From Mr M. Megawer

Those who had great interest in the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, have also managed to pressurise the Syrian government into withdrawing the last Syrian soldiers and intelligence agents from Lebanon on 26 April, ending three decades during which Damascus regarded Lebanon as part of a greater Syria. Syria deployed its forces to Lebanon during the civil war at the request of the international community, among which the Arab League and the USA. The pressure for Syria to leave Lebanon has been building since Israel withdrew from the south of the country in 2000.

America had effectively allowed Syria to turn Lebanon into its vassal in 1990, as reward for supporting the US-led coalition in evicting Iraqi forces from Kuwait. But America’s attitude changed after the war to remove Saddam Hussein, and has since been pushing hard for Syria to pull its troops out of Lebanon. The American Administration stated that the Syrian President was dead set against an attempt to bring democracy to Iraq and peace between Israelis and Palestinians. But in reality, Syria did not support the US-led illegal invasion of Iraq from the very beginning. Besides, Syria has constantly supported the Palestinians’ struggle to have their legitimate rights restored. It seems that Syrian policies always oppose American policies of self-interest in the Middle East.

Freeing Lebanon from Syrian troops and intelligence agents was a victory for the freedom and respect of human rights in Lebanon. Despite Syria’s continuous support from Arab States and its strong opposition to America and Israel, Syria is still one of the most dictatorial regimes in the Arab world. Therefore, in the name of security, its troops and intelligence agents in Lebanon were imprisoning, abusing, humiliating, torturing and killing Lebanese who opposed them. This resulted in a rare scene for the Middle East, when hundreds of thousands of Lebanese marched on Parliament in Beirut. The protesters were demanding an end to decades of Syrian interference in their country.

In the Middle East, the lack of respect for human rights makes it quite easy for anyone in authority to abuse citizens freely. This also happened in Iraq, where the supposedly civilised, professional, disciplined and morally motivated armies, namely the American and the British, have carried out criminal acts by subjecting the Iraqi prisoners to aggression, sexual abuse, and humiliation in their moral and religious beliefs.

One wonders why all the propaganda, the international pressure led by the USA and the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 against Syria? So why just Syria and not Israel? Israel has repeatedly refused to obey a total of 65 United Nations Security Council Resolutions for decades. Both Resolutions 242 and 497 require Israel’s immediate and unconditional withdrawal, but this has never happened!

Moustafa Megawer

QAWRA