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Gaza Today, Lebanon Tomorrow?

Prof. Barry Rubin - 7/4/2007

The world is shocked by Hamas’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip and the damage done to any hope for peace or regional stability is generally recognized. But a second, even more serious, extremist takeover is in the works for which Western inaction would bear far more responsibility.

This time the victim would be Lebanon, and the perpetrator is Hizballah backed by Syria and Iran.

Today, Lebanon is ruled by a Christian-Sunni Muslim-Druze coalition determined to maintain a moderate and independent Lebanon. This partnership arose after Syria assassinated former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005, coming out of a mass movement which successfully demanded the Syrian withdrawal after two decades in which Lebanon was looted as a satellite state by its next-door neighbor.


Syria is determined to end this period of freedom and in doing so it is aided by its client Hizballah and many smaller groups including Fatah al-Islam along with pro-Syrian politicians. Fifteen major terrorist attacks, mostly assassination attempts, and many smaller ones have taken place in the last two years by Syrian agents. Notably, two of these have killed coalition members of parliament, the first Christian, the most recent a Sunni Muslim.

These attacks are not just blind efforts at revenge or mayhem. Syria is literally murdering the Lebanese government out of existence. A few more successes and the coalition will lose its majority. Also, however, the term of pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud, extended by Syrian demand, ends in November, making Damascus eager to get control of parliament before then to ensure its own choice will triumph.

While the violence falls well short of all-out fighting, Lebanon is engaged in a type of civil war. Hizballah walked out of the government and Syrian clients have paralyzed parliament in a so-far failed attempt to keep Lebanon from endorsing an international tribunal to investigate Hariri’s death. Everyone knows that the evidence points to the Syrian government at the highest levels for responsibility. Blocking this tribunal is priority one on the Syrian regime’s list.

As a result, coalition supporters are showing exemplary courage. Any politician or journalist who stands against Syria, Iran, and Hizballah faces the daily threat of assassination. In contrast, of course, the extremists endure no such risk since the coalition does not use terrorism against them.
In comparison with Fatah on the Palestinian scene—an incompetently led, deeply corrupt, extremist and terrorist group on its own right—or an Iraqi regime that wants American soldiers to fight for it, the Lebanese majority is a well-organized, reliable ally ready to defend itself.

The situation in Lebanon, then, is one of stark choice: a moderate, multi-communal majority is trying to protect the country’s independence against a coalition of radical foreign states and extremist Islamist domestic groups. Can one imagine a clearer case of the current conflict that shakes the world today? Is there anyone more on the front line against the forces of terrorism?

Lebanon today is the equivalent of Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s, a small democratic country which must not be sacrificed to totalitarian forces, both due to Western interests and to moral values.

What is the Western record on this issue? There are certainly signs of hope. The United States, with indispensable support from France and others, has pushed forward on the tribunal plan. Military aid was provided to Lebanon to defeat the Fatah al-Islam revolt in Palestinian refugee camps. The UN expanded its UNIFIL force supposedly to stop arms smuggling from Syria and Hizballah’s return to dominate southern Lebanon.

Yet to a serious extent, these efforts have been subverted by Western governments. UNIFIL is a joke, uninterested and unable to stop weapons’ smuggling; standing by and pretending all is well as Hizballah has rebuilt its fortifications and refurbished its arsenals. Western governments may issue condemnations of terror and intimidation within Lebanon but they do nothing about it.

And thus a confident Hizballah knows it can depend on Syria and Iran; the Lebanese coalition does not have the same assurance of help from those who should be supporting it. The impression is being given—and don’t think it escapes Syria and Hizballah—that the West is afraid of them. They kill people, they blow up things. And just as the Islamists claim, these tactics often—should one say, usually?—work at intimidating the West.

A stream of high-level visitors, most recently Italy’s foreign minister, make the pilgrimage to Damascus, where they proclaim Syria to be reasonable and genuinely desirous of rapprochement. They beg Syria’s help to stop the smuggling and believe false Syrian assurances that it is trying to do so. Too many journalists echo Syrian disinformation about Lebanon, for example blaming Fatah al-Islam on the Lebanese coalition rather than Syria.

There is a great danger either that Lebanon will be betrayed or that Western timidity will inspire an aggressive over-confidence on the extremists’ part. Don’t be surprised if some time next year Hizballah becomes a full partner, with veto power, in the Lebanese government, as Hamas did in the Palestinian Authority in 2006. Or even that Hizballah seized control of Lebanon altogether, as Hamas did to the Gaza Strip.

The foundation for this radical victory is being laid now, not only by Syria, Hizballah and Iran, but also by spineless Europeans and indifferent, or otherwise preoccupied, Americans. Have no doubt about it, a failure to act will bring an inevitable, terrible result. Nobody can say that they weren’t warned.