Assad govt faces battle for survival: Hariri report
By Lin Noueihed
BEIRUT: Implicated by a UN inquiry into the killing of Lebanon’s former prime minister Rafik Hariri, Baathist Syria is isolated and fighting for survival. “This is another nail in the coffin of the Syrian regime,” said Volker Perthes, director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and an expert on Syria.
“The regime is definitely shaken because it is better documented now what everybody has suspected in Lebanon and also in Syria... that Syria was involved in one way or another.”
A UN report published on Thursday named Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s powerful brother-in-law and other senior Syrian and Lebanese security officials in the Feb 14 assassination that re-drew Lebanon’s political landscape.
The revelations came as little surprise after months of speculation that German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis’s inquiry would blame Damascus, but that does not ease Mr Assad’s dilemma.
Analysts say he could try to defuse the crisis by handing over any Syrians indicted and submitting to long-standing US demands that Syria stop ‘foreign fighters crossing into Iraq and expel Palestinian militant groups based in Damascus’.
Or he could dig in and face mounting pressure that could imperil the Baathist system in power in Syria since a 1963 coup.
Mr Assad told CNN in an interview last week he was willing to cooperate over Iraq, insisting he did not order Mr Hariri’s murder and saying any Syrians involved in it would be considered traitors and would face Syrian or international justice.
Yet on Friday Damascus denied accusations aired in the UN report and criticized the investigation as politicized.
“They are in denial. They say it’s politicized. I don’t see how they can get out of it,” said Nadim Shehadi, a Lebanese analyst at London’s Chatham House.
“I also don’t see how the international community can have a clear strategy of what to do with Syria. There are many regional implications and unknowns. If we are talking about regime collapse in Syria what is the strategy after that collapse?”
CHANGING ITS SPOTS: The UN Security Council meets on Tuesday to discuss what to do next. Some analysts say splits could emerge.
The United States and its allies appear to be laying the ground for economic sanctions against Damascus, which was forced to end its 29-year military presence in Lebanon in April amid intense international pressure.
But analysts suggest European countries could be more reluctant to impose such broad sanctions before a court of law proves Syrian involvement and fear an Iraq-style slide into lawlessness if the Damascus government crumbles.
“The debate as this moves to the Security Council will be how far do we want to push this?” said Joshua Landis, assistant professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Oklahoma University.
“Can we develop a stick to threaten Syria with to get the kind of changes we want without making that stick so big that it’s going to break the back of the Syrian regime?”
Four pro-Syrian Lebanese former security chiefs have already been arrested and charged in connection with the truck bombing that killed Mr Hariri and 20 others in Beirut.
While the Syrian government may be willing to sacrifice some lower-level officials to ensure its survival, analysts say there is no precedent for an international trial that could demand a government hand over some its most senior officials.
Such officials have previously been tried only after their government has fallen, usually in war or occupation, they say.
‘BEHAVIOUR CHANGE’: Washington says it wants ‘behaviour change’, and not regime change, in Damascus, but its demands would involve discarding policies crucial to its Arab nationalist creed and its struggle with Israel, which still occupies the Golan Heights.
“The question is how many spots do they want to change on this leopard because at a certain point behaviour change becomes in essence regime change,” said Mr Landis, spending a year in Damascus where he runs the popular SyriaComment.com website.
“The Syrian government continually complains about what exactly is being demanded of them. They can’t see a light at the end of this tunnel and they clearly suspect that the end-game is regime change,” he said. —Reuters
