The announcement by Syrian President Bashar Assad that he will redeploy his troops in Lebanon, first to the Bekaa Valley and later to the Lebanese-Syrian border should not be seen as a way to delay a meaningful withdrawal but in fact just the opposite — as the first step toward a complete pullout from the country.
There should not be a great deal of guesswork involved. Whether it is the United States, France or one-time ally Russia, people power in Beirut or the United Nations, Syria has come under intense pressure to withdraw. Bashar thus has little choice but to fulfill the conditions of the Taif Accord and implement UN Security Council Resolution 1559. In a rare address to Parliament, he has done both. He is now in the process of complying with the 1990 Taif Accord, which calls for a redeployment to the Lebanese border and then a negotiated withdrawal according to agreements between Beirut and Damascus. He is also implementing Resolution 1559, which calls for a prompt withdrawal. If he has been vague about the timing, so too were the Taif Accord and the United Nations, neither of which set an exact timetable for a pullout.
Bashar’s decision means that for the first time in almost 30 years, there will be no Syrian presence in the heart of Lebanon. This should have gone down well in many capitals, Washington included, but it hasn’t. The State Department is not duly impressed, echoing President Bush a day earlier when he called on Syria to pull out everything, including intelligence agents.
Bush, who claims Syria is supporting the Iraqi insurgency and Hezbollah and that the Lebanese will not be able to hold free and fair elections in May with the Syrians so close, has made it clear that he is prepared to stake political capital on forcing a withdrawal which he claims is the subject most on his mind right now. But withdrawing an army is not an operation that can be completed in 24 hours. After all, it took years for the US to extricate itself from Vietnam and it will not leave Iraq any quicker.
A sudden Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon could conceivably be dangerous. Lebanon’s multiple religious sects — some 20 of them — on which its whole political system is based are forever squabbling and at times, the disputes descent into something far worse. Syria played a crucial role in ending Lebanon’s 15-year civil war and in helping maintain peace among the country’s different sects and factions. If Syria were to withdraw without safeguards firmly in place, Lebanon might become a hive of militants filling in the power vacuum as they did during the civil war.
Syria does not have a vise-like grip on Lebanon. Since June 2001 the number of Syrian troops has been voluntarily reduced — from 40,000 to 14,000. Bashar says the remainder will follow and there is no reason to believe otherwise. Syria’s previous reduction of its forces in Lebanon plus international pressure should persuade the world that Bashar is serious when he says the natural place for Syrian forces is Syrian soil.
