Protests demanding Damascus withdraw its troops continued to gain steam in the wake of the February 28 resignation of Lebanese prime minister Omar Karami. The protests began following the February 14 bombing assassination of Rafik Hariri, a billionaire who served five times as Lebanon’s prime minister and in the recent period had been a critic of the Syrian presence.

On March 7, an estimated 100,000 people turned out in Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square, where Hariri is buried, to mark the third week since his killing. In addition to an end to the Syrian military presence, the protesters are demanding the resignation of Karami’s boss, Lebanese president Emile Lahoud, a staunch ally of the Syrian government.

Under deepening pressure from the broad anti-Syrian government protests, Hezbollah, a party based among Shiite Muslims, staged a pro-Damascus counterdemonstration March 8 in Beirut that drew hundreds of thousands of its supporters. Two huge banners at the square read, in English, “Thank you Syria” and “No to foreign interference.” Hezbollah’s leaders did not openly call for the Syrian troops to remain, instead demanding that any withdrawal be carried out according to the guidelines of the Taif Accords, signed by the Syrian and Lebanese governments in 1989.

The isolation of the Baathist regime in Damascus deepened when the Saudi monarchy warned Syrian president Bashar Assad March 3 that he would risk damaging relations between the two governments if Syrian troops were not withdrawn. Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak also backed calls for Damascus to pull its troops out of Lebanon.

The Saudi rulers insist on the full withdrawal of Syria’s 14,000 troops and intelligence forces from Lebanon, AP reported, and they wanted it to start “soon.” The Saudi government also rejected Assad’s request that the upcoming Arab League summit give its stamp of approval to a partial pullback from Lebanon.

“I have been talking to him about the withdrawal for two years because I was afraid of the external pressure,” the Egyptian president said. Mubarak was referring to the campaign against Syria being led by Washington that accelerated with the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

According to AP, the Saudi rulers also rejected the Syria government’s proposal that its withdraw from Lebanon be conditional on keeping 3,000 troops and early-warning radar systems in Lebanon as a buffer against Israel. Israeli warplanes have attacked Syria’s early-warning radar installations in the past. According to Agence France-Presse, an unnamed minister in Assad’s government said that a complete withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon would depend on what security guarantees Damascus is given.  
 
Hezbollah holds rally
Hezbollah, which maintains a militia and is backed by Syria and Iran, staged a massive rally in Beirut March 8 that reportedly drew hundreds of thousands of people. The group has won widespread popularity in Lebanon for resisting the occupation of southern Lebanon by Tel Aviv, which withdrew in 2000.

Bowing to the pressure of the broad opposition to Syrian interference, Hezbollah fell short of calling for the Syrian troops to stay.

Instead the organizers of the demonstration attacked UN Resolution 1559, passed last fall, which calls for withdrawal of foreign troops and the disbanding of domestic militias. Hezbollah maintains an armed force of some 20,000 men. “The resistance will not give up its arms…because Lebanon needs the resistance to defend it,” said Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, according to Reuters.

“The troop withdrawal must happen according to the mechanism of the Taif Accords,” Nasrallah said at the rally, the Beirut Daily Star reported. “The governments of the two countries alone have the right to set the suitable timetable for the troops’ withdrawal.” Referring to the opposition coalition, Nasrallah said, “The other party holds different views than ours, which we respect. But we must withdraw the dialogue from the street and take it where it belongs. Either we argue as a national unity government or else keep the dialogue at a roundtable for as long as it takes.”

The Taif Accords, signed by the Syrian and Lebanese governments in 1989 in Taif, Saudi Arabia, restructured the political system in Lebanon by transferring power away from the Maronite Christian minority, which had been given privileged status in Lebanon by its former French colonial masters. The accords established a cabinet divided equally between Christians and Muslims. They also reinforced Syria’s direct role in Lebanese affairs.

While Hezbollah has depended upon a close relationship with Damascus for military and financial support, the deep popular opposition to the Syrian troop presence has forced it to modify its demands. Many saw the Hezbollah-organized demonstration not so much as a protest against the troop withdrawal, but as a show of strength by Hezbollah to bargain for its place in a future Lebanese government.

“They’re like us; they want no foreign interference and want the U.S., Israel, and France out,” opposition demonstrator Samer Samer told the New York Times, referring to Hezbollah. “But we also want the Syrians out too.”

Syrian troops entered Lebanon in an effort to crush a nationalist uprising with revolutionary dynamics in 1976 (see article in this issue). They have remained in Lebanon to enforce the will of the Syrian government there, often coming into conflict with the interests of the Lebanese majority and the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in refugee camps there.

Opposition parties in the Lebanese parliament for more than a week had lobbied Hezbollah to join them. Until Assad’s announcement of the troop withdrawal, Hezbollah confined its statements to ones encouraging negotiations between the Lebanese government, opposition parties, and Damascus. Hezbollah has 12 members in the Lebanese parliament.  
 
Washington rejects proposal
“Leaders in the Middle East have important choices to make,” Bush said in a March 8 speech at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. “The world community, including Russia and Germany and France and Saudi Arabia and the United States has presented the Syrian government with one of those choices—to end its nearly 30-year occupation of Lebanon or become even more isolated from the world.”

All Syrian military forces and intelligence personnel must withdraw before the Lebanese elections, for those elections to be “free and fair,” Bush said, demanding that “international observers” monitor the vote.

Washington began ratcheting up its pressure on Damascus in the lead up to and following the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. U.S. officials accuse Assad’s regime of interfering in Iraq by permitting supporters of the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein to finance and plan attacks on U.S. and Iraqi government forces from Syrian territory. Washington has worked closely with Tel Aviv to pressure Damascus to crack down on Palestinian organizations operating there as well.

The French rulers have also sought to use the weakening of the Baathist regime in Syria to shore up the influence of French imperialism in the region. French president Jacques Chirac reiterated his call March 4 for the “full and immediate application of UN Security Council Resolution 1559.” British foreign minister Jack Straw said Damascus risked becoming a “pariah state.” During a March 3 visit to Yemen German chancellor Gerhard Schröder also called for the implementation of the UN resolution.
 
 
Related articles:
Origin of Syrian troops in Lebanon  
 
 
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