The UN Security Council has passed a resolution demanding Syria cooperate with the continued investigation into the assassination of Rafik Hariri:
The United States, France and Britain pressed for the resolution following last week’s tough report by the U.N. investigating commission, which implicated top Syrian and Lebanese security officials in the Feb. 14 bombing that killed Rafik Hariri and 20 others. The report also accused Syria of not cooperating fully with the inquiry.
The three co-sponsors agreed to drop a direct threat of sanctions against Syria in order to get support from Russia and China, which opposed sanctions while the investigation is still under way. Nonetheless, the resolution was adopted under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, which is militarily enforceable.
The resolution requires Syria to detain anyone the U.N. investigators consider a suspect and let investigators determine the location and conditions under which the individual would be questioned. It also would freeze assets and impose a travel ban on anyone identified as a suspect by the commission.
Those provisions could pose a problem for Syrian President Bashar Assad, as well as his brother, Maher Assad, and his brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat, the chief of military intelligence. The Syrian leader has refused a request from the chief U.N. investigator to be interviewed. Investigators also want to question his brother and brother-in-law.
The fact that sanctions, specifically, were forced out of the final language suggests that any true ramifications will not be there if Assad refuses to cooperate. Russia’s been pushing its way into the Middle East for quite awhile now in hopes of counterbalancing American hegemony, and it seems Putin is more than prepared to split apart the global community as evidenced by his tepid defense of Syria and, perhaps more importantly, his support of Iran’s nuclear ambitions after several weeks of waffling on the issue. China’s opposition to Syria sanctions could possibly be linked to its fear over setting an international precedent with the future of Taiwan and Chinese influence/interference there up in the air. Also, Putin is a fan of satellite state coercion, so any true international response to a client state-based assassination could certainly find its way back to Russia itself one day.
Back to Syria, though. In one way, Assad could benefit from this international pressure, utilizing the scandal to get rid of certain inner circle cronies still loyal to the legacy of Hafez al-Assad. Unfortunately for him, though, he is central to the investigation as is his brother Maher and other close advisors. While Bashar’s proponents in the foreign affairs community can point to his latent reformist sensibilities as reason to back off on possible punishments, domestic Syrian reform issues do not, in any way, fall under the scope of what happened to Rafik Hariri in Lebanon. Even if Bashar al-Assad, in his heart of hearts, wanted to install liberal democracy with an unfettered free market system — total fancy, of course — it would not change the pressure he and the Alawite government in Damascus faces domestically and from abroad. Hariri with his close ties to the Saudi royal family was viewed as a threat to the Alawites at the head of the Syrian government and Assad, constantly and rightfully paranoid, could have easily signed off on an assassination attempt as put forward by his more hot-headed brother Maher, or someone else charged with keeping the Alawite government firmly in power. Also, any loss of footing in Lebanon was seen as a nightmare scenario since Syria is nothing without the leverage it can place on Israel via Lebanon and Hizbollah. Ironically, it appears as if a wayward policy to maintain control in Lebanon is exactly what led to Syria’s mass, although not complete, exodus from the western Levant.
How Assad reacts now is obviously key. A pronounced purging of governmental ranks would not be surprising if Assad finds himself in an even smaller corner. If he has to act in a way that will weaken him, he might as well get rid of those most threatening to him within the governmental ranks and make it appear to the international community as if massive reform has occurred. Regardless, Assad has been weakened in all arenas and it is questionable how long he can hold on to the reins of power. Who knows, perhaps Assad’s most hardline opponents from Hafez’s Old Guard see this as an opportunity to depose Assad himself and reinstate the ultra-repressive policies of old in a fiery Alawite implosion, cheered on by the West and numerous Middle Eastern regimes that find common cause with Syrian Sunnis.
Cross-posted to Digital Dissent