks that the Syrian government has blamed on Islamist extremists, including attacks against Syrian state television in central Damascus, an uprising at the Sednaya prison outside the capital, and an unsuccessful raid on the U.S. embassy just blocks from Bashar al-Asad’s family home. The latest took place on September 27th, when a car packed with 440 pounds of explosives blew up in Damascus next to a Syrian intelligence building, killing 17 and fueling more speculation that the Syrian regime is losing control of its pawns on the Middle East chessboard.

An unstable Lebanon serves Syrian interests because it raises the possibility that the regime in Damascus will once again be called back into Lebanon as a power broker, as it was in 1976 and 1989. Back then, Syria’s method of “pacifying” Lebanon allowed it to dominate its neighbor. Nevertheless, the volatile political and ideological cocktail that Syria is stirring seems to be weakening its own domestic security situation.


Reply