Of all the ridiculous reasons explaining the deployment of thousands of Syrian troops along the northern Lebanese border, surely the most ridiculous is that this was done to thwart smuggling. What we're seeing is, quite simply, intimidation and a reminder, against the conventional wisdom, that Syria's President Bashar Assad never truly reconciled himself with ending his country's military role in Lebanon.
Was it a coincidence that Syrian soldiers began their movement on the very day that President Michel Sleiman traveled to the United States? It's hard to say. However, recall that only hours before Sleiman's visit to Damascus last month, a bomb targeting Lebanese soldiers went off in Tripoli. Assad used the incident to insist that the Lebanese president had to strike against "Salafists" in northern Lebanon. You have to doubt that both those coercive episodes were really accidental.
There are contradictory reports about what happened at the quadripartite summit in Damascus a few weeks ago between Assad, Qatar's emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Some newspapers reported that Sarkozy and Sheikh Hamad were disturbed by Assad's statement that he had told Sleiman to take measures against the northern Islamists, because this suggested that Lebanon was still taking orders from Syria. One account even noted that Erdogan had warned Assad against military moves in Lebanon.
Then a very different story began making the rounds: that Erdogan, and perhaps Sarkozy too, had given Assad a green light to enter Lebanon and intervene against "Islamists." This was highlighted in an article published on Tuesday in the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat, which cited "political sources" in Lebanon to that effect. Yet already last week when I visited Tripoli, religious figures there were grimly convinced that Turkish and French approval had been accorded.
Nothing indicates this is true. But you could see that Rifaat Eid, the son of Ali Eid, the head of the Alawite Arab Democratic Party, felt at ease with the "reconciliation" reached in Tripoli, for several reasons: The Eids came out of the process looking the equals of Saad Hariri politically, as they met under the authority of the mufti. They apparently received a commitment that they would be asked to approve an Alawite candidate, or candidates, in the next parliamentary elections; and they also got, Eid insisted, a government promise to establish an Alawite Higher Council, so those in the community would have their own courts to deal with personal-status issues.
However, it was what Eid did not say, but certainly implied in his answers, that was most interesting: The threat of a Syrian military push into Lebanon is what effectively allowed the Alawites to momentarily play on the same playing field as Hariri. Fears in Saudi Arabia and Egypt of the Syrian Army's return to the Lebanese scene, but also very probably fear of Syria's capability to depict its actions as combating Sunni extremism, are what compelled Hariri to head North, then afterward to the Bekaa, to come out with arrangements everyone could live with.
Does Syria plan to return its armed forces to Lebanon? There is no simple answer. If Assad is to have a strong card in his negotiations with Israel over the Golan Heights, he must first show that Syria has the means of bringing Hizbullah to heel. Without his soldiers in Lebanon, he could not seriously make that case. At the same time, there are genuine difficulties involved. Syria is in no position to disarm Hizbullah, while Iran would, plainly, oppose any such move. This would force Syria to choose between Iran and Israel, and despite the unfounded optimism in some Western capitals that Assad is pining for peace, it's far more probable that he will safeguard his relationship with Tehran.
In that case, has Syria given up on returning to Lebanon? Not necessarily. Developments in the North have shown that Assad can use his army to browbeat the Lebanese, without crossing the border. That's bound to continue. But the Syrians are also calculating in the middle and long term. They know they will not get an international green light to enter Lebanon today, but once the parliamentary elections take place and the March 8 forces and the Aounists win them - at least that's what the Syrians are predicting to their Lebanese allies - then the rules will change. Syria might send its troops into parts of Lebanon if needed, or it might not need to; but Assad will be calling the shots, will have wide latitude to do what he wants with the Lebanese, and that he can take to the table with Israel.
You have to applaud the Syrians for having convinced many people that the Salafist threat in the North is a real one. This view was only helped by Walid Jumblatt's echoing the thought in several of his recent statements, most significantly in an interview with the opposition daily Al-Akhbar. In fact, a visit to Tripoli would show that the Salafists are weak and divided, with some groups closely watched by the security forces. Several jihadists, particularly those who participated in networks sending militants to Iraq, are now in Lebanese jails, though observers who have followed their case will remark that they have actually broken no Lebanese laws, which explains why they have remained imprisoned without trial.
An imminent Syrian invasion of Lebanon is not in the cards. But Assad will continue to see how far he can push the envelope in Lebanon, both politically and militarily. And when he realizes he can push it very far, his confidence will rise, and with it the risk that Syria will use its army in more substantial ways. That's not good news, and it's not good news especially when foreign governments seem so utterly without conviction in preventing Syria from reimposing its hegemony over Lebanon.
Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR.
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