BEIRUT — The dramatic interview that Syrian former Vice-President Abdel Halim Khaddam gave to Al-Arabiyya television last weekend sharply criticized the Syrian regime’s policies in Lebanon, implicitly implicated it in the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and injected a new political calculus into an already complex and fluid situation. His main revelations would seem to be that the Syrian leadership, including the president himself, harshly threatened Hariri before his death; Syrian intelligence officers, most recently under Rustom Ghazali, for years ran and exploited Lebanon as a personal fief, working with Lebanese security officers and in close coordination with Lebanese President Emile Lahoud; and, a sophisticated act such as Hariri’s murder could only be undertaken by a disciplined organization rather than individuals, and if Syrians were involved, this could not have happened without the knowledge of the top leadership.
None of this is new, but it is all very significant, for two main reasons. The information Khaddam provided corroborates numerous facts and allegations already gathered from other sources by the UN-run international commission. For corroboration to come from such a high source who intimately knows the inside of the Syrian political system is a major push forward for the investigation. Khaddam has been a senior political thug in Syria for 35 years, but in such cases a thug’s testimony is very useful — assuming it is factually correct. The convergence of his statements with similar evidence from multiple other sources, investigating commission sources say privately, is both clear and useful.
The second important thing about Khaddam’s behavior is that it seems to represent the first major political crack or defection in the top-level Syrian solidarity system that has long defined the regime in Damascus. Whether or not this is the crack in the dam wall that soon widens into a runaway political torrent remains to be seen. Either way, its significance should not be underestimated. Khaddam pointing fingers at President Assad and his security chiefs is the equivalent of Dick Cheney in the U.S. saying in a press interview that President George Bush knew all along that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction but was determined to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime at any pretext.
If the combination of the revelation and its source is compelling, the political consequences may be huge. The interview set off a new round of speculation and expectation in Syria and Lebanon, and coincided with moves launches in the previous weeks by the UN investigating commission to request interviews with the Syrian president, foreign ministers and other senior officials.
The net, cumulative impact of these developments is to raise the diplomatic and political heat on the Syrian government, because Assad’s government is now challenged by a new and dangerous phenomenon — his own regime’s former pillars. This is extremely worrying for Syria, which now finds itself challenged simultaneously by a credible domestic force, the Lebanese public, and the world acting through the UN.
The UN probe’s request to interview Assad, Sharaa and others will be the next important litmus test of this process because of several key implications.
It represents yet another step forward in the very persistent, steady determination of the UN commission to keep investigating the Hariri murder and not get sidetracked by political diversions or tricks, whether from the Middle East or the West. It reflects the determination of the investigation to speak with all potentially relevant persons, including the highest political and security officials in Syria and Lebanon. It will be a key test of the UN’s demand, in Security Council Resolution 1644 of December 15, 2005, that Syria must “cooperate fully and unconditionally with the Commission,” including a specific demand “that Syria responds unambiguously and immediately in those areas adduced by the Commissioner and also that it implements without delay any future request of the Commission.”
Well, one such future request is here: an interview with the top leaders in Damascus. Resolution 1644 also includes an important new wrinkle in its clause 5, which “Requests the Commission to report to the Council on the progress of the
inquiry every three months from the adoption of this resolution, including on the cooperation received from the Syrian authorities, or anytime before that date if the
Commission deems that such cooperation does not meet the requirements of this resolution and of resolutions 1595 and 1636.”
In other words, the element of time, or playing for time, seems to be changing hands from a mechanism the Syrian government has always used efficiently, to one that the UN will use to pressure the Syrians to cooperate more diligently and quickly.
The fourth important development is the slow, patient expansion of the Hariri murder probe to look into any possible linkages with the dozen or so other bombings and killings that have occurred in Lebanon since October 2004. This selective expansion of the investigation, also on the basis of Resolution 1644, is critically important for Lebanon, because it holds out the hope that the perpetrators of the other bombings will also be identified and brought to justice, presumably also bringing to an end this ugly modern era of politics by bombs.
This occurs at the same time as UN officials are also preparing to talk with their Lebanese counterparts about what kind of “tribunal of an international character” will be established to try those who are accused on the strength of the evidence being collected. The creeping expansion of the Hariri assassination probe into a wider international mechanism increases the likelihood of identifying and bringing to justice those who have perpetrated political terrorism and murder in recent years — and also of reducing such criminality in future.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri
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Released: 04 January 2006
Word Count: 941
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