BBC
Beirut is an essential listening
post for journalists and diplomats trying to work out what is happening
in Syria, and what may happen there next. The Syrian capital,
Damascus, is 85 miles (137km) from Beirut. You can still get there by
taxi. For $150 (£105). But unless you are willing to submit to (or
perilously dodge) the severe restrictions of Syrian intelligence, there
is little point.
A common belief in Beirut is that President
Bashar al-Assad and his army, supported by Russian air strikes, will
move on from driving the so-called Islamic State group out of Palmyra –
and defeat them all the way to their headquarters in Raqqa. Several
Beirut analysts I met believe Western nations have reached the
reluctant (and so far unannounced) conclusion that the least-worst
option for Syria is that Bashar al-Assad should stay on as president –
supported by Russia and Iran, and by Hezbollah.
It is conceivable that the US, Britain and
their allies will fight IS alongside Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and Bashar
al-Assad – especially, I heard, “if they erase their long-held mindset
that Saudi Arabia is their friend and Iran their enemy”.
Beirut international relations researcher Husam Matar says this is not a hypothesis, it’s a fact.
“It
is happening now. Western powers realise the major threat to their
security and to international peace is Isis,” he told me over coffee in a
restaurant that’s part of a Beirut funfair called Fantasy World.
Since
the disasters of Iraq and Libya, and the other disappointments of the
Arab Spring, Mr Matar says: “People now are concerned about stability
and not about democracy or human rights. Or freedom.” He emphasised:
“Give us stability. Then we can have a slow process towards democracy
and freedom.”
UN
Security Council Resolution 2254, unanimously agreed in December 2015,
refers to a “Syrian-led and Syrian-owned” transition, without saying
whether Bashar al-Assad should be part of it.
Neither the word
“President” nor the word “Assad” appears in the resolution. Under the
Syrian constitution, the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces
is “Marshal Bashar al-Assad”.
And there is a potentially serious flaw in the
proposed road map towards democracy in Syria. The UN resolution requires
elections to be held by June 2017. It doesn’t say if Assad can be a
candidate.
There are at least 4 million Syrian refugees in
Jordan, Iraq, Turkey and Lebanon. I have met many of them over the past
five years.
All of them told me there is no way they will go home
to vote in elections if Assad is still in power, not even to vote
against him.
With the Mukhabarat secret police still in place,
they say they wouldn’t feel safe – and fear they would be brutally
punished for fleeing the country.
One Assad supporter in Beirut – she prefers not to be named – told me angrily that the refugees deserve to be punished.
“They are traitors,” she said, “they should have stayed in Syria to fight Isis.”
Two years
ago, when Assad seemed to be losing, Hezbollah rushed to support him
because his defeat was unthinkable for Lebanon right next door.
“Imagine
what would happen in Syria,” a journalist, Ali Rizk, counsels me, “the
toppling of the government and a Taliban-like Isis regime on our
doorstep. They would have moved into Lebanon. It would have been suicide
for Hezbollah not to intervene.”
Strong man
In
Beirut’s southern suburb of Chiyah, a prominent Lebanese supporter of
the Syrian government, Salem Zahran, invited me to his office. On his
desk, there is a photograph – taken last May – of him sitting with
President Bashar al-Assad.
“I visit him a lot,” he tells me.
“How was he?”
“As usual. A strong man. Talking about the departure of Bashar al-Assad is expired. Not valid any more.”
But
he gave me a significant clue that there may be some change. He
revealed that at the Tehran embassy in Beirut, Iranian diplomats have
been negotiating with opposition groups in Syria via video-conference
link.
But in Beirut, there is also vehement opposition to the
idea that the Ba’athist President Assad might stay on as president, at
least until the end of the proposed two-year transition.
No way, says Maha Yahya from the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace think tank in Beirut: “Maintaining in power the
president under whose command people were barrel-bombed, and chemical
weapons were used would be completely crazy, even for a transition
period.”
She says Assad would simply use it as a chance to deploy his extensive security apparatus to undermine any kind of reform.
“This
would be a transition sanctioned by the international community, and
nobody would be watching what is really going on until it blows up in
their faces.”
Beirut’s long history as Middle East listening post:
In
the 1950s, the head of the Beirut “station” for Britain’s MI6
intelligence agency – together with his CIA counterpart – directed a
coup in Iran which removed the democratically elected Prime Minister
Mohammed Mossadegh from office.
The inducements they used
included hiring mobs to riot on the streets of Tehran, bundles of
dollars, and a mink coat for the Shah of Iran’s sister.
Thirty
years later, the CIA’s station chief in Beirut, William Buckley, was
kidnapped – and eventually murdered – by Hezbollah. They may have known
he was a CIA man from documents seized when the US embassy in Tehran was
occupied in 1979.
Numerous other Americans were kidnapped in Beirut in the 1980s.
As
attempted ransom for their release, US anti-tank and anti-aircraft
missiles were sold to Iran – and shipped there by Israel (whose motive
was to persuade Tehran to allow Iranian Jews to emigrate).
The
proceeds of the arms sales were used by an American colonel, Oliver
North, to provide weapons and support for the Contras – US-supported
guerrillas who were fighting the left-wing Sandinista government of
Nicaragua.
The plan didn’t work. Few hostages were released. More
were taken, including Irish writer Brian Keenan and journalist John
McCarthy and Terry Waite from Britain. Waite went to Beirut as a hostage
negotiator for the Church of England. He was held hostage himself for
more than five years.
Throughout this period, Iran and Iraq were
at war. The United States supported and helped arm the Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein, while at the same time supplying his Iranian enemy with
weapons. Terry Waite described this as “duplicity of a very high order”.
