Damascus

In its basic impulses, this was indeed a strictly Arab, and inter-Arab, affair. But where does it fit into the great debate about the degree to which America is contributing to the winds of change in the region? Certainly, at least, George W. Bush could rejoice at this timely convergence of "people power"--massive, authentic, homegrown--with his global crusade for "freedom and democracy." So could his Administration's neoconservative hawks, for whom, soulmates of Israel's Likud, the pan-Arab nationalism of the Baath is the very antithesis of Zionism and its inherent drive to keep the "Arab Nation" fragmented, weak and doomed, in the end, to make peace with Israel on Likudnik terms. The neocons have long targeted Syria as a prime candidate in their grand design for regime change throughout the region, an objective that Congress's latest "Lebanon and Syria Liberation" bill endorses in all but name. And compared with that other candidate for regime change, Iran, Syria is a temptingly "low-hanging fruit," as some in Washington put it, and probably harvestable by merely political, not military, means. No wonder Bush so smartly joined the Lebanese opposition in almost daily and peremptory demands for full and immediate withdrawal of Syrian troops and intelligence services.

To be sure, Syria is not defeated yet. Even as its forces redeploy and some withdraw altogether, it is still sustaining Lebanon's president, Emile Lahoud, and his puppet administration without them. So far Hezbollah, now agonizingly torn between its pan-Arab, jihadist imperatives and increasingly irreconcilable Lebanese ones, remains potently, if very uncomfortably, at Syria's service. And soon after Syrian secret police departed Beirut, car bombs began to go off in Christian neighborhoods. Were these, Lebanese asked, Syria's opening shots in the manufacture of a scenario long hinted at? Namely, that if the world pushes Syria to leave Lebanon, the world will soon come begging it to return as Lebanon, sliding back into civil war, begins to look like another Iraq, another paradise for militants and terrorists of all kinds.

That remains to be seen. But even without such desperate expedients, Syria's extraordinary resolve to keep its faltering grip on Lebanon and the brutally coercive methods it has used are already evidence enough of how vitally important it deems Lebanon to be. "Along with the command economy and the apparatus of repression," said Louai Hussein, a Syrian commentator, "control of Lebanon was one of three main pillars on which [the late] President Hafez al-Assad built his power and prestige." In fact, Syria's rulers always instinctively strive for greater regional influence than the resources of Syria alone can command. They exploit their regional "cards" in a continuous quest to advance their interests--which now boil down to securing their mere survival in the new, US-dominated Middle East order. Iraq is such a card, hence the repeated recriminations over what Syria is, or perhaps isn't, doing to help the anti-American insurgency there. Palestine is another, hence persistent American charges that Syria is "unhelpful" to the peace process, or Israeli ones that Palestinian suicide bombers get their orders from Damascus.

In a long-eroding regional hand, Lebanon, and its complete and exclusive hegemony there, is Syria's only remaining trump. It is Syria's front line, its arena of proxy war, its substitute for the military confrontation with Israel that--given its vast military inferiority--it could never risk directly from its own territory. Hezbollah is the formidable instrument of this proxy war; quiescent at the moment, it is ready and waiting to offer what, in some great showdown, Iran or Syria might require of it: its jihadist zeal, its guerrilla prowess and, according to Israel, the thousands of upgraded long-range missiles it could rain down on Israeli cities.

Economically, Lebanon is Syria's milch cow, such a cornucopia of extortion, racketeering and diversion of public funds that the distribution of the spoils--authoritatively put at about a billion dollars a year--among the Baathist oligarchy is said to be a factor in the stability of the regime. Lebanon is also the place where up to a million ordinary Syrians, facing at least 20 percent (and rising) unemployment in their own country, find illicit, low-paid work, or did so until, after Hariri's murder, they started fleeing in sizable, if unknown, numbers.

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