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268: EXCLUSIVE EXCLUSIVES OF EXCLUSIVES Part III: 16th October 2006 Syria And Iran Stirring Up Civil Strife And Stoking And Arming Two Warfronts
12 May, 2008

EXCLUSIVE EXCLUSIVES OF EXCLUSIVES Part III: 16th October 2006 Syria and Iran Stirring up Civil Strife and Stoking and Arming Two Warfronts

Monday 16th October 2006

Iran and Syria were involved in aggressive moves on three fronts. Iran was pushing Iranian arms for Hezballah via Syria into Lebanon in blatant violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701; the first Syrian military instructors arrived in the Gaza strip to impart Hezballah’s combat tactics to Hamas; and the Syrian army remained on a high state of preparedness.

Those moves against Israel represented only half of Iran’s and Syria’s grand design; and the weapons streaming to Hezballah were a small part of the arms smuggled into Lebanon. The lion’s share was destined for six pro-Syrian factions in Lebanon in preparation for the forcible overthrow of Fouad Saniora’s anti-Syrian government in Beirut, should their adherents in Beirut, spearheaded by Hezballah and Maronite Christian Michael Aoun, fail to attain power by political machinations or means.

A major step aimed at inflaming the Lebanese-Israel border region was taken by the pro-Syrian Lebanese Chief of Staff General Michael Suleiman. On Friday, 13th Oct, he authorized Lebanese officers and men deployed on the border to summon Hezballah forces to fight in any border clash.

That order restored Hezballah to the flashpoint border zone just two months after it had been supposedly evicted by the UN-brokered ceasefire of 14th August. By getting Hezballah reinstated in its old frontline strongholds, Syria and Iran put the finishing touches on one of the Lebanese front, one of their three war edifices against Israel after Gaza and Golan. Those fronts are primed to squeeze Israel hard any time Iran comes under threat of military attack.

Those multiple hazards caught the Israeli government and its armed forces without a remedy. The aftershocks of the Lebanon war were still not fully digested; neither was the errors admitted in Israel.

UNIFIL too, which had committed to defer to the Lebanese government and army in all matters, then found itself obliged to accept Hezballah’s inflammatory presence under Lebanese army sanction and therefore under its own aegis – another full-circle contradiction of the terms of Resolution 1701.

Syrian-Iranian-Hezballah domination was therefore in the bag. So too were the arming of Syria’s primary helpers in Lebanon.

1. The largest recipients are Syria’s veteran tried-and-true allies, led by the clandestine Syrian Social Nationalist Party (the SSNP) which was then awash with anti-tank rockets, mortars, heavy machine guns, explosives, automatic rifles and crates full of shells and other ammo. Made up mostly of Greek Orthodox Christians, the sinister SSNP had been a key operational arm of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon since the 1980s. It was, and still is, closely allied with Hezballah and various other terrorist organizations.

2. Other major recipients are the Sunni Moslem Militias of the northern Lebanese Tripoli district, the Sunni and Christian Militias of the al Hakur region northwest of Tripoli, and the Christian Franjieyeh Marada Clan of Zgharta, whose areas lie southeast of Tripoli.

3. Then there are the communities who oppose the anti-Syrian factions of Lebanon. One is the Druze following of Talal Arslan and Wiam Wahab, rivals of the extreme anti-Syrian Druze chieftain Walid Jumblatt, who not only resists Syrian influence in Lebanon but is at loggerheads and daggers drawn against the Assad regime in Damascus.

4. Syria and Iran were also rapidly arming the Maronite Christians of Michael Aoun’s Patriotic Movement. Aoun has become the most powerful Lebanese Christian ally of Hezballah’s Hassan Nesrallah and the leading Maronite opponent of Fouad Saniora and his pro-American and pro-French government.

The irony is that in May 2005, the United States and France brought or sent (got rid of) Aoun back from his long exile as their candidate for the Lebanese presidency. Later, they withdrew their patronage when they realised the sort of senile and rabid Mad-Clown-Comedian he was, so he was left with the choice of either quitting politics and leaving Lebanon or transferring his allegiance to the Hezballah and the pro-Syrian Camp. He opted for the latter.

5. The Shiite Amal Militia headed by the Speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri, which in previous years had been overshadowed by Hezballah, was on the receiving end of weapons and training by Syrian and Iranian instructors disguised as civilians.

6. The south is a mix of rival forces. Syria further stirred the stew by lavishing arms on the Sunni and Christian family militias, the enormously wealthy and powerful Saad and Bizari clans of Sidon, who are adversaries of the Hariri clan.

A cursory survey of the recipients of Iranian and Syrian arms supplies show Bashar Al Assad was scouting for candidates to fight another civil war in Lebanon on his behalf. The most insignificant splinter willing to rally to the pro-Syrian flag was getting a dollop of weapons.

Assad was clearly in a hurry to capitalize on the setbacks his enemies suffered in the Lebanon war to turn the clock back and restore his stranglehold on his small neighbour by one means or another. A civil flare-up might be headed off by the success of Nesrallah’s scheme to displace the Saniora government and substitute a pro-Syrian administration dominated by Hezballah with Michael Aoun as the president. Bashar Al Assad would profit by:

A: An invitation to come riding back into Lebanon for a much deeper and broader role than ever before.

B: The humiliation of the United States and France for booting Syria out of Lebanon two years before.

C: The crowning of Hezballah – and therefore Iran – as victors of the Lebanon war with the last word in this episode.

D. Another knock to Israel’s standing and reputation.

E. The European peacekeepers would be sent packing without further ado by the pro-Syrian government in Beirut.

Posted by akill 08:30 | General | Comment(0) | Permalink

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