Flag fatigue and flawed fancies

22 Feb

February 22, 2007

Syria and Lebanon watchers know that March is becoming a busy month politically, even somewhat crowded, what with the movements of “March 8” (a defining date both for the Baath and for Hizbullah), “March 14” and now, not to be outdone, "March 11." While the March 11 date is in itself part of the movement’s raison d’être, and thus understandable, an even better date for a regional movement might be “March 21,” to capitalize on the notion of spring and rebirth (rebirth from the rebirth of the Baath itself, of course). In the Arab world, March 21 is also Mother’s Day, which can bring countless positive connotations to a movement of change from Big Brother towards the compassionate realism of Mother. Something like March 21 sounds nice for a real Renaissance, wouldn’t you say?

There’s still the availability of other months, such as February for instance, although it is also gearing up to be full of political activities and ever more daring (some might say suicidal) statements of position, which is necessarily not a bad attribute for a political movement in normal circumstances. Unfortunately, most of these activities were manifested with the tiresome and highly unoriginal flag waving mania. While I will always continue to virtually wave the Palestinian flag (or at least pin it right here on this blog), I confess that both Lebanese and Syrians have turned me off flags for a long time. I don’t think I can bear anymore to see crowds of any political camp, on either side of the border, robotically waving flags in their thousands, identical photos in their hundreds, and chanting ever more hair-raisingly kitschy anthems to one cause, to one leader, to one nation … or to another. All this for a massive deadlock which neither side is capable of tipping. For all the outside support each side is getting, for all the promises of civil disobedience it is quite obvious that Nasrallah couldn’t deliver on his promises (internally, that is) – apart from creating a total freeze that has merely upset even many of his own supporters - and that Siniora is even less capable of “prime ministering” the country, no matter how his superiors push him.

So how long can this corny “my crowd is bigger than your crowd” game go on? I don’t know about you, but I’m all flagged out. And all speeched out as well, especially after having rediscovered that the Lebanese do empty rhetoric (Arabist, nationalist and other) as competently as your leading Baathist, as boringly as your leading regime sycophant, and as convincingly as SANA. Could Saad Hariri have been any less uninspiring? Instead of moving forward, everyone seems to be stepping backward in time and adopting the most ridiculous steadfastness (oh, that hated word) and self-righteousness.

The latter, of course, is somewhat difficult to achieve when the speaker’s entire brain seems to be occupied by the “originality” of the insults being hurled across the border ... and being hurled straight back of course. I think this last point is worth examining, and not because it is unheard of for members of one regime to attack the president of another, and a “brotherly” country to boot, the symbol (whether we like him or not, and I don’t) of a cause many of us hold dear. You surely all remember Mustapha Tlass notoriously calling Yasser Arafat the son of 60,000 … well, you probably saw it for yourself since it was a televised speech. So this is not totally new.

But in the case of the cohort of warlords (mainly Jumblatt and Geagea) going to such extremes, one has to wonder: do the March 14 leaders know something we don’t know? The categorical crude denunciations of Bashar Assad imply that they are totally confident that they never need to work with him, to talk to him, or to negotiate with him again. Rightly or wrongly, they seem confident that there will be an international tribunal, under Chapter VII even, and that the Syrian regime will be found guilty of Hariri’s assassination. At the very least, they are behaving and orating according to this scenario, throwing caution to the wind and not leaving place for alternative readings of the situation.

For all their supposed experience with the Syrian regime, it seems to me that these people simply don’t know with whom they’re dealing! If I were in their shoes, I would not burn all my bridges – especially knowing the history of the region.

It’s true that the Syrian regime appears to be doing everything it can to avoid the tribunal, an attitude most eager analysts are taking as a de facto admission of guilt. While this is still a big possibility, in spite of the tame technical reports submitted by Serge Brammertz, I think it is time to consider other possible explanations for the regime’s apparent obsession with sabotaging said tribunal; amongst others, there is a long list of scores the regime wants to settle.

Whatever happens, the regime will never, ever forget, let alone forgive, the Lebanese politicians/warlords who went running to Bush and Chirac and precipitated the humiliating, hurried Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon with 1559 – the first time a Security Council resolution was passed putting Syria in the wrong. Likewise, the regime will never forget, let alone forgive, the immediate, loud accusations of Syrian leaders every time something went astray in Lebanon, regardless of its actual involvement. In other words, whether or not it actually had a hand in all this chaos is moot here: the regime won’t let go of the fact that it alone was blamed so publicly by rebelling former minions. As far as the Syrians are concerned, lèse-majesté began a long time before the ridiculous insults of this February 14 crowd. The very least the Syrian regime will do, then, is thwart the plans of Lebanese opponents at every possible opportunity, and the Hariri tribunal’s centrality in the latters’ agenda makes it the perfect target. Here’s a big if: if the tribunal is indeed established, and if the Syrians are not found to be guilty, there is going to be hell to pay (regardless of the truth).

But the March 14 leaders seem to be assured of eventual victory, repeating that the Syrians are responsible for all these actions because they are isolated and weak. And here again they are wrong. How little they know the Syrian regime; it is when it feels strongest that it turns its attention to the little annoyances that have been piling up, out of pure spite sometimes. Take the example of civil society activists who have become long suffering prisoners of conscience at a time when they posed absolutely no threat to the regime (not that they had ever posed a threat). There is the worrying case of our respected friend Michel Kilo being left waiting for a process in vain, or the terrible case of Anwar Bunni who was not only beaten in jail, but who is now said to be facing the removal of his citizenship, a possibility that his Syrian lawyer colleagues didn’t deem important enough to protest, given they were too busy striking to denounce Zionist and American campaigns. Meanwhile, Aref Dalila continues to languish in solitary confinement in appalling health conditions. None of these brave men really poses a threat to the regime, but they are being hounded even in their confinement. Kilo and Bunni are particularly relevant to the “revenge for Lebanon” scenario, given that the excuse for their arrest was the Damascus-Beirut declaration - which I remind you Lebanese “activists” hardly deigned to co-sign.

Revenge is a dish best eaten cold, but there are so many instances when the regime couldn’t wait to impose the harshest punishment it could to those who dared affront it. Remember the blockade of Lebanon, and remember the subsequent easing of import restrictions on the Syrian economy, made just in time for the Lebanese one to suffer even more. And there are countless such examples, many already mentioned in this blog.

Syrian regime self-confidence continues to grow, regardless of what some people would have us believe. Is it confident enough to prepare a new law which Dardari says would make the imposition of a state of emergency significantly more difficult? I’ll believe that when I see it (not forgetting that actuals laws never meant anything when a regime crony wants to have his way), but in the meantime, I don’t really see the isolation gleefully announced in some quarters, nor the supposed fear of the regime. On the contrary, the regime feels stronger than before and even has a series of “elections” coming up to prove to the world how popular and democratically-inclined it really is. The more confident it feels, the more time and attention it devotes to its presentation. Syrian media now frequently refers to the president as “fakhamat al ra’is” and not “siyadet al ra’is” anymore – socialism and proletariat be damned. This is significant.

And Syrian television news, while we’re on the subject of media, has undergone an umpteenth exercise of modernization and development (not reform, you see, it’s not needed), changing the static reddish background (too socialist perhaps?) to a busy bluish one, imagining it is good for its credibility. They feel good, so they try to make it look good as well. Well, I’m going to go out on a limb and give the Ministry of “Information” some free marketing advice: nothing kills a bad product like good advertising. No matter how many times it is underlined. (If you don’t follow SANA regularly, you may be a lot saner than I am, but you won’t know that the verb “underline” in all its tenses is the most popular word there, at least in the “English” section where everyone is always underlining the importance, steadfastness and nobility of Syria.)

You don’t need to follow Syrian news to realize that the regime is far from cowering in its corner at the thought of an eventual Hariri tribunal. Which brings us back to the invective of February 14 and the self-confidence of March 14-ers: what do they know? They’d better hope they are right, because they now have burned all the bridges behind them, and the Syrian regime was never the forgiving type; the Syrian people know it, and the Lebanese politicians should know it too. Lebanese analysts, in the meantime, are proving to be very poor judges of the Syrian regime.