LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
ِMay 28/2011

Biblical Event Of The Day
The Letter from James 2/1-13: "My brothers, don’t hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ of glory with partiality.  For if a man with a gold ring, in fine clothing, comes into your synagogue, and a poor man in filthy clothing also comes in;  and you pay special attention to him who wears the fine clothing, and say, “Sit here in a good place”; and you tell the poor man, “Stand there,” or “Sit by my footstool”;  haven’t you shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers. Didn’t God choose those who are poor in this world to be rich in faith, and heirs of the Kingdom which he promised to those who love him?  But you have dishonored the poor man. Don’t the rich oppress you, and personally drag you before the courts?  Don’t they blaspheme the honorable name by which you are called?  However, if you fulfill the royal law, according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,”* you do well.  But if you show partiality, you commit sin, being convicted by the law as transgressors.  For whoever keeps the whole law, and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.  For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not commit murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery, but murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.  So speak, and so do, as men who are to be judged by a law of freedom.  For judgment is without mercy to him who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment"

Latest analysis, editorials, studies, reports, letters & Releases from miscellaneous sources
Liberation, except if you’re Syrian/By: Michael Young/May 27/11  
All at sea/Now Lebanon/May 27/11
US Aid to Arab Spring must go to Democracy groups not to the Islamists/By: Dr. Walid Phares/May 27/11
Editorial calls on Nasrallah to drop support for Syrian regime/The National/May 27/11
Egypt and the fear strategy/By: Amir Taheri/May 27/11
Bashar's first war…will it be his last/By: Adel Al Toraifi/May 27/11
W. Thomas Smith Jr./Leading Kuwaiti newspaper reporting ghastly atrocities by the Syrian regime/27 May/11
Where Netanyahu fails himself and Israel/By Fareed Zakaria/May 27/11
Damascus on Trial/By: David Schenker/May 27/11

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for May 27/11
Al-Rahi: State Can’t Be Built over Statelets, Each Party Formed its Own State/Naharnet
Arab Socialist Baath Party Founder Disappears in Aley/Naharnet
Estonian Delegation Follows up the Probe into the Abduction of 7 Tourists/Naharnet
Erdogan calls Assad to press for reform, source says/Now Lebanon
Four Killed in Nighttime Protest in Syria/NYT
Syria opposition urges army troops to join revolt/Daily Star
Protests sweep Syria's east, Nasrallah pictures burnt/J.Post
G8 vows to support Arab Spring, threatens Syria/M&C
AI reports 'shoot-to-kill' policy in Syria/UPI
Revolt batters Syria's already-struggling economy/Buiness Week
Syria uses shadowy, pro-regime gunmen to carry out brutal attacks on protesters/CP
U.S. Embassy Delegation Inspects Syrian Refugees Situation in North/Naharnet
Hariri questions Nahas motives/Daily Star
Lebanon's Arabic press digest - May 27, 2011/Daily Star
Aoun: Mufti Qabbani is exploiting false claims/Daily Star
Jumblat: Hizbullah Putting Aoun at Forefront, Doesn’t Want Cabinet to be Formed/Naharnet
Rifi Says he Respects Baroud, But Was Compelled Not to Abide by his Orders/Naharnet
Suleiman Asks Rifi to Pull ISF Out of Telecom Building, Mulls Prosecution’s Involvement/Naharnet
Raad: We Call on Army to Protect Finance Ministry to Avoid Repeat of Telecom Ministry Incident/Naharnet
March 8: Suleiman Should End Rifi’s ‘Rebellion’ in his Role as Commander-in-Chief/Naharnet
Aoun Calls for Referring Rifi to Judiciary: Telecom Ministry Incident Premeditated Crime/Naharnet
Hariri ‘Doesn’t Object’ that Judicial Authorities Follow-up Actions of Nahhas/Naharnet
Miqati Vows to Set Things Straight if Impasse Continues/Naharnet
UNIFIL Commemorates International Day of U.N. Peacekeepers/Naharnet
Sheikh Oraymet: My Stance from Aoun Doesn’t Reflect Dar al-Fatwa’s Viewpoint/Naharne
Geagea: Technocrat Government Addresses People’s/Naharnet

Al-Rahi: State Can’t Be Built over Statelets, Each Party Formed its Own State
Naharnet Newsdesk /Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi described on Friday the incident at one of the Telecommunications Ministry buildings on Thursday as unfortunate, lamenting the lack of responsibility demonstrated by the political class. He said: “The state cannot be built over statelets and each political party has formed its own state under its own authority.”
“We should pray that God inspire our Lebanese officials to assume their duties with dignity because politics should be meant to achieve the general good,” he stressed. “We will pray for Lebanon and the Middle East … asking God that these days be the beginning of a new phase where Arab countries would witness more public and personal freedoms,” the patriarch remarked.

Erdogan calls Assad to press for reform, source says
May 27, 2011 /Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Syrian Pesident Bashar al-Assad Friday in another effort to press for reform to end deadly unrest in the Arab country, a government official said. Erdogan "emphasized again the importance of reform," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity, refusing to give other details. According to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), the Turkish PM reaffirmed to Assad Turkey’s “commitment to the strategic relationship with Syria.” Erdogan, who enjoys good relations with Assad, has piled up pressure on the Syrian leader to initiate a democratic transition but stopped short of calling for his departure. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said last week that Syria's turmoil could still be resolved peacefully if Damascus initiates "shock reforms" and stops brutal crackdowns on protesters, warning that "time is running out." Syrian opposition leaders are to meet in Turkey's Mediterranean resort of Antalya next week for a conference in support of the two-month-old protests against Assad's rule. Last month, Ankara sent envoys to Damascus to press Assad to take steps for democratization, offering expertise for political and economic overhaul. Human rights groups say that at least 1,000 people have been killed and more than 10,000 arrested since the demonstrations began on March 15.-AFP/NOW Lebanon

Arab Socialist Baath Party Founder Disappears in Aley
Naharnet Newsdesk /A founder of the Arab Socialist Baath Party, Shebli al-Ousaimi, has disappeared in Aley, pan-Arab al-Hayat newspaper reported on Friday. Al-Ousaimi, 87, was last seen on Thursday afternoon while exercising at al-Zouhour street. “He wasn’t carrying any identification papers or a mobile phone,” al-Hayat said. Aley residents and his family contacted Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat and several officials to uncover the fate of al- Ousaimi. “Currently, he isn’t practicing any political activity,” the newspaper said, adding that the man frequently visits Lebanon.Al-Ousaimi served as assistant Secretary-General of the Arab Socialist Baath party when it was founded under the leadership of Michel Aflaq.
He began visiting Lebanon more than four years ago and stayed at his daughter’s residence in Aley.

Aoun Calls for Referring Rifi to Judiciary: Telecom Ministry Incident Premeditated Crime
Naharnet Newsdesk/Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun urged on Friday President Michel Suleiman to take the necessary measures to address Thursday’s incident at one of the Telecommunications Ministry buildings at Adlieh, describing the event as a “premeditated crime”. He said after an extraordinary FPM meeting on the incident: “According to the military law on rebellion and mutiny, yesterday’s incident is a crime that was part of a coup attempt.” Seeing as the Interior Ministry falls under the President’s authority because of his role as commander of the armed forces, “we hope that he will take the right measures in this affair according to legal and administrative norms,” said the MP.
Aoun called on President Michel Suleiman to refer Internal Security Forces chief Ashraf Rifi to the judiciary, withdraw Intelligence Bureau members from the Adlieh building, and refer its director to the judiciary because he is responsible for the officers’ violations. “We hope the president will exercise his authority so that we won’t be forced to make greater demands,” he warned. “We have several options to tackle this issue if it is not properly addressed,” the FPM leader stated. “The rebellion was not spontaneous and the people now know why I have been demanding to acquire the Interior Ministry portfolio,” Aoun concluded. On Thursday, security forces prevented caretaker Telecommunications Minister Charbel Nahhas from entering the second floor of a ministry building at Adlieh. An ISF statement said that the minister was seeking to dismantle equipment being used to install a third mobile phone network in Lebanon.
Security forces were deployed at the building as per normal procedure when installing such systems, said the statement

March 8: Suleiman Should End Rifi’s ‘Rebellion’ in his Role as Commander-in-Chief
Naharnet Newsdesk /The March 8 forces said that as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, President Michel Suleiman should resolve the Telecommunications Ministry crisis and force all security forces to abide by his decisions. A high-ranking March 8 source told As Safir daily in remarks published Friday that amid a caretaking cabinet and Interior Minister Ziad Baroud’s decision to absolve himself from his duties, the responsibility of Suleiman lies in addressing the issue as all security forces become his subordinates. “It is no longer acceptable for a director-general to continue his rebellion on the entire state by seeking protection from his political-confessional authority,” the source said about Internal Security Forces chief Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi who prevented Caretaker Telecom Minister Charbel Nahhas from entering a facility affiliated with the Telecommunications Ministry in Beirut’s al-Adliyeh area on Thursday.
Rifi is a Sunni with close ties to Caretaker Premier Saad Hariri, who is also the leader of al-Mustaqbal movement. As for Nahhas, he is pro Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun.
The source expected Speaker Nabih Berri and Aoun’s Change and Reform bloc to make stances on the incident on Friday.

Rifi Says he Respects Baroud, But Was Compelled Not to Abide by his Orders
Naharnet Newsdesk /Internal Security Forces chief Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi said that he respects Caretaker Interior Minister Ziad Baroud but he was compelled not to abide by his orders out of his keenness to ensure the protection of the people and state institutions. Rifi told al-Liwaa daily in remarks published Friday that he respects Baroud despite his decision to give up his ministerial responsibilities after being unable to enforce the law. “At times, we find ourselves compelled to take major decisions for being responsible for the protection of the people and institutions,” Rifi said about his rejection to abide by Baroud’s orders to pull his forces out of a building affiliated with the Telecommunications Ministry in Beirut’s al-Adliyeh area.
On Thursday, the security forces prevented Telecom Minister Charbel Nahhas, accompanied by a number of technicians, from accessing the facility to dismantle equipment of a third telecom network. Rifi reiterated that the ISF’s decision to guard the Chinese-donated equipment was based upon the request of Ogero, the state-owned telecommunications company with autonomous status. “In accordance with the ISF law, I am required to provide the support to any demand by an authority. So I am responsible for the protection of the equipment,” he told al-Liwaa. The ISF chief also accused Nahhas of concealing telecommunications data from the ISF’s Information Branch, obstructing investigation into the case of seven Estonian tourists who were kidnapped in the Bekaa valley in March.

Suleiman Asks Rifi to Pull ISF Out of Telecom Building, Mulls Prosecution’s Involvement
Naharnet Newsdesk 8 hours agoPresident Michel Suleiman has reportedly ordered Internal Security Forces chief Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi to clear a building affiliated with the Telecommunications Ministry from his men after they prevented Caretaker Telecom Minister Charbel Nahhas from entering the facility on Thursday. Sources close to Suleiman told several Beirut dailies published Friday that after the president studied the issue legally and constitutionally, he told Rifi to abide by Caretaker Interior Minister Ziad Baroud’s order to pull his forces out of the building in Beirut’s al-Adliyeh area. “A director-general should comply with the decisions” of Baroud “who is the man in charge of the ministry,” they said. Baroud absolved himself from his duties on Thursday after the ISF led by Rifi failed to carry out his orders to withdraw from the facility and allow access to Nahhas. Nahhas, accompanied by a number of technicians, attempted to access the building to dismantle equipment donated to Lebanon for a third GSM network. Suleiman holds onto the law and the authority of the minister on issues linked to state-run authorities and institutions, the Baabda palace sources said. The president also held a telephone conversation with caretaker Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar. He inquired him whether it is possible for the public prosecutor’s office to deal with the incident at the telecom ministry building. Suleiman and Najjar discussed specifically Rifi’s rejection to abide by Baroud’s orders.

Jumblat: Hizbullah Putting Aoun at Forefront, Doesn’t Want Cabinet to be Formed
Naharnet NewsdeskagoProgressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat has said that Hizbullah doesn’t want the new government to be formed and is putting Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun at the forefront of the dispute with the premier-designate on the formation of the cabinet. “Hizbullah is putting Gen. Michel Aoun at the front position and doesn’t want the cabinet to be formed,” Jumblat told al-Akhbar daily in remarks published Friday. The government is necessary for the resistance and Syria and is important on the social and economic levels to overcome the crisis, the Druze leader said. “Sometimes my allies think with an illogical logic which I don’t understand,” he told the newspaper.
Jumblat warned that the tourism season is now in danger. “This would harm several economic sectors in the country.” When asked whether PM-designate Najib Miqati should form a de facto cabinet or give up his task, Jumblat said: “The de facto government is unacceptable and not realistic.” He rejected linking the impasse to developments in Syria, saying Damascus believes that Lebanon should have a cabinet. “Lebanese parties should form the government regardless of any regional factor so that it could protect Lebanon and guarantee stability.”
On the ongoing protests against the Assad regime, Jumblat told al-Akhbar that the Syrian president should engage in dialogue with the society. He denied that he played the role of the Syrian foreign minister during his visit to Paris last week, saying “I asked for an appointment which was set immediately.” While Jumblat refused to discuss in detail about his talks with French officials, he told al-Akhbar that he informed them that isolating Syria would make things worse. Bashar “Assad wants reform and is capable of achieving it,” the PSP leader said

Suleiman Asks Rifi to Pull ISF Out of Telecom Building, Mulls Prosecution’s Involvement
Naharnet Newsdesk 8 hours agoPresident Michel Suleiman has reportedly ordered Internal Security Forces chief Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi to clear a building affiliated with the Telecommunications Ministry from his men after they prevented Caretaker Telecom Minister Charbel Nahhas from entering the facility on Thursday. Sources close to Suleiman told several Beirut dailies published Friday that after the president studied the issue legally and constitutionally, he told Rifi to abide by Caretaker Interior Minister Ziad Baroud’s order to pull his forces out of the building in Beirut’s al-Adliyeh area. “A director-general should comply with the decisions” of Baroud “who is the man in charge of the ministry,” they said.
Baroud absolved himself from his duties on Thursday after the ISF led by Rifi failed to carry out his orders to withdraw from the facility and allow access to Nahhas. Nahhas, accompanied by a number of technicians, attempted to access the building to dismantle equipment donated to Lebanon for a third GSM network. Suleiman holds onto the law and the authority of the minister on issues linked to state-run authorities and institutions, the Baabda palace sources said. The president also held a telephone conversation with caretaker Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar. He inquired him whether it is possible for the public prosecutor’s office to deal with the incident at the telecom ministry building. Suleiman and Najjar discussed specifically Rifi’s rejection to abide by Baroud’s orders.

Raad: We Call on Army to Protect Finance Ministry to Avoid Repeat of Telecom Ministry Incident
Naharnet Newsdesk 5 hours agoThe head of the Loyalty to the Resistance bloc, MP Mohammed Raad noted on Friday that those behind Thursday’s incident at the Telecommunications Ministry were seeking to “cover up several scandals that are aimed at toppling the state.”He therefore called on the Lebanese army to protect the Finance Ministry “to avoid a repeat of the Telecommunications Ministry incident.” The incident reveals the other camp’s unilateral view of governing the country, which says that “if we can’t rule then no one else can,” he continued.
The MP said: “We have heard several accusations against us that we have violated the state and heard demands that we should adhere to it.”“Yesterday’s development was the latest example of their attempt to respect the state,” Raad added.“If this is the state they are aspiring for then let them have it,” he declared.

Miqati Vows to Set Things Straight if Impasse Continues
Naharnet Newsdesk /Premier-designate Najib Miqati warned on Friday that he would take the appropriate decision to set things straight in the formation of the new government.
“I want the formation of the cabinet today more than any other day because it is an additional factor of stability,” Miqati told al-Iktissad Wal Aamal conference at the Phoenicia hotel in Beirut. “I will take the appropriate decision to set things straight regardless of whether it would be a cabinet that would (work) for stability or a government that wouldn’t achieve the expected results,” he said. Miqati told the conference that his role was based on satisfying all sides and forming a government in consultation with the president. However, “it is impossible to satisfy all people and no matter what we do, a certain faction will feel marginalized.”In response to a question, the prime minister-designate vowed to prevent Sunni-Shiite strife, to consolidate the economy and political stability. Miqati said the Lebanese are capable of overcoming all political and social difficulties through their unity. “This will be possible only through the close cooperation between the public and private sectors.”It is time for the state to transform itself from “serving politicians into serving the citizen” and becoming an incentive for productivity, he added.

UNIFIL Commemorates International Day of U.N. Peacekeepers
Naharnet Newsdesk/The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) commemorated on Friday the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers, remembering colleagues who lost their lives in the line of duty and celebrating their contributions to peace. A ceremony was held at UNIFIL headquarters in Naqoura to mark the international day that is observed every year on 29 May.  Peacekeepers representing UNIFIL’s 35 different national contingents were joined by local authorities, officers of the Lebanese army and security forces and diplomatic representatives. UNIFIL Acting Force Commander Brigadier-General Santi Bonfanti, and Brigadier-General Emile Salloum representing the Lebanese army commander, laid wreaths at the UNIFIL Cenotaph in honor of the peacekeepers who lost their lives in the service of peace, while a minute of silence was observed.
There have been 292 fatalities of peacekeepers serving with UNIFIL since its establishment in 1978. “I pay tribute to you all peacekeepers - men and women, civilian and military, who serve selflessly, tirelessly and courageously in UNIFIL every day. Your work is a source of pride for the United Nations every day of the year,” Bonfanti said at the ceremony.
The commemoration is an occasion to pay tribute to those peacekeepers deployed around the world and to remember those who gave their lives in the line of duty.
Since January 2010, tragedies have befallen U.N. peacekeepers, with about 100 killed in a single blow in an earthquake in Haiti that month. In April 2011, 32 lives, many of them U.N. staff, were lost in the crash of a plane serving with the peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A few days earlier, seven personnel were killed in an attack on a U.N. compound in Afghanistan. The theme of this year’s commemoration is upholding the rule of law, which is essential for successful peacekeeping in conflict and post-conflict settings.
“Rule of law assistance is an essential tool that the United Nations relies upon to help maintain peace and security around the world,” Bonfanti said.
The International Day of U.N. Peacekeepers was established by the General Assembly in 2002 to pay tribute to those serving in U.N. peacekeeping operations for their high level of professionalism, dedication and courage, and to honor the memory of those who have lost their lives. The day was set on 29 May, the date in 1948 of the first U.N. peacekeeping mission: UNTSO (U.N. Truce Supervision Organization).  Today, there are about 120,000 peacekeepers worldwide from 115 countries. They include UNIFIL’s 12,000 soldiers and about 1,000 civilians.

Sheikh Oraymet: My Stance from Aoun Doesn’t Reflect Dar al-Fatwa’s Viewpoint
Naharnet Newsdesk /The Secretary General of the Higher Islamic Council said Friday that his announcement about attempts by Dar al-Fatwa to file a lawsuit against the Free Patriotic Movement leader was only an expression of his personal viewpoint. Sheikh Khaldoun Oraymet said in a statement that his remarks to Asharq al-Awsat newspaper on Thursday that Dar al-Fatwa was seeking to sue FPM chief Michel Aoun for libel and defamation was an expression of his “personal point of view and did not reflect the opinion of Dar al-Fatwa or Mufti” Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani. Oraymet said that his remarks to the newspaper were not explained accurately. Only Qabbani announces the stance of Dar al-Fatwa from this issue, he said, stressing his “full commitment to the instructions of the Mufti.”Oraymet told Asharq al-Awsat that Aoun is suffering from the “Hariri complex,” and advised him to “treat himself.”
According to WikiLeaks cables, the FPM leader has said that “the Maronite-Shiite alliance is the only means to confront the local and external Sunni threat” and has dubbed Sunnis as “terrorists."

Geagea: Technocrat Government Addresses People’s
Naharnet Newsdesk /Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea condemned the recent incident at the Telecommunications Ministry, saying it is very unfortunate that some sides’ daily actions are serving to destroy the country’s democracy. He said during the opening of the 13th session of the party’s general conference: “Such actions are eliminating the people’s interests and driving them towards choosing between matters that are not related to them and their concerns.” He therefore urged the need to form a government as soon as possible, noting that the past four months have demonstrated that the other camp is incapable of forming a Cabinet of politicians. “This only leaves us with the option of forming a technocrat government that addresses the people’s concerns away from political disputes,” Geagea stressed

Hariri ‘Doesn’t Object’ that Judicial Authorities Follow-up Actions of Nahhas
Naharnet Newsdesk /Caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri has urged the judicial authority to follow-up the attempt by Caretaker Telecommunications Minister Charbel Nahhas “to put his hands on the third telecommunications network,” a statement released by his press office said. Hariri stressed that “he doesn’t object that the competent judicial authority takes up this issue to determine why the Minister of Telecommunications overruled the decisions of the Council of Ministers,” said the press release. He said that the judicial authority has to find out “the party to which Minister Nahhas wants to deliver the network to, outside the control of the Lebanese state and without its knowledge.”“Nahhas tried to remove it from the control of legal authorities without any legal justification,” the PM added. Earlier Thursday, Hariri held contacts with President Michel Suleiman, caretaker Interior Minister Ziad Baroud and the concerned security, judicial and military authorities, to follow up on the issue, the press release said.

Estonian Delegation Follows up the Probe into the Abduction of 7 Tourists
Naharnet Newsdesk /An Estonian security delegation toured the industrial area of the eastern city of Zahle where seven Estonian tourists were abducted more than two months ago, the pan-Arab al-Hayat newspaper reported on Friday. Informed security sources said that “the aim of the visit might be connected with the abductees’ statement in their last video… saying that the Estonian state doesn’t care about them.” The sources told the newspaper that the “Interior Ministry called on France and other European countries to offer help regarding the abduction by providing Lebanon with satellite images of the industrial area located near the Syrian-Lebanese border.”The delegation included two Estonian police officers accompanied by a security officer from the French embassy in Lebanon and the Internal Security Forces commander of the Bekaa Brig. Gen. Charles Atta, al-Hayat said. The seven Estonian tourists pleaded for help in their last video; criticizing their government for abandoning them and saying they were in "great danger.”

Liberation, except if you’re Syrian
Michael Young, Now Lebanon
May 27, 2011
In his speech on Liberation Day, celebrating when the Lebanese finally saw the back of the Israeli occupation 11 years ago, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah mentioned Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister. He remarked that when Netanyahu, in his speech before the US Congress this week, raised the issue of the rockets in Lebanon and Gaza, there “was fear in his eyes.”
Perhaps there was, but I also see quite a lot of fear in Nasrallah’s eyes these days as the situation in the Middle East goes through radical transformation. And there are primarily three reasons for this.
First, as hard as Nasrallah tries, he just cannot seem to convince Arabs anymore that “resistance” must be given priority over most other aspects of their lives. In Egypt, Tunisia and Syria, people have talked about emancipation, democracy and liberty, with the targets of their opprobrium almost exclusively domestic. Protestors may dislike America and Israel, but for now their aim is to rewrite failed social contracts, impose states that reflect their needs, and be rid of leaders and their families who have suffocated and robbed them for decades.
If Nasrallah has any doubts, he should recall what happened after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s January interview in The Wall Street Journal. Assad gloated that his “resistance” credentials would shield him from an upheaval similar to the others in the Arab world. They didn’t, and now Syrian demonstrators are burning the Iranian flag, along with the Russian and Chinese flags, in the streets of their cities.
There was something terribly off-key in Nasrallah’s comments, showing how alienated he seems to be from the spirit of this Arab moment. The language of rockets, guns and combat is jarring against a backdrop of societies demanding freedom. In armed resistance there is an implicit call for regimentation, for compulsory unity and the banishment of dissent in the greater cause of defeating the enemy. Yet everything about the Arab uprisings has been directed at undermining regimentation and authorizing dissent. Those in the region know all too well that their despots have spent decades using the conflict with Israel as justification for building up vast military and security apparatuses to facilitate open-ended internal repression.
Nasrallah’s second cause of fear is that he’s on the wrong side of the revolt in Syria. Hezbollah, which has always claimed to be the champion of the downtrodden, is defending a leadership crushing its own people. Nasrallah is covering for the soldiers, security officers and gang members who have fired live ammunition at unarmed civilians, killing an estimated 1,100 people in the last two months. He is covering for the unit in Daraa that placed a prisoner under a tank tread before running him over twice, tearing him to shreds.
It was pitiable to hear Nasrallah mentioning the “resistance” bona fides of the Syrian regime as the principal validation for his support of the Assads. In that way the Hezbollah leader suggested that his own agenda was somehow more meritorious than the aspirations of the Syrian people (even as he admitted that Syria needed reform). The reaction on social media outlets was acerbic from many in Syria. They saw that in defense of his party’s and Iran’s interests, Nasrallah would abandon justice and applaud their tormentors. If Syrian protestors prevail, they will not soon forgive him his double-standards.
A third headache for Nasrallah is that he now finds himself at the epicenter of a sectarian confrontation in the Middle East. For a long time Hezbollah managed to transcend Sunni-Shia differences thanks to its accomplishments on an issue that most Arabs sympathize with, namely the battle against Israel. But much has changed since then. To a great extent Iran’s Arab enemies have made headway in portraying the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah as pursuing a project of Shia hegemony, regardless of the merits of such an accusation.
And in Syria Hezbollah’s ally, the Assad regime, also appears to be implementing a sectarian strategy. Many Arabs will have read or heard lately that Alawites are expelling Sunnis from places such as Tal Kalakh. Even diplomats in Beirut worry that this may be a step in establishing an ethnically cleansed Alawite mini-state. It would be disastrous for Nasrallah if a majority of Arabs were to begin lumping his Shia community together with the Alawites in an alleged partnership against Sunnis. He knows that for Hezbollah to be depicted as a sectarian group would undermine it as the vanguard in a model of regional resistance. And yet this has already started.
Hassan Nasrallah is behind the curve on what is going on around us in the Middle East. The Hezbollah leader is employing both rhetoric and imagery that are anachronistic in these transformative times. The future, we hope, will bring a promise of free societies, the reflexes of compromise and greater pluralism. If that fails, as it may, Nasrallah will have saved himself; but at the expense of many innocents.
**Michael Young is opinion editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Beirut and author of The Ghosts of Martyrs Square: An Eyewitness Account of Lebanon’s Life Struggle, which the Wall Street Journal listed as one of its 10 standout books for 2010. He tweets @BeirutCalling.

Where Netanyahu fails himself and Israel
By Fareed Zakaria,
Published: May 25
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/where-netanyahu-fails-himself-and-israel/2011/05/25/AGwSfUBH_story.html?hpid=z4
Conventional wisdom is fast congealing in Washington that President Obama was wrong to demarcate a shift in American policy toward Israel last week. In fact, it was Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who broke with the past — in one of a series of diversions and obstacles Netanyahu has come up with anytime he is pressed. He wins in the short run, but ultimately, he is turning himself into a version of Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, “Mr. Nyet,” a man who will be bypassed by history.
Here is what Netanyahu’s immediate predecessor, Ehud Olmert, said in a widely reported speech to the Israeli Knesset in 2008: “We must give up Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem and return to the core of the territory that is the State of Israel prior to 1967, with minor corrections dictated by the reality created since then.” Olmert, a man with a reputation as a hard-liner, said that meant Israel would keep about 6 percent of the West Bank — the major settlements — and give up land elsewhere. This was also the position of Ehud Barak, Israel’s prime minister during the late 1990s.
The Bush administration did not have a different position, as statements from the president and Condoleezza Rice make clear. Here is George W. Bush in 2008: “I believe that any peace agreement between them will require mutually agreed adjustments to the armistice lines of 1949 to reflect current realities and to ensure that the Palestinian state is viable and contiguous.” (The 1949 armistice lines is another way of saying the 1967 borders.)
Or consider this statement from last November: “[T]he United States believes that through good-faith negotiations, the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state, based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.” That’s not Obama, Bush or Rice, but a statement jointly issued by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Netanyahu on Nov. 11, 2010.
Today, Netanyahu says that any discussion of the 1967 borders is treason and that new borders must reflect “dramatic changes” since then. So in three years, an Israeli prime minister’s position has gone from “minor corrections” to “dramatic changes.” Netanyahu’s quarrel, it appears, is with himself. Yet we are to think it is Obama who has shifted policy?
Why did Netanyahu turn what was at best a minor difference into a major confrontation? Does it help Israel’s security or otherwise strengthen it to stoke tensions with its strongest ally and largest benefactor? Does such behavior further the resolution of Israel’s problems? No, but it helps Netanyahu stir support at home and maintain his fragile coalition. And while Bibi might sound like Churchill, he acts like a local ward boss, far more interested in holding onto his post than using it to secure Israel’s future.
The newsworthy, and real, shift in U.S. policy was Obama publicly condemning the Palestinian strategy to seek recognition as a state from the U.N. General Assembly in September. He also questioned the accord between Fatah and Hamas. Obama endorsed the idea of a demilitarized Palestinian state, a demand Israel has made in recent years. Instead of thanking Obama for this, Netanyahu created a public confrontation to garner applause at home.
Netanyahu’s references to the “indefensible” borders of 1967 reveal him to be mired in a world that has gone away. The chief threat to Israel today is not from a Palestinian army. Israel has the region’s strongest economy and military, complete with an arsenal of nuclear weapons. The chief threats to Israel are from new technologies — rockets, biological weapons — and demography. Its physical existence is less in doubt than its democratic existence as it continues to rule millions of Palestinians in serf-like conditions — entitled to neither a vote nor a country.
The path to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been clear for 20 years. Israel would cede most of the land it conquered in the 1967 war to a Palestinian state, keeping the major settlement blocks. In return, it would get a series of measures designed to protect its security. That’s why the process is called land for peace. The problem is that Netanyahu has never believed in land for peace. His strategy has been to put up obstacles, create confusion and wait it out. But one day there will be peace, along the lines that people have talked about for 20 years. And Netanyahu will be remembered only as a person before the person who made peace, a comma in history.
comments@fareedzakaria.com

End of Days for Assad?
The Uprising in Syria and Washington's Response Michael Bröning, Tony Badran, Mara E. Karlin and Andrew J. Tabler
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/discussions/roundtables/end-of-days-for-assad
May 25, 2011
Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama gave Syrian President Bashar al-Assad an ultimatum: Lead a transition to democracy, or, in Obama's words, "get out of the way." The speech recognized an inconvenient truth for Washington: Although the Assad regime has not yet reached a tipping point like that of the Ben Ali and Mubarak regimes, nearly three months of protests across Syria have shaken the Assad regime to its core. Government forces have killed 1,000 protesters and arrested another 10,000, yet demonstrators continue to fill the streets demanding the fall of the government. Assad is now caught in a dilemma: He can continue relying on his fellow Alawite security chiefs and the minority system they dominate to persecute the predominately Sunni protesters, or he can enact deep political reforms that could convince the protesters to return home but would end the Alawite-led system on which he so heavily relies. Either way, the Assad regime as it has existed for more than four decades is disintegrating.
Now, to follow through on his bold declaration last week, Obama and his advisers must plan for a Syria without the Assad regime as it currently exists. To do so, Washington should try to push Assad from power while pulling in a new leadership.
As a start of this "push" strategy, Obama must go even further than he did in his speech last week and publicly state that Assad must go. Such a move would signal that the United States will no longer deal with Assad. Put bluntly, high-level U.S. officials would no longer plead for Assad's support on questions of U.S. interest in the region, particularly the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon.
Sanctions are another way to weaken Assad's already loosening grip on power. Obama has issued an executive order levying sanctions on Syrian officials responsible for human rights abuses during the current crackdown. Last Wednesday, Washington added Assad himself to the order. Although Assad and other Syrian officials have few assets in the United States, multinational banks and financial firms, which risk losing their U.S. business if they associate with individuals under U.S. sanction, have now been forced to cut ties. This effect has been compounded by recent European Union sanctions against Assad and 22 other regime officials involved in putting down the protests.
The United States could also exploit the vulnerability of Syria's oil sector, a key node of power for the Assad regime. Washington should press EU member states to join in the United States' ban (passed as part of the U.S.A. Patriot Act) on transactions with the Commercial Bank of Syria, the country's largest state-owned bank and the chief vehicle for recycling Syrian oil receipts. The bank is known to keep a portion of its approximately $20 billion in hard currency reserves in short-term accounts at European banks. Freezing those funds would threaten the regime's economic viability and undermine its support from the Syrian business elite. (Assad's much-maligned cousin, Rami Makhlouf -- who himself was designated in a 2008 executive order and whose businesses were further designated under last week's executive order -- would particularly suffer, given his substantial investments in Syrian oil production.)
Furthermore, the United States could invoke some combination of the remaining tenets of the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act. (The act was first enacted by Congress in 2003 to sanction Syria for its pernicious meddling in Iraq and Lebanon, support for terror groups, and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.) Those tenets include a ban on U.S. investment in Syria, a ban on the travel of Syrian diplomats beyond a 25-mile radius of Washington and New York, and a downgrading of diplomatic relations.
**MARA E. KARLIN was Levant Director at the Pentagon in 2006-7 and Special Assistant to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy in 2007-9.
**ANDREW J. TABLER is Next Generation Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author of the forthcoming book In the Lion's Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria.
The above article was published in washingtoninstitute.org on May 26th, 2011 and in foreignaffairs.com on May 25th, 2011.

Damascus on Trial
by David Schenker
Middle East Quarterly
Middle East Forum
Spring 2011, pp. 59-66
http://www.meforum.org/2914/damascus-on-trial
In September 2008, the U.S. Federal Court in Washington, D.C., rendered a $413 million civil judgment against the government of Syria for its provision of support and material aid to the killers of two American contractors in Iraq.[1] Syria's appeal is pending, but should it lose, the victims' families will undoubtedly endeavor to attach Syrian assets in the United States and abroad.
On September 26, 2008, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that Syria "supported, protected, harbored, and subsidized" the Iraq-based terrorist group headed by Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi (above), thus being culpable for the beheading of two U.S. contractors by this group.
Until now, with the exception of sanctions, financial designations, and periodic cross-border direct action, Washington has imposed little cost on Damascus for its consistent support for terrorist attacks in Iraq since the 2003 war. And while the financial implications of this court verdict are unlikely to change Damascus's standing support for terrorism, it will impose an unprecedented price on Bashar al-Assad's increasingly reckless regime.
Support for the Insurgency
In December 2010, U.S. counterterrorism officials reported an uptick in the number of insurgents entering Iraq via Syria.[2] It was the most significant reference to a Syrian role in the movement of jihadists since December 2009 when Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki blamed Damascus for car bomb attacks that killed more than one hundred in Baghdad. But it was only the latest in a long series of U.S. complaints about Syrian provision of support to Iraqi insurgents, a development that started even prior to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Indeed, as Washington was surging troops to the region in 2003 in preparation for the blitz on Baghdad, Damascus was deploying its own counter-force to fight the Americans.
In the months leading up to the invasion, the Assad regime allowed the establishment of an office across the street from the U.S. embassy in Damascus where insurgent hopefuls could sign up and get on a bus to Baghdad for the opportunity to repel the invaders.[3] While brazen, Damascus's support and encouragement for Washington's enemies in Iraq came as little surprise. From the very start, Syria made no secret of its intent to undermine the U.S. invasion. Just days after the start of military operations, for example, then-Syrian foreign minister Farouq Shara publicly announced that "Syria's interest is to see the invaders defeated in Iraq."[4]
The defeat of the U.S. project in Iraq was an interest Damascus shared with Tehran. So much so that, according to then-Syrian vice president Abdel Halim Khaddam, on the eve of the invasion, the two countries forged an agreement to encourage "resistance" against U.S. forces in Iraq.[5]
The Assad regime also took other steps including recruiting local staff—such as the Aleppo-based militant Islamist cleric Abu al-Qaqa—to help organize the infiltrations across Syrian territory.[6] To ensure that these dangerous Islamists did not plant domestic roots that might threaten the Assad regime, Syria's security apparatus apparently documented the presence of these killers. Then-deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz displayed some of the evidence of this official Syrian complicity during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in September 2003.
Holding up passports belonging to foreign fighters encountered by U.S. forces in Iraq, Wolfowitz said,
A foreigner who came into Iraq on March 24th through Syria—not a Syrian, but through Syria. The entry permit on his passport said he came to, quote, "volunteer for jihad." Here's another one, came into Iraq through Syria—same crossing point. The entry permit said, "to join the Arab volunteers." And here's a third one that came in on April 7th. [7]
Wolfowitz's statements were subsequently augmented by those of a dozen or so U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) flag officers, also focusing on the movement of jihadists through Syrian territory and Assad regime complicity in the endeavor. In March 2007, for example, CENTCOM revealed that training camps had been established on Syrian territory for Iraqi and foreign fighters.[8]
The most prominent of these statements, however, was issued by then-U.S. commander in Iraq Gen. David Petraeus, who during testimony to Congress on September 10, 2007, presented maps illustrating Syria's pivotal role as the source of foreign fighters entering Iraq.[9] Only a week earlier, during an interview with al-Watan al-Arabi, the general described how Syria allowed thousands of insurgents to arrive at Damascus International Airport and then cross the Iraqi border.[10] These foreign fighters, he explained, supplied the main manpower pool for the majority of suicide bombings in Iraq. That same month, the centrality of Syria to the insurgency was corroborated by the Sinjar documents, a trove of al-Qaeda materials captured by U.S. forces in Iraq.[11]
Syrian conduct during the war—in particular the state's burgeoning support for and tolerance of al-Qaeda's transit—came as a surprise to many. After all, following September 11, 2001, Damascus provided intelligence on al-Qaeda to Washington that helped save American lives. But Syria was playing a double game by supporting terrorists moving to Iraq while simultaneously supplying information on future attacks—outside of the Middle East—to Washington. Damascus hoped this would purchase immunity, but the gambit failed. After Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld accused Syria in March 2003 of providing night vision goggles to Saddam and declared that Washington would "consider such trafficking as hostile acts and [would] hold the Syrian government accountable for such shipments,"[12] Damascus cut off the intelligence sharing.
As a Syrian foreign ministry official confided to New Yorker correspondent Seymour Hersh, if Washington had agreed to discuss these issues in a back channel, the intelligence sharing might have continued. "But when you publicly try to humiliate a country," he said, "it'll become stubborn."[13] While Damascus sought to blame Washington for the breakdown of the channel, by the time the cooperation had ceased, Syria had been actively facilitating the movement of jihadists into Iraq for months. In addition to killing U.S. soldiers and innocent Iraqi civilians, these insurgents also captured and killed dozens of U.S. civilians working in Iraq.
The Case against Damascus
Two of those American contractors executed by al-Qaeda in Iraq were Olin Eugene "Jack" Armstrong and Jack Hensley. In 2004, Thailand resident Armstrong and Hensley, who was based in Marietta, Georgia, were employed as contract managers by private construction subcontractors in Iraq. The two were kidnapped from their residential housing in Iraq on September 16 of that year. On September 20 and 21 respectively, videos documenting the gruesome beheadings of Armstrong and Hensley were posted on an online web forum associated with al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi.[14] Remains of the victims were found in Baghdad soon after.
In August 2006, the families of Armstrong and Hensley brought a civil action against the government of Syria, President Bashar al-Assad, Syrian military intelligence, and its director, Assif Shawkat. The action, launched by the estates of Armstrong and Hensley—under the name of estate administrator Francis Gates—alleged that Damascus "provided material support and resources" to al-Qaeda in Iraq and sought economic damages, compensation for grief, pain, and suffering, and punitive damages arising from their deaths.[15]
A three-day evidentiary hearing was held in January 2008 to establish the facts of the case. Four American expert witnesses testified how Syria facilitated the movement of jihadists to Iraq, how the Assad regime provided support and sanctuary to the Zarqawi network, and how the regime—and specifically the president and his brother-in-law, military intelligence chief Shawkat—were aware of the activities of Zarqawi and al-Qaeda.[16] The government of Syria neither answered the suit nor appeared in court.
On September 26, 2008, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued its memorandum opinion. In her ruling, Judge Rosemary Collyer wrote,
Plaintiffs proved, by evidence satisfactory to the Court, that Syria provided substantial assistance to Zarqawi and al-Qaeda in Iraq and that this led to the deaths by beheading of Jack Armstrong and Jack Hensley. … The evidence shows that Syria supported, protected, harbored, and subsidized a terrorist group whose modus operandi was the targeting, brutalization, and murder of American and Iraqi citizens.[17]
Most importantly, in her ruling, Judge Collyer concluded that consistent with precedent, Damascus could in fact be held liable for damages pursuant to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA).[18] Under the international principle of sovereign immunity, U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over foreign states aside from certain enumerated exceptions codified by a U.S. federal statute in the act. Cases of state-sponsored terrorism are one exception. As of January 28, 2008, U.S. law "waives sovereign immunity for states that sponsor terrorism and provides a private right of action against such states."[19] Because Assad and Shawkat were not individually served with the action, the court ruled that they would not be defendants.
Based on this ruling, the court awarded damages requested by the Armstrong and Hensley estates. In terms of economic damages—lost income incurred by premature death—the compensation was relatively low, slightly over $1 million each. However, the especially cruel and prolonged technique of execution—and the resultant suffering of the victims and surviving family members—produced substantial damages awards. Most significant were the pain and suffering and punitive damages, which were especially high "in hopes that [these] substantial awards will deter further Syrian sponsorship of terrorists."[20] The court awarded to each family $50 million for pain and suffering, and $150 million for punitive damages. All told, the civil judgment against Syria totaled $413,909,587.
The Syrian Line of Defense
Although the mammoth judgment did not get much attention in the U.S. media, Damascus clearly took note of the award.[21] On October 24, 2008—less than a month after the initial ruling—it filed a notice of appeal. In its effort to overturn the ruling, the government of Syria engaged Johnson administration attorney general Ramsey Clark as its counsel.[22]
Retention of Clark by the Assad regime was not very surprising. Clark has a prodigious record of defending publicly reviled individuals and causes. His clientele list is a veritable "Who's Who" of dictators and perpetrators of genocide that includes Radovan Karadžić, Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, and Elizaphan Ntakirutimana (first member of the clergy to be convicted of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda). Perhaps of more relevance to this case, in the early 1990s, Clark defended the Palestine Liberation Organization in the suit brought by the family of the murdered American Leon Klinghoffer.
The appeal motion did not address the allegations of Syrian material support to terrorists who killed Americans. Rather, it centered largely on two jurisdictional matters. The first of Syria's arguments was that the case should be dismissed because "no service of process has been delivered by DHL [international delivery company] to Syria and no legally sufficient showing of service of process has been made." Indeed, according to the appeal brief, the signature documenting receipt by the Foreign Ministry in Damascus of the package alerting Syria of the legal action "could have been photocopied from an earlier signature … and could readily have been the product of manipulation and falsification." In any event, the brief continued, DHL is unreliable and "the Internet is rife with anguished, indignant complaints by DHL customers."[23]
Damascus conceded that "Essam" was in fact the name of the person who typically signs for packages at the Foreign Ministry, but it maintained that DHL perpetrated fraud to cover-up incompetence and that the government of Syria was never aware of the suit. While Syria's DHL conspiracy theory was entertaining, indications suggest the court will not find the explanation compelling.
More interesting was Clark's second argument as to why the case should have been dismissed or remanded to the district court. Syria argued that the terrorism exception to sovereign immunity that allowed the action to be brought was unconstitutional "because it gives the Executive and Legislative branches incentive and opportunity … to misuse the exception to deny equal sovereignty for political purposes."[24] Most recently, the brief noted, these branches terminated cases and undermined the judiciary's independence with regard to Libya.
In addition to expressing concerns about preservation of balance of powers in the United States, Syria argued that by singling out the state, the suit violated article II of the U.N. charter, which, Syria said, establishes the principle of "sovereign equality of all [U.N.] Members." "By force of the U.S. Secretary's designation [of Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism]," the brief laments, Syria is "deprived of its fundamental right of equal sovereignty."[25]
Worse, the brief continued, the enormous judgment—which Syria described as "economic warfare"—would only "further inflame anti-American passions [and] invite retaliation."
The near half a billion dollars in damages and penalties assessed against Syria for the deaths of two Americans in this case … can only fill Syrians and most of the rest of the world with wonder at the monetary demands U.S. laws place on American deaths and America's non-accountability for the lives it takes. With a gross domestic product per capita of $7,000, it would take 30,000 years for the average Syrian to earn the sum awarded for the death of one American in this case.[26]
In short, the Assad regime argued that the mammoth judgment leveled against Syria by the U.S. District Court with the expressed purpose of not letting "depraved lawlessness go unremarked and without consequence" will only result in Arabs hating Americans more.[27] Consistent with the long-standing Damascus modus operandi, Syria's lawyers essentially threaten violence against the United States unless the initial verdict is reversed.
Precedents
Notwithstanding the seeming novelty of the defense's strategy—attacking the constitutionality of the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act exception for state sponsors of terrorism—Damascus and Clark are employing this tack in other cases. During another recent civil action, two Americans taken hostage in 1988 by the Syrian-supported Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) sought damages against Damascus for its provision of material support to the terrorist organization.[28] In this case, too, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia did not accept Damascus's argument that the terrorism exception was unconstitutional.
At the time of publication, the appeal verdict was pending, but judgments in several previous cases suggest that the Court of Appeals will affirm precedent and deny Syria's argument that the FSIA exception is unconstitutional, just as it has previously found that the U.N. charter is not self-executing and has no jurisdiction in U.S. courts.
Syria is only the latest state to be held accountable in U.S. courts for its role in killing Americans. Most famously, in 1998, the family of Alisa Flatow, who was killed in a bus bombing perpetrated by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, won a $247 million award from the group's Iranian sponsors. But significant judgments have also been rendered against Tehran for kidnappings, tortures, and murders perpetrated in Lebanon by its client Hezbollah and in Israel by Hamas. In 1997 and 2010, nearly $4 billion in civil judgments were rendered against Iran in U.S. courts by the victims of the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon. Likewise, in 2007, U.S. courts awarded $6 billion to six American families and UTA airlines after Libya was found responsible for downing Flight 772 by a bomb over Niger in 1989. Ultimately, the UTA settlement was folded into the $1.5 billion fund established by Libya in 2008 to compensate Lockerbie, La Belle, and all other pending terrorism claims against Libya.[29]
While these astronomical figures would optimally constitute a deterrent for terrorist regimes, regrettably they have not proven effective. The problem, obviously, is that the judgments are exceedingly difficult to collect. After a $1.3 billion judgment was levied against Iran in 2010, U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth calculated that more than $9 billion in uncollected torts had been ordered against Tehran, a sum that made the money a "meaningless charade."[30] Federal courts have frozen some Iranian funds, including a $2 billion account at Citibank.[31] Still other victims of Iran have sought, thus far unsuccessfully, to attach ancient Iranian artifacts in Chicago museums.[32]
As with Iran, wresting assets from Syria to satisfy the awards to the Armstrong and Hensley families will also prove a challenge. Damascus has relatively few assets in the United States, and diplomatic property is inviolable. Still, attorney Steven Perles, who represented the families, remains optimistic. To date, according to his assessment, he has recovered some $70-$75 million in frozen Iranian assets for his clients.[33] And should the verdict be upheld, he says he intends to focus on Syrian assets in Europe "where a number of countries recognize compensatory [if not punitive] damages from American courts." While compensation remains a distant prospect, as long as these judgments are pending—if Iran is any example—it may become increasingly difficult for Damascus to do business in Europe.
In any event, it is increasingly clear that because the Assad regime has contributed to so many American deaths in Iraq and elsewhere in the region, this lawsuit is sure to generate dozens more. Indeed, Perles himself has pledged to "financially pound the Syrians until they do what [Libyan leader] Qaddafi did and compensate the families for the deaths of their loved ones."[34] More suits against Damascus await.
Policy Implications
The $413 million civil judgment represents the latest in a growing series of irritants in the U.S.-Syrian relationship. Since 1979, when Syria was added as an inaugural member of the State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism, U.S. relations with Damascus have never been good. Nevertheless, despite the pariah moniker, over time, relations between Washington and the terrorist state reached a condition of normalcy. This persisted until the Bush-era deterioration triggered by Syrian provision of assistance to insurgents in Iraq and the subsequent assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri in 2005, a murder widely believed to have a Syrian connection.
Despite the Obama administration's sincere efforts to reset the relationship, improve the ties via a more active program of diplomatic engagement, and split Syria from its 30-year strategic relationship with Iran, over the first two years of this presidency, the bilateral dynamic has only gotten worse. Since 2010, Washington has watched Syrian support for terrorism and meddling in Lebanon increase. Meanwhile, Assad regime coordination with Tehran appears to be on the upswing.
An early item on President Obama's agenda was the appointment of a new ambassador to Damascus, a post that had been vacant since the Hariri killing. In February 2010, Robert Ford was appointed to the post, but his confirmation was scuttled when President Assad hosted Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah for a trilateral meeting in Damascus on February 26.[35]
Ford was given a recess appointment at the end of 2010 congressional term and was dispatched to Syria in January 2011.[36] But it is unclear what he will be able to accomplish. In the face of two years of good will gestures by the Obama administration, Syria has provided increasingly lethal and destabilizing support to Hezbollah, believed to include SCUD and/or Fatah 110 missiles, and perhaps game-changing MANPAD systems, which can target Israeli F-16s over Lebanon. In addition to providing ongoing training to Hamas in Syria, recently released State Department cables suggest the presence of Hezbollah military facilities on Syrian soil.[37] At the same time, Damascus continues its policy of noncooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency investigation of the North Korean nuclear facility in al-Kibar destroyed by Israel in 2007.[38] Finally, the human rights situation in Syria remains appalling and shows no signs of improving.[39]
This $413 million judgment joins the perennial catalogue of U.S.-Syrian issues for discussion. And although it is unlikely to become a priority issue, the outstanding award does serve an important purpose on the list. For unlike the other items—which pose a concern for regional stability and a threat to regional friends—the pending damages highlight that Syria's behavior is not just a problem for other states but for Washington. While it is possible that this Syrian obligation will ultimately be met through a Libya-style arrangement where the Assad regime jettisons its support for terrorism, ends its quest for nuclear weapons, and changes its strategic orientation in exchange for a rapprochement with Washington, this kind of deal remains a distant hope at best. In the meantime, the Gates v. Syria verdict is a useful reminder that Syrian support for terrorism kills Americans.
**David Schenker, the Aufzien fellow and director of the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, previously served as the Pentagon's top policy aide on the Arab countries of the Levant.
[1] Associated Press, Oct. 3, 2008.
[2] Ibid., Dec. 5, 2010.
[3] David Schenker, testimony in Francis Gates, et al. v. Syrian Arab Republic, et al., U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Civil Action No. 06-1500 (RMC), Sept. 2008.
[4] BBC News, Apr. 1, 2003.
[5] Author interview with Abdel Halim Khaddam, Paris, Nov. 10, 2008.
[6] Sami Moubayed, "The Islamic Revival in Syria," Mideast Monitor, Sept.-Oct. 2006.
[7] Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, presentation before the Senate Committee on Armed Services, Washington, D.C., Sept. 9, 2003.
[8] ABC News, The Blotter, Mar. 22, 2007.
[9] "Charts to Accompany the Testimony of Gen. David Petraeus," Multi-National Force-Iraq, Sept. 10-11, 2010.
[10] Al-Watan al-Arabi (Riyadh), Aug. 29, 2007. Excerpts from Gen. Petraeus's interview in al-Watan al-Arabi, Tony Badran, trans., Sept. 4, 2007.
[11] For full English translations, see "Personal Information for Foreign Fighters," Harmony Project, Combating Terrorism Center, West Point, accessed Jan. 18, 2011.
[12] Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, Pentagon briefing, Washington, D.C., Mar. 28, 2003.
[13] Seymour Hersh, "The Syrian Bet," The New Yorker, July 28, 2003.
[14] Fox News, Sept. 22, 2004.
[15] Francis Gates v. Syrian Arab Republic.
[16] Ibid., testimony by David Schenker and Matthew Levitt, Washington Institute for Near East Policy; Evan Kohlmann, NEFA Foundation; Marius Deeb, professor, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
[17] Ibid.
[18] 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a), 1605A.
[19] Francis Gates v. Syrian Arab Republic. The language appears in the Defense Authorization Act for FY2008, Public Law No. 100-181, 122 Stat. 3, 338-344 (2008).
[20] Ibid.
[21] Reports of the judgment appeared in Naharnet News Desk (Beirut), Oct. 5, 2008; Tayyar al-Mustaqbal website, Oct. 5, 2008.
[22] Now Lebanon (Beirut), Dec. 21, 2008.
[23] Corrected Brief of the Syrian Arab Republic, U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Aug. 31, 2010.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Francis Gates v. Syrian Arab Republic.
[28] See Mary Nell Wyatt, et al v. Syrian Arab Republic, et al, Civil Action No. 08-0502, U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Sept. 8, 2010.
[29] CNN, Nov. 21, 2008.
[30] ABC News, The Blotter, Apr. 3, 2010.
[31] The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 12, 2009.
[32] See Daniel Pipes, "The University of Chicago vs. Victims of Terror," Lion's Den Blog, June 28, 2006.
[33] Fulton County Daily Report (Atlanta), Oct. 13, 2008.
[34] Author interview with Steven Perles, Washington, D.C., Jan. 10, 2011.
[35] Ha'aretz (Tel Aviv), Feb. 26, 2010.
[36] The Washington Post, Dec. 29, 2010.
[37] "Is Now the Time to Raise Hizballah with Syria?" USEMB Damascus Cable, Nov. 19, 2009, released by WikiLeaks, Dec. 6, 2010.
[38] Der Spiegel (Hamburg), Feb. 11, 2009.
[39] "Syria–Amnesty International Report 2010," Amnesty International, London, accessed Jan. 19, 2011.

Leading Kuwaiti newspaper reporting ghastly atrocities by the Syrian regime
26 May 2011
By W. Thomas Smith Jr.
http://www.worlddefensereview.com/dropzone/archives/186
Kuwait’s Alseyassah newspaper is reporting – in addition to the widely reported mass graves and Syrian army’s killings of unarmed civilians – grisly incidents of torture, including “chopping off the wrists of children so they’d never carry arms against the [Syrian] regime.”
According to Alseyassah, “The World Council of the Cedars Revolution’s Human Rights Dept. chief Kamal Batal visited the border town of Wadi Khaled in northern Lebanon [near the Syrian border] where more than 5,000 Syrians have taken refuge from the death squads and Baath militias… After thorough interviews with the refugees – who are still in contact with their family members displaced to other parts in Syria – Batal gathered horrific details and stories about the massacres committed by the Baath thugs in Syrian towns.”
Batal has learned that regular Syrian army and militia forces – including members of Syrian Pres. Bashar Assad’s Alawite community supported by Iranian Basij fighters and Lebanese-based Hizballah terrorists – are moving from one Sunni village to the next, storming homes and offices, “killing at will whoever defies them and literally emptying entire towns of its civilian population.”The accounts are not unlike other reports, according to the Kuwaiti paper, from international NGO’s and humanitarian organizations based in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon, all of which are confirming stories of civilians being machine-gunned by tanks and shot by snipers. Bodies are being mutilated. And Syrian soldiers who refuse to participate in the wanton killings are themselves summarily executed by Assad’s Alawite death squads. Batal also tells Alseyassah, the militias are planning to establish “a pure Alawite zone along the north coast of Syria. This large carved out zone will serve as a fallback position to Assad and his apparatus if they fail to keep control over the whole country. Sunni villages around that area are looted to the bone, even kitchen tiles and electric lines are not spared.” He adds, “Unmarked white vans are moving their belongings to newly established Alawite villages in the north coast strategically located on the outskirts of the large Sunni city of Hamah.”Read Alseyassah article in Arabic at
http://www.al-seyassah.com/AtricleView/tabid/59/smid/438/ArticleID/140797/reftab/76/Default.aspx#startframe

U.S. Embassy Delegation Inspects Syrian Refugees Situation in North
Naharnet/Share on Facebook TwitterDiggGoogle buzzSend to friendby Naharnet Newsdesk 9 hours agoA delegation from the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon traveled to northern Lebanon on Thursday to follow up on the status of Syrian civilians who have fled the violence in Syria, the embassy announced in a statement.
“The delegation also investigated press reports that Lebanese security agencies have repatriated some of these displaced people to Syria against their will,” the embassy added.
“The United States calls on the Lebanese government to work with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and other international organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross to fulfill its obligations under international law to provide protection to Syrian citizens fleeing to Lebanese territory regarding their potential refugee status,” the embassy said in its statement

US Aid to Arab Spring must go to Democracy groups not to the Islamists
Dr. Walid Phares
25 May 2011
International Analyst  Network
President Obama's grand plan to provide U.S. financial aid to emerging democracies in the Middle East, Egypt and Tunisia now, and possibly later a post-Saleh Yemen and post-Assad Syria, may be commendable but could bring catastrophic results.
If the billions in foreign debt-to-be-forgiven or granted in cash to be invested will be used by democratic governments in the region to move their societies away from fundamentalism, radicalism and inequality toward secular, liberal democracy, then the financial support is commensurate with American ideals, the will of the American people and their elected leaders.
If the aid will be used to fund programs instituted by the Islamists and their movements, old and new, then the Obama administration’s new Middle East initiative will cause greater injustice for the peoples of the region, and eventually produce greater conflicts for future American generations.
President Obama’s speech and comments by his advisers attempted to liken the alleged “historic” aid package for the countries arising out of the Middle East revolts, to the Marshall Plan which helped many European countries cope with post-World War II economic stresses.
The major difference then and now between Europe and the Middle East is that European societies had already experienced and were returning to democracy after a few years of fascism and most of the Arab world has no experience with liberal democracy and those societies that have arisen against authoritarianism are still threatened by jihadi fascism.
A “Marshall Plan” for the Arab world should come after the defeat of that region’s version of fascism, not before. The aid should reward societies for defeating the Salafist and Khomeinist ideologies, not fund their ascendance.
It was secular youth and minorities in Egypt who triggered the popular uprising. The Muslim Brotherhood, a movement dedicated to a theocratic regime and the elimination of liberal democracy, quickly — and with Washington's stealthy backing — seized the revolution’s microphone, positioned itself at the center of the uprising, and branded itself as the “soul” and “future” of the movement, even though the Muslim Brotherhood did not make up more than 15 percent of the mass of demonstrators in Tahrir Square.
Well organized and funded, the Ikhwan, will insert themselves into the electoral process as part of the youth majority. The Christian minority is disorganized and politically marginalized.
By any analysis, short of massive support for democratic forces in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood will acquire significant influence in the next parliamentary election and thus the lion’s share of posts in the ensuing Cabinet. This would mean that Mr. Obama has sent billions in economic aid to a government controlled or significantly influenced by Islamists who have not abandoned, but remain loyal to jihadi ideology.
The administration's intellectuals have been arguing that the Muslim Brotherhood are undergoing transformation and becoming reformers. If the Ikhwan were to reform ideologically, those most targeted by their Islamist agenda — secularists, women, liberals, youth and Copts — would be the first to know it. The news coming from those interests in Egypt does not endorse this claim.
In Washington, academics and advisers have convinced the Obama administration that a post-Gadhafi Libya, a post-Saleh Yemen, and eventually, a post-Assad Syria will make the Islamists the new U.S. partners in the region. Thus, Mr. Obama’s speech on future U.S. Middle East policy reflects an adaptation to these anticipated changes. The U.S. will recognize the Islamists and try to ingratiate them with a “Marshal Plan” to solidify their rule even if they only pay lip service to “representative democracy.”
The Islamists’ voices are not the only ones seeking to be heard in the region. Other voices are speaking out against the alliance between the greatest democracy in history and the Islamists.
Liberal voices of the Egyptian, Tunisian, and Syrian uprisings have been signaling an urgent SOS to the free world over the Arabic airwaves: “Do not abandon us for a pragmatic alliance with the Islamists.”
An Egyptian youth made a very concerning comment on Al-Hurra television this week, revealing that the Obama administration has cut off all funding in support of liberal and democratic NGOs in the region: “How come the Islamists will be gratified with a huge Marshall Plan while those who want to build a true democratic Middle East are ignored? Is the Obama administration replacing old authoritarians with new ones, and with U.S. taxpayer dollars?”
(Published in several outlets)
**Dr Walid Phares is the author of "The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East." He teaches Global Strategies in Washington and advises members of Congress and the European parliament.

All at sea
May 26, 2011
Now Lebanon
Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah as he spoke on Wednesday evening in support of the Syrian regime.
Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah cannot stop clutching at straws. Speaking in the Bekaa town of Nabi Sheet on Wednesday, he finally broke his silence on the pro-democracy movement in Syria, which, despite the regime’s brutal suppression, does not appear to be abating. His clear support for the Syrian regime, whose horrific human rights abuses over the past two months have been well documented – not to mention equally well disseminated – must surely mean yet another nail has been hammered into Hezbollah’s rapidly shutting coffin.
“Our party’s standpoint regarding the Arab revolutions is based on two issues,” Nasrallah said. “A country’s stance on the Arab-Israeli conflict and the degree of corruption in the country.” Clearly, personal freedoms, economic growth and genuine democratic development have no place in the Hezbollah world view, but even if we confine ourselves to the party’s limited criteria, Syria has not fired one serious shot in anger at Israeli forces since 1982, yet it has still done a magnificent job of claiming to be at the vanguard of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
On corruption, Syria is hardly going to rank highly on the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index. Only the most blinkered will deny that the Assad family is the regime and has been since 1971. It controls the security services and the army as well as running the budding private sector (this was no doubt what Bashar al-Assad meant by the economic reform he pledged when he “succeeded” his father to the presidency in 2000).
We Lebanese also know firsthand about Syrian corruption. The country was witness to a ruthless program of embezzlement, especially in the years between 1990 and 1995, but Nasrallah believes it fitting to remind everyone of Syria’s three-decade “presence” by proclaiming, “We cannot forget how much Syria embraced Lebanon.” Quite.
But Nasrallah was saving his best killer point for last when he declared that his party had decided that Syria was different from other nations feeling the heat of the Arab Spring because of the regime’s willingness to reform.
He clearly forgets that Hosni Mubarak, the ousted Egyptian president, made a similar pledge to reform and even went further, promising to step down in September. So has Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Hezbollah had no patience with Mubarak and maintained its support for the brave protestors in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. The death toll in Syria is hitting the 1,000 mark (much more than in Egypt) with the army driving tanks over protestors it captures. No much room for dialogue there, one imagines.
On Lebanon, Nasrallah was equally at sea, calling the four-month delay in the formation of the cabinet proof that the January collapse of Saad Hariri’s government was not a coup and rejecting a technocratic government because “Lebanon is a political country to the bone.” Quite where he acquired this bizarre logic is anyone’s guess. In his world, coup = smooth transition. History might beg to differ.
But surely a more plausible explanation is that the Hariri government was brought down by Hezbollah in a bid to stymie the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, but the subsequent shameful horse-trading has merely demonstrated that March 8 is a disparate bunch of political misfits with no vision for the Lebanon they claim to represent. Still, who can argue with Nasrallah?
Quite a few, it would appear, judging by the messages on Twitter from outraged Syrians, people on whom Hezbollah could once count among their most ardent supporters. The party’s hypocrisy is simply breathtaking. Nasrallah should just come clean and admit that both the Arab Spring and the delay in forming a cabinet have exposed the party for what it is: a monolithic, sectarian war machine, whose narrative of defending Arab dignity has been found wanting when perhaps it was needed most.

Egypt and the fear strategy
27/05/2011
By Amir Taheri
Asharqalawasat
Politicians opposed to reform and change have always used fear as a means of persuading the people to forswear choice in the name of stability.
Their mantra recalls that of Democritus, nicknamed by Avicenna as "The Happy Philosopher."
Democritus' slogan was: "Desire what you have!"
However, when change has already happened, its opponents abandon Democritus in favour of Alice, Lewis Carroll's little explorer of the Wonderland. There, the slogan is: "Jam tomorrow, jam yesterday; but never never today!"
Over the past few weeks, we have witnessed the use of both stratagems in Tunisia and Egypt.
At first, the dominant elite were insisting that change could only lead to disaster. When change came and the roof of heavens did not fall, the elite switched to arguments in favour of postponing elections "at least for a while."
This is now the tune being played by some politicians in Egypt, among them some actual or putative presidential candidates.
"It would be wise to postpone for a while," says Amr Moussa, a former Secretary General of the Arab League and presidential candidate.
Five years ago, Moussa had used the same argument in a conversation we had about Iraq during a Davos gathering.
"Iraqis are not ready," he told me. "It is better to wait for a while."
I think that Moussa was sincere then and is sincere now.
However, I also think he was wrong then and is wrong now.
The reasons why he is wrong are many.
To start with, it is not clear how long "a while" would be.
Former President Hosni Mubarak also thought that Egypt had to wait "a while" before holding meaningful elections.
Moussa has not spelled out why it would be wise to postpone the elections.
Others, however, are more specific: early elections could only benefit the Muslim Brotherhood because it is the best organized group at the moment.
That argument, however, is too clever by half, to say the least.
To start with, at any given time, one party could be identified as the best organized.
For example, had elections be held just six months ago, the best organized party would have been the National Democratic Party. Today, it doesn't even exist.
Next, the argument assumes that there is a one-size-fits-all degree of organization for all parties.
There isn't.
At any given time some parties are more organized than others. One cannot wait until all parties, in the case of Egypt over 60 of them, reach a standard level of organization.
In any case, who is to decide what that standard level of organization is?
The argument is based on the false assumption that if we postpone the elections, all parties, except one, would quickly organize to the unknown level we desire.
The exception would be The Muslim Brotherhood.
However, if The Brotherhood were ready to risk imprisonment and execution by getting organized under the nose of the police state, would they just lie on the beach now that they have the chance to grow their movement in an atmosphere of freedom and security?
The argument for "postponement" could be questioned on a far more important ground: the implicit claim that the judgment of the people could be trusted only if it produces a certain result. In other words, elections would be good for Egypt only if The Brotherhood is the loser.
However, The Brotherhood is part of Egyptian society and it is up to Egyptians to decide what place to assign it in a future pluralist system.
Those who fear elections always refer to Hitler's electoral victory in Germany in 1932. However, that was one of the few historic exceptions that prove the rule. More importantly, the Nazis were not the best organized party at the time. That title routinely went to the Communist Party.
In 1992 and 1993, the Algerian military-security machine opposed elections with the argument that it was imperative to prevent the Front for Islamic Salvation (FIS) from winning. That strategy pushed the country to the edge of civil war and ended up claiming over 100,000 lives.
In the end, what helped Algeria gain a measure of stability and serenity was the series of elections held from 1995 onwards. Though far from perfect, those elections, provided opportunities for defeating the radical Islamists on the political battlefield.
The sooner Egypt and Tunisia hold elections the better the chances of building a pluralist system.
What is needed right away is a snapshot of opinion in Tunisia and Egypt as they emerge from decades of despotic rule. By showing where those societies are today, the snapshot would also reveal their respective potentials for progress towards pluralism.
There is no doubt that The Brotherhood is a profoundly anti-democratic party, if only because its ideology allows no space for individual freedoms.
However, let us not forget that The Brotherhood, created and continuing to thrive under successive despotic regimes, has had no choice but to reflect the violence and intolerance of those regimes. Under a new democratic regime, The Brotherhood might find it politically profitable to move towards a more moderate posture.
There are already signs that The Brotherhood is trying to adopt the so-called "Turkish model" that has helped the Justice and Development Party (AKP) increase the Islamist share of the vote from five per cent in 1983 to 43 per cent three years ago.
The Tunisian branch of The Brotherhood, known as an-Nahda (Awakening) has publicly committed itself to emulating the AKP.
A quarter of a century ago, the Rifah (Welfare) Party was a clear and present danger to Turkish democracy. Today, the AKP, though a reactionary party, is no such danger.
For decades, we saw a similar development in Western democracies as their Communist parties moved away from a radical revolutionary posture and adopted relatively moderate positions within parliamentary systems.
More recently, we have also seen this in the case of some radical Islamist parties in Iraq.
Progressive and secular parties in Tunisia and Egypt should reject the strategy of fear and trust the judgment of the people. They could win a majority through good arguments and hard work, not by dreaming of scenarios to cheat their rivals out of an uncertain victory

Bashar's first war…will it be his last?
26/05/2011
By Adel Al Toraifi
Asharqalawsat
A "war" is usually defined as either an armed conflict between two countries, or a conflict between two sides, one that represents the authority - the central government - or at least a party that aspires to this position. There are several classic academic works on this particular topic, including the "The History of the Peloponnesian War" by Greek historian Thucydides (395 BC), "The Art of War" by the Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu, or Carl von Clausewitz's famous book "On War", amongst others. The purpose of this article is not to define war, or talk about the books that have been written on this subject. Rather, I mentioned the term "war" because it is the best description of what is happening in Syria today.
The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), established by Uppsala University in the early 1970s, stipulated specific criteria for the classification of wars and conflicts, and provided mechanisms for measuring them; the UCDP is recognized by numerous international organizations and bodies. According to the UCDP, one criterion for a "war" is the death toll: the dealt toll must exceed 1,000 people killed directly in the armed conflict.
Five months on from the beginning of the popular uprising in Syria, and the death toll has now exceeded 1,000, according to some sources. This means that what is happening in Syria is more than just protests, but rather a military operation, which has also resulted in the deaths of at least 120 police and military personnel, according to official reports. The Syrian authorities can cast doubt over the accuracy of these figures, and may decline to call what is happening there a "war", yet the fact of the matter is that the regime has deployed its army, divided districts between its troops, and imposed a curfew. There can be no doubt that this is Bashar al-Assad's first internal "war", or let us say his first internal conflict, as he has been forced to mobilize his army in order to quell areas of civil strife. However this is the second time that al-Assad has issued his military with orders to move, following the humiliating withdrawal from Lebanon in April 2005.
Currently, the regime is fighting to survive, and although five months have passed since the beginning of the popular uprising in Syria, the authorities seem to be unable to quell the insurgency, whilst at the same time they are facing tremendous international pressures and sanctions for regime change. There is almost unanimous agreement that no matter what happens, the al-Assad regime will not be as strong as it was in the past, whilst others believe that the regime's days are numbered.
Prominent Egyptian playwright Ali Salem wrote an article entitled "This is the era of collapsing dictatorships" in which he said that the Arab regime – any Arab regime – can no longer manage its affairs via a military dictatorship or by means of deceit. In this article, he referred to one of my previous articles, in which I asked what would happen if the Assad regime successfully remained in power [What if the demonstrations in Syria fail? 28/04/2011]. Mr. Salem considers what happened in the Arab world to be nothing more than an extension of the collapse of dictatorships and totalitarian regimes, which began after World War II and continued through to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Salem said that he believed that the wave of change arrived late in the Middle East to uncover the false slogans of our regimes.
Ali Salem is correct in his assessments, for a number of Arab regimes – not to mention the Baathist and the Arab Socialist regimes – based their legitimacy on a mountain of lies, and there can be no doubt that these lies have today been exposed. Our problem is not restricted to telling lies, or these lies being exposed, but in regimes resorting to lies in the first place, in order to gain some legitimacy. This is because the masses believe in principles or views which the regime, either willingly or unwillingly, cannot implement. Mr. Salem was right when saying that these regimes are no longer capable of deceit in the current era. However allow me to add that the crisis is not only in the presence of dictatorial regime, but that the existence of dictatorships in the past was a justification for such lies.
Let us take the issue of peace [with Israel] as an example: Some regimes refused peace on principle, others advocated it and signed peace agreements, whilst others entered into negotiations before they again retracted, under the pretext that Israel did not want peace. The truth, according to several international polls, is that the peace process has not been popular in Arab nations. Rather, there has been a state of vague suspicion and negativity towards the peace process and its consequences. Regimes therefore lied, either by raising slogans of resistance, or by seeking to impede the peace process, because they were not serious about this, and because Arab societies are not interested in hearing the following truths: Firstly, that peace with Israel is an international necessity that is backed by the international superpowers, and secondly, Arab public opinion towards Israel - even if hatred of Israel is justifiable amongst Arabs - is regarded [by Westerners] as an extremist stance.
There is also the issue of the role of religious movements in politics. Some republican regimes raised religious slogans, whist others either accepted or rejected the role of Islamist movements. Yet every regime was forced to tread carefully around religious "salvation" movements, because no leader wanted to directly tell the masses that religion and politics should not mix in a civil state. It is for this reason that regimes, including the Syrian Baathist regime, lied with regards to this particular issue.
The problem is more than the existence of dictatorial regime, or such regimes resorting to deceit in order to gain false legitimacy, rather the problem can be seen in everyone believing outdated ideas, such as nationalist or extreme religious views, or "the resistance", and other such ideas, as well as in people's inability to move beyond such ideas and viewpoints. The result of this is that people continued to be ruled by dictatorial regimes, which told them what they wanted to hear, but acted otherwise.
There is a wonderful book written by late Egyptian author Ahmed Baha Al Din, entitled "The Legitimacy of Power in the Arab World" (1984), in which he indicates that the Arab regimes are facing three crises: democracy, rationality and legitimacy. The problem regarding the lack of democracy may be clear, but there is still a problem with the lack of rationalism, and consequently the lack of legitimacy. Here, the problem is not that the regime lacks rationalism, but rather that society does. The Arab people do not attach importance to rational reasoning; instead all issues are based on national, religious, or even personal sentiments. Thus it is not surprising that the regime does not act on rational principles when making decisions, and even if the regime did make pragmatic decisions, these will not be accepted because they are solely based upon a rational consideration of [national] interests. It is therefore surprising that people demand a legitimate regime in a region where rationalism does not exist. When people demand democracy, they should know that this is not represented by a ballot box, but a civil and a secular culture in the first place.
The Syrian regime may succeed in remaining in power despite all the surrounding circumstances. Its Iranian allies may offer assistance and advise it on the mechanisms through which it can circumvent the international sanctions, through trading in the black market. Al-Assad might emerge from this crisis as a weak and illegitimate figure in the eyes of the majority of his people, but as long as there are still those who defend his rule, he will remain a ruler, even if this is a ruler of a small piece of land. He is convinced of his own position, and will continue to believe that others, even his own people, are acting against his interest. The real problem with al-Assad is the values and principles that he and his party believe in.
We should remember that a number of such regimes, which are regarded as lacking legitimacy by their own people, have managed to remain in power not only because of their physical capacity, or because they know how to lie and deceive, but because many people are ignorant of how to establish a form of legitimacy that is acceptable to everybody, and that looks out for the general interests. In Syria, the minorities and a section of the middle class – both of whom sided with al-Assad, not out of faith in him but rather out of fear of their own futures – have perhaps accepted their dictator remaining in power. However this gives rise to a question: what is preventing another dictator, or another totalitarian regime, ruling them however he likes? It is clear that some people would prefer to be ruled by a dictator whom they know rather than the unclear form of government – whether this is sectarian or religious – that may emerge in the future.
Ahmed Baha Al Din said "the one who forcibly seizes power can surround himself with all forms of legitimacy…but these are nothing more than curtains that hide his lack of legitimacy. The law is not just a piece of paper signed by the ruler; laws are judgments that emerge from the people's conscience and which are, in essence, an expression of them [the people]."

Hariri questions Nahas motives
May 27, 2011/By Hassan Lakkis /The Daily Star
BEIRUT: Caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri placed his trust in the judiciary Thursday, saying he had “no problem” with letting the institution address what he called an attempt by caretaker Telecoms Minister Charbel Nahhas “to take control of the third telecommunications network from [state] legitimacy with no legal justification.
”Hariri’s remarks came after a dispute that broke out when Nahhas, accompanied by a number of technicians, attempted to access a facility affiliated with the Telecommunications Ministry in Beirut to dismantle what he described as a third illegitimate GSM network operating in the building’s second floor.
A statement from Hariri’s press office said the prime minister wanted to see the judiciary “determine the reasons why the telecommunications minister overstepped Cabinet decisions, and the party to which Nahhas wants to deliver the third network, outside the control and knowledge of the Lebanese state.”
Following the incident Thursday, caretaker Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud said he would give up his ministerial responsibilities after being unable to enforce the law as rival political camps battle over the legitimacy and prerogatives of the Information Branch of the Internal Security Forces.
“Since the law became a point of view … I was convinced over the past few days that the problem is much bigger than its seems,” Baroud said after members of the Information Branch clashed with members of the Embassies Security apparatus escorting Nahhas.
Baroud told reporters at the Interior Ministry’s headquarters that his failure to exercise his authority over “some directorates falling under his prerogatives” was behind his decision to absolve himself from assuming his ministerial responsibilities.
“Since I do not want to turn into a false witness … and since I refuse to act as a caretaker minister whose duties are restricted to signing the [ministry] mail … while my authority over some directorates is merely a paralyzed legal text … I free myself of this position that holds me prisoner,” Baroud told a news conference.
Baroud’s news conference followed ISF chief Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi’s refusal to order ISF members to evacuate the building. Baroud said his decision to step aside was based on his refusal to surrender his prerogatives as minister and his refusal to take sides between Lebanon’s rival political camps.
Following the incident, Nahhas accused members of the Information Branch of unlawfully preventing the ministry’s technicians access to the second floor, which contained communications equipment donated to the ministry by the Chinese government in 2007.
Describing the act as a “coup,” Nahhas said some heavily equipped members from the Information Branch have sealed off the floor since Tuesday. “This is a coup by the Information Branch,” Nahhas told a news conference at the ministry shortly after the incident.
“Under the law, this act is considered mutiny,” Nahhas said, laying the blame on Rifi.
Nahhas said Rifi had taken a unilateral decision to deny access to ministry employees, adding that Baroud ordered the ISF members to withdraw from the building, an order with which Nahhas said Rifi refused to comply.
Later Thursday, President Michel Sleiman requested caretaker Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar to task State Prosecutor Said Mirza to investigate the ISF’s refusal to evacuate the building as instructed by Baroud.
Following Sleiman’s request, Baroud issued a statement to express his regret over statements that criticized the president, stressing that Sleiman supported his orders to the ISF to evacuate the building and was “doing the best he can.”
For his part, Rifi had justified the ISF’s decision to guard the Chinese-donated GSM equipment as based upon the request of the Ogero committee, a state-owned telecommunications company with autonomous status.TURN TO PAGE 10FROM PAGE 1Rifi also accused Nahhas of concealing telecommunications data from the ISF’s Information Branch, obstructing investigations into the case of seven kidnapped Estonian tourists who went missing in the Bekaa region in March.
Dismissing Rifi’s justifications, Nahhas said Ogero director general Abdel-Monem Youssef should submit to the authority of the telecoms minister.
Rifi said Ogero filed the request for security protection after receiving information that Nahhas would take measures to dismantle the equipment.
“Thus, he [Nahhas] provoked this incident in a bid to disrupt our work,” Rifi said. “However, neither Nahhas nor anyone else will be able to do this. We, along with the Lebanese Army are tasked with preserving the country’s security and we will not be easy on him or anyone else.”Thursday’s incident is one of several that pitted Nahhas, who represents the Free Patriotic Movement parliamentary bloc in the government, against Rifi.
The Information Branch of the ISF, which falls under the Interior Ministry’s prerogatives, has long been the focus of political debate between FPM leader Michel Aoun and the Future Movement. Aoun, who is battling with President Michel Sleiman to guarantee that the Interior Ministry falls within his share of ministers in the new government, has accused Baroud on several occasions of failing to put an end to violations by the Information Branch. Aoun has blamed Sleiman, who nominated Baroud as interior minister, for failing to provide the latter with political support to enforce his decisions

Syria uses shadowy, pro-regime gunmen to carry out brutal attacks on protesters
By Elizabeth A. Kennedy, The Associated Press
BEIRUT — The Syrian regime is unleashing shadowy, mafia-style gunmen to carry out some of the most brutal attacks on dissent as the country's 10-week uprising threatens President Bashar Assad's once-unshakable grip on power.
The gunmen belong to a pro-Assad militia called "shabiha," which runs protection rackets, smuggling rings and other criminal enterprises while providing muscle for the regime.
Recruited from the ranks of Assad's Alawite religious community, the militiamen enable the government to distance itself from direct responsibility for the drive-by shootings, bloody executions and waves of intimidation and robbery that have made Syria's revolt one of the deadliest of the Arab Spring.
More than 1,000 people have been killed in the crackdown in Syria, many of them at the hands of the shabiha, human rights activists say. As the uprising has gained momentum in recent weeks, the gunmen appear to have taken on a more central role.
Syrians who have encountered the shabiha say they flaunt weapons, clutch rolls of cash and whiz through checkpoints with guns sticking out of their car windows.
"They always, always get what they want," a 38-year-old Syrian man told The Associated Press in an interview after he fled the besieged town of Banias and crossed into Lebanon.
"If they like your car, it's theirs. If they want your apartment, it's theirs. It's shameful to say it, but if they like a girl, she is also theirs," he said.
He, like all witnesses, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals against relatives still inside Syria.
In many ways, witnesses say, the shabiha are more terrifying than the army and security forces, whose tactics include shelling residential neighbourhoods and firing on protesters. The swaggering gunmen, they say, are deployed specifically to brutalize and intimidate Assad's opponents.
The origin of the word shabiha is murky, although some have speculated it comes from "shabah," the Arabic word for ghost. But Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies in Washington, said it signifies someone with a "long reach" — or, someone who can "pillage with impunity."
Syria is not the first country to use gunmen to carry out its dirty work. During Egypt's revolution, pro-regime gangs enjoyed at least tacit approval from the state, or elements of it, disbanding as quickly as they formed.
But shabiha fighters have a tighter link to the Syrian regime than patriotism or protecting the privileges they enjoy under Assad's rule.
Most shabiha fighters belong to the minority Alawite sect, to which the Assad family and the ruling elite belong. This ensures the gunmen's loyalty to the regime, built on fears they will be persecuted if the Sunni majority gains the upper hand.
An offshoot of Shiite Islam, the Alawite sect represents about 11 per cent of the population in Syria. The sect's longtime dominance has bred seething resentments, which Assad has worked to tamp down by pushing a strictly secular identity in Syria.
But now, Assad is relying heavily on his Alawite power base to crush the uprising, particularly amid rumours that Sunni army conscripts have been refusing to fire on civilians.
He has tried to dampen enthusiasm for the uprising by blaming the unrest on "armed gangs" and a foreign plot to sow sectarian strife. The shabiha's unofficial status offers the regime a useful tool to put down the protests while maintaining "plausible deniability," Badran said.
The opposition has rejected the government's claim of armed gangs and foreign conspiracies behind the violence. "The only armed gangs in our beloved country are the gangs of security agencies and shabiha, who are loyal to the regime," read a message posted on the Syria Revolution 2011 page on Facebook.
Shabiha gunmen have been spotted in the flashpoint towns and cities where protesters have been out in force despite the near-certainty they will face gunfire.
In Talkalakh, near the Lebanese border, residents said shabiha were among the soldiers and security forces who moved in earlier this month to crush any rumblings of dissent.
Witnesses recognized the shabiha gunmen by their black clothes and red arm bands, worn so they can recognize each other in the confusion of an attack.
Four residents independently told the AP that shabiha militiamen killed a man named Adnan al-Kurdi along with his wife, five daughters and a son in their home — a harrowing story that could not be independently verified. None of those interviewed knew why the family was killed.
But, speaking from the Lebanese side of the border, they all said the killings motivated them to leave.
Talkalakh is a Sunni city, surrounded by 12 Alawite villages.
Badran said the shabiha have a decades-long history, dating back to Assad's father and predecessor, Hafez, who ruled Syria from 1971 until his death in 2000.
Under Hafez Assad, shabiha gangs were armed through the military units commanded by Hafez's brother, Rifat. Today, the shabiha know they must serve the larger interests of the regime — as paramilitary mercenaries — if they want to maintain their privileges, Badran said.
"The shabiha are Alawite thugs who work for members of the extended Assad clan, as their personal armed crew and enforcers," he told the AP.
Their criminal exploits include racketeering, theft, blackmail and armed robbery. They also operate extensive smuggling rings, ferrying weapons, drugs, electronics — even cigarettes — to neighbouring states, including Lebanon and Cyprus, Badran said. In part due to the shabiha's role in the crackdown, Syria's sectarian tensions have been laid bare for the first time in decades — a taboo subject because of the Assad family's dynasty of minority rule. Assad's father crushed a Sunni uprising in 1982, shelling the town of Hama and killing tens of thousands in a massacre that is seared into the minds of Syrians. Fear of sectarian warfare has, in the past, been a serious deterrent to dissent. Syria is home to more than 1 million refugees from neighbouring Iraq, who serve as a clear testament to the dangers of regime collapse and fracture in a religiously divided society. They also see the seemingly intractable sectarian tensions in Lebanon as a cautionary tale. But the opposition movement in Syria, still struggling to find a unified voice, has been careful to paint their movement as free of any sectarian overtones. Several opposition members have expressed frustration that the regime is trying to play off of sectarian fears — all the while using an Alawite gang to terrify protesters into submission.
Hamzeh Ghadban, an anchor at Barada TV, a London-based satellite channel that broadcasts anti-government news into Syria, said he hears reports about the shabiha almost daily.
"The shabiha are doing a really horrible job against the Syrian people," he said. "Killing, raping — everything you can imagine."
AP writers Zeina Karam and Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Don Melvin in Brussels contributed to this report.Copyright © 2011 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved

Editorial calls on Nasrallah to drop support for Syrian regime
Arabic News Digest /National
May 27, 2011
http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/editorial-calls-on-nasrallah-to-drop-support-for-syrian-regime
Nasrallah should alter his stance on Syria
Few in the Arab and Muslim world would argue about the great achievements of Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hizbollah, when his party drove the Israelis out from South Lebanon. Yet many would not agree with his selective attitude in dealing with Arab popular uprisings, commented Abdul Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of the London-based newspaper Al Quds al Arabi.
It is true that Mr Nasrallah strongly supported revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere, but he was reluctant to express similar view about Syria. Many, indeed, criticised him following his speech Wednesday. He admitted that Syrian authorities had made mistakes in Lebanon, yet he called on the Lebanese not to interfere in what is going on in their northern neighbour.
He did not, however, advise his friends and allies in Damascus to stop the bloodshed. Nor did he show sympathy for the martyrs killed by Syrian security forces. "We believe that it would be a good step if Mr Nasrallah had used his strong relations with the Syrian president to ask him to stop massacres from being committed every Friday. He should also encourage him to engage in a genuine national dialogue leading to serious reforms …
"He should know that Syria needs advice from its friends. If it continues to suppress protests, that will prompt new western military intervention in the regions, which would be a new catastrophe for all."UN statehood measure could backfire The speech by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to the US Congress had more hype than new content, observed columnist Yaser al Zaatra in a commentary for the Jordanian newspaper Addustour. Mr Netanyahu was greeted by applause from both Republican and Democratic members of Congress, yet his peace proposal was void at the core. In fact, he did not suggest anything new: the same conditions and the same objections to Palestinian rights. He said no to the right of refugees' return, no also to a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, and no yet again to withdrawal from existing settlements. And any potential Palestinian state, he said, should be demilitarised. As the Israeli attitude has not changed and is unlikely to change in the near future it is worthwhile to ask ourselves: how will the Palestinian Authority respond to Mr Netanyahu and the US attitude, supportive to Israel, after the reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas?
We can expect more efforts by Israel and the US, through the Quartet, to force Hamas to recognise its conditions. So the reconciliation has not helped Hamas.
The only right response to Mr Netanyahu now is to revolt, taking advantage of the Arab spring. This way, Palestinians can win Arab and Muslim support. The other option - seeking UN recognition of a Palestinian state may backfire by prolonging the border dispute, which Israel wants. Was Saleh influenced by Mubarak's fate? "I think the Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, heard one of the opposition on TV after he agreed to step down from office, saying 'this is not enough. He must be prosecuted wherever he goes'," wrote Abdul Rahman al Rashed in an opinion piece for the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al Awsat. The opposition spokesman, the writer continued, "also cited a statement attributed to Amnesty International that any GCC agreement with Saleh would not exempt him from responsibility." Perhaps this what dissuaded Mr Saleh from proceeding further with his decision to resign. This would lead us to ask: what in the world will convince a head of state to step down if he knows he will face a terrible fate, while he can still either refuse or confront? Is not it better for him to die standing on his feet than to die tied to a bed in a prison hospital or behind bars? There is no doubt that the news of the imprisonment of Mr Mubarak has changed the concept of peaceful revolutions. This probably has made Col Muammar Qaddafi to hold on power, while he still possesses an arsenal of weapons that he can use. Next page