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Making Iraq out of
Lebanon
By B Raman
After having made a Lebanon out of Iraq,
the United States, duly assisted by France and other
West European powers, has embarked on a policy that is
likely to make an Iraq out of Lebanon.
The ultimate outcome of
the ill-advised psychological warfare (psywar) it has
mounted against Syria by exploiting the recent
assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese
prime minister, is likely to be the revival and
the exacerbation of the inter-religious,
inter-sectarian and inter-ethnic tensions that kept Lebanon
bleeding for more than 15 years and brought into vogue suicide
terrorism by jihadi elements and the culture of
martyrdom through the car bomb.
The United States'
ill-advised demonization of the Saddam Hussein
regime in Iraq and its Ba'ath Party, the cynical
exploitation of its psywar resources for this
purpose and the sowing and fueling of suspicions
between the Sunnis and the Shi'ites and between
the Sunni Arabs and the Sunni Kurds paved the way
for the Lebanonization of Iraq and for the
ascendency of mullahs and tribal sheikhs of
various persuasions in the only model of a modern
secular state in the West Asian region known until
March 2003.
The
US-led coalition and the international
community as a whole are now paying a
heavy price for this. Iraq has become the scene of
suicide terrorism and devastating car-bomb explosions almost
every day. Fallujah, which has reportedly almost
been reduced to rubble by the US Marine Corps
and Air Force, will go down in history as the
Dresden of the the United States' so-called "war against
terrorism".
The world recently
observed the 60th anniversary of two nights of
relentless bombing of the German town of Dresden by
the British and US air forces, which reduced the
city to rubble and killed more than 30,000 civilians.
The world at least has a record of the
sufferings of the German people on whom a cruel
punishment was inflicted for the misdeeds of their
Nazi rulers. The US and its psywar apparatus have
seen to it that there is and there will be no
similar record of the sufferings of the people of
Fallujah and other areas of Iraq, who have been
subjected to brutal punishment for what the US
regards as the misdeeds of the Iraqi resistance
fighters and foreign terrorists.
There is
a clear day-by-day documentation of the number of US
casualties and of the victims of terrorism.
There is no documentation of the number of
Iraqi casualties as a result of the United States'
counter-terrorism and counter-resistance
operations in Iraq. Iraqi fatalities of civilians
are not considered worthy of being documented and
mourned. The figures mentioned by various sources
vary between a minimum of 30,000 and 100,000. The
bleeding shows no signs of stopping and the
terrorism and resistance show no signs of
relenting.
None the wiser for their
experiences in Iraq, the US and its psywar
apparatus have embarked on a demonization of Syria
in the eyes of the Lebanese in order to bring
about the withdrawal of the Syrian troops from
Lebanon and an end of Syrian influence.
The US has reasons to be concerned
over Syria. While it has had no links with Osama
bin Laden's al-Qaeda, it provided sanctuary in the
1980s and the early 1990s to terrorists of various
hues - different Palestinian groups including the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine of
George Habash, the group led by Carlos, the
Japanese and West German Red Army factions, and
different Kurdish groups. Many of the terrorist
strikes in Western Europe and elsewhere carried out
in the 1980s and the early 1990s were planned and
orchestrated from Syrian territory with the
knowledge, if not the complicity, of the Syrian
intelligence. The US was totally justified in
declaring Syria a state sponsor of international
terrorism.
Despite these past misdeeds,
there was reason to believe that the Syrian regime
had rid itself of the company of non-Palestinian
terrorist elements and was taking action to ensure
that its territory was not used by anti-US
elements for their operations in Iraq. It is true
that a number of Syrians have been participating
in suicide missions in Iraq, that there is
considerable anti-US feeling in the general
populace in Syria and that many foreign terrorists
from different countries are managing to make
their way to Iraq through Syrian territory.
However, there is no definitive evidence to
indicate that there has been collusion of the
Syrian authorities in all this.
One
can understand stepped-up US pressure on
Damascus to put a stop to this and to share
intelligence with the US-led coalition. But
exploiting the anger in sections of the Lebanese
population over the assassination of Hariri in
order to turn this anger against Syria and bring
about the withdrawal of the Syrian forces from the
Lebanon is unwise at this critical juncture, when
the post-September 11, 2001, anti-US anger across the
Islamic world shows no signs of subsiding.
While the objective of wanting to bring
about the withdrawal of 15,000 Syrian troops
through diplomatic pressure is understandable, the
way the US has been going about it by exploiting
the assassination of Hariri is likely to prove
counter-productive. There is no evidence so far to
link Syrian intelligence with the assassination.
Logic dictates against any Syrian involvement.
Damascus is not so stupid as to undertake an
operation of this kind at a time when the US has
been mounting pressure against it on the question
of foreign terrorists allegedly using Syrian
territory.
It is noteworthy that despite
the association of leading Western police officers
with the investigation, no progress has been made.
All the Western human and technical resources have
not been able to determine definitively whether
the assassination was carried out by a suicide
bomber or through a remote-control mechanism.
It
seems as if the US, France and others do not want
the investigation to make progress because if it
points the needle of suspicion away from Damascus,
they might lose the raison d'etre
for the psywar mounted against Syria with
the assistance of compliant electronic media.
According to reliable accounts, the anger against
Syria is confined to a small section of the
population, many of them from the Westernized
upper classes (hence the sarcastic title "Gucci
revolution"). Through electronic manipulation of
the visuals it has been projected as if large
masses of the local population have revolted
against the Syrians.
To quote from a
dispatch of Kim Ghattas of the British
Broadcasting Corp: "Some people here are
jokingly calling the phenomenon 'the Gucci
revolution' - not because they are dismissive of
the demonstrations, but because so many of those
waving the Lebanese flag on the street are really
very unlikely protesters. There are girls in tight
skirts and high heels, carrying expensive leather
bags, as well as men in business suits or trendy
tennis shoes. And in one unforgettable scene an
elderly lady, her hair all done up, was
demonstrating alongside her Sri Lankan domestic
helper, telling her to wave the flag and teaching
her the Arabic words of the slogans."
The anti-Syrian protest in Beirut has been
only partly spontaneous. Any trained
intelligence analyst could see it is partly orchestrated.
Whether one likes it or not, there is
considerable sympathy for Syria and Iran in the Muslim
community of Lebanon. The way the US and
other Western countries are trying to exploit
the assassination of Hariri is likely to drive once again
a wedge between the Islamist and the
pro-Western elements, leading to a recrudescence of
the suicide-terrorism and car-bomb culture of which Lebanese
society has been ridding itself in recent years.
Bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and their
terrorist minions would have reasons to be
gratified by the US psywar campaign against Syria
on the issue of the assassination of Hariri. It
will drive many local Muslims into their embrace,
if it has not already done so.
B
Raman is additional secretary (retired),
cabinet secretariat, government of India, and
currently director, Institute for Topical
Studies, Chennai, and distinguished fellow and
convener, Observer Research Foundation, Chennai
Chapter. E-mail: itschen36@gmail.com.
(Copyright B Raman,
2005) |
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