Who benefits? That's always a question worth asking after a political killing. The assassination of Rafic Hariri, former prime minister of Lebanon has been attributed to the Syrians.
Certainly a significant body of Lebanese public opinion accepts this view. The Israelis and Americans were so confident that the Syrians were responsible that they said so while the body was still smouldering. It was
the same rapid judgement of
Syrian guilt when a bomb
exploded in a Tel Aviv nightclub at the end of February.
The Syrians have maintained from the start of the
war against Iraq that they
were to be next in the
American firing line.
Rumsfeld accused them of
helping the Iraqi army
during the war and of providing bases for resistance fighters.
Colin Powell went to
Damascus in May 2003 to put
these accusations to the
Syrians directly and to tell
them to end their support to
Hezbollah, an organisation
the US describes as terrorists.
Unless they wanted to provoke the Americans From the top: Bush, Assad
and former Lebanese Premier
Hariri and Israelis to invade them the Syrians cannot benefit from these acts of terrorism.
The Americans, French and British have now begun demanding that the Syrians withdraw immediately from Lebanon.
It seems likely that this will be one immediate consequence of the two bombs. But there are other occupied territories from which they could demand the immediate withdrawal of brutal armies of occupation.
The United Nations Security Council has passed several resolutions demanding that the Israelis leave East Jerusalem, Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. As we report elsewhere in this issue the British and American acceptance of the lack of democracy in Saudi Arabia renders hollow their support for the "cedar revolution".
In any case the Shiites, the largest community in Lebanon, are very proSyrian, and this will be reflected in any elections.
American forces are coming close to the limits of their operational capability. They have 150 000 troops in Iraq and are obliged to use large numbers of reservists who don't want to go there.
The neo-cons' original template relied on a quick war against Saddam Hussein, the installation of a pliant local administration and moving on to the next quick war.
This has not happened, but the imperialists have been given more room to manoeuvre by Bush's election victory. That is why we are seeing more aggressive policy and threats against
Iran, Syria, Venezuela and Cuba as well as very overt military intervention in Colombia. The demonstrations against Syrian occupation have the same stage-managed, CIA textbook look as those in the Ukraine. They do express the real wish that many Lebanese have for the Syrians to pull out but they may also be the start of a process which risks the return of civil war to Lebanon. But for the imperialists this is a small price to pay for controlling the region. Their occupation of Iraq has been a disaster and their preferred candidates were humiliated in the Iraqi elections, not even winning 15 percent of the vote, while anti-occupation parties won a clear majority.
Their But even though occupation of their original plan Iraq has been a has not survived its
first contact with disaster and reality they still their preferred have a strategy of
controlling the candidates
world's oil producwere humiliated ing areas. in the elections, Syria has been
identified as a
not even weaker target than winning 15 Iran, and the bombs
in Beirut and Tel percent of the Aviv are conveniently helpful for applying more pressure on the Damascus regime. For anti-war activists this generates a number of tasks. Continuing to campaign for troops out of Iraq remains paramount. We need also to resist the aggression against Syria and the other countries threatened by imperialism. But, as the demonsrations in Lebanon show, we must support demands for democracy and self determination with a consistency that Bush and Blair will never be able to show.