Deep Roots Hold Syrian Influence in Lebanon

The sandbags and tanks are long gone, and soldiers are rarely seen in the streets. Syrian military control isn’t on display anymore in Lebanon, aside from some army bases and the clutches of soldiers who stand guard at checkpoints on country roads.

These days, Syrian influence has quietly permeated the parliament, the president’s office, the financial sector and virtually every other institution. Syrian soldiers were meant to keep the peace after Lebanon’s civil war. Instead, Syria has taken over.

“It’s a creeping annexation,” said former Lebanese President Amin Gemayel. “Syria considers its presence here not as something temporary, not as a foreign occupation, but as something natural. They think that Lebanon is a part of Syria.”

Pressure to withdraw Syrian soldiers, whose ranks in Lebanon are estimated to number about 16,000, has swelled since former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated last week in Beirut. Damascus, the Syrian capital, has responded to the calls with defiance.

To Syria, Lebanon is a freewheeling market, a place to earn and keep money. It’s also a crucial bargaining chip in case of negotiations with Israel. Moreover, many Syrians view this graceful, sun-washed Mediterranean country as a fundamental part of the historic Syrian nation.

Even if the soldiers left, Syrian influence would linger in the form of intelligence agents and Lebanese who make a living on the Syrian payroll. For more than a decade, the Syrian regime has bullied and co-opted politicians and business figures, made kings and outcasts with its decrees and mixed favors and threats to keep a grip on power.

After a long, bloody civil war that wound down 15 years ago, Lebanon remains a turbulent and strategically crucial piece of the Middle East. Hezbollah guerrillas use southern Lebanon as a staging ground to attack Israel, and could escalate their assaults to disturb Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Palestinian militants maintain offices in refugee camps in Lebanon.

Beirut invited Syrian soldiers into the country in the 1970s in an effort to keep the peace; the troops won international approval for their presence with the Taif Accord of 1989. The civil war ended a year later, but Syrian troops stayed.

Lebanese sources and Western diplomats say Syria has penetrated the Lebanese army and intelligence services. From the president of the country to university deans, leaders are handpicked by the Syrian regime. Syria has dumped billions of dollars into Lebanese banks and erected monuments and statues to Syria’s ruling Assad family.

“You don’t have to see their tanks,” said Fares Souaid, a member of parliament. “They’ve created a class of military leaders, and this junta is prepared to die to protect its privileges.”

To ease its own unemployment problem, Syria sends hundreds of thousands of workers to live tax free in Lebanon, where they toil at construction and farm work -- earning the resentment of the Lebanese, who complain that there aren’t enough jobs to go around.

All of this had been begrudgingly tolerated, both by an exhausted Lebanese populace that felt adrift after its civil war and by an international community that regarded the Syrians as a necessary menace that kept a volatile country under control.

Until now, that is.

From the United Nations to Washington to the streets of Beirut, calls for Syria to get out of Lebanon have hit an unprecedented pitch. The shift started last fall, when the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution calling for the withdrawal of all foreign soldiers and agents from Lebanon.

Tensions overflowed last week after the assassination of Hariri, a billionaire construction magnate credited with rebuilding battle-scarred downtown Beirut. Hariri had fallen out with Syria, and many Lebanese lay responsibility on Damascus for the massive bomb that killed him.

Syria has denied any role in Hariri’s killing, which it called a “horrible terrorist act.” Syria also downplays its hold over its smaller neighbor, arguing that the soldiers are in Lebanon at the request of the Lebanese government.

Hariri’s death has scrambled the established order in Lebanon and deepened a lingering fault line between those who support Syria’s presence and those who oppose it.

A few months ago, ordinary Lebanese were afraid to discuss Syria on the streets. Last week, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese -- white collar and blue; young and old; Christian, Muslim and Druze -- marched through downtown shouting “Syria out,” hollering curses against Syrian President Bashar Assad and insulting their own Syrian-linked government. Thousands have signed a petition calling for the resignation of the Lebanese government.

In the first days after Hariri’s death, many figures linked to Syria stayed out of sight. A journalist known for supporting Syria spoke only on the condition that his name not be used.

“They gave us security, but what a price we’ve paid for this security,” he said. “They took our money, they took our democracy. I am an ally to Syria, but I can’t defend Syria. There are no allies to Syria now.”

Lebanese who defend Syria have long used the same logic that had been applied by the international community: Only Syria, they say, is strong enough to keep volatile Hezbollah guerrillas quiet, Palestinian refugee camps under control and various Lebanese sects from falling back into civil war.

“If Syria leaves the country, who will disarm Hezbollah? Who will disarm the Palestinian camps?” Prime Minister Omar Karami asked Friday. “Syria was here before the war, it was here during the war and it will remain after Syrian military forces withdraw. Why? Because we’ve got an enemy on our border,” he said, referring to Israel.

Through a series of redeployments in recent years, Syria has pulled soldiers out of Beirut, thinned their ranks near the northern border and removed some troops from Mount Lebanon. They remain concentrated in the Bekaa Valley near the border with Syria, along the southern border with Israel and in the northernmost regions.

“It is less visible than it used to be, like the United States is trying to do in Iraq,” said Ghassan Moukheiber, a Lebanese lawmaker who opposes the Syrian presence. “You maintain an army, and you say you’ll leave if the government asks you to. But you control the government, so they’ll never ask.”

Syria isn’t expected to give up Lebanon easily, especially at a time when it is calling for peace talks with Israel. Without Lebanon, Syria would be in a weak position. All it can offer Israel is its hold on Lebanon’s south, where Syria-backed Hezbollah guerrillas stage periodic attacks against the Jewish state.

“If they’re confronting Israel, what does Syria have to offer, Damascene tapestries?” said Karim Souaid, a Lebanese banker. “You offer peace. You offer to muzzle Hezbollah.”

In the beginning, vocal opposition to Syria was dominated by Lebanon’s Christians. But Syria’s relationships with other sects began to disintegrate because of a controversy over Emile Lahoud, the Syrian-backed military commander who was elected president of Lebanon in 1998.

Both Lahoud and Hariri had the blessing of Syria, but they clashed constantly. Whereas Hariri believed in an open society and a free market softened by philanthropy, Lahoud did the bidding of Damascus and took a dim view of foreign investment and civil liberties, said Nadim Shehadi, the director of the Center for Lebanese Studies at Oxford University.

“The pro-Syrian camp is pro-Syrian by conviction,” Shehadi said. “Before the war, Lebanon had a completely free system, and this can be seen as a weakness because it can be exploited by foreigners.”

Presidential elections were scheduled last fall, and Lahoud was to step down. But Syria intervened, and declared that the constitution should be amended to allow Lahoud to stay in office.

It is still a mystery why Syria was determined to keep Lahoud, but in retrospect the move stands out as a turning point. Hariri threatened to oppose the amendment, then traveled to Damascus to see Assad, the Syrian president. Hariri’s associates later said that he’d been threatened in the Syrian capital. He returned to Beirut, chaired the Cabinet meeting calling for the amendment and almost immediately left the country. Weeks later, Hariri quit.

At the same time, Walid Jumblatt, the powerful leader of Lebanon’s Druze and another longtime Syria ally, became vocal in calling for Syria’s ouster. The Syrian alliance was crumbling.

Another politician, Marwan Hamadeh, was nearly killed after he quit his job as economy minister to protest the forced constitutional change. His car was rigged with a remote-control bomb; the driver was killed and Hamadeh badly wounded. The assassination attempt fell on the day that the United Nations was to hear a report on the resolution demanding a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon.

There followed a volley of threats and invective between Syria-backed loyalists and the ever-more-vocal, ever-more-numerous opposition. Jumblatt told Lebanese television last week that Hariri, in a meeting two weeks before he was killed, warned the Druze leader that “something was going to happen, and that it is either for me or for you.”

“He got killed, and we are all on the list. There is no immunity,” Jumblatt said. “The problem is that if you say no in politics, you get killed.”

What happens next will depend largely on whether the rest of the world, particularly the United States and France, decides to risk regional turmoil to force a Syrian withdrawal. Many Lebanese fear that if Syria is forced to remove its soldiers, the withdrawal could unleash a wave of bloodshed and escalate Hezbollah attacks against Israel. A surge in violence would underline Syria’s argument that it had to stay to keep the peace.

Nevertheless, Hariri’s death has provided a rallying cry for members of the opposition. They’ve called for marches and vigils, hoping to funnel the shock and anger over the assassination into a political uprising and to push the international community to join their fight.

“This is an opportunity to get rid of not only the occupation, but of Syrian national aspirations to Lebanon,” Gemayel said. “I don’t see how Syria can stay now. We’ve heard slogans we’ve never heard before. It’s unbelievable. The people are fed up.”