Syria accused of killing Mughniyeh

Or is someone just double-daring Damascus to start something? "Minister of Communications Marwan Hamade asked Saturday why wouldn't Syria avenge the assassination of Hizbullah's Imad Mughniyeh who was killed in Damascus not in Lebanon. Mughniyeh's assassination in a Damascus suburb on Feb. 12 was a 'major insult to Syria's national security, unless Syria was involved in liquidating him.'"

The Syrian regime, he charged, is "ready to sell its brother, father, uncle and brother in law." Hamade accused Hizbullah, Syria and Iran of "placing bets on Israel that also places bets on them. Fanatics feed each other."

"We are not collaborators with Israel. We adopt a wise Arab stand and who opts for adventures let him go to adventures alone," Hamade stressed.

The implication of course, is that someone else -- Hizbullah, Syria or Iran -- are in secret league with Israel to do in the other party. Hamade went on to imply that Hizbullah might be trying to provoke Israel for its own purposes.

Hamade declared that he can not exonerate Hizbullah's "logistics branch" in the attempt to assassinate him on Oct. 1, 2004 by a car bomb. He noted that Qatar managed to withdraw its contingent serving with UNIFIL in south Lebanon early in February because "it felt that something is being planned for south Lebanon and because no one wants to go back to the 1980s" in reference to the abduction of foreigners by pro-Iranian factions.

I'm not sure whether to believe any of Hamade's specific allegations, but I think he correctly puts his finger on the practice of blaming Israel as a smokescreen to pursue otherwise nefarious agendas or to use Israel to deal with foes. Many of the conflicts in the Middle East are really mundane ploys to pillage fellow Arab countries or esconsce some faction in power or rackets which would be instantly familiar to Al Capone. However, it is the convention in the region to disguise crime as Jihad against the Jew and the convention in the Western intellectual circles to believe them.

Hamade asked for the "international community" to restrain Israel while the Lebanese Army dealt with preventing "civil strife" and safeguarding the "security and stability" of Lebanon, which I take to mean crack down on the Hezbollah. But taking on Hezbollah would provoke civil strife, which might bring Syria in on the side of Hezbollah and which in turn would bring in Israel.

And so we come back to the first question: did Syria kill Mughniyeh?

Radical Islam's Electoral Setbacks, Israel tries isolate Hezbollah

After the Read More! Amir Taheri argues that Islamist parties, not Pervez Musharraf, was the real loser in the Pakistani elections. Barak tells Assad that Israel is going after Hezbollah and warns him to stay clear. And it turns out the Lebanese public is less enthusiastic about war than Hassan Nasrallah. Plus, Sadr extends his "truce" with the USA. Finally, Assad's cousin, Rami Makhluf is the object of US financial sanctions.

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Taheri writes, "The latest analysis of the results shows that the parties linked, or at least sympathetic, to the Taliban and al Qaeda saw their share of the votes slashed to about 3% from almost 11% in the last general election a few years ago. The largest coalition of the Islamist parties, the United Assembly for Action (MMA), lost control of the Northwest Frontier Province -- the only one of Pakistan's four provinces it governed. The winner in the province is the avowedly secularist National Awami Party."

And it's not just in Pakistan either. Taheri claims that radical Islamism's electoral appeal is declining world-wide. The question is why?

Analysts in the West used that prospect to argue against the Bush Doctrine of spreading democracy in the Middle East. These analysts argued that Muslims were not ready for democracy, and that elections would only translate into victory for hard-line Islamists.

The facts tell a different story. So far, no Islamist party has managed to win a majority of the popular vote in any of the Muslim countries where reasonably clean elections are held. If anything, the Islamist share of the vote has been declining across the board.

Peter Wehner, a former Deputy Assistant to the President, writes in an article called "Debating Bush's Wars" in the International Institute for Strategic Studies that we rarely realize the "tremendous damage ... inflicted against al-Qaeda" but that more subtly, fail to appreciate the huge political effects American determination has caused. Wehner argues that prior to 9/11 "American irresolution did in fact embolden jihadists" who were led to believe that they would ride to victory on the tails of some miraculous carpet. But once the US started fighting back their battlefield defeats, and -- Taheri would probably add -- their electoral setbacks now give the radical Islamists pause.

My guess is that the resistance and rejection are intertwined. Radical Islam would have done better at the polls if the West had fled before them on the battlefields of the world. Everybody loves a winner, as Hillary's political strategists must now realize, and the appearance of victory is its own motor. But once the aura of invincibility vanishes, a cause or candidate loses the greatest part of its power. In some fundamental way fighting the foe is essential to winning against it. And if that sounds too trite to be true, consider how often the reverse is believed.

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As if to demonstrate the interplay between force and politics, the Jerusalem Post reports that "Defense Minister Ehud Barak relayed a message to Syrian President Bashar Assad through Turkish President Abdullah Gul that Israel is planning to step-up military activities against Hizbullah and Hamas."

According to the report, Barak encouraged Damascus to take a different stance towards Hizbullah, and emphasized that such a move would be seen as a goodwill gesture, and could open up the possibility for peace negotiations between Israel and Syria.

These are the sort of headlines calculated to increase paranoia, if that were possible, among the Hezbollah, because no matter if Assad indignantly rejects Barak's offer, the Hezbollah knowing the cunning hearts of their Syrian masters, can never be quite sure they haven't been sold out.

And of course they will be, if the price right, either in lucre or the avoidance of pain. Hezbollah would do as well for Syria and Syria would for Hezbollah. In 'militant' circles, the question is never 'whether' but 'how much'.

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Meanwhile, a Lebanese newspaper say that the public is sick of war and that Hassan Nasrallah's recently bloodcurdling threats to fight Israel are sending people into depression.

The fear is worst in villages in the south where residents have barely recovered from the 34-day war that killed more than 1,200 civilians in Lebanon, a third of them children, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

"Since the last war, I have been living on anti-depressants," said Iman, 51, whose home near the coastal city of Tyre was bombed during the war. "And after the latest threats made by Nasrallah, I have been trying to get a visa to any country that will take me. There is nowhere to hide and I can't take this anymore."

In another village southeast of Tyre that was heavily bombed by Israeli warplanes during the war, Mohammed Balhass, 23, is expecting the worst.

"Nasrallah would not have spoken of open war if Hizbullah couldn't stand its ground against Israel," he told AFP. "But, unfortunately, we are the ones who always pay the price."

One of the reasons people in Anbar eventually gave up on al-Qaeda is that they insisted on acting out their fantasies on their front porches. And when they realized peace would immediately come if no terrorist attacks were made; when it became clear that all you had to do to have peace was to live in peace, then they figured war wasn't such a good idea. Maybe that day will come in Lebanon too.

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The AP reports that the "powerful Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is widely expected to extend a ceasefire by his Mehdi Army militia on Friday, a decision Washington says is important to maintain security gains.

I think it's a good move on Sadr's part. That way he can claim that the declining violence in Iraq is due to him. It was better anyway than declaring war on the Coalition and dying in the next few days. Way to go Moqtada.

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The Washington Post reports that "the Bush administration yesterday froze the U.S. assets and restricted the financial transactions of Syrian businessman Rami Makhluf, a powerful behind-the-scenes middle man for the Syrian government, in a move targeting the political and economic inner sanctum in Damascus."

"Once you hit Rami Makhluf, you're at war with Syria," said Joshua M. Landis, a former Fulbright scholar in Syria who teaches at the University of Oklahoma. "When you sanction Rami Makhluf, you're also sanctioning all the people who deal with him, including the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country."

Maybe that's the point of the sanction to start with: not just to send a signal but to hurt the Syrian elite where it lives.

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Getting ready to rumble in Lebanon?

The Israelis are concerned that UNIFIL is gradually being forced from Lebanon as the UN troops come under increasing attack.

A high-ranking defense official told The Jerusalem Post that Israel had indications Spain was considering withdrawing its forces from Lebanon. Spanish peacekeepers have come under repeated attacks by terrorist groups in southern Lebanon and in July, six members of the Spanish contingent were killed in an attack on their convoy near the village of el-Hiyam. ...

"There are signs that Spain might be on its way out," one official said. ... Once one country pulls out the rest of the contributors will also start to rethink their participation, and it could ultimately lead to the breakdown of the entire force," the defense official said.

It's not just the Israelis who are worried, the Saudi Arabian government has advised its citizens to avoid visiting Lebanon.

"The Foreign Ministry advises Saudi citizens against travelling to Lebanon in view of the political and unstable security conditions that Lebanon is going through," the statement said. Analysts said the warning might be based on intelligence or it could signal that Riyadh sees no prospect of a negotiated settlement.

Picador

Is Hezbollah preparing to be struck or preparing to strike?

Ynet quotes a Lebanese newspaper which says Hezbollah has gone to full alert following the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus, ordered 50,000 of its fighters to high alert, and evacuated most of its openly used buildings in south Lebanon in order to prepare 'to curb any Israeli aggression.'" VOA reports Syrian and Iranian officials met Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal and Ramadan Abdullah of Islamic Jihad presumably do discuss a response to Mughniyeh's death. Hezbollah itself has filled Mugniyeh's vacancy by appointing a new commander in secret.

In the meantime the FBI and DHS warned state and local law enforcement authorities to watch for retaliatory strikes by Hezbollah. The joint bulletin said that "while retaliation in the U.S. homeland is unlikely, Hezbollah has demonstrated a capability to respond outside the Middle East to similar events in the past". This, while Israel's chief of staff has "ordered land, air and naval forces on alert to ensure the defense of the northern border and of other Israeli interests," and its facilities abroad hunkered down.

The question on both sides of the line is who is going to move next. Judging by reactions Mughniyeh's death was both a tactical and strategic surprise. Internal investigations into security breaches indicate Syria, Iran and Hezbollah themselves ares still trying to figure out how Mughniyeh was hit. But the secret appointment of a new Hezbollah head and evacuation of their buildings in South Lebanon suggests they also haven't decided why they were hit. There is palpable uncertainty in Damascus over whether Mughniyeh's death was a one-off or the first blow of a wider campaign against them.

Syria in particular must be nervous, following the recent destruction of a mysterious facility in the Syrian desert in which Israeli cyberwar played a large part and the suspicious outage in undersea fiber optic cables serving the Middle East.

The problem facing Syria and Iran (together with the terrorist menageries based in their capitals) has two aspects: where to strike back and how quickly. In deciding the terrorist leaders must calculate whether their response will provoke a full-scale attack by Israel and or if their return blow will come too late to prevent yet another blow upon them.

The terrorist dilemma is compounded by the 2008 Presidential elections in the US. An attack on an American target would re-energize the conservative base. A war with Israel would force every American Presidential candidate to take a definite stand in the conflict. Either could doom Barack Obama's bid for the White House -- as well as efforts by Congress to defang the surveillance of terrorist suspects. Of course if Syria had any problems estimating possible effects on American politics, Assad could ask his guests. As the NY Sun observed on Feb 15, "one of Mr. Obama's foreign policy counselors, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a long-time critic of Israel, and one of Mrs. Clinton's national finance chairs, Hassan Nemazee, were meeting with President Assad".

It is also complicated by the situation in Lebanon itself. Hezbollah's efforts to take over Lebanon politically could go up in smoke if it provoked a wider war with Israel. At the same time neither Damascus, Teheran or it terrorist minions could afford to appear helpless. They must strike back without being sure how hard or how quickly.

The fear in both Damascus and Teheran today is probably that some other unexpected and unattributed blow will descend on it from out of the blue. A blow hard enough to hurt but a short of war; a blow likely to have come from either America or Israel but not for certain. One that will leave them exactly where they are now, but with a few more teeth missing.