Assad won't be making his planned trip to New York to address the UN and hopes to meet with American Government officials. Apparently, the UN Prosecutor, who is investigating the assassination of popular Lebanese leader Hariri, sees culpability extending to the highest levels of both the Lebanese and Syrian government. He has interviewed numerous top officials in Lebanon.
German Prosecutor Detlev Mehlis is back in Beirut, putting together a formidable team of U.N. interrogators and translators to go with him to Damascus on Monday to verify Syria's role in ex-Premier Hariri's assassination. Mehlis arrived in the Lebanese capital Friday evening, flying straight back from New York, where he formally lodged with U.N. chief Kofi Annan a request for a 40-day extension of his investigative mandate beyond the Sept. 15 deadline that had been set by the Security Council.
Mehlis is due to interrogate five senior Syrian intelligence officers—Gen. Asef Shawkat, Gen. Ghazi Kenaan and Brig. Gens. Rustom Ghazaleh, Mohammed Khallouf and Jameh Jameh-- plus several other officials of the Assad administration in Damascus. There is still no estimate on how long the U.N. investigation in Syria will last. The Mehlis commission held fresh interrogation sessions with Lebanon's four detained generals who headed the main security services when Hariri was murdered along with ex-Economy Minister Bassel Fleihan and 21 others Feb. 14. Former Surete Generale chief Jamil Sayyed and former commander of the Internal Security Forces (ISF) Ali Hajj were brought from their solitary confinement along with Presidential Guard Brigade commander Mustafa Hamdan to the questioning session at the commission's Monteverde headquarters at 8 a.m. Friday and were returned to their cells at 1 a.m. Saturday. The fourth detainee, former army intelligence chief Raymond Azar, was in a wretched physical shape when he arrived at Monteverde. So the commission sent him back to prison for the jail doctor to decide whether Azar should be moved to the military hospital or be treated at his cell, An Nahar reported. Media reports said up to 24 new cells have been prepared at the central government prison in Roumieh to receive new suspects sent by the Mehlis commission in Hariri's case.
Mehlis has been very busy putting together his information talking to many pro-Syrian officials in Lebanon. The pressure on current president of Lebanon Emile Lahoud has resulted in him rethinking his political future.
Emile Lahoud is determined to go to the U.N. summit in New York on Monday despite widespread opposition at home and his effective proclamation an international outcast abroad. But the beleaguered president reportedly began to make concessions, agreeing to hinge the fate of his extended term in power on the indictment the U.N. investigation commission will make in ex-premier Hariri's assassination.
"If the indictment is empty from any blame concerning the president, he will complete his extended term," An Nahar on Saturday quoted a ministerial source involved in the contacts between the Baabda Palace and the patriarchal seat in Bkirki as saying. The implication is that the president would be ready to abdicate if he is indicted.
He has already talked to Assad's brother-in-law and is scheduled to return to Damascus.
German State Prosecutor Detlev Mehlis who heads a U.N. investigating commission has formally asked for a 40-day extension of his mandate to catch Rafik Hariri's assassins, adding Syria's overall intelligence Chief Gen. Asef Shawkat to the list of officials he will interrogate in Damascus as of Saturday, the Arab media reported Friday.
An Nahar said Mehlis revealed his 40-day extension request during a meeting he held in New York Thursday with acting chief of Lebanon's U.N. mission Ibrahim Assaf. The original deadline set by the Security Council for the Mehlis investigation expires Sept. 15. Four other Syrian figures are already on Mehlis' list to interview. They are Interior Minister Gen. Ghazi Kenaan who served for years as Syria's military intelligence in Lebanon, his successor Brig. Gen. Rustom Ghazaleh and his two top security aides in Beirut when Hariri was assassinated Feb. 14, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Khallouf and Brig. Gen. Jameh Jameh. Gen. Shawkat, who is President Assad's brother-in-law, was named to head Syria's overall intelligence apparatus shortly before Hariri's assassination. Media reports said the Syrian president himself plans to give Mehlis an audience in the People's Palace in Damascus.
The Bush Administration has been making as much of this investigation as they can expecting that it will further their agenda of regime change in Syria.
The Bush administration has implied that President Assad cancelled plans to attend the impending U.N. Summit in New York because of evidence that implicates him personally in Lebanese ex-Premier Rafik Hariri's assassination, An Nahar reported on Thursday. An Nahar's Washington correspondent Hisham Milhem quoted official American sources as saying Assad canceled his U.N. trip "because the United States opposed his visit after the emergence of serious evidence pinning the responsibility for Hariri's assassination up to the peak of the Syrian pyramid."
The U.S. has sent word to Assad via Saudi Arabia and Egypt about the Bush administration's anger over the "involvement of top Syrian political and intelligence figures in Hariri's assassination" and this contributed to Assad's decision to scrap the New York trip, Milhem reported. He quoted the American sources as attributing news of the new evidence to U.N. chief investigator Detlev Mehlis, who spent a few days at the United Nations and plans to leave back to the Middle East on Thursday. "His serious and convincing information have given us a clearer picture of the extent of the Syrian involvement in Hariri's assassination," one American official source was quoted by Milhem as saying.
There will be many casualties in Syria besides Assad. Syria is a multicultural country. Much of eastern Syria is controlled by people will strong ties to Iraq, even considered themselves Iraqi. Their support for the insurgency that they see as a Shiite power grab, is complicated by their never having the attention of the Syrian government. The blog SyriaComment.com explains the ties across the Syrian-Iraqi border.
The most important feature of regional society is tribalism. The tribal connections between the people on both sides of the border are strong and close. Almost every family has relatives in Iraq. Perhaps a mere 3% of families in the region do not have members in Iraq. The big tribes of Iraq extend into Eastern Syria, especially in the Deir az-Zur region. The leadership and strength of the tribes are centered in Iraq and not Syria, thus people took to Iraq and not Syria as their real home. Saddam had personal and strong relations with many tribal leaders in Bou Kamal and Deir ez-Zor, which made the Syrian government worry a great deal, especially when relations between the two countries deteriorated.
Most of the people in Eastern Syria often say that “our government has offered us nothing since it came to power in 1970.†All of these realities are painful but real. When you get to know these people you get to know just how confused they are about their identity. They are lost and confused by the border and divisions between the two countries. They don’t know where they belong. Because Bou Kamal is a border region, it is now important because there is war in the region. Unfortunately this was not the case previously, causing the region to be ignored by the Syrian government. Recently, Syria has tried to control the region by placing many border guards there to stop the flow of fighters across the border. Despite this effort, the United States continues to use threatening language with the Syrians.
Bou Kamal is an extension of the Ramadi governorate in Iraq, where the Iraqi opposition is centered. [Everyone here believes that] America is trying to fuel the Iraqi resistance. Thus, if Syria tries to stop the flow of goods and men into Iraq from Syria, it will put it at odds with America.
Finally, I conclude that a realistic appreciation of the geographical, social, and historical realities of this region will serve the security situation in Iraq and bring together Syrian and American policies, because the two countries ultimately share the same interests.
- Most important, Syria and the United States must dealing with the security situation in Iraq by creating better joint US - Syrian cooperation. Syria has already started showing its willingness for serious cooperation.
- Both powers must control all fundamentalist Islamic parties before they organize to the point of becoming violent and produce an effective cell structure. This should be done soon to take advantage of the current religious mood among the vast majority of religious people in the region, who realize the dangers of these movements.
- Solving the border issue should be a priority for it will help secure Iraq, much as Pakistan’s help in securing the southern border of Afghanistan has helped stabilize the new government there.
Clearly, the Bush Admininstration does not recognize what Assad can do for America. However, the more isolated and powerless he becomes in Syria, the more empowered the eastern Sunni relatives of Mosel in Syria and the less control there will be of Syrian's border.
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