Syria and the Middle East

Gibran Tueni, editor of An-Nahar newspaper and MP in the Lebanese Parliament, has been murdered and that makes two dead Lebanese journalist-politicians in three months after the similar killing of Samir Qassir. In October, a blog called al-Hiwar had questioned whether the Lebanese custom of news editors and publishers entering politics was problematic, and this is fresh evidence that the practice may be unhealthy in assassin-prone Beirut.

Gibran Tueni’s father, Ghassan, was a government minister, ambassador, and MP all while he ran An-Nahar as a bully pulpit for his frequently half-baked ideas. But the murderous situation in Lebanon, squeezed between Israel to the south and Syria to the north and east and of course inside this tiny country with Hezbollah, makes politics a sport played with live ammunition.

Syria is a country literally out of control, except by the amorphous mukhabarrat, the five intelligence agencies operating semi-autonomously outside direct supervision of all but close Assad family members. The Syrian military serves as the default ruler when the Baathist apparatus does not work.

Syria, like Iraq, is a relic of the Ottoman times when the Turks fostered minorities like the Iraqi Sunni or Syrian Alawites to provide their officer class in the Arab wilayets. The Alawites, who have great respect for the fourth caliph ’Ali, have an affiliation with the Shi’ites and are therefore natural sponsors and protectors of the militant Hezbollah Shi‘ites, who dominate South Lebanon where a Shia majority populate the countryside. And this makes Syria a natural soul-companion with Iran, although the secular Syrian Baathists and the Islamic Republic differ widely on the role of religion in the state.

Indeed, the recent Administration’s intoning about a “caliphate” established by Al-Qaeda “from Indonesia to Spain” becomes highly suspect when viewed against the backdrop of Shia prominence in Iran, Iraq, south Lebanon, parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

However, the neo-con dream of overthrowing the Alawite 12% of the population running Syria would become a nightmare if the Al-Qaeda Sunnis gained a prominent hand in a post-Assad Syria. Al-Qaeda which historically has been Sunni would welcome a Syria without the Alawites in charge. And caliphates in the past several hundred years have all been Sunni.

The Bush Administration has inadvertently advanced the cause of Shi’ite governance with its Iraq invasion, and thus strengthened Iran’s hold, already strong in south Lebanon, over another area in the region. This unintended consequence stems from the basic clumsy ignorance of the neo-cons of the entire region and their stumping for some causes they perceive as pro-Israeli that all but the most deranged Israelis decline to support.

Israel dislikes Syria, but has been able to work with the Syrians in the past. A post-Alawite Syria would mean another drastic turn of the kaleidoscope in the Middle East. Mutterings in DC concerning a new regime there should be thought through, in order to avoid another insurgency.

The prospect of a Sunni caliphate is so minimal that the mere mention of it demonstrates the provincial and uninformed point of view of a US administration that refused and continues to refuse to listen to experts within the US government, like the CIA and State Department, who might disagree with aspects of its goals and means to attain them.

Hopefully, armchair generalissimo Cheney and his rump-CIA will not now tout for any more adventures in the Middle East.

Let the UN take care of Syria---“a bon chat, bon rat.”