Assad Family Values
Harold's List
Wall Street Journal
The U.N. Security Council convenes Tuesday to consider a report about the Feb. 14 murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The report, written by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, offers persuasive evidence that top Syrian officials ordered Hariri's killing after a falling out between the prime minister and Syrian President Bashar Assad.
More than that, the Mehlis report offers a rare and revealing glimpse into how the Syrian regime operates. It's the kind of territory Mario Puzo would have understood well.
Consider the scene: In August 2004, Mr. Assad summoned Hariri to a meeting in Damascus to demand an extension of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud's term; Mr. Lahoud, who remains president of Lebanon Monday, is widely seen as Mr. Assad's puppet in Beirut. According to various witnesses who heard Hariri's account of the meeting, Mr. Assad said "the matter was not open for discussion," that he would "break Lebanon on [Hariri's] head" to get his way, that "you do as you are told or we will get you and your family wherever you are." The meeting lasted 10 minutes.
Several weeks later, Hariri resigned from the government and began to push actively for Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon. Not too much later, as they say in Brooklyn, he got whacked.
And not just whacked: The bomb that destroyed Hariri's motorcade contained some 2,200 lbs. (1,000 kilograms) of explosives and killed 21 members of his entourage. Nor were they the only victims: The Mehlis report strongly suggests the Syrian government kidnapped a Lebanese man named Ahmad Abu Adass and forced him at gunpoint to give a taped confession in which he purports to be a suicide bomber.
"Mr. Abu Adass's disappearance," Mr. Mehlis writes, "as well as the attempt to obscure his presence in Syria by seeking to show that his emails came from Turkey when they in fact came from Syria, are indicative of the type of evidence pointing to Syrian involvement." Mr. Adass is presumed dead.
In its final draft, the Mehlis report accuses unnamed "senior Lebanese and Syrian officials" as responsible for the assassination. However, a widely circulated earlier draft is more specific, naming Maher Assad, the president's brother, and Assef Shawkat, his brother-in-law, among the principal conspirators. Less clear is whether President Assad, who refused to be interviewed by Mr. Mehlis, personally ordered the hit. He has denied any involvement, but there seems little doubt that the Syrians have Hariri's blood on their hands.
The conventional view now is that the Mehlis report puts "pressure" on Mr. Assad. In fact, the real pressure is on the member states of the Security Council to do something meaningful now that a U.N. investigator has come up with incriminating evidence. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was right when he said Friday "you simply cannot tolerate a situation where one state decides to deal with problems of another state by assassinating the other state's leaders." To put it mildly. The French, too, are likely to support some kind of U.N. action against Damascus, perhaps a combination of international sanctions and diplomatic ostracism similar to the kind imposed on Libya after the Pan Am bombing.
It would be excellent if the U.N. were to take such a step: Syria has behaved like a rogue state for decades and it's past time it be treated as a pariah. But just as Mafia dons have been able to run their businesses from prison, sanctions and isolation alone aren't likely to stop the Assad family from continuing to support the Iraqi insurgency, harbor Palestinian terrorist leaders and foment havoc in Lebanon while ratcheting up domestic oppression.
What the U.S. and the international community must aim for instead is regime change. Syria may not have as well-developed an opposition movement as Egypt or Iran, but that doesn't mean one doesn't exist: Last week, a dozen secular political parties came together to sign the "Damascus Declaration," which called for "the abrogation of all forms of exceptions in public life and the end of emergency laws and extraordinary judicial courts and the release of all political prisoners." Syrian police broke up the meeting in which the initiative was announced; the very fact it happened at all testifies to the courage of the organizers, who deserve international recognition and support.
There is always the risk that the downfall of the Assad family could lead to something even worse. We recall similar cautions offered against deposing Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia and evicting Syrian troops from Lebanon. Yet it's hard to imagine a successor regime worse than one that assassinates foreign leaders, welcomes terrorists at the Damascus airport on their way into Iraq to kill American GIs, supports Hezbollah and imposes the tyranny of an Allawite minority on a majority Sunni country. With Saddam Hussein on trial, the fall of the Assad regime would be another act of regional hygiene and a lesson that you can't get away with murder.
Tuesday, the ball will be in the Security Council's court. Any step it takes to hasten this outcome will be a step toward restoring the U.N.'s own tattered credibility.
Wall Street Journal
The U.N. Security Council convenes Tuesday to consider a report about the Feb. 14 murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The report, written by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, offers persuasive evidence that top Syrian officials ordered Hariri's killing after a falling out between the prime minister and Syrian President Bashar Assad.
More than that, the Mehlis report offers a rare and revealing glimpse into how the Syrian regime operates. It's the kind of territory Mario Puzo would have understood well.
Consider the scene: In August 2004, Mr. Assad summoned Hariri to a meeting in Damascus to demand an extension of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud's term; Mr. Lahoud, who remains president of Lebanon Monday, is widely seen as Mr. Assad's puppet in Beirut. According to various witnesses who heard Hariri's account of the meeting, Mr. Assad said "the matter was not open for discussion," that he would "break Lebanon on [Hariri's] head" to get his way, that "you do as you are told or we will get you and your family wherever you are." The meeting lasted 10 minutes.
Several weeks later, Hariri resigned from the government and began to push actively for Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon. Not too much later, as they say in Brooklyn, he got whacked.
And not just whacked: The bomb that destroyed Hariri's motorcade contained some 2,200 lbs. (1,000 kilograms) of explosives and killed 21 members of his entourage. Nor were they the only victims: The Mehlis report strongly suggests the Syrian government kidnapped a Lebanese man named Ahmad Abu Adass and forced him at gunpoint to give a taped confession in which he purports to be a suicide bomber.
"Mr. Abu Adass's disappearance," Mr. Mehlis writes, "as well as the attempt to obscure his presence in Syria by seeking to show that his emails came from Turkey when they in fact came from Syria, are indicative of the type of evidence pointing to Syrian involvement." Mr. Adass is presumed dead.
In its final draft, the Mehlis report accuses unnamed "senior Lebanese and Syrian officials" as responsible for the assassination. However, a widely circulated earlier draft is more specific, naming Maher Assad, the president's brother, and Assef Shawkat, his brother-in-law, among the principal conspirators. Less clear is whether President Assad, who refused to be interviewed by Mr. Mehlis, personally ordered the hit. He has denied any involvement, but there seems little doubt that the Syrians have Hariri's blood on their hands.
The conventional view now is that the Mehlis report puts "pressure" on Mr. Assad. In fact, the real pressure is on the member states of the Security Council to do something meaningful now that a U.N. investigator has come up with incriminating evidence. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was right when he said Friday "you simply cannot tolerate a situation where one state decides to deal with problems of another state by assassinating the other state's leaders." To put it mildly. The French, too, are likely to support some kind of U.N. action against Damascus, perhaps a combination of international sanctions and diplomatic ostracism similar to the kind imposed on Libya after the Pan Am bombing.
It would be excellent if the U.N. were to take such a step: Syria has behaved like a rogue state for decades and it's past time it be treated as a pariah. But just as Mafia dons have been able to run their businesses from prison, sanctions and isolation alone aren't likely to stop the Assad family from continuing to support the Iraqi insurgency, harbor Palestinian terrorist leaders and foment havoc in Lebanon while ratcheting up domestic oppression.
What the U.S. and the international community must aim for instead is regime change. Syria may not have as well-developed an opposition movement as Egypt or Iran, but that doesn't mean one doesn't exist: Last week, a dozen secular political parties came together to sign the "Damascus Declaration," which called for "the abrogation of all forms of exceptions in public life and the end of emergency laws and extraordinary judicial courts and the release of all political prisoners." Syrian police broke up the meeting in which the initiative was announced; the very fact it happened at all testifies to the courage of the organizers, who deserve international recognition and support.
There is always the risk that the downfall of the Assad family could lead to something even worse. We recall similar cautions offered against deposing Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia and evicting Syrian troops from Lebanon. Yet it's hard to imagine a successor regime worse than one that assassinates foreign leaders, welcomes terrorists at the Damascus airport on their way into Iraq to kill American GIs, supports Hezbollah and imposes the tyranny of an Allawite minority on a majority Sunni country. With Saddam Hussein on trial, the fall of the Assad regime would be another act of regional hygiene and a lesson that you can't get away with murder.
Tuesday, the ball will be in the Security Council's court. Any step it takes to hasten this outcome will be a step toward restoring the U.N.'s own tattered credibility.
posted by Marko at 10/24/2005 09:42:00 AM
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