Qifa Nabki | A Lebanese Political Blog

I’ve got a good interview in the pipeline which will go live tomorrow. In the meantime, here are some links to a few worthwhile bits of analysis on Syria.

Advice for the UN from a retired diplomat in Damascus, and for President al-Assad from David Lesch: Joshua Landis publishes two very interesting essays today; I recommend you read them both. The first is by an anonymous former diplomat living in Damascus, who assesses the state of the current revolt in Syria. The second is by David Lesch, an American academic who has had the most direct access to Bashar al-Assad of any other Western scholar. Lesch lays out Bashar’s options.

Sectarianism and the Syrian Uprising: A good piece by my buddy Sean, over at The Human Province.

A Regional Response to Syria: Marc Lynch (aka Abu Aardvark) explains America’s options for dealing with Syria.

From Syria With Doubt (click here for part two): As`ad AbuKhalil (aka the Angry Arab) publishes an interesting minority report from a Lebanese leftist friend of his, which comments on the sectarian backlash that will emerge in the wake of any successful revolution in Syria. The response by As`ad’s Syrian readers to this missive was apparently extremely negative. He cites two reactions (here and here).

The Black Swan of Cairo: Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Mark Blyth apply black swan theory to the Arab revolutions. (You’ll need to be a Foreign Affairs subscriber to read the whole thing, but a summary is available on the website).

A few days ago, I blogged about the debate that has begun to emerge among Mideast analysts with respect to the situation in Syria. One of the major sticking points in that debate is the question of what role Syrian “sectarianism” is playing in the anti-Assad protests and the regime’s counter-propaganda. A couple pieces of commentary caught my eye today, and I think they do a good job of illustrating the two main lines of argumentation on this issue:

(1) Joshua Landis & Ammar Abdulhamid at Blogging Heads: This interview is highly worth watching in its entirety. Landis asks all the relevant questions, and Abdulhamid — a Syrian dissident exiled in Washington and a leading opposition activist –provides a very interesting take on several issues, including: (1) the origins of the protests; (2) the multi-faceted character of the opposition; (3) what happens the day after the regime falls; (4) the future of Syria’s relationship with Iran and Israel.

On the question of Syrian sectarianism, Landis challenges Abdulhamid to respond to those who fear that Syria could disintegrate into a sectarian civil war, like Lebanon during the 70′s and 80′s, or Iraq after the US invasion. Abdulhamid’s response, to my mind, is not particularly convincing. He argues that Syria is exceptional; it is unlike Lebanon and Iraq, and will find a way to withstand a sectarian conflagration because it is “a country of minorities”. Furthermore, this exceptionalism is something that the regime itself has always touted.

The logic is easy to pick apart. Lebanon is even more diverse, minority-wise, than Syria and this did not prevent a sectarian civil war. Furthermore, it strikes me as problematic to use regime propaganda to bolster a claim of Syrian exceptionalism. Note that I am not arguing that Syria is actually a sectarian powder-keg; I just don’t think that Abdulhamid’s argument is very convincing.

(2) May Akl, “The False Hope of Revolution in Syria,” (Foreign Policy): In this piece by Michel Aoun’s US spokesperson, the Syrian protests are characterized as a fringe phenomenon instigated by Salafist elements who don’t have Syria’s best interests at heart. No real evidence is presented for this thesis beyond the notion that a recent army ambush had the tell-tale signs of a jihadi operation. Akl plays the sectarianism card with gusto:

Syria is a secular country where minorities are protected, and as much as they might want to see a regime change in their country, the majority of Syrians cannot accept their country becoming another Iraq — in terms of security — or another Saudi Arabia — in terms of religious rule.

Obviously a majority of Syrians — or, for that matter, the citizens of any country anywhere in the world — would prefer not to see their nation disintegrate into a bloody civil war. But that’s neither here nor there. The issue is whether or not the levels of dissatisfaction with the regime will eventually prevail over whatever anxieties may indeed exist about inter-sect relations.

Incidentally, it’s also worth comparing this Aounist position on Syria with Aoun’s own statement at a fundraiser in the US in the early 2000′s (Arabic YouTube clip; English translation below):

Hizbullah is the extension of the [foreign] policy of two countries — Iran and Syria — in Lebanon, and its operations are controlled by these two countries. We refuse to say that the responsibility [for Hizbullah's actions] lies with one organization only; when Syria itself is dealt with, Hizbullah will disappear from Lebanon. But if Hizbullah is hit in Lebanon, Syria will bequeath us a second Hizbullah and a third, and a fourth, and a fifth. In a spirit of friendship with the Syrian people, I wish them salvation from a terrorist regime, because this people was the first victim of terrorism. Let’s not forget that Hama was the first example of terrorism, when in twenty-four hours the Syrian regime killed more than 30,000 citizens because they were opposed to its rule.

My point is not to play a game of gotcha with Akl or Abdulhamid, but simply to say that we should all recognize that the sectarianism question is very much open. We just don’t know how it is going to feature in the fallout of the Syrian revolution, assuming the protesters can prevail.

Can anyone recommend some solid reading on the current state of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood? Who are the experts?

In a week from today, Lebanon will have been without a functioning government for three months. That’s not quite as long as the four and a half month stint that the country endured in 2009 following the legislative elections, but it’s still an embarrassingly long delay.

Perhaps the most embarrassing thing about it is the fact that the March 14th coalition has opted to stay out of the next government, giving March 8th (the new majority) free rein to put together a cabinet without having to manage the whims and stalling tactics of its opponents. When Saad al-Hariri set about forming a government in 2009, he had to deal with the demands of his own allies as well as those of Hizbullah, Amal, the Free Patriotic Movement, and Abu Tanjara, who all had something to say about a myriad of contentious issues, from the sanctity of the resistance to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.

This time around, things should be simpler, right? So what’s taking so long? Inquiring minds (not just my own, but also Nabih Berri’s and Ghazi al-Aridi’s) want to know. There has been much speculation on the various issues that are at stake, but it seems clear that the main obstacle can be summarized as follows:

Two former Lebanese Army generals named Michel want the right to appoint one of their allies to the Interior Ministry. One of the generals represents the largest bloc of MPs in the current parliamentary majority. The other general is the President of the Republic and must sign off on any cabinet lineup for it to be legally approved. Without the bloc leader’s votes, the President would have no cabinet decree to sign. Without the President’s signature, the bloc leader would have no seats in the cabinet.

In other words, you’ve got two equal and diametrically opposed forces bearing down on the same area. What is the result? Stalemate.

As usual, the problem is basically a structural one. The Lebanese Constitution does not provide any elucidation for how to move beyond the current impasse. Aoun is within his rights to demand any portfolio he would like, and President Sleiman is within his rights to accept or refuse any cabinet lineup that is placed before him. Both men are at each other’s mercy. Ironically, however, they are also each at the height of their own powers. Consider the following:

Aoun has never had a better opportunity to shape a cabinet under circumstances as favorable as the current ones, where his bloc represents the senior partner in the parliamentary majority and where the opposition has decided not to join the cabinet. (Given his age and health concerns, he may never get a clearer shot to control the agenda than this one.) Without Aoun, there would be no March 8th cabinet, and if Miqati fails in his efforts, it would be exceedingly difficult for Hizbullah and its allies to appoint anyone else to the job who could pick up where Miqati left off. Aoun knows this, so he is doing what he does best: sticking to his guns and waiting for his opponents (or, as the case may be, his allies) to blink first.

Similarly, Sleiman knows that a Lebanese president is never more powerful than when he is being asked to sign off on a cabinet-forming decree. Almost all of the president’s powers are either ceremonial or revocable. One of the only truly significant things that he can do is to refuse to sign a decree forming a new cabinet. For a nice reflection on the importance of this principle, take a look at the following excerpt from Wikileaks cable  07BEIRUT1724 (which dates back to Nov. 5, 2007, when the US was pushing its March 14th allies to elect a new president with a simple majority.)

The danger is that a compromise over the presidency combined with the “blocking/toppling third” in the cabinet that the pro-Syrians will insist upon puts March 14 in potentially a worse position than it is today, no matter how stellar a good PM’s March 14 credentials might be. The pro-Syrian ministers could not topple Siniora’s cabinet a year ago because they did not have sufficient numbers to do so. In a new cabinet, they are likely to have that third, meaning that they can topple the cabinet at will. This is not an insurmountable problem if the president is March 14: he can work with the parliamentary majority to see that the replacement cabinet is an improvement, without a toppling third given again to the pro-Syrians. But if the president is weak or under Syrian influence, he will likely use his signatory power over the cabinet formation — signatory power that cannot be overridden — to insist again that the pro-Syrians have the toppling third, continuing the cycle of pro-Syrian vetoes over cabinet action… All of this argues, of course, for a credible president committed to March 14 principles as the first step to resolving Lebanon’s political crisis.

In other words, once Sleiman signs that piece of paper, the clock strikes midnight and his carriage turns back into a pumpkin. He has virtually no way to dictate the government’s agenda besides holding out for the best deal he can get right now. What this means, among other things, is that he is probably coming under a great deal of pressure from March 14th (and perhaps also the US ambassador and the Saudis) to continue to play hardball with Aoun.

So why all the fuss over the Interior Ministry? That’s a subject for another post.

A relative of mine was in Damascus last week on business, and he told me about a conversation he’d had with a government official. The official dismissed the protests as being organized by “terrorists” and “hoodlums” who had no interest in real reform in Syria. When I mentioned this conversation to a Syrian friend of mine, he bristled and said: “Of course that’s what the government wants people to believe. They are the real terrorists.”

This interchange is emblematic of the increasing polarization of commentary about Syria that we’re getting in the press. As protests gain momentum across the country, the Syrian “condition” is finally being explored on an international stage. I’ve found it very interesting to follow the debate about the legitimacy of the protest movement, the agendas of its supposed instigators, the brutality of the regime’s crackdown, and the role of opposition parties in exile over the past few weeks, and it seems to me that one is starting to witness the coalescence of certain “camps” among the commentariat.

The biggest camp is certainly the pro-democracy, anti-regime camp that has generally shaped the debate on Syria for the past several years, inhabited by folks like Andrew Tabler, Tony Badran, Radwan Ziadeh, Steve Heydemann, and Patrick Seale. Interestingly, this group is also starting to attract people like my friends Robin Yassin-Kassab and Rime Allaf, who have generally been supportive of Syria’s foriegn policy but today are no less critical of the regime’s domestic crackdowns than the folks at WINEP. This is an interesting development, in and of itself.

The regime’s defenders are a far more quiet bunch, but they have a voice and a constituency. Alastair Crooke wrote a much-discussed article for the MidEast Channel a few weeks ago that was about as laudatory a sweetheart piece as Bashar al-Assad could have hoped for outside the pages of Vogue. Michel Kilo, one of Syria’s most famous former prisoners of conscience, wrote about the need for a “political solution” to the crisis (rather than a revolutionary change driven by the anger of the street) for as-Safir late last week. And Joshua Landis has, in my view, tried to walk a middle path with regard to the regime’s fate. (He has cut Bashar some slack and given him the benefit of the doubt, but he has also courted criticism from regime supporters by painting the standoff in sectarian tones.)

No matter what happens in the near term, it is very difficult to imagine things returning to the status quo, now that the system has received a shock and an opposition has been mobilized. Then again, the Iranian Green Movement seems to have been successfully strangled by Team Ahmadinejad…

Next up, more Wikileaks.

Update: A comment by a reader, J of Chalcedon

“Well spotted. Do you think someone like Michel Kilo, even at this stage, would recognize himself as a “regime supporter”? Maybe the unspoken point of his comment in Assafir was that the regime has taken itself to a point at which it can’t hope to change things even by addressing the very modest demands of such dissidents?

Keep in mind that this is someone who was very adamantly about not kicking over all the chessmen, with Iraq as the referent, and got years of harassment for his troubles. Now the ground his shifted under his feet as well, and satisfying those reasonable demands looks insufficient to save the people who wouldn’t have him as an interlocutor.

I’m wrong all the time, but it looks to me like the effective authority has hit on the idea of palliative measures long after they could have helped. If they have the support of Michel Kilo, it’s because – and after – they made him irrelevant. Now it’s about a system that can only break; bending is beside the point.”

The latest Wikileaks dump by the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar extends the series of intriguing and record-changing insights into the tumultuous 2006-08 period, which witnessed the July War between Hizbullah and Israel, an 18 month-long downtown sit-in, and a takeover of Beirut by Hizbullah forces on May 7, 2008.

Two cables are especially worth reading in their entirety. I link to them below, along with relevant excerpts and some commentary.

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08BEIRUT490 (April 8, 2008) | Subject: JUMBLATT CONCERNED ABOUT UNIIIC DELAYS, SUNNI MILITIAS, AND HIZBALLAH FIBER OPTIC NETWORK

5. (S) Jumblatt revealed what he deemed a “very serious blow” to the UN Commission investigating the assassination of former PM Rafiq Hariri and others. According to information he received from Internal Security Forces (ISF) Intelligence Director Wissam Hassan the previous evening, Wissam Eid, who worked for Hassan and was assassinated January 25, had discovered a year and a half ago a link between Abd al-Majid Qasim Ghamlush and a network of 17 other cell phone numbers. Former UNIIIC Commissioner Brammertz reportedly did not act upon this information.

6. (S) In January 2008, however, after Daniel Bellemare took over as Commissioner, Eid met with Bellemare, and was killed one week later. (Note: UNIIIC contacts have confirmed to us that Eid had met with Bellemare exactly one week prior to his death. End note.) The assassination of Hizballah leader Imad Mougnieh followed two weeks later, leading Jumblatt to believe there was a link between Ramloush [sic]and Mougnieh, “assuming Ramloush [sic]was still alive.”

8. (S) The second issue Jumblatt raised was Saad’s reported training of Sunni militias in Lebanon (allegedly 15,000 members in Beirut and more in Tripoli). In establishing his own “security agencies” in Beirut and Tripoli, Saad was being badly advised by “some people,” Jumblatt said, such as ISF General Ashraf Rifi. In his meeting with Jumblatt, Hassan admitted having knowledge that members of Saad’s Future Movement were being trained. Hassan reportedly opposed such training, but “people around Saad” (i.e., Rifi) were telling him to go ahead. (Note: The Jordanians have refused to train Internal Security Forces (ISF) members hand-picked and vetted by the Embassy to participate in a DA/ATA-funded Terrorism Crime Scene Investigation program, reportedly because they don’t want to be involved in training “Saad’s militia.” End note.) Jumblatt said Saad’s militia would cause significant damage to March 14, especially because Geagea’s Lebanese Forces and Suleiman Franjieh’s Marada were in line to train their own forces.

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08BEIRUT642 (May 9, 2008) | Subject: GEAGEA PROPOSES ARAB PEACEKEEPERS; A STRONG SINIORA IS PLANNING A TELEVISED ADDRESS SATURDAY

5. (C) Geagea then asked to speak privately to the Charge. It was important for everyone to push the LAF to do its job, said Geagea. However, he wasn’t sure that the army would succeed. If the army failed to protect Christian areas, Geagea said he wanted to make sure Washington knows he has between 7,000 and 10,000 well-trained Lebanese Forces fighters who could be mobilized. “We can fight against Hizballah,” he stated with confidence, adding, “We just need your support to get arms for these fighters. If the airport is still closed, amphibious deliveries could be facilitated.”

The Charge assured Geagea that the U.S. was encouraging Sleiman and the LAF to protect state institutions and the citizens of Lebanon. (Note: At 2315, Geagea telephoned the Charge to relay that his morale had been boosted by a telephone call from NEA A/S Welch. End note.)

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QN Comment

There’s a lot to discuss here, but I’ll just point out the following tidbits:

1. Brammertz, Wissam Eid, and the CBC Report:

Some of you will recall the famous CBC report on the Hariri investigation, which came out several months ago. (See my commentary on it here, here, here, and here.) In that report, Neil Macdonald revealed that the UN investigating team (led by Serge Brammertz) did not begin doing any telecommunications analysis until late 2007. As I pointed out, Macdonald’s assertion simply did not tally with the UNIIIC record, which mentioned telecommunications analysis in eight different reports from 2005-07.

Now, in the first cable posted above, Jumblatt makes the same point that Macdonald does in his article, and cites his source as Wissam al-Hassan (the ISF intelligence chief). This, then, seems to bolster the points made in the CBC article, except it still does not explain why the UNIIIC claimed to be performing telecommunications analysis for three years when it actually wasn’t. Another possible explanation for this discrepancy is that Macdonald’s source for the information about Brammertz was also Jumblatt’s source: Wissam al-Hassan. Thoughts?

2. Saad al-Hariri and the Mustaqbal Militia

After the events of May 7 2008 (when Hizbullah’s fighters took over Beirut and parts of Mount Lebanon as a response to the Siniora government’s attempted crackdown on the party’s fiber optic network), there were rumors circulating about a “Sunni militia” sponsored by Saad al-Hariri that had been training in Jordan. No real evidence of any such militia ever emerged, and March 14th has always insisted that it never entertained a military option against  the Shiite party.

The Jumblatt cable is the first indication that these rumors may indeed have been true. Of course, we have no idea how far along al-Hariri’s militia-building plans had gotten. Hizbullah’s 2008 strike was remarkably efficient… practically surgical, which leads one to believe that Saad’s fighters were either: (a) nonexistent; (b) poorly trained; (c) or ordered to give up their weapons without a fight.

3. Geagea’s 10,000 LF Fighters

The Lebanese Forces released a statement today saying that the May 9 2008 cable which quotes Samir Geagea as requesting weapons from the Americans for his fighters is actually a vindication, because it shows that the LF is not armed after all, but rather merely “well-trained”. I’m not sure I buy that… what Geagea was probably asking for was heavier weapons — mortars, grenade launchers, field guns, etc. — to complement the machine guns that every self-respecting Civil War vet still has tucked away in the cellar.

But maybe not. What do you think?