The Autumn of the Autocrats

Fouad Ajami

From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2005

Summary:  If the assassins of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri sought to make an example of him for his defiance of Syria, the aftermath of the crime has mocked them. For a generation, Lebanon was an appendage of Syrian power. But now the Lebanese people, in an "independence intifada," are clamoring for a return to normalcy. The old Arab edifice of power has survived many challenges in the past, but something is different this time: the United States is now willing to gamble on freedom.

Fouad Ajami is Majid Khadduri Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Riyadh will not intercede either, but for different reasons. Hariri held Saudi citizenship, and his ties to the House of Saud ran to the very heart of the dynasty. Hariri had brought to Beirut not only Saudi money and investments, but also the Saudi way -- an aversion to ideology, a businessman's peace, and a belief in the power of wealth and caution. The Saudis are not given to expressions of public outrage, but one of their own was struck down in Beirut. A huge contingent of Saudi princes came to Beirut for Hariri's funeral; the de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, went to the Hariri home in Riyadh to offer condolences to his two older sons. Saudi Arabia will not trumpet Syria's culpability in his death. But the reserve that Saudi Arabia has displayed toward Syrian officialdom since the murder has conveyed the House of Saud's unease. Plainly, there is no faith in Riyadh that Assad, the young Syrian ruler, knows the intricacies of power.

Lebanon has long been ignored in the Arab circles of power, but the wind now blows its way. This is a marked break with the past. In the 1970s, when Palestine was the Arabs' avowed cause, the Arab states bought time for themselves at Lebanon's expense. They bequeathed Lebanon and its sovereignty to the Palestinians; they underwrote Yasir Arafat's "state within a state." During the 1980s and 1990s, it was more of the same: the Arabs stepped clear as Syria chipped away at the remnants of Lebanon's independence and dignity. Many Lebanese are convinced that this lack of sympathy derived from the fact that Lebanon is, in the main, a Christian country with heterodox communities. There is a great deal of truth to that charge. But the Arab abdication in Lebanon springs from varied sources, including the nature of Arab politics: there was no "Arab solution" for Kuwait's troubles in 1990-91 and no Arab solution for Iraq's nightmare under Saddam. The indifference to Lebanon thus was of a piece with this larger cynical acceptance of the logic of brute force in life.

In the Arab world, there is now in the air the same reading of Syria that came to surround Saddam's regime on the eve of its destruction by the United States: a recognition that the Syrians have overplayed their hand and are now on their own. No science can predict when old ways will suddenly lose their legitimacy, and when patience with them will snap. There has been much bloodshed in Arab life, everyone knows all too well. But the Hariri murder, in full public view at midday in West Beirut, claimed the Syrian power structure as its collateral damage. Assad's move to replace the head of military intelligence with his brother-in-law only days after Hariri's murder was a clumsy response to the suspicions swirling around Syria.

The claims of an Iranian-Syrian accord should also not be given much credence. Iran's horizons are wider, and Iran's interests differ radically from those of Syria. For all their strident revolutionary poses, the Iranians are shrewd, unsentimental practitioners of realpolitik. Iran's pursuit of its nuclear ambitions (or the barter of these ambitions for economic and political concessions from Europe and the United States) overwhelms the concerns of Syria, with its extortion rackets in the Bekaa Valley and Tripoli. Tehran will not ride to the rescue of Damascus.

THE STORM WAVE OF FREEDOM

The independence of Lebanon should not be feared; it is not stability that the Syrians provide. The sky will not fall if Syria pulls out its troops. The Lebanese can take heart from recent events, for the army has not split up, and the institutions of the state have held thus far. Terrorism may yet make its appearance and threaten the fragile peace. It is then that the Lebanese will be tested. But come what may, the "trusteeship" of Syria has outlived its use. What the Syrians have built is a safe haven and a sanctuary for terror.

The nature and makeup of the Syrian regime is not known with confidence. It is part Stalinist, part tribal-sectarian. Fundamentally, it is remarkably similar to the Tikriti edifice built by Saddam. It has the strengths and weaknesses of sectarian control: the secretiveness, the devotion to the clan, the subordination to the leader, and the brittleness at the center of it all. Hafiz al-Assad, the shrewd peasant soldier who built this dominion and brought the Alawis out of their insularity to their current position of power and material plenty, knew the ways of his region. But to judge by the ongoing performance of Syria in Iraq and Lebanon, his son lacks his subtlety.

In one reading, Damascus will fight for its turf in Lebanon. The Syrians will see their eviction from Lebanon as the first step toward "regime change" in their own country. Syria's rulers have nowhere to go. They ride a tiger, and the retribution against them, were they to be overthrown, would be frightful. But there are grounds for a less apocalyptic view of things. In this more realistic scenario, withdrawing from Lebanon would have no consequences for the survival of the regime in Damascus. The withdrawal would be deliberate, first to the Bekaa Valley, then across the border. The Syrians would be given a fig leaf of an orderly retreat, in accordance with Security Council Resolution 1559 and with a 1989 agreement concluded in Taif, Saudi Arabia, that legitimized Syria's reach into Lebanon but made clear, in spirit, that Syria's role was contingent on Israel's occupation of Lebanese territory. A Lebanese parliamentary election scheduled for May is sure to bring a lopsided victory for Syria's opponents, providing the perfect opportunity for the emergent Lebanese government to ask for Syrian withdrawal.

Even if Syria leaves, there is no swift sword that would extirpate with one stroke its influence in Lebanon. The claims of contiguity, and geography more generally, would continue to make themselves felt. But what would end is the debilitating machinery of control that the Syrians use to dominate so much of Lebanon's life. In their fashion, the Syrians have been darkly warning that they would set Beirut to the torch and bring about a second civil war were they forced to pull out. There is primitiveness here, but bluff as well. Lebanon's prosperity has spared the Syrians the consequences of their own inefficiencies. Lebanon's banks have functioned as a banking system for the Syrians. And an estimated 600,000 Syrian laborers have found work across the border. Damascus would not likely destroy a country upon which it relies.