The Cedar Revolution

Amir Taheri, The Wall Street Journal:

Since the liberation of Iraq, those interested in seeing the Middle East brought into the democratic mainstream have been asking: Who's next? For the past two weeks the answer has come from Lebanon, where, enraged by the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, hundreds of thousands of people have poured into the streets to defy a discredited regime installed and maintained by Syrian military power.

"Lebanon is ready for democracy," says Marwan Hamade, an opposition member of the National Assembly who survived a Syrian attempt on his life last October. "What is needed is an immediate end to Syrian occupation."

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A month ago, such direct reference to Syria's military presence would have been unthinkable in Lebanon. Even the most courageous opposition leader knew that attacking Syria in public could mean death. Over the past 20 years Syrian agents have murdered 37 prominent Lebanese figures, including two presidents. Hariri's tragic fate was the latest reminder of that grim reality.

"Fear has changed camp," says Walid Jumblatt, the Druze chief who is emerging as the leader of the Lebanese opposition to Syrian occupation. "It is the turn of the occupier to feel fear." To illustrate his point, Mr. Jumblatt stunned everyone earlier this month by publicly accusing Syria for the murder of his father Kamal in 1977. "Everyone knew the truth from day one," he says. "But it was important that it be put on record in public."

The Syrian strategy for dominating Lebanon through a mixture of military presence and Mafia-style business networks worked as long as Lebanese politics was limited to narrow elites representing the country's various religious and ethnic communities. Damascus could always find allies or clients in every community to play divide and rule. Hariri's murder, however, has introduced a new element in Lebanese politics: people power.

Inspired by free elections in Afghanistan, Iraq and the West Bank and Gaza, ordinary Lebanese from all communities were already on the march against Syria's suffocating presence before Hariri's killing. But there is no doubt that the murder inspired a paradigm change by forcing the nation's political aristocracy to adopt the new radicalism of the people. And yesterday, in a first major victory for this unfolding Cedar Revolution, Prime Minister Omar Karami announced his government's resignation.

The question now is whether Syria's Baathist rulers will see the writing on the wall and end their occupation of Lebanon as demanded by U.N. Security Council resolution 1559.

Although it is still not easy to read Syria, which remains a hermetically sealed dictatorship, there are signs that the Baathist elite in Damascus is divided over the issue. The initial reaction of President Bashar Assad and his entourage was to blame "the old guard" for Hariri's murder and stick to their hymn sheet about "a young leader who wants change but cannot achieve it because of opposition from conservatives." To underpin that claim, Mr. Assad sacked the chief of his military intelligence, the organ most likely to have planned Hariri's murder, and gave the job to his brother-in-law Assaf Shawkat.

Some members of "the old guard," however, dispute Mr. Assad's narrative and insist that the president has had personal charge of the Lebanese dossier for the past two years. "The decision to force an amendment of the Lebanese constitution came from Bashar," says a friend of Vice President Abdul-Halim Khaddam, who is regarded as a leader of the so-called old guard. "It was also Bashar who insisted that Lebanon's President Emile Lahoud should stay in power" for a further three years even though that left Hariri with no choice but to resign as prime minister.

Sources within the Syrian government insist that it was also Mr. Assad who decided to reject Resolution 1559. Days after the resolution was passed Mr. Assad flew to Tehran, the only regional capital where he still gets a red-carpet welcome, to reinvigorate his "strategic partnership" with the mullahs. The Syrian president and the mullahs agreed to "resist" what they label "American hegemony" on all fronts, especially by keeping the low-intensity war in Iraq going for as long as possible.

Having secured promises of financial, military and political support from Tehran, Mr. Assad rejected the old guard's suggestion of an alternative strategy of moving closer to Saudi Arabia and Egypt as a prelude to mending ties with the U.S. Iran , which has a 400-man military mission in Beirut, regards Lebanon as a glacis and a forward point for exerting indirect military pressure on Israel through Hezbollah.

As a sign that he is in charge President Assad created an informal "national security committee" consisting of his brother Maher, his brother-in-law Shwakat and his personal friend Bahjat Suleyman. The surest sign so far of Mr. Assad's determination to "resist" what he sees as "American pressure" came when his deputy foreign minister, Walid al-Mu'allim, described the Lebanese uprising as a series of "provocative acts" that could lead to "negative developments" which would "make Lebanon pay a high price."

Mr. Assad's game plan in Lebanon is based on the cheat-and-retreat tactic used by Saddam Hussein and the mullahs of Tehran for years. This consists of offering minimal concessions to get out of a tight corner and moving into any available space as quickly as possible.

It is in this light that one must assess Syria's announcement that it is "redeploying" its 15,000 troops from one part of Lebanon into another, presenting the meaningless move as a prelude to withdrawal. Such a move would not affect Syria's 25,000 paramilitary and security agents all over Lebanon. Damascus could also announce the closure of its intelligence headquarters near Beirut. But that would not affect the many clandestine spy networks and nine prison camps that Syria maintains in Lebanon.

Bashar Assad hopes that his nominal concessions will help defuse the situation long enough for his clients in the Lebanese government to organize a carefully arranged general election this spring, thus producing a parliament that would welcome Syria's continued presence. The international community should be on guard against these "cheat-and-retreat" tactics. Syria must be pressed to fully withdraw from Lebanon by the end of March, before the Lebanese election campaign begins. The election must be held under existing law -- and not the gerrymandering that Damascus is trying to impose. The election itself should be organized by a caretaker government whose neutrality would not be in doubt, and under credible international control.

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The Syro-Iranian strategy in Lebanon is premised on one key assumption: continued support by the Lebanese Shiite community for the status quo. But even that premise is now in question. Lebanon's Shiites have seen fellow Shiites gaining a share of power in both Afghanistan and Iraq for the first time thanks to the democratization promised by the U.S. and its allies. In Syrian-occupied Lebanon, however, Shiites, who represent the largest community, have less than half the number of parliamentary seats warranted by their demographic strength.

Hezbollah's leadership may decide to sink or swim with Bashar Assad and the mullahs. But more and more Lebanese Shiites are rejecting a policy of supporting the Syrian occupation of their country. Don't be surprised when Lebanon's Shiites switch sides to join the people power on march.