LEBANON: Recent expectations of change in Lebanon are giving way to anxieties that the country could slip back to civil war divisions, writes Lara Marlowe
President Bush repeated yesterday, for the third time in as many days, that Syrian troops must pull out of Lebanon, and Damascus must not intervene in the upcoming Lebanese legislative elections.
But 10 days after the assassination of the billionaire former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, the anti-Syrian opposition, who were emboldened by his death, are plagued with uncertainties. Chief among them are doubts about the ability of Washington and Paris to enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which they jointly sponsored.
Washington talks of economic pressure to force Syria to leave its neighbour, but UN sanctions would have little effect as long as Syria is able to "breathe" through Lebanon. Sanctions on both countries would unfairly punish their civilian populations.
A month will pass before Peter Fitzgerald, the Deputy Commissioner of An Garda Síochána appointed by the UN to investigate the murder, reports back. And Terje Roed Larsen, another of Mr Anan's envoys, is not due to report to the Security Council on progress towards implementing 1559 for two more months.
So the anti-Syrian opposition is trying to be patient. They were invigorated by the 100,000-strong demonstration in downtown Beirut on Monday. For a few hours, it seemed they might be able to muster a Ukrainian-style peaceful resistance movement. Marchers wore red and white scarves (the main colours in the Lebanese flag) and held placards saying, "Independence 2005", "29 years of terror is enough" and "Bashar, pull your dogs out of Lebanon".
Christians, Druze and Sunni Muslims united for the first time since Hariri's death, but organisers say street protest does not come easily to the Lebanese. If mobilisation wanes, they fear, international support will peter out. There are other anxieties: a few demonstrators carried the white flag with a red circle around a cedar tree, symbol of the Maronite Ktaeb (Phalangist) party. The presence of factions from the 1975-1990 civil war risks scaring off ordinary Lebanese.
The Sunnis lost their leader in Hariri. There have been suggestions that his eldest son, Baha, might take his place, but he has no political experience and the idea seems far-fetched. In the meantime, the Sunnis are following the Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, but for how long?
The situation of the Shia Muslim community, 25 per cent of Lebanon's population of 3.6 million, is ambiguous. The two main Shia parties, Amal and Hizballah, are supported by Damascus. In an apparent call for calm and dialogue, Hizbullah's Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah, noted that "if the roof collapses, it falls on all of us". Unlike members of the pro-Syrian government, Hizbullah has not accused the opposition of serving the interests of Israel and the US, and its deputies are expected to abstain when the opposition slates a vote of no-confidence next Monday.
For the moment, the opposition are pinning inordinate hopes on what promises to be a stormy session of parliament on February 28th. With only 40 per cent of deputies opposed to Damascus, it is unlikely that the no-confidence vote will pass.
The gamble is that a substantial number of Syrian loyalists were so disgusted by the slaughter of Hariri and 17 others that they will switch sides.
There were rumours this week that Prime Minister Omar Karamé's slavishly pro-Syrian government was about to fall. Mr Karamé said he would be willing to resign "on condition that we agree on a new government to avoid a constitutional void". He then seemed to rescind the offer.
Widely accused of killing Hariri, Bashar al-Assad's regime acts like a frightened animal caught in the headlights. President Assad left it to Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League, to relay the gist of their talks at the beginning of the week.
Mr Moussa said Assad promised him that Syria was prepared to fulfil the 1989 Taif agreement which required a withdrawal to the Bekaa Valley, followed by a full withdrawal, to be negotiated with the Lebanese government.
But Syrian officials disputed Mr Moussa's account of the meeting, and the world was left in a fog about Damascus' intentions. The Syrian information minister spoke of a "redeployment" similar to five earlier redeployments that reduced the number of Syrian troops in Lebanon from 35,000 to 14,000. No Syrian officials have acknowledged Resolution 1559, or the demands by Messers Bush and Chirac. And State-controlled Syrian media are mute.
"Syria considers Lebanon its first and last line of defence," says Lebanese political scientist Elie Kheir. "The regime risks become suicidal and adopting a Samson strategy - bringing the roof down on its own head and the head of its enemies."
Damascus will no doubt be pleased by the analysis of the British writer Patrick Seale, the biographer of the late President Hafez al-Assad, considered one of the foremost experts on Syria. "I am convinced that Hariri wanted to negotiate his own return to power, that he was not determined to join the opposition," Seale says, arguing that it would have been irrational for Damascus to kill Hariri.
Six weeks before he died, Hariri told The Irish Times he was about to join the opposition. Seale's theory that Muslim fundamentalists or Israeli intelligence may have assassinated Hariri also ignores the vehemence of the Syrian-backed Lebanese government towards Mr Hariri. The week before he died, interior minister Suleiman Frangieh called Hariri "the head of the serpent" of anti-Syrian opposition.
Seale does believe that things have gone awry since the death of Hafez al-Assad in 2000. "They must announce the withdrawal of their troops; call Rustom Ghazale [the head of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon] back to Damascus; accept international observers for the elections; co-operate with the UN investigation ..." Financial corruption in Syria must be stopped, Mr Seale continued. If Syria followed his advice, he said, Damascus could count on Europe to "weigh in against the United States". The real question was "whether the Syrian regime is capable of doing these things, given that they're paralysed by internal conflicts."