Dark deeds in Lebanon

Dec 13th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

The killing of another prominent anti-Syrian leader in Lebanon—just as a UN investigator reports more details of Syria's alleged involvement in the killing of a former Lebanese prime minister—further undermines Lebanon’s stability and intensifies the pressure on the regime in Damascus

THE metaphor was more fitting than its writer intended. “We have turned the day into a dark night,” said the fax posted by a hitherto unknown group claiming responsibility for the bomb that killed Gibran Tueni, a prominent Lebanese publisher and politician, on Monday December 12th. The Arabic word for day, an-Nahar, happens to be the name of the high-brow Beirut daily that Mr Tueni's grandfather founded and his family still runs. Yet Mr Tueni's killing also darkened the cloud of deception and fear that has shrouded efforts to bring the light of truth into Lebanon's murky and dangerously polarised politics.

The most obvious of these efforts has been the United Nations-sponsored probe into last February's murder of Lebanon's long-serving prime minister, Rafik Hariri, which led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops and the ouster of the Syrian-run security establishment that had dominated Lebanon since its civil war ended in 1990. Few think it a matter of chance that Mr Tueni's assassination coincided with the release of a second progress report on this investigation, which, reinforcing an earlier report in October, suggests that people in the shadowy matrix of Lebanese and Syrian security services had Hariri killed.

With its Lebanese component now largely dismantled, most Lebanese tend to blame Syria for the 14 bombings that have shaken their country since February. These have now killed 13 people, including four Christian leaders, among them Mr Tueni, who were outspoken critics of Syria's regime. Though not mandated to look into these later attacks, the UN investigation team, led to date by a German prosecutor, Detlev Mehlis, cites new evidence in its latest report that a “high-level Syrian official” supplied arms to groups in Lebanon, “to create public disorder in response to any accusations of Syrian involvement in the Hariri assassination.”

Mr Mehlis's report also politely but firmly chides Syria for stalling, despite a UN Security Council resolution obliging it to co-operate fully with the investigation. Syria did let five security men, now named as being among 19 suspects in the Hariri murder, be interrogated. But it also tried hard to discredit Mr Mehlis, most dramatically by televising a key witness's supposed recantation. The UN report suggests that this witness's original testimony was corroborated by others and retracted under duress. It also revealed that Syria claims to have burned all documentation of its 30-year armed presence in Lebanon, and has failed to produce two witnesses believed to be in Syrian police custody.

Mr Mehlis is retiring from the investigation team, but the Security Council may extend its mandate for six months. After requests from Lebanon's government, it may also broaden the investigators' brief to look into the post-Hariri bombings and set up an international tribunal to try the culprits. The council still refrains from imposing immediate sanctions on Syria for failure to co-operate, preferring instead to hold out the threat of “further action” under Chapter 7 of the UN charter, which authorises the use of force.

International wariness of hurting ordinary Syrians means that such punishment is likely, as a start, to be limited to restricting the movement of Syrian officials and diplomats. This would humiliate the increasingly isolated regime of President Bashar Assad but not bring him down. His mixture of bluster and delaying tactics followed by quiet concessions has impressed few outside Syria. Yet it has brought some sympathy from his own people: many remain persuaded by official posturing that presents their country as a bastion of Arab nationalism besieged by western and Zionist designs.

Such defiance plays well in other parts of the Arab world, including even Lebanon. Many Shia Muslims, the largest but historically most disenfranchised of Lebanon's 18 recognised confessional groups, still see Syria as the ultimate champion of the notion of “resistance”. Hizbullah, the strongest Shia party, sees the extension of UN influence in Lebanon as a Trojan horse for western domination. Pro-western Lebanese, particularly Christians such as Mr Tueni, are regarded as traitors for arguing that Hizbullah's “resistance” militia be disarmed, as demanded by the UN.

But acts such as the killing of Mr Tueni, while raising the spectre of the kind of tit-for-tat confessional response that led to a 15-year-long civil war, also strengthen the outrage that has fuelled a broad-based popular movement for greater freedom. Most Lebanese, including a growing number of Shias, are tired of being held hostage to outmoded heroic notions. What they want is the light of justice.

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