Hanin Ghaddar

On September 11, 2001, almost 3,000 people died in the US in a terrorist attack targeting innocent civilians. By September 11, 2011, almost 3,000 people have died in Syria in terrorist attacks targeting innocent civilians committed by the government. Two acts of terrorism, separated by ten years, changed and will continue to change the political map of the region.

In 2001, the US received condolences, support and promises of cooperation from almost all Arab leaders as it embarked on its war on terrorism. Today, not a single Arab leader has asked Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down. How many more does Assad have to kill for an Arab state to react?

Assad and his family have been in power for more than 40 years, and neighboring countries are used to dealing with Syria as the Assads’ property. Now some, including Iran, are starting to think of Syria after Assad, except the Arabs, and mainly Lebanon.

This weekend, Arab League President Nabil Al-Arabi visited Damascus and came out with lame promises of a plan for reform agreed upon by Assad. Arabi, blinded by his ambition to secure a role for the Arab League in any negotiations over Syria, forgot that the Syrians and others across the Arab world long ago gave up on reforms. The people want to see Assad step down and appear at the International Criminal Court.

The Arab League’s position is not surprising, and many Arabs lost faith in the role and intentions of the institution long ago. It is not surprising either that Arab leaders haven’t asked Assad to step down yet. No one wants to feel that he is next. On the contrary, if Assad manages to maintain power in Syria, they believe, it might actually stop the domino effect of the uprisings, the nightmare of every Arab president and king.

This is the attitude here in Lebanon, too. March 8 leaders are worried that the fall of the Syrian regime will wipe away their dreams of controlling Lebanon and its institutions. Hezbollah and Syria’s other proxies in Lebanon will lose their only Arab ally, and the Party of God, which is becoming known as a backer of dictatorships in the region due to its staunch support of Assad, will also lose its access to arms smuggling routes if the Syrian regime falls.
This does not mean that Hezbollah will disappear from Lebanon as soon as Assad is ousted. It will still have its arsenal and will certainly use it to sustain the balance of power in Lebanon, as long as Iran wants this balance to stay.

Assad’s fall would also not mean that the March 14 coalition would come out a winner. Most of this camp’s leaders still see the uprising in Syria as an event taking place in a distant country, while the Lebanese people feel that their country is more like a district in Syria that may not be experiencing the action directly, but that is being greatly influenced by the uprising and the government’s bloody crackdown.

March 14 members are acting as if Lebanon is still the center of the region, while no one really cares anymore. Former PM Saad Hariri is hiding in Paris while his aides and MPs are reacting to the uprising in Syria as if it were a Sunni affair. Most of the March 14 Christian leaders are being cautious, noting that Assad might be necessary for the safety and preservation of the Christians and other minorities in both Syria and Lebanon. They seem to have forgotten that during its presence in Lebanon before being kicked out in 2005, the Syrian regime persecuted, tortured and killed Christians just as it did with Lebanese from other sects.

As for the leader of the Druze sect in Lebanon, Walid Jumblatt, he is still swinging between his fear of Hezbollah and his desire to see Assad fall. All that swinging left him little space for thinking about the Syrian people.

March 8 leaders lost their ability to react shrewdly because of their fears, while March 14 leaders lost their ability, if there was ever one, to strategize because they simply do not see the Syrian uprising as it is: a storm that will change politics in the region, and the key to doors that were closed for ages. When these doors open, they will let in revolutionary ideas that will change the way our politicians are forced to think and talk.

There will be no space for either March 8 or March 14 in the post-Assad era in Lebanon. They will be replaced by new, dynamic leaders who act as fitting counterparts to the new political breed in Syria. It will probably take a very long time before Lebanon comes up with a new political class that could meet the new standards in the region, but it is worth a shot. Isn’t it?

Hanin Ghaddar is the Managing Editor of NOW Lebanon