An article in the Guardian by its veteran Arabist David Hirst is as illuminating for what it does not say as what it says. Reflecting on the fact that the UN team investigating the murder of Lebanon's former prime minister Rafiq Hariri is apparently about to accuse members of the old Syrian-backed regime and thus implicate Syria itself, he reports Arab commentators claiming that this event will have seismic repercussions throughout the Arab world:

'"a truly historic turning point that could shatter the dominance of political power by Arab security and military establishments"... with "the same impact in this region as the birth of the Solidarity trade union movement had in eastern Europe 25 years ago ... ultimately resulting in the collapse of the communist police state system".'

Hirst himself makes the following observation:

'The region-wide implications of the Hariri affair stem from the abiding fact that what happens in one part of the Arab "nation" is inherently liable to have an exemplary effect on others, especially if it is something constructive.'

Now that, of course, is precisely the thinking behind the Bush doctrine and the whole notion of democracy-building in the Middle East; for the Americans, it was a significant factor behind the toppling of Saddam. Hirst, a visceral opponent of Bush, his doctrine and the Iraq war, draws a clear distinction, however, between the possible exemplary effects of seismic change in Lebanon (good) and the possible exemplary effects of seismic change in Iraq (bad).

As a result, he bestows all the credit for seismic change in Lebanon/Syria upon the (sainted) UN. What he completely omits from this analysis is the event which started the sequence of events which, through the catalyst of the Hariri assassination, led to what has been called the ‘Cedar revolution’ last spring in which the UN ordered Syria out of Lebanon so that, after decades of occupation, it meekly packed up its tanks and left. That event was, of course, the toppling of Saddam and the arrival of free elections and a democratic constitution in a country which, while still engulfed by a bloody civil war caused by the desperate attempt to prevent a liberated Iraq from achieving precisely such an ‘exemplary effect’ on other parts of the Arab nation, has nevertheless ignited similar aspirations among other Arabs groaning under the yoke of tyranny.

Soon after Hariri’s assassination, President Bush declared:

'We want that democracy in Lebanon succeed, and we know it cannot succeed so long as she is occupied by a foreign power, and that power is Syria.'

The Lebanese, paying close attention, took to the streets and demanded Syrian withdrawal. Walid Jumblatt, the Lebanese Druze leader said:

'I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Berlin Wall has fallen.'

To omit the fall of the Arab Berlin Wall altogether from an analysis of this struggle towards a revolutionary new political order in the Arab world is quite an achievement. But then Hirst elegantly adds a harmonious coda to this singular thought process. For he seems to conclude that, despite the excitement of the Syrian people at the prospect of deposing their hated regime, since there is a danger that Syrian despotism might crumble under the impact of the Hariri repercussions into Iraq-style chaos, the world should think again – and keep Bashar Assad in power!

'If the Syrians [ie the Ba'athists] themselves are so worried, shouldn't the world be too? Would it really like its "good" intervention, undeservingly, to go the grim way of its "bad" one - and risk a second Iraq? If, in the era of Bush's "freedom and democracy", it was cynical enough to strike such a bargain with a minor player such as Colonel Gaddafi, mightn't it do the same with an embattled Bashar, for much greater reward, at the strategic and emotional heart of the Arab world?'

Ah yes — the stability of despotism is so much safer than unleashing the manifold unpredictabilities of freedom.

Don’t you just love the left-wing press?

Posted by melanie at September 28, 2005