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Syria's Remote Control
Wall Street Journal,
USA, December 15, 2007
Wednesday's car
bombing of Lebanese General Francois Hajj is being treated
as something of a murder mystery because, unlike Lebanon's
other recent assassination victims, the general was not an
overt foe of Syria. Yet the method of his killing, along
with the political benefits that accrue from his death,
hardly rule out a Damascene hand.
Hajj made a
name for himself earlier this year by routing Fatah
al-Islam, a Sunni terrorist group that had been hiding out
in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared, up the
coast from Beirut. This has led to speculation that Hajj was
killed by that group to avenge its defeat. While that may be
true, what's more significant is that Fatah al-Islam is
widely suspected of being controlled and aided by Damascus.
The sophistication of the bomb that killed Hajj -- a
remote-control device similar to the one that killed
anti-Syrian figures Gebran Tueni, Walid Eido and Antoine
Ghanem -- underscores that suspicion.
No less
important is that in targeting Hajj, who had reportedly been
tipped to become the next chief of staff, a message has been
sent that the Lebanese military is now fair game. The
current chief of staff, General Michel Suleiman, is the
nominee to be Lebanon's President, and Damascus is
ambivalent about his candidacy. Murdering Hajj is a signal
to General Suleiman and other officers not to chart too
independent a course from Syria.
All this should
alarm the Bush Administration, which was instrumental in
evicting Syria from Lebanon in 2005. Instead, it has been
helping to rehabilitate Bashar Assad's regime. Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice made a point of meeting one-on-one
with her Syrian counterpart at a regional meeting on Iraq in
May. Syria's state-run news agency condemned the Hajj
assassination via an unnamed government official, but the
Syrians also condemned the murder with a remote-control bomb
of Rafik Hariri in 2005. A U.N. probe into that murder has
found overwhelming evidence of Syrian complicity.
The difference
this time is that State Department spokesman Sean McCormack
praised Syria for its condemnation, calling it "positive if
continued over time." Maybe Secretary Rice believes she can
get the Syrians to play nice on Iraq and Israel while
thwarting their ambitions in Lebanon. For their part, the
Syrians tend to view such American entreaties as signs of
weakness. On Tuesday, Syrian Vice President Farouq Sharaa
remarked that "no one in Lebanon, even with foreign support,
can win the battle against Syria." The next day Hajj was
dead, which, if nothing else, was a perfect illustration of
Mr. Sharaa's point. |
