From the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri on Feb. 14 to the almost successful assassination attempt on journalist May Chidiac this past Sunday, there have now been 13 attacks in Lebanon which have appeared to target Lebanese opponents of Syrian domination (Reuters: Lebanon Seeks Help on Security). The main consequences have been massive protests which have forced the Syrian military to end its three-decade occupation of Lebanon and the establishment of an independent UN commission to investigate Hariri’s assassination, led by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, which is now turning up evidence implicating high-ranking Lebanese officials with links to Syria. His report is due Oct. 25. Now the gruesome attack of this past week deprived an attractive and popular journalist of a leg and an arm, and the outrage in the Arab world is growing. This post will examine the current status of the investigation, and what it could mean for the future of democratic Lebanon and the Assad regime in Damascus. It will also examine how the issue is playing out in the Arab media.

(Links to Arab newspapers are in Arabic unless otherwise indicated. Citations without links are due to the newspaper removing the articles from its website after I printed a copy but before copying the link.)

Syria Feeling the Heat
It should be noted at the outset the extreme danger this investigation poses for the Syrian government and its ruler, Bashar Assad. Hariri was not merely a former official turned opposition leader, but a Sunni Muslim with deep ties in Saudi Arabia, a close friend of French President Jacques Chirac, and a billionaire businessman reformer credited with rebuilding war-ravaged Lebanon in the 1990s. As Raghida Dergham wrote in Al-Hayat, Iran Receives Iraq as a “Gift” (English):

In private sessions, Arab leaders avoided pre-judging the investigation, either in its Lebanese or Syrian components. However, they are completely clear that there would be no Arab “cover” for anyone whose involvement in the Hariri assassination is proved by Mehlis. If the investigation issues charges against a person, security body or political regime, no Arab or Muslim leader with be able to challenge this – he will have to announce his support for the trial of anyone suspected of committing the crime…

During the course of its presence in Lebanon, Syria has not merely maintained a military presence but developed an extensive web of agents and other clients within the Lebanese political and security establishment allowing it to maintain control over the country while retaining a semblance of Lebanese sovereignty. A Sept. 9 report by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy describes the course of the investigation so far and its potential impact on the Syrian government:

…Meanwhile, the assassination polarized Lebanon and triggered a grassroots national movement that compelled Syria to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1559 and withdraw from Lebanon after almost three decades of occupation. At the same time, the opposition in Lebanon called for the resignation of the seven most important pro-Syrian security chiefs and officials. Six of the seven resigned, including the head of the General Security Department, Brig. Gen. Jamil Sayyed; the chief of the Internal Security Forces, Maj. Gen. Ali Hajj; and the head of military intelligence, Brig. Gen. Raymond Azar. The only one who remained in office was the commander of the army’s Presidential Brigade, Brig. Gen. Mustafa Hamdan.

On April 7, the UN Security Council acted on the factfinding mission’s recommendation and passed Security Council Resolution 1595, authorizing an independent commission to investigate the assassination. Annan appointed German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis to head the commission. Following several months of extensive interviews and forensic work, Mehlis surprised the political establishments in Lebanon and Syria by naming former pro-Syrian security chiefs and officials suspects in the assassination. On September 1, Lebanese authorities rounded up nine pro-Syrian officials for interrogation by the Mehlis Commission. Prominent among them were Sayyed, Hajj, Azar, and Hamdan. In a press conference the following day, Mehlis announced that the investigation had made significant progress on several fronts. When asked about the implication of the security chiefs in the assassination, he answered, “They participated to some extent in the planning that led to the assassination of Hariri.” On September 3, the Lebanese investigating magistrate Elias Eid issued arrest warrants charging the four security chiefs with murder, attempted murder, terrorism, and illegal possession of weapons and explosives…

Mehlis had earlier said that he is not satisfied with the level of Syrian cooperation in his investigation. In particular, he has been disappointed in his commission’s access to Syrian security officials who were posted in Lebanon. In a dramatic reversal, Syrian authorities have invited Mehlis to Damascus on September 10. Mehlis has gone some way to assuage Syrian concerns by saying that he wants to interview some Syrian officials as witnesses and not as suspects. It is not clear if Syria will allow access to all of the relevant people. One of the most significant figures — Brig. Gen. Rustum Ghazaleh, former chief of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon — recently retired, making him a potential fall guy. Other important officials include chief of Syrian intelligence in Beirut, Muhammad Khallouf, and the officers in charge of intelligence posts in Akkar (Nabil Hishmeh), Tripoli (Khalil Zogheib), Dahieh (Jameh Jameh), and Zahle (Abu Michel)…

The British newspaper The Guardian provides further details regarding evidence uncovered more recently (via Syria-Comment):

…According to a source close to the investigation, evidence pointing to Syrian involvement in the murder has grown – in particular, from a Syrian defector, who claims he was in the room when Hariri’s assassination was discussed. “The defector is singing,” the source said.

Evidence recovered by a team of six British divers off the Beirut coast, where Hariri’s motorcade was blown apart, had also played an important part in the inquiry, the source added. The scene of the explosion was quickly covered over after the murder and much evidence lost, but the divers recovered human remains and car and truck parts from the seafloor…

This week Mr Mehlis visited Damascus where, according to a diplomatic source in Beirut, he interviewed Rustom Ghazali, Syria’s former intelligence chief in Lebanon, and Walid al-Mouallem, the deputy foreign minister, who has been given responsibility for Lebanese affairs since Hariri’s death.

A team of four investigators has been sent to Damascus to interview Asef Shawkat, the head of military intelligence and Mr Assad’s brother-in-law, and nine other Syrian officials. All those being interviewed were, at this stage, classified as “witnesses”, the diplomatic source said. Mr Mehlis would decide who, if any, should be reclassified from “witness” to “suspect”, he added…

Last week Lebanon’s central bank agreed to waive strict secrecy laws to allow the investigators to examine the bank accounts of senior Syrian security officers, including Mr Ghazali and the interior minister, Ghazi Kanaan, who was Syria’s intelligence chief in Lebanon before Mr Ghazali. Bank accounts used by the men’s wives and families will also be inspected. The Syrian regime is known to have siphoned millions of pounds from the Lebanese economy during their years of occupation following the civil war.

The heat is on indeed.

Arab Reactions
Randa Naqi al-Din, writing in Al-Hayat, seemed to express the main sentiment in tying the attack on Chidiac to previous assassinations, in an article titled May Chidiac and ‘Our River of Hell‘:

The hideous crime which sought to kill our friend May Chidiac, comes within the framework of cowardly plans to shut down the free press and cover up the truth and the popular will. The program ‘Your Happy River’ which Shidyak produced was always trying to make up for the lack of real dialogue and lively exchange of opinion in a true democratic way. And along with ‘Your Happy River’ last Sunday to ‘The River of Hell’ of May there was also our friend Samir Qasir who gave his life, and the former general secretary of the Socialist Party George Hawi, both of which followed the explosion which killed the martyr president Rafiq Hariri and representative Basil Falhan and their associates…

And so our prayer today for May Chidiac is that the strength of her voice recover and return, but it is also important that we discover who wanted to kill her and who wanted to assassinate Samir Qasir and George Hawi. The truth will be shown in regard to the killing of the martyr president Rafiq Hariri, because Mehlis is determined to show it. But as to the other crimes we must also discover the truth of them for the sake of all the sons of Lebanon.

Also in Al-Hayat (“So That the Killer Does Not Smile,” Sept. 27), Ghassan Sharbil wrote regarding Chidiac’s work: “Our friend May Chidiac accomplished that which justified the decision to condemn her. She was a journalist of independence and honesty of our time without parallel. Her questions were direct in an environment which required concealment. She went far in dialogue and conversation like she disdained any red lines. She crept in the morning into houses near and afar. And the most dangerous thing about her was her practice of going to the witness and maintaining the confidence of those who both agreed with her and those who did not.”

Not all have been content to merely condemn the attack and imply who might be guilty. As Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports, Lebanese Communications Minister Marwan Hamada has explicitly blamed Syria and Lebanon’s pro-Syrian president Emil Lahoud for the attempted assassination (see “Hamada Accuses Syria, the Intelligence Services and Lahoud…the Interior Minister Declares that Lebanon Faces the Specter of Terrorism,” Sept. 27).

As also noted in the Reuters article linked above, Lebanese Defense Minister Elias al-Murr, who survived an attempt on his own life in July, is quoted in Al-Hayat (see Mehlis Leaves Tomorrow While Authorizing Assistants in Damascus to Work Further and the Security Council Excepcts a Lebanese Request for Aid… Investigators to Meet with al-Murr and a Witness in the Chidiac Attempted Assassination Focusing on the Distortion of Evidence which Preceded the Assassination of Hariri) and Al-Quds (see The Attempted Assassination of May Chidiac…Who Did it and Why?) as pointing the finger at Syria. It says a lot that the defense minister of a country spends most of his time outside of it because he doesn’t trust its pro-Syrian security chiefs to protect him. Perhaps this will change with the recent arrests. The headline of the Al-Hayat article refers to the discovery of evidence regarding previously covered up communications which took place prior to the Hariri killing and which continued for more than two hours following, and the fact that al-Murr must be questioned in Switzerland. The article also notes that although investigating the Chidiac attempt is beyond Mehlis’ jurisdiction, his team will be looking at that too, suggesting that there was a witness whose testimony might bear on the Hariri matter.

With the pressure mounting, there are indications that Bashar Assad has sought to gain protection by reaching a deal similar to that Muamar Qaddafi reached with the United States in which he escaped liability for past terrorism by coming clean, giving up his nuclear program, and compensating the victims. But according to this Washington Post article, at least, it seems that neither the U.S. nor France is interested in any bargain. Both seem to have decided that this investigation could fatally cripple Assad’s regime, and they are glad to see it happen. Al-Hayat has also reported similarly (see the Sept. 27 article, “French Warning of a ‘Difficult’ Lebanese Phase and the Willingness of America to Help in the Investigation…A Joint Declaration by Hariri and Jaja Condemns the Crime…The Attempt to Assassinate Chidiac Opens the Security Issue and Siniora’s Government Seeks to Strengthen Security”). The article discusses the increasing pressures on the prime minister from all factions opposed to Syria to take decisive action to prevent any more acts of violence against that country’s critics.

Conclusion
I suspect that the evidence trail will stop somewhere short of the feet of Bashar Assad, but nevertheless the fact that it is gone this far would have been unthinkable in the Arab world just a few years ago. Multiple factors, including regime change and democratic blossoming in Iraq, the death of Yasser Arafat, the climbdown of Libya’s Muamar Qaddafi, and particularly here the popular revolution in Lebanon have changed the world in which Arab tyrants live. Seeing the fate of Arab generals decided by a German lawyer may be more chilling than that of Saddam climbing out of that spider hole. As Dergham notes, Iran is ascendant as the West is paralyzed with indecision in the face of its nuclear ambitions, yet Baathist Syria has never been more isolated. Even if Assad himself is not implicated, the Mehlis investigation is already touching key members of the factions which have real control of the unstable tyranny over which he presides. Bashar himself will not likely be strong enough to hold it together if they go.

Contributed by Kirk H. Sowell, Arab World Analysis.com