Draft Gore 2008 PAC

Helena Cobban has an excellent short summary of Syrian-Israeli peace negotiations.

Rumyal (Yossi) writes: Helena Cobban has a good post summarizing the history of Syrian-Israeli peace negotiations. She doesn’t mention the indirect negotiations mediated with Abe Suliman and Alon Liel, but otherwise it looks pretty complete.

This summary requires a bit of discussion. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s been almost two decades now since we have sat down at the table and started talking about peace. And guess what, there was almost never anything unbridgeable in the positions, certainty not after Oslo in 93, when the Syrians started viewing themselves as free to sign their own bi-lateral agreement with Israel, separate from the Palestinians.

So… why don’t we have peace with Syria? That’s because I and the rest of the citizens of Israel are a bunch of certified DUMMIES. A herd of catatonic meat-eating sheep. In almost all the negotiations with Syria, negotiations broke down due to political expediency calculations from our joker-of-a-leader de-jour. The only one who wasn’t a joker, and was dead serious—was also seriously dead, literally, because of that. I’m talking about Yitzhak Rabin of course…..

An article in the Arabic Economic News, a Syrian economic magazine, gives the following breakdown of the top 1000 industrialists: 75% are in Damascus, 10% in Aleppo, and 5% each in Latakia, Homs and Tartus.

مجلة سورية تطلق قائمة أبرز 20 صناعي في سورية بينهم ثلاث سيدات
الاخبار الاقتصادية

وتوزع شيوخ كار الصناعة 2009 على المحافظات وفقا للنسب التالية 75 % دمشق، 10 % حلب، 5 % اللاذقية، 5% طرطوس، 5% حمص.

Boston Globe: Syrian dissident receives rare acquittal
2009-06-17 by Khaled Yacoub Oweis
A Syrian court issued on Wednesday a rare acquittal in a political case, finding dissident Walid al-Bunni not guilty of “weakening the morale of the nation.” Syrian dissident receives rare acquittal

Faysal Miqdad: “Syria’s relations with the next Lebanese government will be based on two key issues, he said, ‘The first is the way this government deals with Syria and its view of Lebanese- Syrian relations. The second is the way it deals with Hezbollah’s arms, which Syria sees as a necessity to Lebanon in the face of the Israeli occupation.’”

Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren said:

“When the prime minister and the government uses the word ’state’ now, it has to attach a number of caveats to it, so it’ll be understood that what we’re talking about here is not a state in the classical sense, as is widely understood, but a state that will have some — some — substantive restrictions on its powers,”

Carter in Gaza, NYTimes

Earlier, touring the site of the American International School, a private institution in Gaza that was bombed by the Israelis during the war, Mr. Carter said, “I have to hold back tears when I see the deliberate destruction that has been wreaked against your people.” He added that he felt partly responsible because the school had been “deliberately destroyed by bombs from F-16s made in my country.”

“Tragically, the international community largely ignores the cries for help, while the citizens of Gaza are treated more like animals than human beings,” he said.

In a related development on Tuesday, two Israeli groups that advocate for Palestinians, HaMoked and Gisha, revealed a new Israeli procedure that makes it impossible for Gaza residents to move to the West Bank in all but the most exceptional of cases. For example, the groups said, under the policy, chronically ill patients, orphans and elderly invalids will not be able to receive care from their closest relatives living in the West Bank if they have any relatives in Gaza capable of caring for them.

Carter is becoming a huge problem and a growing concern for Obama,” a Washington Middle East hand said. “They are very pissed with him.” (Laura Rosen in the Cable at Foreign Policy)

Living in Exile: Young Iraqi refugees in Syria
Independent

This black ops, green beret soldier

has come to the realization that the doctrine of brute military force against foreign citizens in faraway lands is not a winning strategy in the long term. …

After watching the U.S. try and fail for years to put down insurgencies in both countries, Gen. McChrystal said he believes that to win in Afghanistan, “You’re going to have to convince people, not kill them.

“Since 9/11, I have watched as America tried to first put out this fire with a hammer, and it doesn’t work,” he said last week at his home at Fort McNair in Washington. “Decapitation strategies don’t work.”…

Arabic bloggers

are predominately young and male. The highest proportion of female bloggers is found in the Egyptian youth sub-cluster, while the Syrian and Muslim Brotherhood clusters have the highest concentration of males…..

The one political issue that clearly concerns bloggers across the Arab world is Palestine, and in particular the situation in Gaza (Israel’s December 2008/January 2009 military action occurred during the study). Other popular topics include religion (more in personal than political terms) and human rights (more common than criticism of western culture and values). Terrorism and the US are not major topics. When discussing terrorism, Arab bloggers are overwhelmingly critical of terrorists. When the US is discussed, it is nearly always critically…..

NSA gathering e-mail in America

The agency’s monitoring of domestic e-mail messages, in particular, has posed longstanding legal and logistical difficulties, the officials said.

Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation.

Iraq says Syria has been more co-operative recently but that insurgents continue to cross the border

In reading the following story about Syria and Iraq it is worth noting that Syrian officials here have been saying that Syria can help the US depart Iraq “honorably.” The implication is that the US would be embarrassed by an outbreak of violence in Iraq following US departure, something Syria can help to stop.

US troops ask Syria to thwart al-Qa’ida offensive

Iraqi authorities say militants will launch attacks in order to claim credit for American military withdrawal
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad, Wednesday, 17 June 2009

Iraq says Syria has been more co-operative recently but that insurgents continue to cross the border

The Iraqi government expects al-Qa’ida and Baathist insurgent groups to launch a wave of attacks so they can take credit for compelling the US military to leave Iraqi cities by 30 June, according to a senior Iraqi minister.

An American military team was dispatched from Baghdad to Damascus at the weekend to demand that Syria help choke off a guerrilla offensive by imposing greater control over its border with Iraq, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari revealed in an interview with The Independent.

“I think the American rapprochement with the Syrians will be judged more by their co-operation, not in Lebanon, but in Iraq,” said Mr Zebari. “This is a good moment for them to come clean.” Although Syria has been more co-operative with Iraq than in the past, guerrilla fighters are still crossing over the border, he added….

“The purpose of the US military team going to Damascus is to urge Syria to do more to prevent foreign fighters from coming here,” said Mr Zebari. “According to our intelligence analysis al-Qa’ida, the Baathists and all armed groups will escalate the violence just to prove that they have won a victory.

“They want to say it was the sons of the resistance, not Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki or the Iraqi government’s agreement with the Americans, that forced them out of the cities.”

“Ahmadinejad won. Get over it”
Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
Politico

“Without any evidence, many U.S. politicians and “Iran experts” have dismissed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reelection Friday, with 62.6 percent of the vote, as fraud.

They ignore the fact that Ahmadinejad’s 62.6 percent of the vote in this year’s election is essentially the same as the 61.69 percent he received in the final count of the 2005 presidential election, when he trounced former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The shock of the “Iran experts” over Friday’s results is entirely self-generated, based on their preferred assumptions and wishful thinking….

Only Arabs Can Restore Arab Rights (CBS) By Bouthaina Shaaban

EU ministers said in a statement they “welcomed the initial step” of Netanyahu’s speech, but added it was not enough and that Israel had to unequivocally state its support for the two-state solution. The EU “remains deeply concerned by settlement activities” and urged the Israeli government to “immediately end settlement activities, including in East Jerusalem and including natural growth,” the statement said, reiterating the position that settlements are illegal according to international law and are an obstacle to peace.

وزير المالية إن التحصيل الضريبي ارتفع في العام الماضي ليصل إلى 360 مليار ليرة سورية مقابل 6ر301 مليار ليرة سورية عام 2007 موضحا أن هذه الزيادة جاءت من خلال مكافحة التهرب الضريبي ولاسيما أن وزارة المالية لم تفرض خلال العام الماضي ضرائب أو رسوما جديدة. وبين الوزير الحسين أن مساهمة الضرائب والرسوم تشكل حوالي 60 بالمئة من إيرادات الموازنة حيث حلت بذلك مكان النفط الذي كان يشكل حوالي 70 بالمئة من هذه الإيرادات مؤكدا أن وزارة المالية ليست بصدد فرض أي ضرائب أو رسوم جديدة وإنما تركز جهودها على زيادة الإيرادات الضريبية من خلال مكافحة التهرب الضريبي.

Tabler at WINEP

….Syria’s problematic finances and its potential confrontations with the IAEA and the Hariri tribunal provide Washington with leverage that it can incorporate into its diplomacy with Syria to break the status quo. Exploiting pressure from the IAEA and the Hariri tribunal should be easy for Washington, since the pressure is coming from international institutions with established mandates. Utilizing U.S. economic leverage will be trickier, however. The United States has substantial “negative pressures” it can employ from the recently renewed Syrian Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act (SALSA) and a series of executive and Treasury Department orders targeting Syrian individuals and banks. In terms of positive inducements or “rewards” in the event of peace, however, it is doubtful the United States can entice substantial foreign investment in Syria without addressing the country’s worsening corruption problems. On a political level, should Syria conclude a peace treaty with Israel and implement reforms that would facilitate large flows of FDI, the minority networks in the security services and the bureaucracy stand to lose the most. Given Iran and Hizballah’s close relationship with Syria’s security establishment, the discontent of these networks could be exploited by Tehran to derail implementation of a future peace.

Damascus has thus far refused to address its support for terrorist organizations or domestic issues — most notably human rights — in its early dialogue with the Obama administration. No doubt terrorism will be on the agenda if the United States mediates Israeli-Syrian peace talks. But rather than dumping domestic issues — a common practice in the past — Washington should add rule of law to its list of priority issues for dialogue with Syria.

Firas Azmeh, a Syrian from Damascus and now a Silicon Valley exec, has begun a smart blog on things Syrian and current affairs with a focus on the broader Middle East.  http://currenteventually.blogspot.com/

AKIVA Eldar in Haaretz

“Egypt and Syria have upped their pressure on Hamas in recent days, in support of a reconciliation agreement with Fatah. The deal would include a multinational Arab force in the Gaza Strip that would operate in parallel to joint Fatah-Hamas security forces.

An Egyptian source told Haaretz that the American administration is aware of the plan’s details and apparently special envoy George Mitchell has asked the Damascus government to use its influence over Hamas to push the plan and the Quartet conditions. The Americans promised the Syrians that if they take on a positive role in the Palestinian channel, the U.S. would act to resume negotiations in the Syrian track.

The Hamas-Fatah reconciliation plan includes the creation of a joint dozen-member committee, to be under Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ indirect authority. The committee, only authorized to act in Gaza, would be in charge of post-Operation Cast Lead reconstruction, government reforms, and preparations for the January 2010 presidential and legislative council elections. All factions would undertake to honor the election results and allow the elected government to rule in both Gaza and the West Bank.

Military forces from Egypt, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and other Arab countries would assist local forces in maintaining order until and throughout those elections. ….

As part of the feverish activity to reach an agreement, Meshal met last week in Cairo with Egyptian intelligence head Gen. Omar Suleiman. A senior Fatah delegation also visited Cairo a few days ago. ..”

Iraq’s Unspeakable Crime: Mothers Pimping Daughters
Rania Abouzeid, Baghdad
Dennis Ross. AP

“The Obama administration’s pointman on Iran is moving from the State Department to the White House to better coordinate inter-agency policy on the Persian Gulf region, U.S. officials said Monday.

Dennis Ross, who is in charge of formulating President Barack Obama’s outreach to Iran as special adviser for the Gulf and Southwest Asia, will take a similar position at the National Security Council, the officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the switch have not yet been finalized.

The White House and State Department declined to comment on the matter but denied an Israeli newspaper report that Ross was being removed from his job. Ross worked on the Middle East peace process for the administrations of former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.”

Economy: Jihad Yazigi gives us financial headlines in his Syria Report that include:

Central Bank Allows Foreign Banks to Open Representative Offices in Syria
The Credit and Monetary Council has allowed foreign banks to open representative offices in Syria

Economy: Hong-Kong Firm to establish 7m sqm Industrial Zone in Syria
Gatoson Ltd, a Chinese Holding firm, is establishing an economic zone dedicated to Chinese investments in the region of Hama.

Finance: Insurance Premiums Rise as Government Opens New Markets
Insurance premiums reached SYP 3.1 billion in the first quarter of this year according to data from the Syrian Insurance Federation.

Finance: Listed Companies Rise to Ten as Trading Remains Limited
Al-Ahliah Vegetables Oil Company saw its shares listed in the Damascus Securities exchange on June 15 after it received a formal approval from the board of the Syrian bourse.

Tourism: European Tourists up 25 Percent at end-May
The number of tourists visiting Syria, in particular from Europe, has continued to increase in the first five months of this year, according to data from the Ministry of Tourism.

Syria: These Teenagers Mean Business
By Nitin Jugran Bahuguna, Womens Feature Service

A math whiz since childhood, it seemed a foregone conclusion that Rasha Al Dabbas, 15, would take up a career in engineering or medicine. So when she informed her parents of her dream to open branches of her own bank in different provinces of Syria after graduation, they were taken aback.

Dalal Al Imadi, 15, has come up with a novel idea of creating a website on the internet to design advertisements for companies. “This is a very rare idea, giving companies an opportunity to promote their products on my website. There is no such website in Syria, yet,” she claims proudly.

Turning away from the traditional and accepted career options of doctor, teacher or engineer, young women in Syria are setting out to storm the hitherto male bastion of the business world, be it in the banking sector, web-designing or as a private enterprise.

Under the auspices of SHABAB, a Syrian NGO, young girls are being given a unique opportunity to achieve their potential in diverse fields……

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), female participation in total labour force has increased from 12.4 per cent to 16.3 per cent between 1994 and 2006.

To encourage young women entrepreneurs, the government has started a two-fold micro credit scheme that gives women both access to finance as well as training in marketing, sales and advertising at special training centres, Assad reveals. Observes the First Lady, “We are the first country in the Middle-East to develop a micro credit legislation to support small entrepreneurs to register their companies in the formal sector so that they have more benefits like tax benefits.”

From Stratfor via FLC

Perhaps the greatest factor in Ahmadinejad’s favor is that Mousavi spoke for the better districts of Tehran — something akin to running a U.S. presidential election as a spokesman for Georgetown and the Lower East Side. Such a base will get you hammered, and Mousavi got hammered. Fraud or not, Ahmadinejad won and he won significantly. That he won is not the mystery; the mystery is why others thought he wouldn’t win.

For a time on Friday, it seemed that Mousavi might be able to call for an uprising in Tehran. But the moment passed when Ahmadinejad’s security forces on motorcycles intervened. And that leaves the West with its worst-case scenario: a democratically elected anti-liberal….

The question now is what will happen next. Internally, we can expect Ahmadinejad to consolidate his position under the cover of anti-corruption. He wants to clean up the ayatollahs, many of whom are his enemies. He will need the support of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This election has made Ahmadinejad a powerful president, perhaps the most powerful in Iran since the revolution. Ahmadinejad does not want to challenge Khamenei, and we suspect that Khamenei will not want to challenge Ahmadinejad. A forced marriage is emerging, one which may place many other religious leaders in a difficult position.

Certainly, hopes that a new political leadership would cut back on Iran’s nuclear program have been dashed. The champion of that program has won, in part because he championed the program. We still see Iran as far from developing a deliverable nuclear weapon, but certainly the Obama administration’s hopes that Ahmadinejad would either be replaced — or at least weakened and forced to be more conciliatory — have been crushed. Interestingly, Ahmadinejad sent congratulations to U.S. President Barack Obama on his inauguration. We would expect Obama to reciprocate under his opening policy,…

What we have now are two presidents in a politically secure position, something that normally forms a basis for negotiations. … For the moment, the election appears to have frozen the status quo in place…”

Der Spiegel: Landmark Court Decision: Will Germany Loosen Trade
2009-06-16 By Holger Stark

German businesses have long complained about tough restrictions on trade with Iran, claiming that bans on certain exports only benefit their foreign competitors. Now a far-reaching court decision is posing a challenge to the government’s rigid policies.

The tone of the letter to the German Foreign Ministry may have been polite, but the content was pointed. Over five pages, Martin Jäger, the chief lobbyist for carmaker Daimler, explained why Berlin’s export restrictions on trade with Iran place German industry at a serious disadvantage.

A truck carries a Ghadr-1 missile during a military parade in Tehran: Berlin is worried that German vehicles could be used to launch Iranian rockets.
Zoom
REUTERS

A truck carries a Ghadr-1 missile during a military parade in Tehran: Berlin is worried that German vehicles could be used to launch Iranian rockets.
According to Jäger, the German government’s rigid position achieves only one thing, namely that goods being exported to Iran are no longer coming from Germany, but from countries like France and Sweden. Instead of Daimler, the companies that benefit from trade with Iran include Renault, Volvo and Iveco, which are able to sell their goods largely unencumbered by restrictive regulations. Jäger asked if that was really what the German government wanted. …

Fact of the day provided by Ehsani:

US CONSUMERS ARE 4.5% OF WORLD POPULATION. THEY SPEND $10 TRILLION A YEAR….. CHINESE AND INDIAN CONSUMERS MAKE UP 40% OF THE WORL POPULATION THEY SPEND A COMBINED $2 TRILLION A YEAR IN OTHER WORDS, US CONSUMERS ARE 10% OF CHINA AND INDIA IN TERMS OF POPULATION BUT THEY SPEND 5 TIMES MORE GLOBAL RECESSION IS BASICALLY INEVITABLE IF THE US CONSUMERS ARE ON STRIKE.

Syrians were split on the Ahmedinehad victory. Damascene friends called me to express their contentment when they believed that Mousavi was slated to win, as al-Jazeera suggested early on. I was with family in Latakia over the weekend when the Ahmadinejad landslide was announced. Many people in that coastal city smiled happily when they asked me what I thought of the Iranian election results. They were particularly gratified to have an American reaction. I plan to write about my trip soon and about the building boom taking place in Syria.

Juan Cole presents Six arguments for why the Iranian Presidential Election Was Stolen.

Gary Sick: “The willingness of the regime simply to ignore reality and fabricate election results without the slightest effort to conceal the fraud represents a historic shift in Iran’s Islamic revolution. All previous leaders at least paid lip service to the voice of the Iranian people. This suggests that Iran’s leaders are aware of the fact that they have lost credibility in the eyes of many (most?) of their countrymen, so they are dispensing with even the pretense of popular legitimacy in favor of raw power….”

Tritta Parsi: “It’s one thing if Ahmadinejad had won the first round with 51 or 55 per cent. But this number … just sounds tremendously strange in a way that doesn’t add up … It is difficult to feel comfortable that this occurred without any cheating.”

(Addendum) T_Desco does not argue that Ahmeddinejad won, as I first wrote. See his correction of me in the comment section. Brian collects arguments that he won fairly, also in the comment section below.

T-Desco explains the elections - here, here and here.

The WSJ argues that Ahmadinejad’s victory is good for Syria. (Thanks T_desco and Norman)

“Not all big Arab states stand to lose with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s victory. Former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, Mr. Obama’s top Mideast envoy, is in Damascus Saturday for talks with Syrian officials.

With Mr. Ahmadinejad likely staying put in Tehran, Washington may have more interest in trying to woo President Bashar Assad away from Iran’s orbit. That could translate into leverage for Damascus amid U.S.-Syria negotiations. For instance, Syria wants the U.S. to loosen economic sanctions imposed on it for alleged links to terror financing.”

Also in the WSJ

“… Sen. Mitchell flew into Damascus after a stopover in Beirut, …. A big part of the thaw has been the dramatic rehabilitation of Syria’s Mr. Assad in the eyes of many Western and Arab officials.

The Bush administration and its Western and regional allies spent years isolating Syria. ….. But Mr. Assad also proved instrumental in a Qatar-backed peace plan last Spring that ended a long political standoff in Lebanon. Shortly after, he entered into indirect peace talks with arch-foe Israel.

Mr. Assad’s hands-off approach in recent months in Lebanon has encouraged some Western officials and analysts into thinking he’s eager to play a supporting role in cooling Mideast tensions further.

The Lebanon elections, though they went against Syria, may help pave the way for more productive talks with Washington, says Joshua Landis …

If Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad holds onto power in Friday elections, Mr. Assad could be a useful ally for Washington in pressuring Iran into meaningful talks. Sen. Mitchell’s stopover follows lower-level visits by U.S. diplomats in recent weeks. U.S. officials are pressing for help stabilizing the Iraq-Syria border and for support in Arab-Israel peace efforts….”

Mitchell Cites Syria’s Role in Mideast Peace Effort
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 13, 2009

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — George J. Mitchell, the Obama administration’s Middle East envoy, said during a visit with Syrian leaders here on Saturday that the country had a vital role to play in forging peace in the region…..

“Syria has an integral role to play in reaching comprehensive peace,” Mr. Mitchell said. Syria and the United States share an obligation “to create conditions for negotiations to begin promptly and end successfully,” he told reporters after a 90-minute meeting with President Bashar al-Assad in the capital, Damascus.

A senior Syrian official described Saturday’s talks as “very positive” and said Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Assad also discussed the security situation in neighboring Iraq. …..

“I’ve held substantive discussions with President Assad and on the full range of serious issues in our bilateral relationship,” Mr. Mitchell said. “We seek to build on this effort to establish a relationship built on mutual respect and mutual interest.”

Despite the diplomatic overtures, the Obama administration renewed Bush-era economic sanctions against Syria last month as a way to keep pressure on the country to cooperate.

The following article by Scarlett Haddad (copied below in part) explains why Hizbullah and Syria are content with the election loss in Lebanon. It reviews a number of parliamentary seats that Hizbullah and Syria withdrew candidates from, resulting in March 14th or Jumblatt victories. It also argues that Saudi Arabia and Syria are coming to terms on Lebanon, as they did in the 1990s. Saad Hariri will preside over the government, but Syria’s and HIzbullah’s political interests will be respected. This makes sense for it goes a long way to explain the outcome of the elections as well as the behavior of all sides and accords with the new dynamic of compromise that is taking hold in the region now that Bush is gone.

If Walid Jumblatt is the bellwether of Lebanese politics, his recent mia culpa is significant:

Walid Jumblatt today spoke about his mistakes in being aggressive in criticizing Bashar Assad in the past and he said that Syria is Lebanon’s natural depth and he said that 1559 was the worst thing to happen to Lebanon … and that all that must be put behind them as they all work together as one …

Et si le Hezbollah ne voulait pas vraiment gagner les élections? (Thanks Why Discuss)
Par Scarlett HADDAD | 13/06/2009 l’Orient (Read the whole article.)

….De plus, le Hezbollah avait aussi saisi avant tous ses autres partenaires au sein de l’opposition le désintérêt de la Syrie à l’égard du processus électoral libanais. Alors que certains alliés de la Syrie annonçaient sans relâche que Damas comptait entrer dans la bataille électorale par le Akkar, la Békaa-Ouest et Tripoli, rien ne s’est passé jusqu’à la fermeture des bureaux de vote. Même auparavant, certains piliers de l’opposition s’étaient plaints auprès des dirigeants syriens d’un afflux d’argent en provenance d’Arabie saoudite, contrairement à l’accord conclu entre le roi Abdallah d’Arabie, l’émir du Qatar et le président Bachar el-Assad au cours de leur rencontre au sommet du Koweït, lorsqu’ils s’étaient mis d’accord pour ne pas intervenir dans le cours des élections libanaises. Là aussi, les autorités syriennes n’avaient pas réagi, tout comme elles n’étaient pas non plus intervenues dans la composition des listes de l’opposition, laissant quasiment tomber certains de ses alliés. De l’aveu de certains chefs de l’opposition, la Syrie n’a donc rien fait pour favoriser une victoire de ses alliés. Et lorsque la question a été directement posée aux dirigeants syriens, ceux-ci ont laissé entendre que le résultat des élections ne compte pas, à partir du moment où les relations entre Damas et Washington sont en train de s’améliorer, tout comme celles de Damas et de Riyad. Les autorités syriennes seraient donc prêtes à ouvrir une nouvelle page avec Saad Hariri devenu Premier ministre, du moment que leurs relations avec les dirigeants saoudiens sont devenues plus cordiales. D’ailleurs, comme toujours, c’est Walid Joumblatt qui a donné le ton en déclarant hier au Akhbar que « Saad Hariri peut dialoguer avec la Syrie, et cela est inévitable ». Mais plus important que les considérations internes libanaises, la Syrie a des défis régionaux et internationaux à relever. Elle s’apprête à relancer le processus de négociations avec Israël et souhaite montrer de bonnes dispositions à l’égard de l’Occident. Pour elle, les élections libanaises ne constituent pas un enjeu très important, d’autant que ses alliés libanais restent forts et en mesure de s’opposer à d’éventuelles décisions qui visent à les marginaliser…

En somme, les résultats des élections législatives arrangent un peu tout le monde, l’équilibre des forces est pratiquement inchangé, ce qui rassure l’Occident, et la victoire indiscutable de Saad Hariri lui permet de jouer un rôle nouveau sur la scène interne et régionale. Seuls ceux qui espéraient un véritable changement sont déçus…

US could lift Syria sanctions: Carter

DAMASCUS (AFP) — Former US president Jimmy Carter said on Thursday he believed the new US administration of President Barack Obama could lift sanctions on Syria and upgrade ties by sending an ambassador to Damascus.

“I think the United States will respond… to any positive steps that Syria takes,” Carter said at a press conference after meeting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Foreign Minister Walid Muallem.

“There’s no doubt on my mind that the American president wants to have full and cooperative relationships with Syria, and that involves the lifting of sanctions in the future and that also involves the appointment of an American ambassador to Damascus,” he said.

State media accuses Israeli PM of rejecting all peace initiatives by conditionally accepting Palestinian state.

Netanyahu’s speech:http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1092810.html

Obama’s response:

“The president welcomes the important step forward in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in a written statement. “The president is committed to two states, a Jewish state of Israel and an independent Palestine, in the historic homeland of both peoples. He believes this solution can and must ensure both Israel’s security and the fulfillment of the Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations for a viable state, and he welcomes Prime Minister Netanyahu’s endorsement of that goal.”

Syrian state media on Monday slammed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “torpedoing peace” in a speech accepting a Palestinian state but shackled by unacceptable conditions.

“Netanyahu’s speech torpedoes all peace efforts” wrote the mass-circulation Al-Watan in its report of Sunday’s speech.

Al-Baath, the mouthpiece of Syria’s ruling party, commented: “Netanyahu has confirmed that he rejects the Arab initiative for peace along with all the initiatives and resolutions of the Security Council relative to peace” in the Middle East…..

Another Syrian newspaper, Ath-Thawra, said Israel appeared to be far from thinking about peace.

The Israeli leader’s speech “shows it is useless to await any change in the programme of Netanyahu or the Israeli government,” it said.

“The United States, which is working for peace, finds itself today with two alternatives: they can either go back and maintain the status quo marked by crisis, which we hope doesn’t happen, or assume their responsibilities in pushing Israel to talk seriously in order to bring about peace and security.”

Suleiman: Netanyahu’s Rigid Stance Calls For More Arab Unity, Safeguarding the Resistance

“The Israeli stance expressed by PM Netanyahu is characterized with rigidity, whether in dealing with the issue of peace, or on the level of settling the issue of Palestinian refugees. [This] calls on Arab leaders for more unity and to safeguard the spirit and willingness of the resistance,” Suleiman said.

Iraq and Syria

U.S. commander sees fewer foreign fighters in Iraq
Mon Jun 15, 2009

BAGHDAD, June 15 (Reuters) - Iraq has seen a significant fall in the number of foreign fighters arriving to battle U.S. and local forces, and efforts by neighbouring Syria are starting to bear fruit, U.S. General Ray Odierno said on Monday….

“We have seen a significant decrease in the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq in the last eight to 10 months,” Odierno, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, told a news conference alongside the Iraqi defence and interior ministers. “For the most part it has just been a trickle … We have seen some fighters coming through Syria, but Syria has been taking some action over the last few weeks, so hopefully that will continue,” Odierno said. Violence in Iraq has dropped sharply in the past year…..

Stable Iraq Key to U.S.-Syria Dialogue
By Peter Harling
1 June 2009, Defense News

Engagement with Syria has been featured among the U.S. administration’s prom­ised foreign policy changes, yet so far a mechanism for coopera­tion has elud­ed both sides. Renewed negotiations with Israel must wait for the political dust to settle in Jerusalem.

Damascus is unlikely to ac­cede to U.S. requests for shifting poli­cies toward Hamas or Hizbollah, and certainly will not do so before signifi­cant progress has been made on oth­er fronts. The United States has renewed sanctions.

That leaves the topic of Iraq, where both sides expected the road to be smoothest because of apparent shared interests. In­stead, U.S. officials accuse Dam­ascus of allowing — if not abet­ting — the infiltration of militants across the border to Iraq.

Securing this border was sup­posed to be the most straightfor­ward of issues, but the question is more complicated than it first appeared and will require a broader discussion about politi­cal reconciliation in Iraq and a better understanding of Damas­cus’ fluctuating relationship with Sunni armed groups.

Different Perspective

When Iraq’s former regime col­lapsed, Syria openly supported those resisting the occupation, busing militants across the bor­der and creating an image that has shaped U.S. opinion ever since. However, the intensifying conflict transformed Syria’s threat perception from one cen­tered on the U.S. agenda for the region to one more concerned about Iraq’s breakup, sectarian dynamics, the influx of refugees and the uncomfortable expansion of Iranian influence.

Syria’s policy also was driven by the government’s desire to de­flect its own jihadi problem and rid itself of home-grown activists while placating the jihadi move­ment as a whole. That policy eventually backfired: Those who didn’t die came back more expe­rienced, better connected and ful­ly indoctrinated — more of a risk than before.

As Iraqi Sunnis turned away from foreign volunteers and Dam­ascus adjusted its own posture, Syria lost both a useful outlet and the indulgence of the jihadi com­munity. A series of violent inci­dents culminating in the 2008 bomb attack in the Syrian capital underscored this shift.

Syria’s dysfunctional border controls are also an important factor. Corruption has long been rife, enabling cross-border net­works to operate with cover from high-ranking officials. Moreover, technology is deficient; Damas­cus only recently introduced a centralized computer system to monitor entries and exits.

Despite an antiquated approach to illegal crossings, notable ef­forts have been made, such as en­gaging tribes, improving routine controls, and even cracking down on corrupt magnates in order to better protect Syrian territory.

Ironically, Syrian officials now complain that the United States and Iraq aren’t doing enough on the Iraqi side to seal the border.

Two issues stand out. First, the ambiguous links that Washington accuses Damascus of enjoying with al-Qaida and other armed groups provide Syria with far bet­ter intelligence on the former and more leverage on the latter than the search-and-destroy approach typically pursued by the United States. In other words, Syria may think twice about severing ties that bolster its security and en­hance its political clout,

Second, opening and closing the tap of insurgents going into Iraq likely will remain a valuable pressure point for Damascus in future negotiations with the United States. That said, while U.S. demands on Syria are clear, Syria’s expectations are clouded in strategic ambiguity.

There are other obstacles to ef­fective security cooperation. The uneven quality of U.S. intelli­gence, particularly human intelli­gence from questionable Iraqi sources, along with a propensity to favor short-term benefits over long-term infiltration, has gener­ated skepticism in Syrian quar­ters. It will take time before enough trust exists for the Syrian regime to allow the U.S. to by­pass political interlocutors and engage the intelligence communi­ty directly.

Perhaps most important, no matter what is done in Damas­cus, U.S. efforts to eradicate the insurgency will only go so far without a political breakthrough in Iraq. Less violence and suc­cessful elections in Iraq have led only to token reconciliation and little reform. Simply arresting ever more opponents is not a so­lution while fundamental issues go unaddressed. Security steps are not what will make the biggest difference in Iraq now.

Political ones will. And that is also the arena where cooperation with Syria may prove the most fruitful.

Today, Damascus has a keen in­terest in Iraqi stability, after hav­ing paid a high price for promot­ing the reverse. Moreover, at a time when its economy is danger­ously ailing, it wants to become an outlet for Iraq’s oil products, a supplier for its emerging markets and a route for transit trade. De­veloping economic ties will en­hance Syrian buy-in.

Officials also have realized that an unstable Iraq serves Iran, not Syria, and now see value in recon­ciliation. If Washington pressures Baghdad to implement a genuine reconciliation process, Syria can help by using its access to impor­tant insurgent players. In that context, sifting unredeemable al­Qaida elements from more main­stream resistance will become easier. Only if it is built on a shared vision, with promise of sustainable economic benefits rather than immediate security gains, can the U.S.-Syrian dia­logue on Iraq succeed.

By Peter Harling , the Damascus-based director for Iraq, Syria and Lebanon with the International Crisis Group, an independ­ent, nonprofit, non­governmental organization working to prevent and resolve deadly conflict.

Why is Dennis Ross being ousted as Obama envoy to Iran? (Thanks T_desco)
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent

Dennis Ross, who most recently served as a special State Department envoy to Iran, will abruptly be relieved of his duties, sources in Washington told Haaretz. An official announcement is expected in the coming days.

The Obama administration will announce that Ross has been reassigned to another position in the White House. In his new post, the former Mideast peace envoy under President Bill Clinton will deal primarily with regional issues related to the peace process.

Washington insiders speculate that a number of reasons moved the administration to reassign Ross. One possibility is Iran’s persistent refusal to accept Ross as a U.S. emissary given the diplomat’s Jewish background as well as his purported pro-Israel leanings. Ross is known to maintain contacts with numerous senior officials in Israel’s defense establishment and the Israeli government.

Diplomatic sources in Jerusalem surmised that another possibility for Ross’ ouster is his just-released book, “Myths, Illusions, and Peace - Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East.”

Ross, who co-wrote the book with David Makovsky, a former journalist who is a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argued against a linkage between the Palestinian issue and the West’s policy against Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Ross and Mokovsky also raised the possibility of military action against Iran.

“Tougher policies - either militarily or meaningful containment - will be easier to sell internationally and domestically if we have diplomatically tried to resolve our differences with Iran in a serious and credible fashion,” they wrote.

Another possible reason for the reshuffle could be Ross’ dissatisfaction with his present standing in the State Department, particularly given the fact that Washington’s two other envoys to the region - George Mitchell, who is overseeing the Mideast peace process; and Richard Holbrooke, who is dealing with Pakistan and Afghanistan - wield great influence and are featured prominently.

A diplomatic source in Jerusalem speculated that perhaps Ross preferred to work for the National Security Agency, which answers directly to President Barack Obama, and would thus be considered a more enhanced role. (…)

Josh Hersh, in the New Yorker (Thanks FLC)

“… Perhaps the only thing Carter hadn’t found time for, of late, was an epic e-mail from Jeffrey Feltman, the State Department’s envoy to Syria—“It’s this long,” Carter said, spreading his hands wide as if he were taking measure of a prize fish. Carter, who has been outspoken in his support for more American engagement with the Syrian regime, and groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, which are on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, has a particular disdain for Feltman, who as Ambassador to Lebanon during the Bush Administration, consistently antagonized Syria. “For some ungodly reason, when Hillary decided to send some representative to Syria they picked out Feltman,” he said.

Carter praised Obama for his recent speech in Cairo but stopped short of agreeing with those who claimed it had helped March 14 win the election. Instead, he credited much of the progress to Obama’s “general attitude toward this region” and “the favorable attitudes that people now have toward the United States.

As for the future of Hezbollah, Carter said, “Oh, I don’t think Hezbollah’s going to create any problems for Obama, or for Lebanon. I think they’re satisfied to maintain the status quo.” This may be optimistic. Carter said, “We’ve met with Hariri, we’ve met with other leaders today, and I think that withdrawing weapons from Hezbollah is out of the question. I don’t think they’re going to even bring it up. And that’s the main thing that Hezbollah wants.”

Helena Cobban of Just World News writes:

With Mitchell now due to be in Syria either Friday or Saturday you can find the transcribed highlights of my June 4 interview with FM Walid Moualem here. You can find the news-analysis piece I did on this for IPS here:

Talking To: Blogger Elias Muhanna
Elias Muhanna talks about his blog, “Qifa Nabki,” and the election results

UPI: “Syria ‘ready to help,’ officials say”

I am very eager to see a real improvement in our relations with Washington,” said Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem in an interview with Foreign Affairs magazine. “But nothing has happened yet.” Moallem acknowledged the Washington sanction decision was based on Syrian support, along with Iran, for the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas. “But it’s very strange that you condemn me as a ‘terrorist’ at the same time as you call on me to help you combat terrorism in Iraq and elsewhere,” he said, referring to Washington. “It doesn’t make sense!” He noted, however, that Damascus was ready to step forward to act as a possible intermediary regarding Washington concerns over Iranian proxies and its controversial nuclear program. “We are ready to help,” he said.

Will Syria play key role in Obama’s Mideast peace efforts? US envoy Mitchell was in Egypt Thursday, and arrives in Damascus Friday. Syrians hope for a new rapprochement under an Obama administration.
By Julien Barnes-Dacey in CSM

George Mitchell is due to arrive in Syria on Friday for what promises to be a crucial visit. Syria wants a place in any emerging Obama peace plan for the region. Washington would be short sighted not to include Damascus. The Lebanon has been a leading factor in Syria’s isolation and Washington’s dominant concern in the Levant for five years very much to Syria’s detriment. Because of the election results, Lebanon can now take a back seat to other regional considerations.

The Lebanon elections produced results confirming the political status quo among Lebanon’s competing factions. The Doha, power-sharing agreement that resolved the Lebanon question last year - or something closely approximating it - is likely to be reformulated for the new government. All sides seem to be in agreement about the general outlines of a new government, eliminating the temptation on the part of all sides, including the US and Syria to renegotiate the regional balance of power. Lebanon has effectively been placed in deep freeze.

Obama has yet to speak the word Syria. He has spoken clearly and emphatically about the Palestinian track in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict, but not about the Syrian track.

For Syria, this means that the moment of truth for Washington has arrived. If Mitchell is interested in coming to an understanding with Syria, Damascus will be very responsive. Damascus does not want to be left out of a regional peace plan. It is eager to come to an understanding with the US that recognizes its long-term interests. Those interests are: 1. Getting back the Golan and signing peace with Israel. 2. Getting out from underneath sanctions imposed on it due to its struggle with Israel. 3. Working with the US and Baghdad to assure the stability, security, and political balance of Iraq. 4. Moving forward with border delineation in Lebanon; and 5. Encouraging Hamas to work with the PLO in supporting an emerging Obama plan to resolve outstanding Palestinian-Israeli differences.

Damascus fears that Washington intends to “cherry pick,” or to push Syria forward on the Iraq and Lebanon issues, which are relatively easy to resolve, without committing itself to including Syria in the Obama peace plan or to getting the Golan restored, which is much more difficult. After all, the sanctions which weigh on Syria are a result of its on-going struggle with Israel as are the claims that it supports “terror.” Syria want normal relations with the world, but it will not abandon its right to the Golan.

Syrian authorities are unlikely to give to Obama what they refused to give to Bush. Damascus will give gratification on the issues important to Washington if it gets gratification on the Golan, Sanctions, and diplomatic normalization in return. This is why Syria insists on a comprehensive approach to the region’s problems. It does not want to repeat the experience of the 1990s, when it was abandoned at the alter in 2000 after eight years of cooperation in Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq.

News Round Up follows

Aoun: We Will Contest the Elections, Murr’s Victory

MP Michel Aoun announced Wednesday he planned to contest the elections before the Constitutional Council and said he was not opposed to giving President Michel Suleiman veto power “within the constitution,” in his first public appearance following March 8’s defeat in the June 7 elections…..On his loss in the elections, Aoun said: “We had the support of 70% of Christians at a time when we had nothing in the government. Now we have 27 deputies. Explain to me how does that indicate we lost?” “They admit today that I represent half (of the Christians), then I want half of the Christians’ share in governance,” he added. He said that although the opposition did not win parliamentary majority, it “maintains popular majority.”

Feltman Insists U.S. Will Not Deal with Hizbullah (Naharnet, 10 Jun 09 - via T_desco)

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffery Feltman said Hizbullah should be disarmed and become a political party that functions in accordance with the Lebanese constitution.

Feltman, in an interview with Alhurra Arabic language satellite TV network, said that Hizbullah should abide by U.N. Security Council resolutions that call for the disarming of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias.

Feltman reiterated that the U.S. does not and will not deal with Hizbullah. He said Washington does not deal with a party that threatened its people through the use of arms in May 2008.

He told Alhurra that the U.S. looks forward to cooperate with the new Lebanese government and its people in order to strengthen its institutions, independence and sovereignty.

On U.S. aid to Lebanon, the top official reiterated that assistance depends on the moves the new government will make.

Asked about possible cabinet ministers, Feltman said that it is up to the Lebanese people to decide the formation of the cabinet. (Naharnet, 10 Jun 09)

Hezbollah, in a statement on the Web site of the group’s al-Manar television station, said it “strongly condemns the continued harsh and overt interference of the United States in the internal affairs of Lebanon, especially in terms of the statements of its officials on the results of recent parliamentary elections.” (Darhally in “Lebanon’s Winning Bloc Must Try to Placate Hezbollah”

(Naharnet, 09 Jun 09)

“A high-ranking State Department source” “said the U.S. and Lebanon’s friends were not comfortable with the experience of veto power in the government because many issues were frozen in the previous period.

A high-ranking State Department source also told pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat that it would be easier to cooperate with a Lebanese foreign minister who is not allied with Hizbullah.

About U.S. aid to Lebanon, the source said: “Washington’s assistance to Lebanon depends on what it wants and what it expects from the Lebanese government in terms of its partnership with the U.S.”

Aid also depends on the upcoming cabinet’s formation and policy statement, the official added.”
(Naharnet, 09 Jun 09)

Geagea: Veto Power with Minority Will Cripple Country (Naharnet, 09 Jun 09)

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea reiterated his opposition Tuesday to giving the minority veto power in government warning it could lead to the “complete paralysis” of the country.

“I support awarding veto power to the president of the republic because he is neutral and was elected through consensus,” Geagea said following talks with U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Michele Sison in Maarab.

“Regarding the need for a “second Doha Agreement” to form the next government, Geagea believed that the picture conveyed by these elections was clear and did not point in this direction, revealing: “I am against the hindering third. However, this issue will be discussed with all the other forces of March 14. Personally, I am in favor of giving that power to the President of the Republic”, recalling the campaigns that used to be waged by some, even until now, against the president of the republic, who is a consensus president. (Naharnet, 09 Jun 09)

Hariri in al-Hayat:

“Al-Hayat asked Al-Hariri if the March 14 forces have developed a plan for dealing with future decisions, in relation to the leadership of parliament and government, its formation, and representation in it. Al-Hariri answered: “The March 14 forces are working now to formulate the plan and we will meet to decide on it.” Asked if his candidate for heading the government has been decided, he answered: “Only one person decides who the prime minister will be and this person is Saad al-Hariri, of course, in consultation with the allies.” When asked for his opinion of some speculations that it would be difficult for President Michel Sleiman to play a bigger role after the elections following the failure of an independent bloc in the Jbeil district, he replied: “The president’s role is that of the wise man, judge, and protector of the constitution. As for the bloc, my entire bloc is for the president of the republic.”

A.L. Butters in TIME

The temptation to make too much of Hizballah’s failure to unseat Lebanon’s Western-backed government in Sunday’s election is obvious. For past three years, the Shi’ite Islamist movement has been on a roll, withstanding an Israeli invasion, then paralyzing the U.S.-backed government, eventually humiliating its militias in a street confrontation, in the process winning veto power over cabinet decisions. Many had feared that the election would see the Iran-backed movement lead an opposition coalition to victory. Instead, voters on Sunday affirmed the status quo, prompting some observers to claim that the region’s political tide had turned against Iran and its “rejectionist” allies.

One Israeli official claimed that “Hizballah was punished for the [2006] war,” while New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman announced, “President Barack Obama defeated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran” in Lebanon’s vote. Yet these are somewhat far-fetched claims for an election that was decided by Christian swing voters — and that affirmed the raw sectarianism of Lebanese politics.

Sectarianism is the organizing principle of Lebanese democracy, because the constitution allocates a fixed number of seats in parliament to each religious group — on the basis of a formula derived from the population statistics in 1936. (The slicing of the political pie no longer matches the demographic reality: Christians, for example, are allocated half of the seats in parliament, but probably comprise little more than a third of the population; Shi’ites are allocated 20% of the seats but their share of the population is closer to double that proportion.)…

Thomas L. Friedman’s one sentence summary of the region…

… Ballots were the only weapons the March 14 coalition had against an Iran-Hezbollah-Syria alliance that is widely suspected of having been involved in murdering Rafik Hariri … (Ballots Over Bullets: NYT, June 9, 2009) thanks T_desco

Milli Schmidt added in the comment section of the last post:

How wonderful that attention is drawn to Rafik Shami! He is very well known in Germany (he publishes in German), particularly for the absolutely wonderful book “A Handful of Stars” - a moving, beautifully written, funny account of his childhood in Bab Tuma, when the old city was still a collection of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Armenians and a handful of madmen and women thrown in. I’m also just now reading a collection of stories that expands on one character out of A Handful of Stars (the old coach driver Salim), called Damascus Nights - all highly recommended!

Also, very interesting and well written piece on the Iraqi refugee crisis in Syria, contains a wider analysis of the country’s economic and political situation:

A.B. Yehushua in Ha’aretz: “Why do we insist on a ‘Jewish’ state?”  (Thanks Shai)

Addendum: (My first numbers are wrong. They were hastily taken from a reader. A more correct number is a 9% win for the opposition in the popular vote, not 15% as I first reported. Here is a smart account by “B-side Beirut.” shooting blanks and the popular vote:

According to a study cited by al-Akhbar (bottom of the page), the opposition received 54.5% of the popular vote, whereas the ruling coalition received 45.5%. I find it funny that the total adds up to 100%. As far as I know, we have not succumbed to the two-party system yet and there was a visible amount of votes cast for people not running on either lists, especially in Hizballah and Amal’s backyards.

Now I am no professional, but here are the numbers I got when, instead of taking the voters as blocks of with or against, I added the total number of votes cast for the total number of candidates in three categories: opposition 50.4%, ruling coalition 46%, and other 3.6%. I only did the numbers once and I might have missed an affiliated independent or two, but not any with a considerable number of votes attached.

(Original Post) The popular vote in Lebanon favored the opposition by roughly 15%, but due to the vagaries of Lebanon’s electoral system, March 14 won. Aoun will speak today. Syria and Hizbullah have conceded gracefully.

These are the official numbers of the June 2009′ Elections
Friday Lunch Club.

The aggregate averages of voters in each district in Lebanon, shows that the ‘losers’ got 54.8% of the total votes (839,371 votes) and the ‘winners’ racked up 45.2% of the votes (692,285 votes).

Syria satisfied with Lebanon polls, praises spirit of reconciliation
9 June, 2009

Damascus- Syrian Arab news agency ( SANA ) quoted Presidential Political and Media Adviser Bouthaina Shaaban on Tuesday as saying “the Lebanese elections are an internal Lebanese matter” and said she expressed ‘Syria’s satisfaction over the safe and stable course of the elections.’

Shaaban underlined in a statement Syria’s concern for the” unity, stability and prosperity of Lebanon, and its readiness to help it in all fields to attain these goals.” SANA reported

Shaaban added according to SANA “Syria encourages the spirit of reconciliation shown by all the Lebanese parties, hoping that it will be turned into tangible steps through the national program in the coming phase.”

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah delivered a graceful concession speech on TV Monday in which he admitted defeat ‘with sportsmanship and democratic spirit’ , congratulated his opponents and confirmed the acceptance of the election results.

In the Daily Star

Nasrallah uttered one sentence that effectively left the door open for challenging the entire democratic process. The Hizbullah leader drew a distinction between what he called a “parliamentary majority” and a “popular majority,” thereby indicating that although the March 14 alliance won the elections, they failed to earn the loyalty of a majority of citizens.

Nasrallah is right on this score: The numbers show that the opposition garnered over 100,000 more votes than March 14 did on election day. But the electoral law gave greater weight to votes in some districts than it did to those in others.

This might make for a useful piece of ammunition in Hizbullah’s arsenal of arguments were it not for one thing: All of the parties, including Hizbullah, agreed to the rules of the game in advance. In fact, the law that was used to govern this year’s parliamentary elections was agreed to during negotiations that took place in Doha after the May 2008 clashes. Hizbullah, having demonstrated its superior military prowess during those street battles, could have tried to force a different electoral arrangement, but the party chose not to. There can be no turning back on that agreement now.

Lebanon feels the Obama effect
by Simon Tisdall
9 June 2009, Guardian Unlimited

The pro-west coalition’s narrow win in Beirut is the first indication that the US president’s Middle East message is being heard

Foreign policy experts and commentators have been trying to elucidate an “Obama doctrine” ever since the new US president took office. Lebanon’s surprise election result, in which a pro-western coalition narrowly triumphed, suggests these analysts have got things the wrong way round. Whatever the theory may be, the Beirut turnabout is the first, circumstantial evidence of a tangible “Obama effect” in the Middle East. It could be catching.

It would be fanciful to claim that Obama’s bridge-building speech to the Muslim world in Cairo last week, attractive though it was, crucially influenced Lebanese voters. But the calmer, unconfrontational tone adopted by Washington on Middle East issues since George Bush trudged home to Texas appears to have struck a chord in a country that was teetering on the brink of sectarian civil war one year ago.

Pre-election visits by Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, and Joe Biden, the US vice-president, underscored the importance that Obama attached to the poll. Some resented these interventions as unwarranted interference. But many Lebanese, particularly the nearly 40% of the population that is Christian, seem to have approved of Washington’s increased engagement; and to have heard its implicit message that a vote for Hezbollah and its allies would be a backwards step.

That refrain was underscored by exaggerated claims that Hezbollah and its Tehran backers, if further empowered, would turn Lebanon into a second Gaza. And if that was not enough, an eve-of-poll demarche by Boutros Sfeir, spiritual leader of the country’s Maronite Christians, may have done the trick. He warned the country was in danger. It was clear from whom he believed the danger emanated.

By giving the nod to Saad Hariri and his 14 March bloc of Sunni Muslim, Druze and Christian parties, which won 71 parliamentary seats against 57 for the opposition, Lebanon has provided Obama with his first significant regional policy success. The result is a setback for Iran, which has sought enhanced influence via Hezbollah. And it confirmed Lebanon’s 2005 rejection of Syria as the master manipulator of its affairs, confounding suggestions that Damascus was inching back.

The results are also a boost for western-leaning Arab regimes, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, that helped prevent Lebanon falling into the abyss after the assassination of Hariri’s father, the former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, and the subsequent, disastrous Hezbollah-Israel war of 2006. Saudi Arabia’s rapprochement with Syria, and a parallel warming of ties between Syria and the US, will be all the easier to pursue as a result of Sunday’s election.

Syria’s 2008 Inflation Rate: Jihad Yazigi reports a correction: Syria’s inflation rate stood at 15.15 percent, and not 5.4 percent, last year the Central Bureau of Statistics said. Read

From Thomas Dine - via the Pulse and FLC

Since the Obama Administration came into office in January, it has approached the Syrian regime with a certain coolness and caution. … Today, the U.S. sees Syria as promoter and supporter of terrorism, host of the leaderships of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad. In brief, the prospects of coming off the official terrorist list in the near future are nil. Syria has covertly tried to develop supplies for if not its own nuclear weaponry, accused again by the IAEA of such activity this weekend. Syria, according to American forces, continues to support anti-American violence in Iraq and thus a delegation of military officials to discuss joint efforts to shut off Arab and other insurgents operations inside Iraq is a necessity. Friction between Syria and Lebanon is an ongoing concern, and the election results will not ease the strain in American and Saudi views of Syrian activity and influence inside Lebanon’s body politique. Achieving respectful behavior toward Beirut is a problem on which the Americans remain greatly concerned and focused.

Syria Declares Emergency For Drought-hit Northeast: Authorities “have begun to distribute food aid in the worst drought-affected regions in the northeast” as part of a series of emergency steps. “Nearly 5,200 food rations have been distributed in Al-Hasakah and 15,000 more rations will arrive in the next few days,” said provincial governor Najib Salloum. He added that each food ration comprised 150 kilograms of flour, 25kg sugar, 25kg semolina, 10kg lentils, 2kg animal fat, 1kg tea, and 1kg oil, distributed to the worst-affected families.

David Butter, who writes for the Economist Intelligence Unit dropped me a line to say:

I am also deeply into Rafik Schami’s The Dark Side of Love, a magnificent Marquez-like novel of 20th century Syria that is a must-read for anyone interested in Syrian history and society — and deserves a much wider readership. It has just been published in English (from original German) — I fear it may never come out in Arabic — too much sex and politics.

Here is a link to a review by Robin Yassin-Kassab, who is an SC reader and writer. He states:

“Egypt, with its unending metropolis, is the home of the Arabic novel, and Egypt produced the Arabs’ master of fiction, Naguib Mahfouz. But a flame equally bright now burns from Damascus, via Germany, as shown by what may turn out to be the first Great Syrian Novel.”

All the best
David

Also read this review by The Armenian Odar Reads who read the book in two days.

Here are some other puffs from Amazon:

Rafik Schami’s dazzling novel spans a century of Syrian history in which politics and religions continue to torment an entire people. Simultaneously, his poetic stories from three generations tell of the courage of lovers who risk death sooner than deny their passions. He has also written a heartfelt tribute to his hometown Damascus and a great and moving hymn to the power of love.

“A grandiose book–one of the richest, most venturous, and most beautiful projects of capturing the world…”
–Deutschlandradio

“A cascade of stories, which again and again inflame themselves… An Arab variation of Romeo and Juliet with a happy ending… A wonderfully easy read… A modern Arab genre tableau… an immense declaration of love to Damascus with its East-West tensions…”
–Neue Züricher Zeitung

“The strangeness of the Arab world in Schami’s novel becomes immediately familiar–in 896 pages, in 300 stories, between grief and laughter, crime and poetry.”
–Süddeutsche Zeitung

“Rafik Schami’s novel is a festival for the imagination…”
–Süddeutsche Zeitung

I am setting out for Syria today and will stop in Rome for several days followed by travel in Syria to Latakia and the Beit al-Murj in the mountains to visit Manar’s family. We will be continuing our on-going language experiment. Kendall Shaaban learned to speak ARabic passibly during the summer of 2007 when he spent two months in Syria. He promptly forgot how to speak on returning to the US. He has a good passive knowlege of Arabic because Manar speaks to him in Arabic at home. His accent when trying to speak now is very American. He will spend two months in a totally ARabic speaking environment this summer, playing with cousins and among family. Will his Arabic spring right back to what it was? He should learn new grammar rules and vocabulary as he develops speaking skills. We will see and I will report to you at the end of the summer. Little Jonah Firas does not speak any language yet, eccept for “biddi” and “dada’, etc.

Alex and Ehsani will pick up some of the slack on Syria Comment while I am out of commission. I am not sure when I will be able to post again and report on my first impressions from Syria.

Joshua

News Round Up

Hezbollah Denies Involvement in Al-Hariri’s Killing
2009-05-24, By Alaa Shahine

May 24 (Bloomberg) — Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese group and political party, denied German newsmagazine Der Spiegel’s report that it was involved in the killing of Rafiq Al-Hariri, Lebanon’s former prime minister. The report is a “fabrication” intended to “influence the electoral atmosphere in Lebanon,” Hezbollah said today in a statement in Beirut. The Shiite Muslim group, which has representatives in the current Lebanese cabinet and parliament as well as an armed wing, and its allies may emerge strengthened in parliamentary elections taking place on June 7.

[SYR] Microsoft blocks Messenger access to Syria and Iran
2009-05-24

Microsoft has confirmed that it is blocking Windows Live Messenger access to users in Syria and Iran in the Middle East, as well as Sudan, Cuba and North Korea. It cited that they are “subject to United States sanctions” without providing further details. Industry analysts questioned the timing behind move however, pointing out that many of these sanctions date back eight years or more.

Turkey Raises Water Flow to Syria as Wheat Crop Fails to Meet Expectations:Turkey has agreed to increase the water flow from the Euphrates River to Syria and Iraq, according to Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmad Davutoglu.

Economy: FDI Cross the USD 1 billion Mark for the First Time
Foreign Direct Investment crossed the USD 1 billion mark last year for the first time, according to statistics from the Central Bank of Syria

The Syrian Stock Market expands trading to three days in an effort to increase liquidity. It also opens up to foreign brokers. See the following article from syria-news in Arabic

السماح لشركات الوساطة والأجانب بالتداول .. وثلاث جلسات بالاسبوع بدلا من اثنتين

الاخبار الاقتصادية

جليلاتي: من شأن هذه المحفزات أن تنشط التداول

أكّد المدير التنفيذي لسوق دمشق للأوراق المالية د.محمد جليلاتي لـ”سيريانيوز” أنّ إدارة السوق لن تقف مكتوفة الأيدي تجاه ضعف التداولات التي تشهدها السوق منذ افتتاحها مطلع آذار الماضي، وأن هناك جملة من المحفزات -قيد النقاش حالياً- من شأنها تنشيط التداول عند اعتمادها.

ولم تُسجل سوق دمشق تداولات كبيرة خلال الجلسات السابقة، وبقي يحوم ضمن نطاق سقفه 3 ملايين تقريباً، ليسجل مؤخراً قفزة وصلت إلى 12 مليون ليرة تقريباً ثم عاد ليهوي مجدداً.

وكشف جليلاتي في تصريح خاص بـ”سيريانيوز” أنً إدارة السوق رفعت عدة مقترحات إلى هيئة الأوراق والأسواق المالية لأخذ الموافقة والمباشرة بتطبيقها في أقرب وقت، “وأهم هذه المقترحات هو السماح لشركات الوساطة المالية ممّن حصل على ترخيص (الوسيط لحسابه) بالتداول على أسهم المصارف -التي تحتاج إلى إعادة نظر- كصانع سوق”.

أسباب لـ «الحذر السوري الايجابي» من مقاربة أوباما قضايا الشرق الاوسط
السبت, 23 مايو 2009
al Hayat دمشق - ابراهيم حميدي

لم يكن قرار الرئيس الاميركي باراك اوباما تجديد العقوبات الواردة في ما يسمى «قانون محاسبة سورية» مفاجئاً بحد ذاته، ذلك ان اوباما لم يكن في وارد الوقوف في وجه الكونغرس، السلطة التشريعية، في الاشهر الاولى من ادارته. كما لم يكن متوقعاً، ان تطوي بدايات الحوار السوري - الاميركي الإرث الثقيل الذي تركه الرئيس جورج بوش.

تجديد العقوبات، كان «روتينياً» ومتوقعاً في موعده المحدد قبل انتهاء مدة السنة، بل ان ادارة اوباما حرصت على ايفاد مساعد وزير الخارجية الاميركي لشؤون الشرق الاوسط بالإنابة جيفري فيلتمان ومسؤول الشرق الاوسط في مجلس الأمن القومي دانيال شابيرو الى دمشق في 27 الشهر الماضي لسببين: الاول، ابلاغ دمشق، بخطوة استباقية، بأن العقوبات ستمدد روتينياً. الثاني، عدم تزامن ثاني زيارة يقوم بها الوفد الأميركي الى دمشق منذ وصول اوباما الى الحكم، مع تمديد العقوبات.

غير ان ازدحام دمشق بمواعيد الزائرين، وكان بينهم الرؤساء: الايراني احمدي نجاد والتركي عبدالله غل والفلسطيني محمود عباس واستضافة مؤتمر وزراء خارجية منظمة المؤتمر الاسلامي، ساهم في ان تأتي زيارة فيلتمان-شابيرو قبل يومين من موعد التمديد. كما ان الرئيس اوباما، لم يغير في طبيعة العقوبات.

في مقابل هذه «الاشارات الايجابية»، تمكن ملاحظة اشارات اخرى تعزز القناعة السورية بضرورة التعاطي بـ «حذر» مع الرياح الجديدة الآتية من البيت الابيض والتعامل معها على انها «اشارات وأجواء» الى حين انتقالها الى «واقع وأفعال»:

اولاً، كان لافتاً ان الرئيس اوباما ألقى بياناً بعد توقيع القرار التنفيذي بتمديد العقوبات، متضمناً مزاعم ضد سورية بـ «دعم الارهاب والسعي الى امتلاك اسلحة دمار شامل وإضعاف جهود اميركا لتحقيق استقرار العراق»، بحسب رسالته الى الكونغرس. ما يستدعي الحذر، هو ان هذه المفردات تنتمي الى قاموس الرئيس بوش و«المحافظين الجدد». هذا القاموس الذي لم يساهم ابداً سوى بفشل السياسة الاميركية في المنطقة. الأهم، انه كان جزءاً من ادوات سياسة الضغط ومساعي العزل، التي لم تؤد ابداً الى تحقيق الاهداف التي اعلنتها واشنطن في السنوات الثماني الماضية ولم تؤد الى إضعاف الدور السوري في منطقة الشرق الاوسط ولا الى إبعاد دمشق عن حلفائها. على العكس، التعاون السوري - الايراني مع كل من «حماس» و «حزب الله» ساهم في تحقيق انتصارات سياسية على ارض الواقع في السنوات الاخيرة.

ما كان ممكناً ان ينتمي الى قاموس جديد وتوصيات بيكر-هاملتون في نهاية العام 2006، هو ان يقول الرئيس اوباما في بيانه الرئاسي، انه اتخذ قراراً تنفيذياً بتمديد العقوبات، لكنه يتطلع الى حوار بنّاء مع سورية لمعالجة قضايا القلق المتبادلة ومراجعة السياسة ازاء دمشق وصولاً الى اعادة النظر بالعقوبات في العام المقبل.

لا شك في ان مقاربة كهذه، كانت ستساهم في اعطاء دفعة اضافية للحوار الذي انطلق بين دمشق وواشنطن في الأشهر الأخيرة للحفاظ على الدينامية الايجابية المولدة من الاشارات الآتية من الطرفين. وما يساهم في الحفاظ على الدينامية وبناء الثقة والتأكد من «حسن النيات» الاميركية، إقدام ادارة اوباما فوراً على اعطاء استثناءات تنفيذية من العقوبات (التي لم تمنع تصدير اي بضائع أميركية أو اخرى فيها 10 في المئة من المنتجات الأميركية، باستثناء شهادات تصدير خاصة لمواد الغذاء وأمن الطيران المدني) والسماح لشركة «ايرباص» بتصدير طائرات الى سورية، اضافة الى قرار في هذا المعنى بالنسبة الى الحظر المفروض على «المصرف التجاري السوري» الحكومي.

ثانياً، اللافت في الاتجاه المعاكس ايضاً، ان «مسؤولاً اميركياً كبيراً» تحدث الى صحيفة «واشنطن بوست» بعد عودة فيلتمان وشابيرو الى واشنطن، عن مزاعم لدور سوري في دعم المقاتلين في العراق وتسهيل تهريب اسلاميين لهم علاقة بـ «القاعدة». مصادر دمشق نفت هذه المعلومات، وقالت: «إطلاقها في هذا الوقت بالذات مؤشر على ارتباك أميركي في التعامل مع الموضوع الأمني في العراق».

لكن، ما يستحق الملاحظة في هذه التسريبات الأميركية، انها جاءت بعد قول فيلتمان انه في امكان سورية وأميركا العمل سوية باعتبار ان «المصالح مشتركة» في العراق. واقع الحال وتجربة السنوات الثماني السابقة، ان الحملات الاعلامية العلنية، لن تساهم في مد جسور التعاون المشترك. لقد جربت ادارة بوش ذلك، وشنت حملات اعلامية على سورية وطالبتها بالتعاون في ضبط الوضع الامني في العراق والتعاون في مكافحة الارهاب. لكن ذلك لم يسفر عن شيء ويدفع الى التعاون، مع استمرار دمشق في القيام بتعزيز اجراءاتها وضبط الحدود لمصلحة العراقيين والسوريين وتوفير الاستقرار والامن في البلد الجار.

هناك مقاربة بديلة وبنّاءة: التعاون في مكافحة الارهاب، في حاجة الى مظلة سياسية وحوار ديبلوماسي على اساس المصلحة المشتركة والى شرايين اقتصادية. كما انه بحاجة الى الاقرار العلني بإيجابية خطوات دمشق لمصلحة العلاقة السورية - العراقية، خصوصاً في الفترة الاخيرة التي تمثلت بزيارة وزير الخارجية وليد المعلم ورئيس الوزراء محمد ناجي عطري الى بغداد. ويتطلب ذلك، تشجيع الجانب العراقي على تعزيز علاقاته الاقتصادية مع دمشق وتنفيذ الاتفاقات والمذكرات التي جرى التوصل اليها في مجالات النفط والغاز وتعزيز التبادل التجاري. والمثال البريطاني - السوري، يحتذى. اذ اسفر عن نتيجة بعد اكثر من سنتين من الحوار السياسي بين الحكومتين ولقاءات متعددة للمعلم مع نظيره ديفيد ميليباند، والاهم قيام الاخير بزيارة دمشق نهاية العام الماضي ودعم «الانخراط» الاوروبي مع سورية وتشجيع اطلاق عملية سلام شاملة على المسارات التفاوضية كافة، بما فيها السوري لاستعادة الجولان.

اعلن الوزير المعلم من بغداد ان بلاده مستعدة لمساعدة الاميركيين على الخروج من العراق من دون ان يوضح تفصيلات. كما اوضح مسؤولون سوريون ان مساعدة القوات الاميركية على الخروج من العراق تعني المساعدة على انهاء الاحتلال، الامر الذي يختلف عن المساعدة على دخولها العراق. هذا موقف مهم وجديد. هل تعاطت واشنطن معه بالمستوى نفسه؟

دمشق ترى ان العراق يشكل «عمقاً استراتيجياً» لها. وهي تريد دعم العملية السياسية في العراق وتشجيع جميع الاطراف على المشاركة، وإبقاء اولوية الحفاظ على وحدة العراق على اساس التشجع من نتائج انتخابات الادارة المحلية الاخيرة التي اظهرت رفضاً لعراق طائفي.

ثالثاً، وجود فجوة في بعض الاحيان بين تصريحات الرئيس اوباما والسياسة المتبعة على ارض الواقع من جانب بيروقراطيي الادارة وبعضهم عمل في الادارة السابقة. وخير مثال ما يقال عن نيته اطلاق مبادرة «سلام شامل» خلال زيارته القاهرة في 4 حزيران (يونيو) المقبل. لا شك في ان مبادرة كهذه، ترمي الى القول ان حل النزاع العربي - الاسرائيلي يشكل اولوية لادارته (بعد حل الازمة المالية، والتعاطي مع موضوع باكستان - افغانستان)، منذ بداية عملها على عكس ادارة بوش التي تأخرت في الوصول الى هذا الاستنتاج الى ان وجدت نفسها منقادة اليه.

اعلن الرئيس بوش عن «رؤية» في منتصف العام 2005 تقوم على «حل الدولتين» خلال فترة مددت تكراراً. لكن الذي حال دون تحقيق «الرؤية» افتقارها الى: الادوات التنفيذية والآليات الواقعية المعززة لـ «الرباعية الدولية» و«خريطة الطريق»، السعي الى عزل اطراف فاعلة، دولاً او احزاباً وقوى سياسية، في الشرق الاوسط ونزاعاته، وعدم القدرة او الرغبة في الضغط على الحكومة الاسرائيلية. وربما كان السبب ان الادارة السابقة تعاطت مع مبدأ «حل الدولتين» لإعطاء الانطباع بأن واشنطن تعمل على حل الصراع العربي - الاسرائيلي لتحسين صورتها ومشاكلها في العراق و «جبهات» اخرى، وليس كهدف في حد ذاته.

ولئلا يكون مصير مبادرة «الحل الشامل» مماثلاً لـ «رؤية بوش» وسط حديث البعض عن ضرورة «حل الصراع العربي - الاسرائيلي لإضعاف ايران»، لا بد من مقاربة مختلفة: اولاً، توافر الارادة والرغبة ثم البحث عن وسائل للضغط على حكومة بنيامين نتانياهو لقبول «حل الدولتين» ووقف الاستيطان، والاقلاع عن سياسة فرض الامر الواقع ثم التفاوض انطلاقاً منه، اضافة الى رفض مبدأ «السلام الاقتصادي» كحل بديل مقابل التمسك بالمبادرة العربية للسلام وليس تعديلها. ثانياً، التحدث الى الاطراف الفاعلة في تنفيذ رؤية «الحل الشامل». وكي تكون الافعال دليلاً الى الاقوال، لا بد من زيارة مبعوث عملية السلام جورج ميتشل الى دمشق باعتبارها احدى الدول المعنية مباشرة بمفاوضات السلام، بدلاً من ان يزور دولاً عربية بعيدة من ساحة النزاع وغير معنية مباشرة بالمفاوضات وتنفيذ «الحل الشامل». كما ان ذلك، يتطلب تشجيع الحوار مع «حماس» باعتبارها لاعباً اساسياً في الساحة الفلسطينية. وبدلاً من تشجيع حكومة برئاسة سلام فياض، يجب تشجيع الحوار الفلسطيني لينتج حكومة وحدة. وبات معروفاً، ان حكومة من دون قاعدة شعبية، لا تستطيع احترام تنفيذ اتفاقات السلام وأن الوحدة تساهم في تحقيق السلام. كما بات معروفاً ان «اقتلاع» حماس ليس ممكناً وأن عزلها لن يضعفها، او على الاقل لن يؤدي الى تقوية «فتح». وان الحوار مع «حماس» يقنعها اكثر باتخاذ مواقف براغماتية من «حل الدولتين» وحدود 1967.

رابعاً، يقال في بعض الدوائر ان ادارة اوباما لن ترسل ميتشل الى دمشق ولن تعيّن سفيراً في سورية قبل الانتخابات اللبنانية في بداية الشهر المقبل. وهذه الوسيلة الديبلوماسية التي كانت اتبعتها ادارة بوش والرئيس الفرنسي السابق جاك شيراك، لم تؤد الى نتيجة جوهرية، بل ساهمت في عزل قدرة باريس وواشنطن على لعب دور في ملفات اقليمية كبرى. ان مقاربة الرئيس نيكولا ساركوزي في علاقته مع دمشق، اثبتت نجاحها وصحة رهاناته بعدم الاكتفاء بالنظر الى سورية من البوابة اللبنانية، بل النظر اليها من منظار وزنها في الشرق الاوسط ومن منظار العلاقة السورية - الفرنسية.

وكي تكون مقاربة اوباما مختلفة عن سلفه ومشابهة لادارة ساركوزي، يجب البناء على نقاط المصالح المشتركة بدلاً من التركيز على نقاط الاختلاف. اذ تلتقي المصالح السورية والاميركية في العراق وفي تحقيق السلام الشامل. وبالتالي، استمرار الحوار لتوسيع التعاون في هذين الملفين وترك العلاقة بين دمشق وبيروت تأخذ مسيرتها الثنائية النابعة من مصالح البلدين وأحكام التاريخ والجغرافيا.

يضاف الى ذلك، المضي قدماً في العمل على «الاستثمار» في علاقة دمشق مع كل من «حماس» وايران وإيجاد خيارات سياسية بديلة في منطقة الشرق الاوسط عبر اضاءة شعلة السلام في آخر نفق المنطقة، بدلاً من المقاربة السابقة التي كانت تقوم، خطأ، على السعي الى الفصل بين هذه الاطراف بمحاولة عزلها جميعاً والـلاحـوار معها. والاهم، التعاطي الاميركي بجدية، عبر آليات وأدوات، مع مسألة استعادة الجولان كأولوية وطنية بالنسبة الى دمشق، ضمن رؤية شاملة.

Raqqa and Beyond: Dispatch from Damascus 23
By Ali Khan
May 22, 2009

Checkpoints are not as abundant in Syria as they are in Lebanon. While driving on the road to Al-Raqqa I saw a group of men standing around near a white and red barrier as I slowed down for the speed bump. When the car was near enough for them to see the number plates, a man dressed in a red T-shirt and green army issue camouflage trousers, tipped his gun and pointed to the side of the road. It seemed as if they were expecting us. I rolled down the window and Nono, half asleep, asked whether we had reached. He must have got a bit of a shock when he saw the soldier peering into the car. The first two minutes were spent exchanging pleasantries. They asked me how the roads were compared to India, how we liked Syria and what we were doing here. Dutifully I collected all our passports and answered that we were all students of Arabic. He took our papers and asked for our names. Nono, probably still a bit rattled from our earlier encounter with the Peugeot 504, mumbled ‘adab ‘arabi, Arabic literature. The man looked puzzled and then burst out laughing and said so your name is fe’al, verb, or mubni al majhool, the passive tense? Nono had probably not heard the question properly and so had answered the soldier’s previous question about what we studied rather than giving his name. Nevertheless, the mistake helped in making light of the situation and we all had a good laugh about it. In the meanwhile another man in a suit had ambled over and taken our passports into the office. After about fifteen minutes he returned, handed the passports back to us, asked where we were planning to spend the night and then waved us on with a friendly wave. I must say I was impressed with the smooth way in which they handled the situation because often such encounters are tense and can be worrying for people who are stopped.

We reached Al-Raqqa in the early afternoon. The round, horseshoe shaped layout of the old city, a copy of Baghdad’s circular plan, was designed by the Abbasids. However, the city was first founded by the Macedonians and served as a border town straddling the Persian and the Roman Empires. Most of monuments were hidden by modern concrete constructions as we drove in. Harun al-Rashid used to summer in Raqqa away from the heat of the Baghdad summer and also occasionally used it has a base from which he could attack Byzantine areas. We drove past the main street, which looks like it could be from any of the other cities in Syria. We did not stop for long and we were soon on our way to Rasafa.

We didn’t encounter much traffic, apart from the occasional farmer on a motorcycle stacked with fresh vegetables, headed for the souks. We passed a small cluster or dark Bedouin tents on the way. The colourful robes of the Bedouin women were hanging out to dry on the ropes holding the tents in place and a scrawny looking donkey raised its head ever so slightly to look at the intruders but then immediately went back to searching for something to eat amongst the desert shrubs. Outside the main tent a group of children were wrestling each other in the sand next to a couple of metal drums, presumably for storing water. In the distance behind the tents I could see huge steel silos that dominated the otherwise bleak landscape. It was a poignant juxtaposition of the traditional life of the Bedouin slowly being overtaken by the ‘progresses’ of modernity. Wilfred Thesiger, before crossing the Rub al-Khali in the Arabian Peninsula with a group of Bedouin, lamented the fact that the way of life of the Bedouin was doomed to extinction and that the nobility of spirit, and the richness of language would die with it. It had long been a tradition for poets to go out to the desert to live with the Bedouin in order to learn from their language and their fascinating verbal imagery. We would do well to sometimes remember Thesiger’s saying that “the harder the life, the finer the person.” We must also remember that this decline is in part of our own making. The Bedouin in Jordan no longer get good prices for their cattle because of the competition from lamb from New Zealand. The drive between the main road and Rasafa is bleak and we were flanked on both sides by an arid and seemingly endless desert.

Rasafa unexpectedly appears in the middle of the desert and if it wasn’t for the blue signs announcing that we were about to reach, arriving there would have been even more striking. Just before we reached, a lone soldier, who looked terribly bothered by the heat and the solitude of his check post, lazily waved is through. The huge walls suddenly dominate the skyline and the walls glittered in the sunlight because of the white crystalline stones embedded in the walls. Rasafa was a Roman outpost even though it was not on any of the great trade routes. It became famous because of the shrine of St. Sergius. He was a Christian officer in Emperor Diocletian’s army and was tortured to death by his fellow officers. Soon his shrine attracted pilgrims from all over Greater Syria. The Byzantines expanded the city so that it initially withstood the attacks of the Persians. Khusrau II managed to conquer it and later the Umayyads restored parts of the city but after the collapse of their empire it gradually became neglected. We drove around the city to the back. Unfortunately, the first thing we saw was a fleet of huge luxury buses. Thankfully the tourists, this time Spanish, were busy sitting in the cafeteria eating lunch.

We took advantage of the empty site and went to climb the ramparts in order to get a good view of the ruins. The earth coloured buildings undulated in and out of sight. In the middle the remains of a basilica stood better preserved than the other structures. The rectangular outer wall was punctuated by a series of arches through which I could see patches of green fields on the western side. We climbed down and Fred went off to try and find the underwater cisterns. Eventually we located them and peered down past the iron railings into these vast underground chambers. Fred had been told that it was possible to go down into them but we could not locate the stairs. After a while Nono pointed out some stairs that disappeared into the ground beneath us. It had started to drizzle and so we decided to walk down. After a few minutes of feeling our way down the stairs we crouched to go through a small hole that opened out into one of the cisterns. I joked with Fred that maybe the archaeologists had got it wrong and that this was a secret underground cathedral where the Christians held secret services in order to avoid being persecuted. The scale of the water cisterns is beyond description. While we were walking around, a group of Spaniards were straining to get a look from the iron railings. We all hid behind pillars and I took a photo with a flash, hoping to scare the old ladies. It didn’t work and soon a group of men with their fishing vests and floppy hats climbed down into the cistern. It was sobering to think about how people managed to build these gigantic underground structures to harvest water. Today, despite all our technology and progress, we waste so much and pay little attention to the world’s depleting fresh water supplies.

We quickly wandered through the rest of the site, carefully stepping around chunks of fallen pillars with the decorative motifs still visible. The remains of an Umayyad mosque have been recently discovered in the precinct but I only found this out later while reading about Rasafa. With the passing of time, all ruins look the same anyway. As we wandered out, a Syrian lady, who was leading the group of Spaniards, walked up to me and asked me if I was Nono and Fred’s driver. Before I could reply she thrust a book into my hand and said that she had found it near the entrance of the cisterns. We still had a couple of hours of sunlight and so we decided to head to Lake Assad. The drizzle abruptly stopped and soon the sun was out again. Just before entering the compound to Lake Assad we were again stopped at a checkpoint, though this time because we had to register to in order to enter the protected security area around the dam. When the lake was being created a huge number of archeological sites were flooded. Amongst some of the more important sites that have been lost was Mureybit, which, historians and archeologists have said, might have dated back to 11000 BC. It was possibly one the first sedentary settlements of its kind in the area. We drove past a thicket of electric pylons and wires and crossed over the dam.

As we reached the other side I managed to get a peek at the immense body of water that was being held back. The land on both sides was green and obviously exceptionally fertile. Instead of seeing sandy earth with patches of green, one could only see patches of red earth in between huge green fields. We drove towards the ruins of the Qil’a al-Jabar that survived because it is on a cliff. The main door had been shut and a group of middle-aged men were pacing up and down near the massive entrance. Fred decided to try and persuade the director to open the castle for a short while. I wandered off into the trees to get a better look at the lake. A young couple was sitting on the edge of the stonewall holding hands but as soon as they heard me coming, they shuffled away from each other. Surprisingly, the director was happy to help and opened the doors with a giant key. The main entrance is through a series of steps built in a tunnel. It is hard to imagine how they managed to bore through the dense stone. The castle dates back to the time of Nur-ed-dine but had previously been in possession of the Crusaders of Edessa.

All of us went off in different directions. I circled around the ramparts and climbed onto the highest part of the ruins. On the opposite bank, I could see the plains of Siffin, where Imam Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet fought against Mu’awiya, the founder of the Umayyad Dynasty, in 657, in a battle that played a crucial role in defining the future of the still nascent Muslim community. The waves gently shattered against the bottom of the cliff and thousands of little suns were reflected in the rippling waters. However, there was something extremely unsettling about the place. I shuddered just thinking about what might happen to the whole area if the dam developed a fault or was sabotaged and ruptured.

I climbed back down to find Fred and Nono surrounded by a group of Syrians and Turks. They were business partners and lived close to each other near the Syrian-Turkish border. Judging from their accents, it seemed to me that they were Kurds. Two of them argued about whether I was from the Gulf or North Africa and when I eventually told them I am Indian, a third chimed in and said that it was clear I was from India because my nose is not Arab. I am not sure what an Arab nose looks like. In university in Damascus I have seen very conceivable shape of nose possible. They continued to argue and only stopped when I suggested we take a group picture. The doors clanked shut as everyone exited. We went to the little open-air café to drink some Arabic coffee and eat some food. The weather was perfect and there was no wind. We sat in the open with a roof of vines cascading around us. A cat sat on the table next to ours, eating someone’s leftovers. After sitting in silence for a while, I experienced the same melancholy that I had felt in Deir Ez-Zure, though this time I was certain that it was because of the sound of the water.

The light was fading and as we drove back towards the main road, Nono observed that parts of the area looked like California. Automatic sprinklers were rolling across huge wheat fields and clusters of trees filtered the orange light. We stopped again at the checkpoint so that they could make sure everyone who entered was leaving. The soldier was apologetic for making us wait and soon enough waved us through. The traffic on the main road had increased as we turned north towards Aleppo.

Until the next Dispatch Ma’as Salaama!

The Der Spiegel article is suspicious for many reasons. Here are a few put forward by SC readers:

1. The timing suggests that the story was released to provide maximum damage to Hizbullah’s and Aoun’s likely success in the elections.

2. The most recent UN investigative teams (in contradistinction to Mehlis) have been excellent at not politicizing or leaking evidence from the case.

3. Nasrallah has no record of assassinating Lebanese political figures that stand in his way.

4. The accusations against Syria in 2005 and 2006 turned out to be based on false witness, why should we trust this bombshell?

5. There are accusations that Der Spiegel and Israeli intelligence are in close cahoots. 

6. Ehsani notes that the article claims that investigation reached surprising “new” conclusions a month ago. 

Are we to believe that the court was set up on march 1, 2009 without a formal and concrete case at the time, and that somehow this case took a new turn very recently?

7. Alex writes: This article is the ultimate manifestation of the on-going politicization of the Hariri tribunal.

All the evidence in this article is twisted, starting with the 8 cell phones, which for your information, belonged to a Sunni group in Trablus, not to any one in Hizbullah. And this is a confirmed fact even during the Mehlis phase of the investigation

8. T.desco alerts us to the similarities between the Spiegel article and the Le Figaro article of 2006.

I think you should also post the Figaro article, because it’s more fun:

Der Spiegel 2009:

“The pace of the investigation stalled under Mehlis’s Belgian successor, Serge Brammertz. (…)

But now there are signs that the investigation has yielded new and explosive results. (…)

Tribunal chief Bellemare and his fellow judges apparently want to hold back this information, of which they been aware for about a month.” (!) (my emphasis)

Le Figaro 2006:

“LES ENQUÊTEURS libanais, en charge de l’assassinat de Rafic Hariri, travaillent depuis quelques mois sur une nouvelle piste, qui conduit au Hezbollah. «L’enquête internationale dirigée par le juge Serge Brammertz s’oriente également dans cette direction», confirme, au Figaro, un proche de Saad Hariri (…).” (my emphasis)

Der Spiegel 2009:

“Damascus’s view of the situation could be more mixed. Although the Syrian government is not being declared free of the suspicion of involvement, at least President Assad is no longer in the line of fire.”

Le Figaro 2006:

“Elle ne modifie pas l’orientation générale de l’enquête : la Syrie reste pointée du doigt. «Les Syriens ont cloisonné l’opération, en confiant à leurs différents alliés au Liban le soin de préparer cet attentat, sans que l’un sache ce que l’autre avait à faire», estime un spécialiste des questions de sécurité.”

Ehsani Writes:

The story goes out of its way to highlight the fact that “although the Syrian government is not being declared free of the suspicion of involvement, at least President Assad is no longer in the line of fire. There is hardly anything to indicate he was aware of the murder plot”.

Presumably, the release of the four Lebanese Security Chiefs has put to rest the theory that Damascus was to blame.

With Syria out of the picture, the story goes on to shift the blame to Iran and HA. Here are the key parts:

“SPIEGEL has learned from sources close to the tribunal and verified by examining internal documents, that the Hariri case is about to take a sensational turn.”

Is it the source that examined the internal documents or is it spiegel that examined these documents. If it is the latter, was the source able to take these documents outside the tight security building? Surely, the investigation should be able to track this so-called source?

The article claims too much knowledge: “He is believed to be Abd al-Majid Ghamlush, from the town of Rumin, a Hezbollah member who had completed training course in Iran. Ghamlush was also identified as the buyer of the mobile phones. He has since disappeared, and perhaps is no longer alive.”

How did they know that he completed training in Iran? Did they see him board a flight to Tehran and followed his bus ride to a training camp?

“Salim has largely assumed the duties of his notorious predecessor, with Mughniyah’s brother-in-law, Mustafa Badr al-Din, serving as his deputy. The two men report only to their superior, and to General Kassim Sulaimani, their contact in Tehran.”

How did the investigators identify General Kassim Sulaimani in Iran? Did he have a caller ID? Was this general dialing in from his Tehran office into salim’s cell phone? Also, how does the reporter know the secret chain of command at the top ranks of Hizbullah?

The terror attack in Beirut on Valentine's Day, 2005: Intensive investigations in Lebanon are all pointing to Hezbollah and not Syria.

BREAKTHROUGH IN TRIBUNAL INVESTIGATION
New Evidence Points to Hezbollah in Hariri Murder
SPIEGEL, By Erich Follath, 05/23/2009

The United Nations special tribunal investigating the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri has reached surprising new conclusions — and it is keeping them secret. According to information obtained by SPIEGEL, investigators now believe Hezbollah was behind the Hariri murder.

It was an act of virtually Shakespearean dimensions, a family tragedy involving murder and suicide, contrived and real tears — and a good deal of big-time politics.

The terror attack in Beirut on Valentine’s Day, 2005: Intensive investigations in Lebanon are all pointing to Hezbollah and not Syria.
On February 14, 2005, Valentine’s Day, at 12:56 p.m., a massive bomb exploded in front of the Hotel St. Georges in Beirut, just as the motorcade of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri passed by. The explosives ripped a crater two meters deep into the street, and the blast destroyed the local branch of Britain’s HSBC Bank. Body parts were hurled as far as the roofs of surrounding buildings. Twenty-three people died in the explosion and ensuing inferno, including Hariri, his bodyguards and passersby.

The shock waves quickly spread across the Middle East. Why did Hariri have to die? Who carried out the attack and who was behind it? What did they hope to achieve politically?

The Hariri assassination has been the source of wild speculation ever since. Was it the work of terrorist organization al-Qaida, angered by Hariri’s close ties to the Saudi royal family? Or of the Israelis, as part of their constant efforts to weaken neighboring Lebanon? Or the Iranians, who hated secularist Hariri?

At the time of the attack, it was known that Hariri, a billionaire construction magnate who was responsible for the reconstruction of the Lebanese capital after decades of civil war, wanted to reenter politics. It was also known that he had had a falling out with Syrian President Bashar Assad after demanding the withdrawal of Syrian occupation forces from his native Lebanon. As a result, the prime suspects in the murder were the powerful Syrian military and intelligence agency, as well as their Lebanese henchmen. The pressure on Damascus came at an opportune time for the US government. Then-President George W. Bush had placed Syria on his list of rogue states and wanted to isolate the regime internationally.

In late 2005, an investigation team approved by the United Nations and headed by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis found, after seven months of research, that Syrian security forces and high-ranking Lebanese officials were in fact responsible for the Hariri murder. Four suspects were arrested. But the smoking gun, the final piece of evidence, was not found. The pace of the investigation stalled under Mehlis’s Belgian successor, Serge Brammertz.

The establishment of a UN special tribunal was intended to provide certainty. It began its work on March 1, 2009. The tribunal, headquartered in the town of Leidschendam in the Netherlands, has a budget of more than €40 million ($56 million) for the first year alone, with the UN paying 51 percent and Beirut 49 percent of the cost. It has an initial mandate for three years, and the most severe sentence it can impose is life in prison. Canadian Daniel Bellemare, 57, was appointed to head the tribunal. Four of the 11 judges are Lebanese, whose identities have been kept secret, for security reasons.

As its first official act, the tribunal ordered the release, in early April, of the four men Mehlis had had arrested. By then, they had already spent more than three years sitting in a Lebanese prison. Since then, it has been deathly quiet in Leidschendam, as if the investigation had just begun and there were nothing to say.

Hezbollah supporters in Beirut listen to a speech given by the movement’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Hariri’s growing popularity could have been a thorn in the side of Lebanese Shiite leader Nasrallah.
But now there are signs that the investigation has yielded new and explosive results. SPIEGEL has learned from sources close to the tribunal and verified by examining internal documents, that the Hariri case is about to take a sensational turn. Intensive investigations in Lebanon are all pointing to a new conclusion: that it was not the Syrians, but instead special forces of the Lebanese Shiite organization Hezbollah (”Party of God”) that planned and executed the diabolical attack. Tribunal chief Bellemare and his fellow judges apparently want to hold back this information, of which they been aware for about a month. What are they afraid of?

According to the detailed information provided by the SPIEGEL source, the fact that the case may have been “cracked” is the result of a mixture of serendipity à la Sherlock Holmes and the state-of-the-art technology used by cyber detectives. In months of painstaking work, a secretly operating special unit of the Lebanese security forces, headed by intelligence expert Captain Wissam Eid, filtered out the numbers of mobile phones that could be pinpointed to the area surrounding Hariri on the days leading up to the attack and on the date of the murder itself. The investigators referred to these mobile phones as the “first circle of hell.”

Captain Eid’s team eventually identified eight mobile phones, all of which had been purchased on the same day in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. They were activated six weeks before the assassination, and they were used exclusively for communication among their users and — with the exception of one case — were no longer used after the attack. They were apparently tools of the hit team that carried out the terrorist attack.

But there was also a “second circle of hell,” a network of about 20 mobile phones that were identified as being in proximity to the first eight phones noticeably often. According to the Lebanese security forces, all of the numbers involved apparently belong to the “operational arm” of Hezbollah, which maintains a militia in Lebanon that is more powerful than the regular Lebanese army. While part of the Party of God acts like a normal political organization, participating in democratic elections and appointing cabinet ministers, the other part uses less savory tactics, such as abductions near the Israeli border and terrorist attacks, such those committed against Jewish facilities in South America in 2002 and 2004.

The whereabouts of the two Beirut groups of mobile phone users coincided again and again, and they were sometimes located near the site of the attack. The romantic attachment of one of the terrorists led the cyber-detectives directly to one of the main suspects. He committed the unbelievable indiscretion of calling his girlfriend from one of the “hot” phones. It only happened once, but it was enough to identify the man. He is believed to be Abd al-Majid Ghamlush, from the town of Rumin, a Hezbollah member who had completed training course in Iran. Ghamlush was also identified as the buyer of the mobile phones. He has since disappeared, and perhaps is no longer alive.

Revelations Will Likely Harm Hezbollah

Ghamlush’s recklessness led investigators to the man they now suspect was the mastermind of the terrorist attack: Hajj Salim, 45. A southern Lebanese from Nabatiyah, Salim is considered to be the commander of the “military” wing of Hezbollah and lives in South Beirut, a Shiite stronghold. Salim’s secret “Special Operational Unit” reports directly to Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, 48.

A Lebanese demonstrator holds a portrait of ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri and a sign reading “justice” in Arabic.
AFP

A Lebanese demonstrator holds a portrait of ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri and a sign reading “justice” in Arabic.
Imad Mughniyah, one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, ran the unit until Feb. 12, 2008, when he was killed in an attack in Damascus, presumably by Israeli intelligence. Since then, Salim has largely assumed the duties of his notorious predecessor, with Mughniyah’s brother-in-law, Mustafa Badr al-Din, serving as his deputy. The two men report only to their superior, and to General Kassim Sulaimani, their contact in Tehran. The Iranians, the principal financiers of the military Lebanese “Party of God,” have repressed the Syrians’ influence.

The deeper the investigators in Beirut penetrated into the case, the clearer the picture became, according to the SPIEGEL source. They have apparently discovered which Hezbollah member obtained the small Mitsubishi truck used in the attack. They have also been able to trace the origins of the explosives, more than 1,000 kilograms of TNT, C4 and hexogen.

The Lebanese chief investigator and true hero of the story didn’t live to witness many of the recent successes in the investigation. Captain Eid, 31, was killed in a terrorist attack in the Beirut suburb of Hasmiyah on Jan. 25, 2008. The attack, in which three other people were also killed, was apparently intended to slow down the investigation. And, once again, there was evidence of involvement by the Hezbollah commando unit, just as there has been in each of more than a dozen attacks against prominent Lebanese in the last four years.

This leaves the question of motive unanswered. Many had an interest in Hariri’s death. Why should Hezbollah — or its backers in Iran — be responsible?

Hariri’s growing popularity could have been a thorn in the side of Lebanese Shiite leader Nasrallah. In 2005, the billionaire began to outstrip the revolutionary leader in terms of popularity. Besides, he stood for everything the fanatical and spartan Hezbollah leader hated: close ties to the West and a prominent position among moderate Arab heads of state, an opulent lifestyle, and membership in the competing Sunni faith. Hariri was, in a sense, the alternative to Nasrallah.

Syrian President Bashar Assad with his wife Asma: Although the Syrian government is not being declared free of the suspicion of involvement, at least President Assad is no longer in the line of fire. There is hardly anything to indicate he was aware of the murder plot.
DPA

Syrian President Bashar Assad with his wife Asma: Although the Syrian government is not being declared free of the suspicion of involvement, at least President Assad is no longer in the line of fire. There is hardly anything to indicate he was aware of the murder plot.
Whether Lebanon has developed in the direction the Hezbollah leader apparently imagined seems doubtful. Immediately after the spectacular terrorist attack on Valentine’s Day in 2005, a wave of sympathy for the murdered politician swept across the country. The so-called “cedar revolution” brought a pro-Western government to power, and the son of the murdered man emerged as the most important party leader and strongest figure operating in the background. Saad al-Hariri, 39, could have become prime minister of Lebanon long ago — if he were willing to accept the risks and felt sufficiently qualified to hold office. After the Hariri murder, the Syrian occupation force left the country in response to international and domestic Lebanese pressure.

But not everything has gone wrong from Hezbollah’s standpoint. In July 2006, Nasrallah, by kidnapping Israeli soldiers, provoked Israel to launch a war against Lebanon. Hezbollah defied the superior military power, solidifying its image as a resistance movement in large parts of the Arab world. If there were democratic opinion polls in the Middle East, Nasrallah would probably be voted the most popular leader. The highly anticipated June 7 elections will demonstrate whether the Lebanese will allow Nasrallah to radicalize them again. Once again, he is entering into the election campaign in a dual role. He is both the secretary-general of the “Party of God,” represented in the parliament since 1992, and the head of Hezbollah’s militia, part of a state within a state that makes its own laws.

Hezbollah currently holds 14 of 128 seats in parliament, a number that is expected to rise. Some even believe that dramatic gains are possible for Hezbollah, although landslide-like changes in the Lebanese parliamentary system are relatively unlikely. A system of religious proportionality ensures, with list alliances arranged in advance, that about two-thirds of the seats in parliament are assigned before an election. In the cedar state, a Sunni must always be prime minister, while the Shiites are entitled to the office of speaker of parliament and the Christians the relatively unimportant office of the president.

Hezbollah has not managed to upset this system, adopted decades ago, even though it objectively puts its clientele at a disadvantage. As a result of differences in birthrates, there are now far more Shiites than Sunnis or Christians in Lebanon. Some say that Nasrallah isn’t even interested in securing power through elections, and that the “Party of God” would be satisfied with a modest share of the government. By not taking on too much government responsibility, Hezbollah would not be forced to dissolve its militias and make significant changes to its ideology of resistance.

The revelations about the alleged orchestrators of the Hariri murder will likely harm Hezbollah. Large segments of the population are weary of internal conflicts and are anxious for reconciliation. The leader of the movement, which, despite its formal recognition of the democratic rules of the game, remains on the US’s list of terrorist organizations, probably anticipates forthcoming problems with the UN tribunal. In a speech in Beirut, Nasrallah spoke of the tribunal’s “conspiratorial intentions.”

The revelations are likely to be just as unwelcome in Tehran, which sees itself confronted, once again, with the charge of exporting terrorism. Damascus’s view of the situation could be more mixed. Although the Syrian government is not being declared free of the suspicion of involvement, at least President Assad is no longer in the line of fire. Hardly anything suggests anymore that he was personally aware of the murder plot or even ordered the killing.

One can only speculate over the reasons why the Hariri tribunal is holding back its new information about the assassination. Perhaps the investigators in the Netherlands fear that it could stir up the situation in Lebanon. On Friday evening, the press office in Leidschendam responded tersely to a written inquiry from SPIEGEL, noting that it could not comment on “operational details.”

Detlev Mehlis, 60, the German senior prosecutor and former UN chief investigator, has his own set of concerns. He performed his investigation to the best of his knowledge and belief, questioning more than 500 witnesses, and now he must put up with the accusation of having focused his attention too heavily on Syrian leads. The UN tribunal’s order to release the generals who were arrested at his specific request is, at any rate, a serious blow to the German prosecutor.

One of the four, Jamal al-Sajjid, the former head of Lebanese intelligence, has even filed a suit against Mehlis in France for “manipulated investigations.” In media interviews, such as an interview with the Al-Jazeera Arab television network last week, Sajjid has even taken his allegations a step further, accusing German police commissioner Gerhard Lehmann, Mehlis’s assistant in the Beirut investigations, of blackmail.

Sajjid claims that Lehmann, a member of Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) proposed a deal with the Syrian president to the Lebanese man. Under the alleged arrangement, Assad would identify the person responsible for the Hariri killing and convince him to commit suicide, and then the case would be closed. According to Sajjid, the authorities in Beirut made “unethical proposals, as well as threats,” and he claims that he has recordings of the incriminating conversations.

Mehlis denies all accusations. Lehmann, now working on a new assignment in Saudi Arabia, was unavailable for comment. But the spotlight-loving Jamil al-Sajjid could soon be embarking on a new career. He is under consideration for the post of Lebanon’s next justice minister.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan.

Posted By Alex:

An Israeli tourism poster is being pulled from the London subway after the Syrian Embassy complained that the map on it appeared to show the Golan Heights and Palestinian territories within Israel’s boundaries, officials said Friday.

Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority received more than 300 complaints about the ad, a promotion for the Israeli Red Sea resort town of Eilat, according to the agency’s spokesman Matt Wilson.

The Syrian Embassy and pro-Palestinian groups complained about it because the featured map appeared to show the territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war - the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights - within the borders of the Jewish state, according to the Israeli Tourism Ministry and the British standards authority.

Syrian Embassy spokesman Jihad Makdissi said the move follows days of lobbying to get rid of the ad, which he called offensive. Although Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, Israel maintains a tight blockade on the narrow strip of land and remains in the West Bank.

Full story By RAPHAEL G. SATTER - Associated Press Writer

Addendum by Ehsani2 (May 22, 2009)

The initial impetus for my comment on taxes came from reading the latest change in Syria’s tax code. The amendment concerned the initial tax bracket that is exempt from taxation. Income up to SYP 5,000 was exempt from tax. This number was raised to just over SYP 6,000. The rationale of the amendment seems to be an acknowledgment that an income as low as SYP 6,000 ($130 per month and $1,560 per year) ought to be exempt from tax.

In the U.S., a taxable income (after deductions and exemptions) of $100,000 per year ($8,333 per month) is taxed around $22,372 for the year ($1,864 a month). Households are then taxed at the state and local levels in addition to the above federal taxes. Indeed, starting next year, those making over $373,000 per year will be taxed at 39.6% up from 35%. Total taxes for high income residents of the state of NY are likely to pay just over 50% of their income. Europeans are already very familiar with such tax brackets. Syrians “were” all too familiar with this too. There was a time when the highest income bracket in Syria faced a tax levy approaching 80%.

The Syrian tax code has been streamlined significantly since then. To encourage compliance, the highest tax bracket has been lowered to 22%.

I am jealous. I wish my American taxes would be as low. What is considered a socialist country (by its own constitution) taxes its highest earners a maximum of 22% while the world’s leading capitalist nation chooses to tax its own high earners as high as 52%. It was in this context that I made my initial observation.

What bothers me about the Syrian tax system is the following:

It is hard to live on $130 or even $1600 a month. Paying any tax on income over $130 a month seems harsh. People working for the government and those on fixed income get their taxes deducted from their income at the source. The current tax code assumes that the highest tax bracket is $1630 a month and this is taxed at 22%. As many people may agree, making $1630 a month does not go a long way in Damascus and is certainly not in the spirit of being a high earner.

When I asked a leading business man in Damascus how he feels about paying “only” 20% on income, I got this response:

“Why should I pay 20%? What do I get for that? What services does the Government provide me with?”

This response is rather common for most high rollers in the country.

The fact is that the Government provides plenty of services but gets very little credit for doing so. Education is free at all levels of schools and universities. Many commodities and finished products are heavily subsidized. Yet, no one thinks of these as “services”. Most people see them as a right.

Tax compliance for high income earners is difficult in most less developed countries. Syria is no exception. Not only that the 22% highest tax bracket is rather low by world standards, most high rollers seem to find a way to avoid paying it altogether. One business man boasted to me once that he does not recall the last time he paid any tax.

Syria faces fiscal pressures going forward. Its population doubles roughly every 22 years. It has very expensive subsidy program that it finds hard to dissolve. Its tax collection and compliance program for non-fixed income earners is weak. Those that are wealthy enough to pay the tax are too connected and too powerful to pay their fair share. Low paid government employees in charge of collecting the tax are no match for the business tycoons and their ample resources.

Ehsani2 writes about Syria’s new tax code:

Even a capitalist like me finds Syria’s economic system too capitalist. The fat cats pay hardly anything while those on fixed incomes pay the following based on the new decree.

Monthly earning range Tax rate
$0-$131 0%
$132-$261 5%
$262-$348 7%
$349-$435 9%

More on Syria’s tax system:

if you make $ 1,000 per month, your tax is $106 or 10.6%
if you make $ 2,000 per month, your tax is $311 or 15.5%
if you make $ 5,000 per month, your tax is $971 or 19.4%
if you make $10,000 per month, your tax is $2,071 or 20.7%
if you make $50,000 per month, your tax is $10,871 or 21.7%
if you make $100,000 per month, your tax is $21,871 or 21.9%
if you make $500,000 per month, your tax is $109,871 or 22.0%

…….WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE? ……..The poor pay that 20%….while the rich, capped at 20% do not pay it ………In effect people on fixed incomes pay while the fat cats watch.

414 Syrian intellectuals banned from Travel. The following article published in Kulina Shuraka reveals that a new report describes the many Syrians who have had their passports taken away.

أسماء المثقفين والإعلاميين والمحامين والفهمانين الممنوعين من السفر
طباعة أرسل لصديق
خاص - (كلنا شركاء)
22/ 05/ 2009

كشف تقرير سوري اليوم عن قائمة تضم ( 414 ) اسماً لسياسيين وكتاب وصحفيين وحقوقيين سوريين ممنوعين من السفر خارج البلاد لأسببا مختلفة، منهم 71% أتى منعهم على خلفية نشاط سياسي فيما يشكل الممنوعون من السفر على خلفية نشاط حقوقي 24%.
وأكد التقرير الصادر عن المركز السوري للإعلام وحرية التعبير، أن العدد الحقيقي للممنوعين من السفر هو أكبر من ذلك لكن هذا الرقم هو حصيلة ما أمكن جمعه استناداً للبيانات المتوفرة والتي ساهمت بها هيئات ومنظمات حقوقية عديدة.
وفي القسم الذي أسماه التقرير خارطة المنع من السفر في سورية، وبعد إشارته لأن نسبة الخطأ في البيانات تقارب ( 3.7 % ) فقط، أوضح التقرير أن الممنوعين من السفر من المقيمين خارج سورية يقاربون 3% فيما الممنوعون وهم بداخل السجون السورية يشكلون 2%
ويوضح التقرير أن النسبة الاكبر من الممنوعين من السفر ينتمون إلى محافظة الحسكة تليها محافظة اللاذقية فدمشق ثم السلمية وحلب…
كما يشكل الذكور 91% من عدد الممنوعين من السفر، والباقي من النساء.
أما عن مهن واختصاصات الممنوعين من السفر فبحسب التقرير يأتي في المقام الأول المهن الحرة، ثم الكتاب والصحفيون، يليه المدرسين والمهندسين فأصحاب المهن القانونية.

Syria to Open Its Economy to Foreign Investors
By JAY SOLOMON, MAY 14, 2009

WASHINGTON — Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government is pushing ahead with steps to open up its economy to investment, senior Syrian officials said, although the U.S. is maintaining broad economic sanctions on the Arab nation.

Damascus is preparing to grant new private-banking licenses to foreign investors, while expanding the Damascus Securities Exchange, which made its debut in March, these officials said. It’s also wooing foreign investment in manufacturing and tourism to support economic growth, which has averaged about 5% over the past five years.

“This economy is virgin. There are many opportunities to explore,” Central Bank Governor Adib Mayaleh said in an interview.

Two men in a Damascus café beneath a poster showing Syrian President Bashar Assad, right, and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah of Lebanon. The U.S. is hoping to improve relations with Mr. Assad’s government in an effort to weaken Syrian alliances with Iran and groups such as Hezbollah.

Two men in a Damascus caf[eacute] beneath a poster showing Syrian President Bashar Assad, right, and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah of Lebanon. The U.S. is hoping to improve relations with Mr. Assad’s government in an effort to weaken Syrian alliances with Iran and groups such as Hezbollah.

Two men in a Damascus caf[eacute] beneath a poster showing Syrian President Bashar Assad, right, and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah of Lebanon. The U.S. is hoping to improve relations with Mr. Assad’s government in an effort to weaken Syrian alliances with Iran and groups such as Hezbollah.

It’s a new direction for Damascus, which has maintained one of the Middle East’s most closed economies in recent decades. Middle East analysts also question whether Mr. Assad can achieve his economic goals without changing his authoritarian political system and improving relations with Washington.

President Barack Obama has said he is interested in developing better ties with Syria and sent two high-level diplomatic delegations to Damascus. But last week, Mr. Obama renewed five-year-old economic sanctions on Damascus because of U.S. concerns about Syrian support for militant groups, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, operating in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

U.S. officials also charge that Damascus continues to facilitate the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq, an allegation Syria denies.
[Syria]

Mr. Assad assumed power from his late father, Hafez Assad, in 2000 amid high hopes that the new leader’s youth and Western education could lead to changes in Syria’s rigid one-party state.

Mr. Assad, 43 years old, has displayed little appetite for opening Syria’s political system, say Middle East analysts, imprisoning pro-democracy activists in recent years and closing independent media outlets. The International Monetary Fund and other financial institutions, however, praise Mr. Assad and his economic planners for liberalizing finance and trade while reorienting Syria’s economy away from a dependence on oil as their domestic production dwindled. Damascus has moved from exporting nearly 700,000 barrels of oil a day in the mid-1990s to becoming a net importer of oil.

As recently as 2004, the state controlled the banking system. Today, about a dozen private banks — mostly Arab-owned — operate, Syrian officials said. Damascus pegged the Syrian pound to an IMF-administered basket of currencies and allowed its largely free conversion into U.S. dollars. The government is privatizing some state-owned firms and bringing in independent managers to help oversee others. Foreign direct investment in Syria jumped to $2.1 billion last year from $400 million in 2004, according to the IMF. Syria’s non-oil exports, meanwhile, are projected to grow to more than $9 billion next year from less than $4 billion in 2004.

“We see a clear move toward economic reforms in Syria,” said Khaled Sakr, the IMF’s mission chief for the country. “It’s cautiously and steadily moving in the right direction.”

Mr. Mayaleh, the central-bank governor, said another seven to eight private banking licenses will be put up for bidding, and Damascus hopes to see an additional 10 companies listed on the Syrian stock exchange. “We’re open for investment in our economy,” he said.

Analysts say Syria’s economy still faces significant challenges. Damascus is running sizable annual budget deficits, and it is unclear whether the country can develop new streams of revenue to offset dwindling oil supplies. Mr. Assad has been criticized by Washington for directing contracts to his family and political allies.

The Truth About Richard Bruce Cheney
by Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson
The Washington Note

Report: Russia won’t sell Syria fighter jets due to Israeli pressure
By Reuters, 20/05/2009

Russia has halted plans to sell MIG-31 fighter jets to Syria because of pressure from Israel, the Kommersant daily reported on Wednesday citing an unidentified source in Russia’s defense industry.

In 2007, Russia agreed to supply Syria with eight MiG-31 fighters, known in the West by NATO codename Foxhound, for about $400-$500 million, the paper said.

Kommersant, a commerce-oriented newspaper published in Russia, quoted an unidentified person close to Russia’s state arms exporter as saying that Moscow had halted the contract due to pressure from Israel.

The paper quoted another source in an unidentified Russian ministry as saying that the contract had been halted because Syria could not produce the money to pay for the fighters.

The MiG-31 is a supersonic, high-altitude fighter plane. It has a maximum speed of 3,000 km/hour (1,860 miles/hour) and a combat radius of 720 km (450 miles.)

Russia’s state arms exporter, Rosoboronexport, declined to comment on the report. A spokesman for the Syrian embassy in Moscow was unavailable for comment.

Russia’s defense industry, which says it is starved for investment, was rattled last year when Algeria returned 15 MiG-29SMTs to Russia, saying the aircraft contained some substandard parts.

Syria and the ‘China Growth Model’
Ben Simpfendorfer, 05.21.09
Chinese traders say Syria is no ‘Axis of Evil.’

HONG KONG — Below is the last of three excerpts from “The New Silk Road,” by Ben Simpfendorfer, reproduced with the permission of Palgrave Macmillan.

In July 2004, President Bush spoke of an Axis of Evil during his State of the Union Address. It was a bold declaration made in the aftermath of September 11.

Iran, Iraq, and North Korea were the original members of the Axis of Evil. But Under Secretary of State John Bolton added Syria to the list the following year. Washington imposed economic and political sanctions in 2004, later tightening them. Although the European Commission signed a Partnership Agreement with Syria in 2004, they said it was “difficult to imagine deepening our relations” given the current political circumstances.

Relations with America and Europe remained frosty a few years later, especially after accusations of Syrian involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese President Rafiq Hariri. It was as if the country had fallen off the map.

But many Chinese traders disagreed with the West’s assessment. Instead, they have labeled Syria a “cohesive force” (ning jiu li) for the Arab world.

It was their personal view, rather than official Chinese policy. But the expression recognizes the important historical role Syria has played as a terminal point for the Silk Road and as a trading hub for the region. These traders are willing to bet that Syria will continue to play this role despite the economic and political sanctions imposed by America and Europe. They assume that the underlying tides of history are too powerful for the sanctions imposed by a foreign government. Indeed, China itself is rising on much the same historical tide that has buoyed Syria. The number of Chinese traders walking the streets of Damascus continues to grow even as Washington tries to wall the country off from the rest of the world.

Syria’s status as a “cohesive force” is aided by its relative stability. This is no small achievement. The country suffers from the same sectarian divisions between Sunni, Shi’a, Christian, and Kurd that afflict Iraq and Lebanon. The country also shares borders with Iraq to the east, Lebanon to the west, and Israel to the south. An intrusive security apparatus helps keep the peace. And, although the Syrian government has openly defied America and Israel in past decades, it has avoided inciting armed conflict.

This strategy is now paying off handsomely. Chinese traders refer frequently to Syria’s “stability” as a reason to base their operations in the country. How long the country will remain stable is debatable. But at least for now the rise of China is helping to ignite memories of the country’s historical role as a trading hub.

The Adara Free Zone is a poster child for the chance that Syria may choose to take the second, more optimistic, path before it. The industrial park enjoys duty-free status and is a major transshipment hub for the region. Zhou Dongyun has recognized the value of the Adara Free Zone as a commercial hub. Her newly constructed China City is especially popular among visiting Iraq officials. Its two-storey exhibition halls sell everything from office equipment to factory equipment.

Chinese traders are also using the Adara Free Zone to sell to the broader region, in particular Lebanon, as reconstruction efforts after the 2006 war have spurred demand for construction materials. The industrial park is playing a similar role to the open-air squares in the old city of Damascus that once hosted traders arriving along the Silk Road.

Lebanon: Suspected Israeli spy involved in death of Hizbullah official
05.21.09, 09:04 / Israel News

Nasser Nader, one of the main suspects in the Israeli espionage affair in Lebanon, confessed in his investigation to his involvement in the assassination of senior Hizbullah member Ghaleb Awali on July 19, 2004, a Lebanese security source told the as-Safir newspaper.

According to the report, Nader, who was the source said was “one of the most important personas for the Israeli Mossad”, confessed to his involvement in “preparing the grounds for the assassination of Hizbullah officials”. (Roee Nahmias)

Syrian political writer set free after 3 years in jail
Tue May 19, 2009
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Syrian authorities released prominent writer Michel Kilo from prison Tuesday after he completed a three-year sentence for political crimes related to his calls to mend relations with neighboring Lebanon.

“Michel Kilo was set free tonight. I spoke to him. He is now at home,” Kilo’s lawyer Mohannad al-Hassani told Reuters.

Kilo’s jail term expired last Thursday. He was moved to a security compound and kept under arrest there for another five days before he was released, the Syrian observatory for Human Rights said.

“Congratulations on your return to freedom, Michel Kilo. All prisoners of conscious in Syria must be set free. Arbitrary arrests must cease,” a statement by the group said.

The 69-year political writer was a leading signatory of the Damascus-Beirut Declaration, a 2006 document signed by 500 intellectuals and political activists from Syria and Lebanon.

Shortly after the declaration was issued, Kilo was arrested and charged with weakening national morale.

The document urged the Damascus government to establish diplomatic relations with Lebanon, a move demanded by the international community and taken by Syria two years later.

The declaration also called for demarcating the Syrian-Lebanese border and an end to political killings in Lebanon following the assassination of Rafik al-Hariri, a parliamentarian and former prime minister, and other figures who were mostly opposed Syria’s role in Lebanon.

Human rights lawyer Anwar al-Bunni, another signatory, received a five year sentence on the same charge as Kilo. He is still in jail despite Western calls on Syria to release him.

Unlike other non-violent critics of the government, who sometimes are let free after completing three quarters of their sentence, Kilo, served his full term.

The United States and the European Union had called repeatedly on the Syrian government to free Kilo and French President Nicolas Sarkozy intervened in vain with President Bashar al-Assad during a visit to Damascus last year.

Kilo had tried to operate within the confines of Syria’s political system, which has been monopolized by the Baath Party since it took power in a 1963 coup, banned all opposition and imposed emergency law still in force today.

His captivity sent a signal that even milder forms of dissent were not allowed in Syria, human rights campaigners said.

“Kilo had concluded a while before his arrest that the regime was not interested in any meaningful political reform,” one opposition figure said.

The Syrian government has stepped up a campaign of arrests against opposition figures since its relations with the West improved sharply last year. Officials have dismissed Western criticism about lack of observance of human rights in Syria as interference in internal Syrian affairs.

Middle Eastern disappointments are mounting and some of the Arab hopes in Obama have begun to fade. The Syrians are saying that in three months Obama’s policies in the Middle East should be clear. By that time elections in Lebanon and Iran will be over and the dust will have had time to settle. If US policy changes have not taken shape by then, they probably will not take shape at all.  A number of Syrian officials got mud on their faces with the sanctions fiasco. They had supported the notion that Washington had indeed turned a new page.

Palestinian officials said they were disappointed that Monday’s round of U.S.-Israeli talks in Washington produced no clear progress on the removal of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank or other issues they feel are crucial to rejuvenating stalled peace negotiations.

Israel stood firm against demands from Barack Obama on Monday to cease the construction of Jewish settlements and embrace the “two-state solution” to achieving peace in the Middle East.

MJ Rosenberg in the PULSE, (via FLC) explains that Prime Minister Netanyahu is up to the same thing that Yitzhak Shamir was in 1992 when he had just been defeated by Yitzhak Rabin and announced that he wanted to drag out peace talks with the Palestinians for a decade while vastly increasing the number of Jewish settlers in Israeli-occupied territories.

Mr. Shamir reportedly said, ‘ I would have conducted negotiations on autonomy for 10 years and in the meantime we would have reached half a million people” in the West Bank.’ ” Shamir, of course, is one of Netanyahu’s heroes and mentors. Sixteen years later, he has the same strategy Shamir did. He says he will negotiate but he will not commit himself to Palestinian statehood.

Syria-US Thaw Awaits Concrete Steps
By Edward Yeranian, Cairo, 18 May 2009

Relations between the United States and Syria remain rocky after a series of recent developments, including the arrest of a Syrian man involved in terrorist activities in northern Iraq, coupled with U.S. accusations that Damascus is still not controlling its border.

U.S. President Barack Obama has been carefully seeking to improve ties with Syria, after several years of ostracizing Damascus by the Bush Administration and the world community.

Senator George Mitchell applied for Syrian visa, he may visit Damascus

Word that U.S. peace envoy George Mitchell may be visiting Damascus soon is raising speculation of a new U.S. push to jumpstart stalled peace talks on the Israeli-Syrian track.

Jordan’s King Abdullah indicated several days ago the United States was “preparing a new Middle East peace initiative.”

Syrian Ambassador to Washington Imad Mustapha revealed, last week, that Senator Mitchell had applied for a Syrian visa, although State Department spokesman Robert Wood indicated that such a trip is not necessarily imminent.

Acting Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman and National Security Council Senior Director Daniel Shapiro visited Damascus earlier this month. It was their second visit to the Syrian capital since President Obama vowed in January to engage with all Middle Eastern countries, including longtime foes Syria and Iran…

Professor Joshua Landis of Oklahoma University’s Center for Middle East Studies, who authors the popular Syria Comment website, thinks the United States and Syria are frustrated:

“They have hit a wall. The Syrians were very upset about the way sanctions were renewed by the Obama Administration,” he said. “I think that they understood that there was going to be a renewal of sanctions, because talks have only just begun. But there was no change in language, and no softening of tone, and they were upset. Now, the Americans obviously want to see a number of things. They want to see good-faith measures being taken by Syria and they want action on this Iraqi border.”

Syria’s main issue: the return of the Israeli-occupied Golan Height

“Syria wants linkage: they want America to send back an ambassador, they want peace talks to go forward,” added Landis. “So how do you proceed? That is the question. You know, Syria, of course, is very worried that America is going to ask it to take a lot of steps and it is not going to get very much in return. America is saying: “Trust us, you do these things and Obama is going to change the Middle East.”

Paul Salem, who heads the Beirut-based Carnegie Center for Peace in the Middle East, says Syria’s main ambition is the return of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights:

“The main issue for Syria has been restarting the peace track with Israel to regain the Golan Heights,” he said. “What has clouded that process is statements by the Israeli government that they do not seem interested in restarting the peace track with Syria. But if there is no life on the Israeli side of the Israeli-Syrian track, then I think Syria will probably reconsider its overtures and the United States and Syria would have to figure out how to manage their relations, while Israel continues to occupy the Golan Heights.”

Salem thinks that the United States is cautiously “biding its time and not rushing” to resume ties with Syria:

“The United States is not completely positive in its orientation towards Syria. It has a lot of misgivings and a lot of things it is not happy with,” said Salem. “But I think President Obama understands that in order to make a real change in terms of Syria’s regional policy will require some concessions from Israel.”

Salem stresses that Syria’s positions are connected to the issue of the Golan Heights. Everything else depends on it, he says, and ” it is hard to get something for nothing.”

The following article by David Rose is excellent. The same deals as were struck with the Iraqi Sunnis could have been struck with Syria, which should have been part of a larger “awakening” in the region. The US Defense Department’s refusal to work with Syria was ideological. Even after the Bush administration had accepted the necessity of working with the Sunni tribes in al-Anbar province and elsewhere, it could not bring itself to do the same with Syria.

Heads in the Sand
By David Rose in Vanity Fair. May 12, 2009

The so-called Sunni Awakening, in which American forces formed tactical alliances with local sheikhs, has been credited with dampening the insurgency in much of Iraq. But new evidence suggests that the Sunnis were offering the same deal as early as 2004—one that was eagerly embraced by commanders on the ground, but rejected out of hand at the highest levels of the Bush administration…..

Peres: If Assad wants Israel-Syria peace, why is he shy?
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondent and The Associated Press

President Shimon Peres on Sunday urged his Syrian counterpart, Bashar Assad, to agree to engage in direct peace negotiations with Israel.

“The Syrians should be ready to talk. If President Assad wants peace, why is he shy?” Peres said after participating in an international economic meeting sponsored by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum.

“We suggested many times direct talks,” he added. “[Assad] thinks direct talks is a prize to Israel. It’s not a prize. It’s normal.”…

Just a few days ago, Netanyahu said he would not return the Golan.

Peres said a gesture by Syria would be more important than all the negotiations. “Change the air,” he said. “There stands the president and he said he doesn’t want to meet. Why? You want us to give back something, but he doesn’t suggest to give us back anything.”

Please, with might
By Gideon Levy
17/05/2009, Haaretz Commentary

……Now is the time for the occupier to end the occupation, immediately, unconditionally, moments before the two-state solution draws its final breath and passes beyond the realm of possibility, if it hasn’t already. Which is why Obama should be standing with a stopwatch, too: Time is running out.

There’s one message that should emerge from Washington: Israel is beginning to act, not to talk but to act, to end the occupation. Freeze the settlements without any lies, dismantle the outposts without tricks, give Palestinians freedoms without feints, and establish a rigid agenda to dismantle the entire settler enterprise. Anything less will be seen as failure, any move less daring will ensure a deadlock that will bring more bloodshed and the eventual establishment of a permanent binational apartheid state.

Does it sound big and pretentious? Well, there’s a big, pretentious president now sitting in Washington. The Arabs have already learned that Israel understands force and force alone; all its limited concessions were carried out after bloodshed, never before. It’s time Washington learns the same lesson: Please, with might, Barack Obama, because there is no other way…

Syria upset over ‘big stick’ diplomacy
Published: May 18, 2009 at 4:04 PM

WASHINGTON, May 18 (UPI) — Damascus was deeply insulted by a Washington decision to renew economic sanctions while U.S. diplomats pursued an engagement strategy, a scholar said.

U.S. President Barack Obama renewed diplomatic sanctions against Damascus in early May for its support of militant organizations in the region and other actions, following a visit by acting U.S. Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman and Daniel Shapiro, U.S. National Security Council senior director.

“The national emergency with respect to Syria remains in effect because Syria continued to not meet its international obligations,” Feltman said. “We continue to have serious concerns about Syria’s actions.”

University of Oklahoma Assistant Professor Joshua Landis, author of the revered Syria Comment blog, described Syria as being “at the center” of Washington’s Middle East policy, saying it lies at the crossroads of issues pertaining to Lebanon, Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Damascus reacted with outrage to the renewed sanctions, calling Washington’s actions “foolish.” In an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations, Landis said the sanctions’ renewal ran counter to Syrian hopes for engagement.

“They want the United States to stop treating Syria like a rogue state and start showing it respect,” he said. “Give us some hope; don’t just use the big stick.”

Hassakeh: Dispatch from Damascus 22 (16/05/09)
By Ali Khan

Early morning street scene in Al Hassakeh

Instead of taking the main road we decided to take a shortcut across the Euphrates that would later connect us to the road to Hassakeh. Food was still on our minds as we drove past huddled little villages. The sun was still warm as it slowly sank into the horizon and families of farmers walked back towards their houses. We stopped at the first shop we saw and managed to secure some provisions. Styrofoam crisps and plywood chocolate was on the menu of the day, washed down with some Ugarit Cola. As we curved northwards the greenery slowed faded away and was replaced by rocks and sand, although because of the melting light, the desert did not look as harsh as it might have in the midday sun. Finally, after an hour of meandering on small roads, which were paved well enough to rival some of our motorways in India, we managed to join up with the main road. There was not much traffic on the road apart from the odd bus and a wayward truck or two. Unfortunately, people sometimes drive without headlights here, even at night and the reason I was once given was that they think it might prolong the battery life and save petrol. We were talking about this when a motorcycle suddenly appeared out of nowhere and Nono managed to swerve just in time because we noticed the glowing dot of his cigarette dangling from his mouth. The cigarette had saved him! The rider seemed quite unfazed and even though one would expect such a person to at least scream a few obscenities, albeit to no avail, he waved at us grinningly and with a deft flick of his hand tied his keffiyeh over his mouth.

Eventually we made it to Hassakeh. Despite the fact that we arrived at night, it was easy to see that it is mainly an industrial town. There are virtually no surviving historical buildings and we had gone there because Nono wanted to attend the Syriac Orthodox Church’s Palm Sunday service. The manager of the first hotel we went to tried to argue with us that we must pay in dollars and wanted sixty dollars. Eventually after an exasperating five minutes we stormed out followed by a hail of expletives though we managed to sling some back before disappearing. The other option was tucked away in a little alley off the main souk and we drove around in circles for a while before figuring out where exactly it was. The whole town seemed to be out shopping and the main road was a blur of multi-coloured neon lights, Chinese counterfeit goods and busy shoppers. Fred spotted a sign for the Syrian Nationalist Socialist Party (SNSP) and we all agreed that I was exceedingly strange that they maintained an office in this farflung northeastern part of Syria. The manager of the hotel was a chain-smoking, slim man with chaotic facial scruff by the name Laurence. Before letting us into the room he gave us a grilling. Why were we in Hassakeh? Did we know anyone there? Where did we come from? When did we leave? Where did we stop on the journey? Where were we going next?

After a while he relented and showed us to our room. Later, we realised that it was probably because of the large Kurdish population in the area that the authorities were wary of foreigners coming to the area. Nono added that they probably wanted to make sure that we were not going to Qimishli, a town northeast of Hassakeh that is predominantly Kurdish. The most pressing concern was locating a restaurant and so we left. On the way Laurence offered to bring us food but when we insisted on walking around he showed us a little Kebab place opposite his hostel. The owners were Kurdish and everyone had congregated around the small TV in order to watch the Barcelona game. So far, the whole of the country seems to be awash in Barcelona, Manchester United and AC Milan supporters.

Kebabs

As one does, we ordered a kilo of kebabs and sat down to watch the game. One of the cooks came up to me and asked where I was from. After the usual disbelief and a slap on the back that meant, joke’s over, now tell me where you are really from, he frowned and asked if there were Kurds in India. I replied that there were none, which seemed to puzzle him, however, our kebabs were on the skewers and he went back to the oven, thus saving me from explaining why there are no Kurds in India, as I had done once before. A little boy in a Barca shirt plonked three plates of salad on our table and a jug full of a yogurt drink that tasted a bit like Iranian Doogh. We said our goodbyes and wandered into town. The streets were flanked by morose looking concrete boxes, and the fluorescent lights made the area look bleak. However, the throng of people, muhajjiba women pushing babies in prams, men in crumpled gallabiyyas, Christian women with huge crosses around their necks, and small groups of shabab added some much needed colour to the bazaar. On our way back to the hotel we wandered past a huge empty looking Church. The gate was open and the inside the building was only visible because of the dim street lights. On closer inspection it turned out that the builders had decided to style a huge Christmas tree in the brickwork. It looked like something out of a cheap Hollywood horror film.

Sinalco, your fav Syrian pop by nhraim (بــيــت نـهــريـم).

As was to be expected, Laurence was still smoking when we got back but he was not alone. A young man in a leather jacket was inspecting his ledger. When we got there he too started with the barrage of questions. Where are you going tomorrow? Which road will you take? Where will you spend the night? After a while we simply said that we were too tired and went to the room.

The next day we bumbled out of bed early so that we could go to the service. As we got closer to the Church, I saw men in suits converging on the street from all sides and women in their gaudy Sunday best walking briskly towards the entrance. The older women were dressed more conservatively and had their head covered. By the front door there was a group of young people in scouts uniform who immediately spotted us and after applying a sticker to our chests, and loudly shouting welcome, ushered us into the church. They took us to the front despite the fact that there were no seats and so after sheepishly looking around we went back and found room to stand. It seems that there were meant to be different sections for men and women but some of the younger men had interspersed themselves in women’s pews. The church seemed to be new and the altar was separated from the main section by a heavy maroon curtain. This apparently signifies the veil between the earth and the heavens. Every so often one of the priests would draw the curtain during the service. There were many white crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and would have been beautiful if it wasn’t for the neon candle lights in them giving off a ghoulish glow. I strained up to see the plaques that hung from each one and found that various people had donated all of them. The deacons wore white flowing robes with red and gold embroidered sashes and two of them carried long staffs that had a silver plate at the top. They would twist these to produce a clacking sound. It seemed to serve the same purpose as Tibetan prayer wheels.

Assyrian celebration in Hassakeh: أقيم في كنيسة السيدة العذراء بمدينة الحسكة السورية

Towards the end of the service a procession of sorts assembled. The priest led it and walked from the altar into the courtyard outside with families trailing behind them. Then they entered the church again. At the head of the column was a young deacon who was enthusiastically swinging an a bronze incense burner and behind him the older priests carried a golden cross and people from the pews leaned forward to touch it. Behind them were young families with their babies. The children were dressed in fantastical costumes. The girls were dressed in frilly skirts and mini ballroom gowns and the little boys in white and black dinner jackets and suits. All the children carried multi-coloured candles and most seemed rather annoyed by all the fuss but the doting mothers manage to keep them calm. At the end of the service when everyone had reconvened in the church the final prayers were said in a mixture of Syriac and Arabic. An old man who must have been the head priest came out and sat on an ornate wooden chair. His golden robes twinkled in the light of the altar and he promptly yawned and dozed off. While I was observing all this the man next to me whispered ‘musafaha’ in my ear and shook my hands and then touched his own hands to his face. Musafaha literally means handshake and I think the blessings from the service were being passed around the church in a sort of Mexican wave style. I did the same with the person to my right albeit a bit hesitantly because I had seen him picking his nose and scratching his ears earlier. The choir on the balcony behind us broke into song as the consecrated bread was passed around. Shortly afterwards another basket weaved its way through the crowds, announcing its arrival with the clinking of coins. I craned my neck up to get a look at the choir. They seemed oddly out of place there and their dress and manner of singing was more reminiscent of a Gospel choir from Brooklyn rather than how I would have imagined a Syriac Orthodox Choir.

There was a massive surge to get out of the church as soon as the service was over and we ploughed our way into the courtyard, through a sea of wayward elbows. It reminded me of the dangerous crowds of Iranian women in Damascus fighting their way out of Seyyida Ruqayya’s shrine on a Thursday night. There was scout band outside belting out catchy tunes but the music didn’t really appeal to us and we pushed out way out of the church. Our luggage was packed and so we set out straightaway for Raqqa. As I was negotiating the late morning traffic, I noticed that the same white Peugeot 504, a favourite of the security services in Syria, had been following us since we left the hotel. I pulled in and went into a shop to buy water thinking that I was just being paranoid and that they would just drive past. I glanced out of the shop window and saw that the car did continue but they pulled in just in front of the car behind which I had parked. Not exactly inconspicuous but then again maybe they wanted us to know they were watching! I got back in and started driving again but this time in the slower lane and I could see in the mirror that they too had adjusted their speed according to ours. Eventually, we took the exit for Halab and about twenty miles later they slowly disappeared from sight. We discussed why they might have been following us and came to the conclusion that it must have been because they thought we might be going to Qimishli. Freddy and Nono nodded off while we headed west. The land became greener again and the afternoon sun was merciless. I switched on the AC, put in a Najat al-Sagheera CD, glanced in my rearview to make sure we were alone and then changed into the fast lane.

Gul: Syria is Turkey’s door to the Middle East. Assad talks with Gul included the situation in Iraq in addition to talking over means to support the Iraqi government in its endeavors to reach national reconciliation and the withdrawal of all the foreign soldiers.

Syria Looking for Improved Relations with Obama Administration
Council on Foreign Relations
by Joshua Landis, May 15, 2009

بعد تجديد العقوبات الامريكية :اتهامات تطال كبار المسؤولين السوريين وتهويلات مغرضة حول طردهم ؟
طباعة أرسل لصديق
خاص (كلنا شركاء)
16/ 05/ 2009

Israel’s Secret War With Iran
The Mossad has stunning achievements to its credit, yet the mullahs remain a threat.
By RONEN BERGMAN Wall Street Journal, MAY 16, 2009 (edits by FLC)

” ……The Israeli intelligence community is now learning this lesson the hard way. It has penetrated enemies like Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Hezbollah and Hamas. Yet despite former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s willingness to authorize highly dangerous operations based on this intelligence, and despite the unquestionable success of the operations themselves, the overall security picture remains as grim as ever.

In 2002, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appointed his friend and former subordinate, Gen. Meir Dagan, director of the Mossad. Gen. Dagan found the organization lacking in imagination and shying away from operational risks. Mr. Sharon, who knew Gen. Dagan from his days as head of a secret assassinations unit that acted against Fatah in the Gaza Strip during the 1970s, told the general that he wanted “a Mossad with a knife between its teeth.” Gen. Dagan transformed the Mossad from top to bottom and made the organization’s sole focus Iran’s nuclear project and its ties to jihadist organizations. He put tremendous pressure on his subordinates to execute as many operations as possible. Moreover, he built up ties with espionage services in Europe and the Middle East on top of Israel’s long-standing relationship with the CIA.

In tandem with Gen. Dagan’s Mossad revolution, other Israeli military intelligence has also made outstanding breakthroughs. The Shin-Bet (Israel’s internal intelligence service), in cooperation with the military, has made huge strides in its understanding of Palestinian guerilla organizations.

The results have been tremendous. During the last four years, the uranium enrichment project in Iran was delayed by a series of apparent accidents: the disappearance of an Iranian nuclear scientist, the crash of two planes carrying cargo relating to the project, and two labs that burst into flames. In addition, an Iranian opposition group in exile published highly credible information about the details of the project, which caused Iran much embarrassment and led to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections.

On July 12, 2006, thanks to precise (?) intelligence, the Israeli Air Force destroyed almost the entire stock of Hezbollah’s long-range rockets (Huh?)stored in underground warehouses. Hezbollah was shocked.In July 2007, another mysterious accident occurred in a missile factory jointly operated by Iran and Syria at a Syrian site called Al-Safir…. In September 2007, Israel destroyed a nuclear reactor built by Syria and aided by North Korea in Dir A-Zur — In February 2008, Hezbollah’s military leader, Imad Mughniyah, was killed in Damascus. In August of that year, Gen. Mohammed Suliman, a liaison to Hamas and Hezbollah who participated in the Syrian nuclear project, was assassinated by a sniper…..

In December 2008, Israel initiated operation Cast Lead, which dealt Hamas a massive blow. Most of its weapons were destroyed within days by Israeli air strikes. (Israel also knew where the Hamas leadership was hiding, but since it was in a hospital Mr. Olmert refused to authorize the strike.(NOW THIS IS REALLY FUNNY!)) In January 2009, Israeli Hermes 450 drones attacked three convoys in Sudan that were smuggling weapons from Iran to the Gaza Strip.

These are all excellent achievements, but did they change reality? Mostly not.

Even worse, the heads of Israeli intelligence are now losing sleep over recent information showing that attempts to delay the Iranian nuclear project have failed. Despite some technical difficulties, the Iranians are storming ahead and may possess a nuclear bomb as early as 2010. Hezbollah, although weakened by the 2006 war and Mughniyah’s assassination, has become (JUST NOW?) the leading political force in Lebanon. ……the trafficking of weapons and ammunition into the Gaza Strip continues. Hamas’s standing among Palestinians has strengthened. ….”

George Mitchell prepares for possible Syria visit AP

“President Barack Obama’s special Middle East envoy is laying plans to visit Syria as a way to push forward talks between the Arab world and Israel, U.S. officials said Friday. Former Sen. George Mitchell and his team have applied for Syrian visas for an as-yet unannounced trip that could come within a month….

Obama and the Middle East
By Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, New York Review of Books, May 14, 2009

The time will come for the US to unfurl a grand diplomatic initiative. Not now. The most urgent task is to prepare the way for that day by countering the skepticism that has greeted and torpedoed every recent American idea, good or bad—from Secretary of State William Roger’s 1969 plan to the road map. The time is for a clean break, in words, style, and approach.

For many in the US, the notion of such radical change often is reduced to the question of whether or not to talk to Hamas. That is a diversion. The challenge is whether Obama can speak to those for whom Hamas speaks. They are the people who have lost faith in America, its motivations, and every proposal it promotes.

The broader point is this: a window exists, short and subject to abrupt closure, during which President Obama can radically upset Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim preconceptions and make it possible for his future plan, whatever and whenever it might be, to get a fair hearing—for American professions of seriousness to be taken seriously. It won’t be done by repackaging the peace process of years past. It won’t be done by seeking to strengthen those leaders viewed by their own people as at best weak, incompetent, and feckless, at worst irresponsible, careless, and reckless. It won’t be done by perpetuating the bogus and unhelpful distinction between extremists and moderates, by isolating the former, reaching out to the latter, and ending up disconnected from the region’s most relevant actors.

It won’t be done by trying to perform better what was performed before. President Bush’s legacy was, in this sense, doubly harmful: he did the wrong things poorly, which now risks creating the false expectation that, somehow, they can be done well….

…For the new president, the starting point should be recognition of some uncomfortable, brutal realities. These include the depth of inherited anti-American animus; of cynicism toward old plans and tired formulas; of popular estrangement from the regional leaders on whom Washington has come to depend; and of popular attraction to militant activists, militant behavior, and a radical worldview….

….

Senior al Qaeda leader in Syria sanctioned by US Treasury
By Bill RoggioMay 14, 2009 11:00 AM

A senior al Qaeda leader based in Syria who recruits and facilitates the entry of foreign fighters into Iraq has been sanctioned by the US Treasury Department.

Sa’ad Uwayyid ‘Ubayd Mu’jil al Shammari, an Iraqi member of al Qaeda who operates from inside Syria, has been designated as a terrorist under Executive Order 13224. The designation allows the US to freeze his assets, prevent him from using financial institutions, and prosecute him for terrorist activities.

“We will continue to aggressively implement the international obligation to target al Qaeda-linked terrorists, like Abu Khalaf, who threaten the safety of Coalition Forces and the stability of Iraq,” said Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence said in a Treasury press release issued today.

Shammari, who is better known as Abu Khalaf, is known to recruit suicide bombers from North Africa and aids in setting up their travel arrangements into Syria and ultimately Iraq. “The facilitator recruited a few suicide bombers, who attempted to travel to Iraq,” the Treasury press release stated.

Khalaf also helped al Qaeda suicide bombers based in the Persian Gulf region travel to the Levant to conduct suicide attacks. The Levant consists of the countries that border the Mediterranean Sea and includes Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt. He is believed to operate in Tal Hamis in Syria and Tal Wardan and the ‘Awinat village in t Rabiah district in Iraq.

US targets Syrian al Qaeda network

Syria has long supported or looked the other way as al Qaeda and Sunni insurgents used the country as a transit point and safe haven for fighters entering western Iraq. More than 90 percent of the suicide bombers who have entered Iraq since the insurgency began in 2003 have entered Iraq via Syria…….

Will the Parties Honor Their Planks?
What Palestinian Refugees Need From Lebanon’s Elections
By FRANKLIN LAMB in CounterPunch, May 12, 2009

Wavel Palestinian Refugee Camp, Bekaa Valley.

“My work here is very difficult. To be honest with you there isn’t a single day when I don’t leave work completely depressed, sometimes in tears. The amount of abuse of Palestinians in Lebanon is at a level that you cannot even imagine unless you live here. At the end of the day I go home and sit. And think. How is this possible? I think of these Palestinians and feel they are so pale and patient and ‘moderate’ compared to what I feel. I tend to keep quiet but what I feel inside is shocking and I am not comfortable describing it. This place is close to exploding.”

–European NGO social worker who assists children of NON-ID Palestinians in Ein el Helwe Refugee Camp

Beirut’s Casino de Liban north of Beirut at Maameltein, perched above the Mediterranean north of Jounieh, was offering as late as 3 a.m. Saturday morning May 9, 2009, 2 to 1 odds that US President Barak Obama will drop out of the sky a la C. Rice and H. Clinton in an 11th hour ‘hail Mary’ to score a last minute goal for Israel. Another US ‘quick drop-in’ to shape the ‘US Ruling Team’ into a ‘US Wining Team’ during President Obama’s upcoming visit to the region.

Will he and will it work?

Hard to say, but the likes of David Hale, Michele Sison, Jeff Feltman, Madeleine Albright, Susan Rice, Alenjandro Wolf (from the sidelines) David Welch, John Burns and David Shapiro—various USAID and other officials do not appear to have built up their squad sufficiently and the election is in less than one month away. Signs of desperation are wafting down from Mount Lebanon and Awkar, site of the US Embassy.

Soon George Mitchell and his expanding entourage will give it a go and maybe, according to this morning’s rumors, President Obama himself, dues ex machina, since the State Department knows he is way more popular among Arabs and Muslims than is current US policy.

As Lebanon wonders if the much admired ‘gifted one’ will appear, the US coaching staff insists that it has been trying not to interfere in the internal affairs of this independent, democratic and sovereign country and explains during carefully culled media interviews, that before the election, none of them will engage or even dialogue with Lebanon’s Hezbollah led Resistance or with Hamas. Some here believe that after the election they may be obliged to seek meetings with both.

The job of recent visiting American officials has been to convince Lebanese voters that PM Fuad Sinioria’s Campaign slogan: “Our policy is to negotiate; theirs is to deter,” (emphasis mine) as he runs for Parliament from the voter and cash rich Hariri home base in Sidon, will deliver votes. The problem is that many Lebanese feel Lebanon is far better off with deterrence against Israeli aggression than what Human Rights Ambassador Ali Khalil calls “fake negotiations carefully designed in Washington and Tel Aviv to achieve nothing”.

Arriving Americans campaign advisors are also expressing alarm over the number of alleged Israeli spies that are being caught—on average of one a week since last January. The US concern appears not to be that there are an awfully lot of Israeli spies in Lebanon, but rather the fact that since the July 2006 War Hezbollah and the Lebanese Internal Security Forces (ISF) seem to be working well together and have revamped the ISF unit into Lebanon’s first effective spy snatching outfit.

The implications of this Opposition-Majority cooperation are sobering for the White House. If Hezbollah can so …..

Binyamin Netanyahu’s delicate balancing act with Barack Obama
James Hider, The Times of London, May 16, 2009

…Mr Netanyahu has talked about granting autonomy to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, accompanied by massive economic investment to raise standards of living, which would bring down violence.

Mr Obama cannot be seen to endorse such a vision publicly. Washington has reiterated its commitment to a two-state solution and insisted that peace talks should be resumed. Mr Netanyahu, bowing to such pressure, said in a meeting this week with Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian President, that he expected negotiations to resume in the coming weeks. He cannot, however, yield too much to America without losing the support of his religious-nationalist coalition.

The United States and Britain are also keen on capitalising on an Arab League peace initiative, presented seven years ago, which would see the entire Arab world make peace with Israel if it returned lands seized in the 1967 Six-Day War. Israel argues that key clauses would allow millions of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in what became Israel in the 1948 war, destroying its identity as a Jewish state.

There have been leaks that the Arab plan has been watered down to make it more palatable to Israel, although, with so much bargaining ahead, all sides are keeping silent about what concessions they might be ready to make.

Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu will agree on one thing — the need to confront Iran’s nuclear ambitions….

…the two leaders may instead focus on further isolating Iran from its key ally Syria, which has expressed an interest in resuming peace talks with Israel under US auspices. …

In response to Bashar Assad’s statement according to which Syria was keen to resume Middle East peace talks just as soon as it had someone it could deal with on the Israeli side, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon (Yisrael Beiteinu) said the Syrian president was “lying”. “He does not want peace. For peace he would have to offer normalization and openness, and this may result in the collapse of his regime,” Ayalon, a former ambassador to Washington, told a cultural forum in Beersheba Saturday. “Assad does not want to open Syria to the rest of the world because he is a tyrant. He wants to pursue a process that will end his isolation and ease the international community’s pressure.” According to Ayalon,…”You can’t wish for peace and at the same time support and arm Hizbullah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad,” he added.

Who Killed Hariri? The Simplest Theory
By t_desco
For Syria Comment
May 15, 2009

The recent release of the four Lebanese generals by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) led journalists like Nicholas Blanford and Georges Malbrunot to discover new “intriguing questions” and to speculate about possible motives for the assassination.

I would like to point out that - without having to resort to speculation - it is possible to establish that members of the Nab’a/Taha cell, described in Malbrunot’s article as being allegedly involved in the assassination, had a personal motive for killing Rafiq Hariri: revenge. Hariri executed Salafi mujaheddin in 2004, who were close to them.

Badih Hamadeh belonged to the Dinniyeh group (1). So did Hassan Nab’a (2), emir of the cell that included the man who claimed the attack in a video statement, Ahmad Abu Adas (3). And so did Ahmed Salim Miqati (2), leader of another cell to which Adas was indirectly linked (4).

Prime Minister Hariri signed the execution order for Badih Hamedeh. Hariri’s predecessor as Prime Minister, Salim Hoss, had refused to sign their execution orders because he objected to the death penalty on moral grounds(5).

Hassan Nab’a’s brother Khader, also a member of his cell, was reportedly linked (6) to the assassination of al-Ahbash leader Nizar al-Halabi in 1995 for which three men were hanged in March 1997, among them Afghan veteran Ahmed al-Qassam (7). Two years later, four Sidon judges were killed in revenge (8).

The Dinniyeh group was founded by Afghan veteran Bassam al-Kanj, who died in clashes with the Lebanese army in the mountains of Dinniyeh in January 2000 (9). Ahmed Miqati escaped to the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh (10), whereas Hassan Nab’a fled to Syria (11). Both Miqati and Nab’a were reportedly in contact with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (12), who knew the latter from Afghanistan (13).

In July 2002, Badih Hamadeh shot and killed three intelligence officers, who had wanted to ask him about his links to the Dinniyeh group (1). Ahmed Miqati sheltered him in Ain al-Hilweh (10), but members of other extremist groups, fearing for the safety of their operations in the camp, handed him over to the authorities (14). The Dinniyeh militants reacted by placing a bomb in the Sidon mosque of Sheikh Maher Hammud who had delivered Hamadeh to the authorities (15).

The smoke from from the "car bomb" that killed Rafik Hariri on 14 Feb 2005

Ahmed Miqati reappeared in 2004 when a plot by his cell was uncovered that intended to blow up several targets in downtown Beirut, including the Italian embassy (16).

Some observers like Nicholas Blanford and Jihad al-Kazen have speculated that this may have been the first attempt to kill Hariri because he liked to meet journalists in a café just opposite the Italian embassy building (17).

It is interesting that, according to some reports, the Palace of Justice was also on the list of targets (16). The trial of Badih Hamadeh, his fiancée and her mother was held at a military tribunal in Beirut (10).

On February 1, 2006, Al-Balad received a telephone call from a man claiming to speak on behalf of al-Qa’ida. The caller announced that a security target would be bombed in retaliation for the arrest of the Nab’a/Taha cell (subsequently a small bomb exploded at the Fakhreddine barracks in Beirut). He also demanded the release of Badih Hamadeh’s fiancée and her mother (18). The call was traced to a public phone booth in Ain al-Hilweh (19).

In October 2007, Fida’ ‘Itani published in Al-Akhbar what was said to be the testimony of a Saudi member of Nab’a’s cell, Faisal Akbar (20). He first confesses to having taken part in the filming of the videotape containing the claim of responsibility by Ahmed Abu Adas. Then he retracts his testimony. Concerning the video by Adas, he declares that Hassan Nab’a had told him that Hariri was responsible for signing the execution orders in the Nizar al-Halabi case. He also explicitly mentions Badi’ (Hamadeh) (21).

The statement read by Ahmed Abu Adas does cite the intention to “avenge” the deaths of “martyrs who were killed by security forces” in Saudi Arabia as one of the reasons for the attack (22). Unfortunately, I was unable to find a complete transcript of the statement.

In the final part of Faisal Akbar’s testimony, he also describes a file found on the computers of Khaled Taha and other members of the cell as a sophisticated bomb-making course by Isma’il al-Khatib (23), indicating the existence of a link between the Miqati/al-Khatib cell and the Nab’a/Taha cell.

Ahmad Abu Adas worked at a computer shop owned in part by Sheikh Ahmed Al-Sani, a member of the Miqati/al-Khatib cell, in the summer of 2004 (4). Ahmad ‘Isaam al-Saani’a was among those arrested when the plot was uncovered in September 2004 (24). It is possible that at that time Adas was already in contact with extremist groups in Ain al-Hilweh and at Al-Huri mosque, where he sometimes led prayers and where he met Khaled Midhat Taha (25).

Coincidentally, Al-Huri mosque is also the place where Ahmed al-Qassam, Khalid Hamid and Munir Abbud clashed with the Ahbash some years earlier (7), before they were arrested and executed for the assassination of Nizar al-Halabi.

When Bassam al-Kanj visited Lebanon in 1994, he met with several Afghan veterans, among them Ahmed al-Qassam who introduced him to Abu Obeida (26), the deputy leader of Usbat al-Ansar, the same Abu Obeida (Jihad Mustafa) whom Ahmad Abu Adas visited in Ain al-Hilweh years later, according to the first Mehlis report (27). Ahmed al-Qassam went on to serve as liaison between Bassam al-Kanj, the nucleus of the Dinniyeh group in Tripoli and Beirut and Abu Obeida’s group in Ain al-Hilweh until he was executed in 1997 (28).

In conclusion, it is important to stress that while this group did have a motive, that does not automatically mean that they did it, or that this motive was the reason why they did it.

Sources:

1.

“The Badih Hamadeh Affair

When three military intelligence officers came to his home in Saida on July 11, 2002, to interrogate him on his alleged involvement in the clashes that pitted jihadist Islamists against the army in the Diniyeh region of northern Lebanon (…), Badih Hamadeh killed them and went to hide in Ain al-Helweh. In the camp, he joined the group of Lebanese militants - the “Diniyeh group” - that had settled in the Tawari’ neighborhood, at the northern end of the camp, with Usbat al-Ansar’s support.”

(Bernard Rougier, “Everyday Jihad”, Harvard University Press, Cambridge and London 2007, p.152)

2.

“A fourth group was described by the MLCC (Mount Lebanon Criminal Court; t_d) as “holding leading positions in the armed gang” and was identified as (…), Ahmad Miqati, (…).

A fifth group was described by the MLCC (Mount Lebanon Criminal Court; t_d) as having been trained in the use of firearms but not with having taken part in the clashes. They were identified as (…), Hasan Nab’a, (…).”

(Lebanon: Torture and unfair trial of the Dhinniyyah detainees, Amnesty International, AI Index: MDE 18/005/2003, 7 May 2003)

3.

قرار اتهامي يعرض لنشاطها ولصلتها بـ«أبو عدس» وخالد طه … الادعاء اللبناني: مجموعة الـ 13 تنتمي لـ «القاعدة» …وخططت لاستهداف احدى الطوائف

بيروت الحياة - 07/04/07//

(Google-cache only)

Nibras Kazimi, “Six Degrees of Terrorism: Tentative Link Between Zarqawi’s Al-Qaeda and the Hariri Assassination,” 7 April 2007

4.

“81. (…) The Lebanese investigation further revealed that Mr. Abu Adass had been employed at a computer shop in the summer of 2004, which was owned in part by Sheikh Ahmed Al-Sani, who was a member of the Ahmed Miqati and Ismaíl Al-Khatib network.”

(Detlev Mehlis, Report of the International Independent Investigation Commission Established Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1595. 19 October 2005)

5.

“Three executed at dawn in Lebanon, first in six years (…) Capital punishment was rare in Lebanon until a 1994 law effectively renewed the practice. Whereas only three convicts had been hanged in the past 35 years, the law cleared the way for 14 fresh executions. Execution orders were then stopped when Lahoud first took office in 1998 because then prime minister Salim Hoss was an opponent of the death penalty and refused to sign any such orders.”

(AFP, 17 January 2004)

6.

“After a missile attack on Israel from south Lebanon on December 27, 2005, the Organization of al-Qaeda in Iraq, or the Land of the Two Rivers, issued an audio-recording for its leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in which he claimed responsibility for the attack and said it was ordered by al-Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden.

Among the names announced by Lebanese authorities, four of the suspects were Lebanese nationals. (…) Among the Lebanese were Khader and Malek Nab’a, who are relatives of the suspects in the Dinnieh incidents of 2000 (see the indictment in Lebanon-based al-Nahar newspaper, July 11 2000).

In addition, Khader Nab’a is associated with the appearance of the Salafi-Jihadist movement in Lebanon, when the leader of the al-Ahbash religious sect, Nizar Halabi, was assassinated in 1995.”

(Murad Batal al-Shishani, “Al-Qaeda’s Presence in Lebanon“, Terrorism Focus Volume 3, Issue 4, 31 January 2006 , Jamestown Foundation)

7.

“The Lebanese public first heard Abu Mahjin’s name at the end of 1995, several months after Shaykh Nizar al-Halabi was assassinated on August 31. The security forces arrested five young men, three Lebanese nationals and two Palestinians. Before taking violent action, these men had been harassed by the Ahbash in the mosque of Beirut’s Arab University, in the heart of the popular Sunni neighborhood of Tariq al-Jidaydeh, where Islamist groups usually control street politics. (…) The tribunal also issued death sentences for three of the five men arrested. The sentence was carried out on March 24, 1997: the three Islamists - a Palestinian, Munir Abbud, and two Lebanese men, Ahmad al-Qassam and Khalid Hamid - were hanged at dawn in the courtyard of Rumiyyeh Prison.”

(Rougier 2007, p.119, 120)

Note: The mosque of Beirut’s Arab University = Al-Huri mosque.

8.

“In the Usbat al-Ansar network, for instance, members of a “military wing” took the initiative, on June 8, 1999, to machine-gun four judges while they were in session at Saida’s Palace of Justice, probably to avenge the execution of four (sic; t_d) Islamists sentenced in 1997 after the murder of Nizar al-Halabi, the leader of al-Ahbash.”

(Rougier 2007, p.103)

9.

cf. Rougier 2007, Chapter 7, Underground Jihad in Sir al-Diniyeh, p. 229ff.

10.

“Abu Obeida (Badih Hamadeh; t_d) Pleads Guilty to Murdering 3 Soldiers, Tells How

Fundamentalist activist Abu Obeida has pleaded guilty to killing three Lebanese army soldiers in Sidon and described to a Beirut military tribunal how he carried out the tripartite murder in the presence of his Palestinian fiancée and her mother. (…)

“I then ran into the garden, climbed over the fence and sprinted to the Ein El-Hilweh camp, where Ahmed Mikati and Saadeddine Seiss sheltered me in a mosque,” said Abu Obeida, who, if convicted, could be executed by a firing squad.

Mikati and Seiss are the leaders of the so-called Dinniyeh group of fundamentalists who flood (”fled”; t_d) north Lebanon’s Dinniyeh mountains after an Islamic anti-government insurrection that the army crushed in the first week of 2000. Mikati and Seiss are standing trial in absentia.

Abu Obeida’s fiancée, Sohair Saeed, and her mother Nayfeh Qanwan, both pleaded not guilty to a charge of helping Abu Obeida shoot the three troopers at the midnight of July 11-12. The court adjourned until Sept. 17 for defense hearings.”

(Naharnet, Beirut, 23 September 2002)

11.

“Arrestation de membres proches d’el-Qaëda venus de Syrie ?

Les services de sécurité libanais ont arrêté 18 salafistes qui seraient liés au réseau el-Qaëda, dont certains membres pourraient être liés à l’assassinat de Rafic Hariri. Dans un reportage diffusé jeudi par la LBC, et dont les informations ont été reprises par le quotidien koweïtien al-Raï al-Aam, les membres de deux groupes salafistes qui se sont infiltrés au Liban via la Syrie ont été arrêtés au cours des derniers jours par les Forces de sécurité intérieure. [...]

Il s’agit de Hassan Mohammad Nabaa, « l’Émir » du groupe (le chef dans le jargon salafiste). Ce dernier avait pris part aux événements de Denniyé en 2000, avant de fuir en direction de la Syrie. Son frère a été arrêté lors des manifestations de dimanche dernier à Achrafieh. [...]

Les mêmes sources ont en outre révélé que les deux personnes les plus dangereuses de ce groupe, Bilal Zaaroura et Khaled Taha, seraient toujours en fuite. Ces derniers sont entrés au Liban en décembre dernier. [...]”

(L’Orient-Le Jour, 11 Février 2006)

12.

“Tre dei dodici estremisti salafiti fermati nei giorni scorsi a Beirut hanno ammesso l’ appartenenza al commando suicida che agì in Iraq. Li guidava Ahmad Salim Miqati, uomo che i servizi segreti ritengono legato ad Al Zarkawi.”

(Terroristi arrestati: «Colpirono a Nassiriya», Fiorenza Sarzanini, Corriere della Sera, 25 settembre 2004, Pagina 8.

Testimony of Nab’a cell member Faisal Akbar, translated by Nibras Kazimi:

(Faisal Akbar:) “A: (…) The letters, which you have shown me, and that I have recognized them, are letters from the brothers in Usbet al-Ansar in the Ain al-Helwah Camp to Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, through Rashid, (while) the letter addressed to “the Hajji”, which is an alias for Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, and the letter to Abu Laith al-Nejdi, who was martyred (later), these two letters (belong) to Rashid.”

(Nibras Kazimi, Narrative of a Conspiracy, Part 4)

13.

“Q: Where did you meet Rashid and how and when?

(Faisal Akbar:) A: I met Rashid who is in your custody and now I found out that his name is Hassan Naba’a, in Afghanistan during the year 2000 in one of the training camps and we stayed together for approximately five months, then Abu Musa’ab al-Zarqawi sent him to Lebanon to organize groups to prepare the ground for the jihad in Lebanon, so Rashid arrived and he was called at the time “Abu Muslim”.

(Nibras Kazimi, Narrative of a Conspiracy, Part 4)

14.

cf. Rougier 2007, The Badih Hamadeh Affair, p.152ff.

15.

“Arafat loyalists fight hardliners linked to al-Qa’ida”

By Robert Fisk at the Ein al-Helweh refugee camp, Sidon, Lebanon

(…)

The Jaamat men have threatened to turn the camp into a bloodbath. Indeed, when another of their members, Badi Hmadeh, was turned over to Lebanese police last month, its leader, Ahmed Miqati, warned he would transform the camp into “another Afghanistan”. The trouble is, these few armed and very strict Muslims could provoke a great deal of killing. (…)

As for the men of the Jaamat al-Noor, they have told their friends that they do not recognise Syria, Lebanon or Palestine, that “we live in Allah’s wide dominion and implement his decree”. Their wives wear the chador. Their homes are decorated with pictures of Mr bin Laden. In protest at the arrest of Badi Hamadeh, they left an explosive device in Sidon - inside the city’s al-Quds mosque.”

(The Independent, 16 August 2002)

“Palestinian Fanatics Threaten to Turn Lebanon into ‘Pool of Blood‘

(…) “We have addressed a warning to Hammoud for his betrayal two weeks ago,” said Osbat Al Noor’s statement, referring to a bomb found at the bottom of the rostrum that Hammoud uses to deliver his sermons at Sidon’s Al Quds mosque, two days after Abu Obeida’s arrest.

“It seems, however, that this warning was not enough to stop Maher Hammoud from conspiring with several factions in the camp to turn over the Dinniyeh group,” the statement said. “We declare that we will turn Ein El-Helweh and the whole of Lebanon into a pool of blood if the conspirators press ahead with their plots,” the statement threatened.”

(Naharnet, Beirut, 12 August 2002)

16.

“Lebanon’s Minister of the Interior Elias al-Murr said Isma’il al-Khatib was among 10 people arrested on 22 September, apparently for alleged links to al-Qa’eda and an alleged plan to attack the Italian and Ukrainian embassies, the Palace of Justice and other government security buildings in Beirut.”

(Lebanon: Amnesty International demands independent investigation into death in custody and end to incommunicado detention, Amnesty International, 30 September 2004, AI Index: MDE 18/011/2004)

17.

“Without knowing it, Elias Murr thwarted the first, or original plot to assassinate Rafik Hariri, which had it succeeded, would have done away with the country’s entire future, by striking at the Beirut Central District, the symbol of Lebanon’s recovery.

The Italian Embassy in Lebanon faces the Parliament building at Nejmeh Square and is next to St. George Eastern Orthodox church and the Etoile coffee shop where PM Hariri used to meet friends and journalists upon exiting Parliament. If a ton of explosives had gone off there, the destruction would have been devastating, right in the heart of the capital, and would have killed hundreds.”

(Jihad al-Khazen, The International Investigation and Old Security Files, Al-Hayat, 2 November 2005)

Note: In an apparent misreading of the Mehlis report, the article wrongly states that Ahmed Abu Adas was “part of” “the Ahbash”.

18.

“Blast near Lebanese army post after al Qaeda warning

By Nadim Ladki

BEIRUT (Reuters) - A bomb exploded near a Lebanese army barracks in Beirut early on Thursday, shortly after a purported threat by al Qaeda to attack security installations in Lebanon.

Security sources said the night blast slightly wounded a soldier, wrecked a car and blew out windows in nearby buildings.

They said a local newspaper had received a telephone call from someone claiming to speak on behalf of al Qaeda and declaring that a security target would be bombed in Beirut in retaliation for the arrest last month of 13 group members (the Nab’a/Taha cell; t_d). (…)

Al-Balad newspaper reported in its morning edition that it had received a telephone call in which a man claiming to be al Qaeda’s representative in Lebanon gave the authorities two weeks to release two women detainees.

“The caller threatened to launch three qualitative military operations simultaneously and clash with the security forces if the two women … are not freed,” al-Balad said in a report.

The women are the fiancee and her mother of an al Qaeda member (Badih Hamadeh; t_d) who was recently executed for killing three military intelligence agents.”

(Reuters, February 2 2006)

19.

“Two Suspected Qaida Members Held Over Army Barracks’ Bomb”

Military Examining Magistrate Rashid Mizher questioned two alleged al-Qaida network members suspected of detonating a bomb near an army barracks in Beirut two weeks ago.

Khalil al-Sowda and Abdel-Rahman al-Jasser, both Palestinians, are also suspected of hurling hand-grenades near Lebanese army checkpoints outside the Palestinian Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in the outskirts of Sidon. (…)

An army statement issued later Thursday said investigators traced the call made to al-Balad newspaper to a public phone booth in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el-Hilweh. The camp near the southern port city of Sidon is known to be a hotbed for fugitives and Islamic extremists.”

(Naharnet, Beirut, 16 February, 2006)

20.

رحلة فيصل أكبر من السعودية إلى سوريا فبيروت

فداء عيتاني

مالك نبعة ينفي التُهم وأكبر يعترف بتجهيز أبو عدس

فداء عيتاني

http://www.al-akhbar.com/ar/node/50181

السعودي أكبر يعترف بتفاصيل التفخيخ والاستطلاع وتنفيذ الاغتيال

فداء عيتاني

http://www.al-akhbar.com/ar/node/50301

السعودي أكبر يتراجع عن اعترافاته ويدلي بما هو أخطر

فداء عيتاني

http://www.al-akhbar.com/ar/node/50501

Translated by Nibras Kazimi, Narrative of a Conspiracy, 5 November 2007

21.

“Q: What did you see on television when Ahmed Abu Ades appeared, and what do you remember of him?

(Faisal Akbar:) A: I remember watching him on the Aljazeera channel, in a film cut up into two or three segments, reading a statement (on behalf) of the Nusra wel Jihad group, taking responsibility for the Hariri assassination. I don’t remember all the reasons, but I remember some of them that revolved around the revenge for the martyrs of the haramein (Translator’s Note: the holy cities of Mecca and Medina), and it was widespread among us that Hariri had signed the execution (orders) for some of the Salafist mujaheddin in Lebanon. (…)”

“(Faisal Akbar:) A: No one was with us, and Rashid said at the time, after the film was played on Aljazeera, that “Hariri was implicated and responsible for signing the execution (orders) for the mujaheddin in the Nezar al-Halabi case” and I hadn’t known about this matter until Rashid told me about it.

(…)

A: I certify to you that what I mentioned now is honest and true, and what Rashid had mentioned about the execution of the mujaheddin in the Nezar al-Halabi case is what I learnt from him. As for what (I meant) by widespread, are the executions in general, which Hariri signed, and they concern past Lebanese mujaheddin like Badi’ or Wadi’.”

(Nibras Kazimi, Narrative of a Conspiracy, Part 4)

22.

“To support our brother mujahidin in the land of the two holy mosques and to avenge their righteous martyrs who were killed by security forces of the Saudi regime in the land of the two holy mosques, we resolved, after relying on Almighty God, to carry out fair punishment against the agent of this regime and its cheap tool in Greater Syria, the sinner and maker of illegal money, Rafik Hariri, through the implementation of a resounding martyrdom operation.”

(Nicholas Blanford, Killing Mr Lebanon, London, Tauris 2006, p. 141)

23.

(Faisal Akbar:) “A: (…) As for the studies that were saved on the computers of the guys, these are modern combat studies, like the seminar of the martyr Isma’il al-Khatib on assembling electronic circuits to attach to explosives, and seminars on making explosives, and seminars on advanced communications equipment.”

(Nibras Kazimi, Narrative of a Conspiracy, Part 4)

24.

نص القرار الإتهامي لقاضي التحقيق العسكري الأول في لبنان بحق35 شخصا من شبكتي أحمد المقياتي وإسماعيل الخطيب بتهمة التخطيط لتفجير السفارتين الإيطالية والأوكرانية في لبنان

صيداويات - الثلاثاء 04 كانون ثاني 2005

25.

“174. (…) Khaled Midhat Taha, another religious associate of Mr. Abu

Adass’s, (…). Mr. Taha met Mr. Abu Adass when they were students at

the Arab University where they used to meet in the University’s mosque.”

(Mehlis I, October 2005)

26.

“During his 1994 stay in Lebanon, Basim al-Kanj had met demobilized Afghan veterans who had returned to their homeland. Thanks to one of them, Ahmad al-Qassam, whom he had met in Peshawar - and who was executed on March 24, 1997, for having participated in the assassination of Nizar al-Halabi, the head of al-Ahbash - he met Usbat al-Ansar leaders for the first time in the Ain al-Helweh camp. He met the group’s emir, Abu Mahjin, and his lieutenant, Abu Ubayda, also known as Jihad Mustafa, the head of the clandestine organization’s military wing.”

(Rougier 2007, p.233)

27.

“80. (…) According to Mr. Abdel-Al, he obtained information about Mr. Abu Adass’s background, (…) the fact that he often went to Ein al Helwa, (…) and that he visited Abu Obeida (deputy to the leader of Jund al Sham).”

“197. (…) the Al-Ahbash Security Service had seen Mr. Abu Adass before the assassination in the Ain Al-Hilweh Palestinian camp together with Abu Obeida the deputy leader of the terrorist group Asbat al Ansar.”

(Mehlis I, October 2005)

28.

“After Basim al-Kanj left for the United States in 1995 (to establish the “Boston al-Qa’ida sleeper cell”; t_d), Ahmad al-Qassam appointed people close to him to develop ties with Abu Mahjin’s group. Umar Yi’ali commuted between Tripoli and Ain al-Helweh, (…). Ihab al-Banna (…) also went back and forth between Ain al-Helweh and the capital to maintain ties with Usbat al-Ansar. After Ahmad al-Qassam was executed in 1997 for the assassination of Shaykh al-Halabi, Basim al-Kanj, who was now settled in Beirut (he returned to Lebanon in 1996; t_d), asked Ihab al-Banna to become the main liaison with Ain al-Helweh. Banna went to the camp at least once a month to give religion lessons to Abu Ubayda (…).”

(Rougier 2007, p.235)

Moallem Discusses with Feltman and Shapiro

Ire over US Sanctions Causes Policy Review in Damascus

The Syrians are upset with the way sanctions were reimposed by President Obama. The current administration’s use of language identical to that used by President Bush, without any phrases to soften the hostility and without referring to dialogue, progress, or anticipated improvements angered Syrian policy makers. Many are becoming ever more convinced that the Obama administration cannot bring about real change and is falling back on the use of sticks and the intimidation techniques that President Bush favored. Officials have suggested that Damascus is reviewing its policies and does not know where the US-Syrian dialogue goes from here. No one whats to talk about the promised Mitchell visit as yet. They are still trying to digest the implications of the Feltman-Shapiro visit last week.

The scheduled agenda for Feltman’s and Shapiro’s visit in Damascus last week was to implement a wide ranging agreement on intelligence sharing and security cooperation in Iraq, which included joint patrols and other arrangements that could finally end border disputes and put an additional dent in infiltration across the long Syrian-Iraqi border. Today, no communications exist between officials on the two sides of the Iraqi-Syrian border, which often leads to security breaches, misunderstandings, and recriminations from both sides that the other is at fault for placing politics above security, ideology above the lives of common people, and posturing above peace.

On Lebanon, the Americans expressed unsolicited gratification that the election preparations and campaigning was proceeding in an atmosphere of freedom and security.

On the Golan and possible Peace talks with Israel, it is too early to say what will happen. Netanyahu has only reiterated his refusal to give up the Golan.

A Syrian who has good contacts with the government in Damascus wrote me the following about the way Obama renewed sanctions:

Really inexplicable. Obama had the chance to protect his troops in Iraq without further delay, and to really change the dynamic of US-Syria relations by immediately sending an ambassador to Damascus and starting intelligence sharing. I do not know whose idea it was to test Damascus and to throw a spanner in the works. Soon negotiations will lose momentum and relations will fall back into the quagmire of the Bush Syria-policy. I am not sure how US interests are served by this continuing dance of recriminations and insults which do nothing but perpetuate mistrust and ill-will.

Another said:

“How dare they send Feltman and Shapiro to announce that they are renewing sanctions and then explain that we should think nothing of it — that it is routine — and expect that we will just turn the page and get on with implementing the broad security and intelligence sharing plan that was to be the substance of our meetings.

Another Syrian official explained:

“Yes, we expected the sanctions to be renewed, but why use the identical language that Bush used? Why not say something to reflect the progress made in out discussions and our mutual intentions of changing our relationship? Obama could have said something like: “We renew sanctions but hope that by the end of a year we will be able to revise our relations and will have made considerable progress on a number of differences we have with Syria.”

An American-Syrian explained:

“Syria is not changing. They think that they can give zero to the Americans. What has Syria really done for America? Nothing. Syrian officials believe that America needs Syria and has been wrong to treat it so badly these last eight years that they should renounce sanctions and change their ways for free. The world does not work like that. This is a golden opportunity for Syria. It is slipping from Syria’s hands because of pride and obtuseness.

The following article in Syria-News quote Turkey’s Foreign Minister saying that Syria is genuinely interested in peace negotiations with Israel and should be given the benefit of the doubt.

Gul

غول:سورية أكثر صدقية من إسرائيل ونيتها حقيقة في الانفتاح على الغرب

الاخبار السياسية

وينقل إلى سورية تطمينات أمريكية حول علاقاتهما

وصف الرئيس التركي عبد الله غول سورية بأنها “كانت أكثر صدقية من إسرائيل خلال المفاوضات غير المباشرة”, مشيرا إلى أن “الرئيس الأسد لديه النية الحقيقية والقوية في الانفتاح على الغرب”.

وأضاف غول في مقابلة مع صحيفة الحياة أن “سورية وإسرائيل كانتا على وشك الانتقال إلى مفاوضات مباشرة بينهما، لكن حرب غزة أدت إلى إحباط المفاوضات غير المباشرة التي كانت ناجحة”.

وكانت سورية وإسرائيل وصلتا إلى المرحلة الرابعة من مباحثات السلام غير المباشرة بوساطة تركيا قبل أن تعلقها سورية إثر العدوان الإسرائيلي على غزة أواخر العام الماضي.

وحول العلاقات السورية الأمريكية قال الرئيس التركي إن “ملف سورية كان من بين أهم الملفات التي ناقشها مع الرئيس الأميركي باراك أوباما خلال زيارته إلى أنقرة، وأنه يحمل إلى دمشق التي سيزورها بعد يومين تطمينات”.

ومن المقرر أن يصل الرئيس التركي إلى سورية الجمعة المقبل للتباحث مع كبار المسؤولين السوريين في العديد من القضايا ذات الاهتمام المشترك.

وتأتي زيارة غول بعد أكثر من شهر على توقيع اتفاقية للتعاون الفني العسكري في مجالات الصناعات الدفاعية وتبادل المعلومات الفنية والعلمية بين سورية وتركيا, و قيام قوات برية سورية وتركية وعلى مدى ثلاثة أيام، بتدريبات عسكرية مشتركة عبر الحدود الدولية بين البلدين.

Maariv via the Pulse via FLC

“US President Barack Obama’s two envoys returned from Damascus last weekend with the impression that Syria is still not ready to withdraw its support for terror,” Maya Bengal wrote in Ma’ariv today:

Syria criticizes renewal of US sanctions
By ALBERT AJI

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syria rejected the Obama administration’s decision to renew economic and diplomatic sanctions against Damascus and urged Washington to abandon “foolish policies,” a state-run newspaper reported Sunday….

Syria’s Tishrin newspaper said U.S. policies of isolation, blockades and sanctions adopted by the former U.S. administration “have put the United States in an intractable impasse.” It said Washington can reverse this path if it stepped up its role in promoting peace, security and stability in the Middle East.

The United States should get rid of “foolish policies and replace them with openness, dialogue and discussions through transparent practices, the foremost of which is an open and final reversal of the policy of sanctions against states and peoples,” the newspaper said in a front-page editorial.

Syria Must Take ‘Immediate’ Action on Iraq Fighters, U.S. Says
2009-05-11
By Viola Gienger

May 11 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. called on Syria to take “immediate and decisive action” to stop the transit of foreign fighters into neighboring Iraq, where a spate of bombings made April the deadliest month since September.

Acting Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman and White House adviser Dan Shapiro raised the issue with Syrian officials during their meetings in Damascus last week, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said today.

“We continue to have very deep concern about this issue of the flow of foreign fighters going into Iraq via Syria,” Kelly told reporters in Washington. Syria should improve screening at the Damascus airport and increase security on the border with Iraq and cooperation with Iraqi officials, he said….

The death toll was 40 percent higher than in March, AFP said last week. Still, data compiled by Washington’s Brookings Institution from U.S. Defense Department reports show the level of violence remains well below that of two years ago.

Syria denies country is route for al-Qaida
2009-05-13

DAMASCUS, Syria, May 13 (UPI) — Syrian officials are denying a news report that al-Qaida has resumed sneaking fighters into Iraq through Syria. Officials said the published report in a U.S. newspaper that the smuggling resumed was false and indicated U.S. confusion about security matters in Iraq, the Kuwaiti news agency KUNA reported Wednesday.

Terrorist Traffic Via Syria Again Inching Up
By Karen DeYoung

Last October, as the Bush administration was touting a dramatic drop in the number of suicide bombings in Iraq, four young Tunisian men left their homes for Libya and then headed to Syria. There, they were met at the Damascus airport and taken to a safe house. Six tedious months passed until their handlers felt that it was safe to move the men again. In April, they were smuggled across the Iraqi border; within days, two were dead, among the suicide bombers who have killed at least 370 Iraqis in a wave of attacks over the past several weeks.

The third Tunisian disappeared. The fourth was captured and, according to a senior U.S. military official, provided interrogators with this account of their travels.

His statement, combined with what other sources had previously indicated to U.S. and Iraqi intelligence, confirmed what American officials had suspected: After a long hiatus, the Syrian pipeline operated by the organization al-Qaeda in Iraq is back in business.

The revival of a transit route that officials had declared all but closed comes as the Obama administration is exploring a new diplomatic dialogue with Syria. At the same time, Washington remains concerned by Syrian activities — including ongoing support for the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as activities involving Iraq.

On Wednesday, acting Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey D. Feltman and National Security Council official Daniel Shapiro arrived in Syria for their second visit since Barack Obama’s inauguration as president. Two days later, however, Obama renewed U.S. sanctions against Syria, accusing Damascus of supporting terrorism in the Middle East and undermining Iraqi stability.

“I think it sends the message that we have some very serious concerns,” Robert Wood, a State Department spokesman, said of the sanctions renewal. Feltman, he added, was “in Damascus to talk about . . . how we can get Syria to change its behavior and see if it’s willing to really engage seriously in a dialogue, be a positive role in the Middle East. Up until now, Syria hasn’t played that positive role.”

Saudi Arabia Must Come Off the Sidelines in Iraq
Michael Wahid Hanna |12 May 2009
World Politics Review

At a recent forum on U.S.-Saudi relations in Washington, D.C., current and former Saudi officials decried the previous U.S. administration’s Middle East policies. …On his recent trip to the region, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates reiterated his appeal to Riyadh and Cairo to appoint ambassadors to Baghdad….

The Saudi-Iraqi border represents yet another opportunity for mutually beneficial cooperation. The border has been a main entryway for takfiri extremists into Iraq, and Saudis represent (.pdf) a high proportion of those foreign fighters. While infiltration has decreased with the improvements in security, increased coordination and joint planning would improve the effectiveness of border patrols and further stem the flow. That, in turn, would help to blunt the dangers posed to Saudi Arabia and the broader Arab world by the return of seasoned and radicalized fighters…

“The critical juncture will be what comes out of the Obama-Netanyahu meeting,” Abdullah said.

“If there is procrastination by Israel on the two-state solution or there is no clear American vision for how this is going to play out in 2009, then all the tremendous credibility that Obama has worldwide and in this region will evaporate overnight if nothing comes out in May. Reuters

An assured Assad in Financial Times, May 10 2009
By Roula Khalaf and Anna Fifield

“The Syrians now believe they are the centre of the Middle East,” quips Andrew Tabler…
US officials fear that Syria might be overestimating the change of tone of the Obama administration and misreading its intentions. To stress that point, a day after a senior US envoy was in Damascus at the end of last week, the administration renewed its unilateral sanctions against Syria, citing the regime’s support for terrorism and weapons trade.

“We want to see a change in Syria’s outlook, away from being a spoiler and more towards being a constructive problem solver, at least willing to deal with some of the problems in the region,” says one US official. “It is not that we want them to cut off relations with Iran but to recognise that the west can offer things that Iran can’t – like economic prosperity and peace with Israel.”

by Ali Gharib in IPS

Under centrist Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Israel had been in Turkish-mediated peace talks with Syria until they were broken off during the Israel Defence Force’s brutal three-week incursion into the Gaza Strip.

“They had spent a lot of energy doing the Olmert thing in Turkey,” Landis said. “No one believed anything would happen under Olmert, but the idea was you get momentum and create things. [Now] the Syrians feel like they’re being played and they’re getting asked to do a strip tease, and they’re not going to get anything but knowing glances from Israel.”

Indeed, the young right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave even less than a “knowing glance” over the weekend.

“Remaining on the Golan will ensure Israel has a strategic advantage in cases of military conflict with Syria,” Netanyahu told reporters on Thursday. He reaffirmed that he didn’t intend to withdraw from the strategic plateau during a cabinet meeting Sunday.

With the Golan Heights off the table, resumption of meaningful talks is unlikely.

Thaw with Syria Hits Stumbling Blocks
By Ali Gharib

WASHINGTON, May 11 (IPS) - U.S. President Barack Obama issued a statement on May 8 calling for the renewal of sanctions on Syria, which were set to expire on Monday. The declaration came at the end of a busy week in which both high-level U.S. officials and the Iranian president visited the Syrian capital, Damascus.

Though Syria has recently sought engagement with the U.S. and Israel, the executive order extending sanctions is only the latest in a series of significant stumbling blocks to peeling off one of Iran’s closest regional allies.

The renewed sanctions came on the heels of two-high profile visits to Damascus - first by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and then U.S. diplomat Jeffrey Feltman and Daniel Shapiro of Obama’s National Security Council - which exemplified the West’s sometimes-faltering efforts to pull Syria away from Iran’s influence.

Obama cited Syria’s support for terror, its weapons programmes, and its “undermining” of U.S. goals in Iraq - collectively “the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy” of the U.S. - as reasons to extend the George W. Bush-era sanctions for one year.

Two weeks earlier, Representatives Mark Kirk of Illinois and Eliot Engel of New York wrote a letter to the White House urging Obama to “act quickly” and renew the sanctions.

According to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, which compiles statistics, Kirk received the most campaign donations from pro-Israel political action committees of any House member, 62,000 dollars in total, in the 2007/2008 cycle. Engel was the second largest Democratic recipient in the House in that period, with 36,500 dollars.

But the extension of sanctions does not mean that the possibility of U.S. engagement with Syria is disappearing. Indeed, there were indications that Obama’s Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, would be visiting Syria next month.

Rather, the sanctions appear to be a reinforcement of the status quo.

“This is the clearest sign that negotiations between Damascus and Washington are going, if not badly, at least slowly, despite statements by both sides that progress is being made,” wrote Oklahoma University professor Joshua Landis on his blog, Syria Comment.

“It tells us that despite the rhetoric about a ‘new U.S. relationship’ to Middle Eastern countries, Washington still believes that it must keep its foot on Syria’s economic throat in order to win concessions.”

Mending ties will take time
By Sami Moubayed, Special to Gulf News
Published: May 11, 2009, 23:14

The big news is that US President Barack Obama has renewed sanctions on Syria, imposed by his predecessor, George W. Bush, in 2004. The order, numbered 13,338, was due to expire on May 10.

The renewal came after Acting Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, Jeffrey Feltman and National Security Council official Daniel Shapiro visited Syria, followed immediately by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Foreign Minister Walid Al Mua’allem met with the official US envoys, who were making their second trip to Syria since Obama came to office last January, and said that the talks had been “constructive.”

During a meeting with his Iranian counterpart, President Bashar Al Assad defended Syria’s alliance with Tehran as “strategic”, saying that the common vision shared since 2005 was “correct.” Syria had no intention of abandoning its allies, or changing its policies vis-à-vis the resistance in Lebanon or Palestine, the Syrian president said.

US-based Syria expert Joshua Landis said at the time, “This is the clearest sign that negotiations between Damascus and Washington are going, if not badly, at least slowly despite statements by both sides that progress is being made.”

Others also analysed Feltman’s visit and the renewal of sanctions and said these developments served the interests of the anti-Syrian March 14 Coalition in Lebanon. Some pointed to a visit by Israeli officials to Washington, where they had extensive talks with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, while sanctions were being renewed on Damascus.

Let’s not get carried away here purely for the sake of creating media excitement. Renewal of sanctions is a routine process that was expected, and does not affect the Syrian-US commitment to continue searching for common ground in the Middle East.

Terrorist Traffic Via Syria Again Inching Up
Pipeline to Iraq Back In Business After Lull

Syria Sentences Kurd Dissident To 3-1/2 Years Jail by Khalid Oweis
Mishaal al-Tammo, 52, was found guilty of `weakening national morale` after a five session trial at the Palace of Justice.
Syria Sentences Kurd Dissident To 3-1/2 Years Jail
May 11, 2009

A Syrian court sentenced a Kurdish dissident to 3-1/2 years in jail on political charges on Monday, the latest in a string of convictions against opponents of the government, which is mending its ties with the West.

Mishaal al-Tammo, 52, was found guilty of “weakening national morale” after a five session trial at the Palace of Justice in the Syrian capital attended by diplomats from Europe and the United States.

“This trial is a persecution of the culture of diversity,” Tammo said in a statement released by his Movement for the Kurdish Future.

“Oppressive state security does not take into account that I am not Arab, that I belong to the Kurdish nation,” he added.

Tammo, a campaigner for the rights of what he had described as a dispossessed Kurdish minority in Syria, was arrested in the north eastern province of Qamishli in August. Political pamphlets were found in his car.

Chief among his causes are the plight of tens of thousands of Kurds who were denied citizenship following a 1960s census and a ban on teaching Kurdish language.

A rights group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the conviction ran counter to a right of free expression enshrined in Syria’s constitution and international conventions the state had signed.

Mohannad al-Hassani, a member of Tammo’s defence team, said the judge refused to allow any witnesses to appear on behalf of his client.

Dr. Shaykh Mahmoud Ahmad Kaftaru, son of the deceased Grand Mufti of Syria, was freed by Political security after holding him in detention for 13 days. Read the following article in Arabic.

الأمن السياسي بدمشق : يطلق سراح الدكتور الشيخ محمود احمد كفتارو !
طباعة أرسل لصديق
خاص ( كلنا شركاء)

MI Chief: Gaza smuggling continues, despite Egypt’s efforts
By Yuval Azoulay

Military Intelligence Chief Amos Yadlin said on Tuesday that despite Egypt’s increased patrol along its border with the Gaza Strip, the smuggling of weapons into the coastal territory has not been stymied.

Yadlin told the Knesset Foreign Affairs Committee that Egypt has made impressive efforts along all of its borders, including with Sudan, but has been unable to stop Bedouins living in Sinai from cooperating with militants in the Gaza Strip.

“The situation is better than before, but the Gaza Strip has still not been hermetically sealed to smuggling,” Yadlin told lawmakers.

SYRIAN ECONOMY

Syria to Give Foreign Investors Stock Exchange Access (Update1)
2009-05-11, By Nadim Issa

May 11 (Bloomberg) — The Syrian Commission on Financial Markets & Securities may let foreign investors trade in the country’s stocks in a week, Chief Executive Officer of the Damascus Securities Exchange Mohamad Al-Jleilati said.

Brokerages, who until now have been able to trade on behalf of clients, may be allowed to trade shares on their own account as well, Jleilati said in a phone interview from Damascus today. “We are also looking into the possibility of allowing the brokerage companies to buy and sell shares in listed companies but they have to abide by certain rules,” he said.

Trading on the exchange began in March. Seven companies are listed on the market, which opens for two days a week. Syria is looking for alternative sources of revenue to boost the economy as oil reserves dwindle. For brokers to qualify for buying shares on their own account they will have to sell them in less than three months and won’t be entitled to participate in shareholder meetings or have voting rights, he said. The exchange will also allow listed companies to split their shares, thereby decreasing their nominal value from 500 Syrian pounds each to 100 pounds, he said. Syria will lower the amount in initial share offerings to 25 percent from 45 percent to encourage family-owned companies to list on the bourse, Jleilati said.

Government Approval

The commission will propose the rule changes that still require government approval, he said. The exchange will keep its daily price-fluctuation limit on stocks at 2 percent this year, Jleilati said. Trading volume on the stock exchange reached 705,782 Syrian pounds ($15,000) today. International Bank for Trade & Finance dropped 1.9 percent to 1,112 pounds, while the remaining seven listed companies climbed to their 2 percent trading limits, according to the daily bulletin on the exchange’s Web Site.

Ehsani2 did some math to show that the brokerage firms working at the Syrian Stock Exchange will soon go bankrupt unless the 2% change cieling is eliminated and teh market is opened for 5 days a week rather than the 2 it is opened for at present. He was motivate by this article in Syria News decrying the lack or volume and revenues being generated by the exchange.

Ehsani writes:

Let us suppose that the daily turnover on the DSE reaches $5 million a day to reach the levels of Beirut’s exchange. If the DSE trades 5 days a week (it now only trades twice a week), total annual trading volume will be around $1.25 billion. Since brokerage firms normally end taking 0.1% of revenues exchanged, the total revenue among all 6 brokers is $1.25 million =====> or
$200k per firm. Assuming 10 people work per brokerage firm ===> $20k per broker……..
This is the best case scenario.

Remember, of course, that rather than $5 million a day, the DSE is doing only $50k a day. Also remember that it is open only twice a week. At this rate, total volume will be $5.6 million a year. At 0.1% profits, total revenue among all 6 brokers come out to be $ 5.6k =======> or $939 per firm. Assuming each firm employs 10 brokers ===> $93 per broker …..PER YEAR……..

Lancement du Club des entrepreneurs franco-syrien

Une conférence-débat, organisée à la Chambre de commerce et d’industrie de Paris le mardi 12 mai avait pour thème « La République Arabe Syrienne, retour sur la scène économique internationale : atouts et opportunités ».

Tax Cut in Syria

مجلس الوزراء يقر رفع الحد الأدنى المعفى من ضريبة الدخل من الراتب

أقر مجلس الوزراء يوم الثلاثاء مشروع قانون حول تعديل أحكام المادتين 68 و 69 من القانون 24 لعام 2003 المتعلقة بتعديل الشرائح والمعدلات على الرواتب والأجور، ورفع الحد الأدنى المعفى من ضريبة الدخل من خمسة ألاف ليرة إلى 6010 ليرات سورية وهو الحد الأدنى للرواتب والأجور.

An assured Assad in Financial Times, May 10 2009
By Roula Khalaf and Anna Fifield

“The Syrians now believe they are the centre of the Middle East,” quips Andrew Tabler…
US officials fear that Syria might be overestimating the change of tone of the Obama administration and misreading its intentions. To stress that point, a day after a senior US envoy was in Damascus at the end of last week, the administration renewed its unilateral sanctions against Syria, citing the regime’s support for terrorism and weapons trade.

“We want to see a change in Syria’s outlook, away from being a spoiler and more towards being a constructive problem solver, at least willing to deal with some of the problems in the region,” says one US official. “It is not that we want them to cut off relations with Iran but to recognise that the west can offer things that Iran can’t – like economic prosperity and peace with Israel.”