The Road from Damascus

* France (the former colonial power in Lebanon) and the United States are stepping up a diplomatic drive to force Syria’s 12,000-man occupation force and Gestapo-like secret intelligence service out of Lebanon, which Syria has occupied since 1976.

* Although proof remains lacking, there is widespread belief (shared by many in Washington) that Syria was behind the February 14 assassination of popular former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, along with 16 others–the outrage that has left Lebanon’s normally disparate ethnic groups united against Syria.

* The Syrian-installed puppet government headed by Omar Karami submitted its resignation on February 28, as the popular Cedar Revolution in the streets of Beirut daily picked up steam.

* Israel and the United States have irrefutable proof that the Damascus-based Palestine Islamic Jihad was responsible for the suicide bomb detonated at the Stage Nightclub on Tel Aviv’s fashionable waterfront two weeks ago.

* General John Abizaid bluntly stated last week before a congressional panel that Syria remains “unhelpful” to Iraq in its efforts to prevent cross-border support for insurgents.

In a desperate bid to staunch the bleeding and salvage his ruling House of Assad, the Syrian president hightailed it last week to Saudi Arabia to shore up fraternal Arab support. But the effort failed, and only fellow terror-sponsor Iran has rallied to Assad’s side with a pledge of allegiance.

No one knows whether Assad can jettison enough ballast to survive. The air is pregnant with change, but the House of Assad has proven its ruthless resilience before. How Assad manages the fallout from the Cedar Revolution could determine whether the minority Alawites in Damascus survive a crisis of Syria’s own making.

Alibis and motives abound. But the ten-foot-deep crater at the site where Rafik Hariri’s motorcade was ambushed has all the hallmarks of a plot hatched by Syria’s intelligence operatives–possibly without the knowledge of Assad himself.

Hariri had earned the standing of a revered Lebanese patriot. It was he who, after a decades-long civil war, cajoled his countrymen into putting aside their differences and rebuilding their shattered nation. He persuaded them that Lebanon could become again a shining jewel in an otherwise turbulent Middle East.

Last year, Hariri resigned as prime minister to protest the reappointment of Syrian-puppet president Emile Lahoud. But Hariri was plotting a comeback. He and Druze chieftain Walid Jumblatt and other anti-Syrian political leaders were planning to form a new, more potent parliamentary opposition to the Syrian-backed government.

Meeting at Beirut’s fashionable Bristol Hotel in October 2004, Christian allies of Hariri and Jumblatt began preparing a manifesto of sorts that would compel reforms and force Syria out of Lebanon once and for all by overturning all laws and treaties legitimating Syria’s presence. Damascus understood only too well the implications of these gatherings and of the unprecedented anti-Syrian Sunni-Christian-Druze alliance that was emerging.

Long chafing under the illegal Syrian occupation, Lebanese civil society has been energized by Hariri’s assassination as by no other event. Hundreds of thousands of flag-waving protesters have encamped in Martyrs’ Square astride the site where the motorcade was attacked. Day and night their numbers have grown. They are emboldened by the courage of their Iraqi brethren, by the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and by the resignation of the Karami government.

What the Lebanese want is not only an end to the Syrian occupation, but a sensible electoral law, clean parliamentary elections in May, an international investigation into Hariri’s murder, and a stop to Syria’s meddling in their country’s internal affairs. They have a steep road to climb, steeper than that of their fellow protesters in Kiev. The obstacles to a viable Lebanese democracy include a historical proclivity to place religious differences above national unity; the presence of a fifth column of Shiite political parties backed up by formidable militias (Hezbollah and Amal) which oppose a break with Syria and Iran; and Syria’s historical claim to Lebanon as an integral part of a Greater Syria.

Should the U.S.-backed Cedar Revolution succeed in securing the total expulsion of Syrian troops and agents from Lebanon, it would constitute a triumph for the winds of democratic change now sweeping the region. If managed thoughtfully, it could inspire Syria’s own democratic movement.

But such triumph would also trigger inevitable dangers. Lebanon’s liberation from Syria might increase the already sizable political influence of Hezbollah and its principal patron, Iran. Hezbollah opposes the creation of a pro-Western, democratic government in Lebanon, and its opposition could produce the very instability that Syria’s expulsion was meant to prevent. Paris and Washington seriously differ on the danger Hezbollah poses.

Then, too, even a humiliated Syria would retain the power to interfere in Lebanon’s affairs. Assassinations, disappearances, and other underhanded retaliation against democratic activists would become the norm unless the Syrian-Lebanese border were sealed–a highly unlikely event. In addition to which, Syria and Iran, fearing a pro-Western democratic government in Beirut, might order Hezbollah to launch cross-border attacks against Israel, throwing the region into further turmoil.

From a strategic perspective, a democratic, stable Lebanon is indeed a worthy goal–but less urgent than success in Iraq, which requires quashing once and for all Syria’s support for the insurgents. However desirable Assad’s fall may be, it has the potential to produce in Syria the same type of chaos that Saddam’s fall produced in Iraq. Lessons learned from the mayhem in post-Saddam Iraq compel Washington to weigh carefully whether, for now, a defanged Assad regime might be preferable to a Baathist implosion. We may have to settle for the lesser of two evils.

In 1958, President Eisenhower dispatched a Marine expeditionary force to the beaches of Beirut to help prevent Damascus from absorbing Lebanon into Syria’s new union with Egypt. In 1983, President Reagan once again dispatched U.S. troops to Lebanon, as part of a multinational peacekeeping force to restore order in a country occupied since 1976 by Syrian “peacekeepers”–only to withdraw them after the suicide bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks killed 243 Americans. Neither intervention produced either stability in Lebanon or the expulsion of Syria.

Whether or not the Lebanese people finally achieve their freedom, Syria will remain a national security quandary for the Bush administration. Since the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Damascus has curiously escaped any behavior-modifying punishment for its overt support of the Iraqi insurgency. Syria’s own quandary in Lebanon obliges the White House to refocus its energies and present Damascus with a stark choice backed up by a plan of action: Either seal your border with Iraq, end your support for Hezbollah and other Palestinian terrorist groups, dismantle your WMD, and cooperate with the new Iraqi government, or you will suffer even greater international isolation and multilateral economic sanctions than you do now–and possible military retaliation.

Syria’s paleo-Baathists rule by the law of the jungle. They are masters of the diplomatic bone toss to ensure the regime survives at any cost. In the four years the younger Assad has been president, he (or those of his father’s cronies who really run the place) has, by his strategic miscalculations and isolation, put the regime in jeopardy. “Baby Doc” Assad has been a convenient figurehead for the Baathists. Given Syria’s bloody history of military coups, however, Assad may soon be jettisoned if the regime’s stakeholders believe his fall will buy them time.

Marc Ginsberg is a former U.S. ambassador to Morocco and senior vice president for APCO Worldwide.