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Syria Seeks a Military Return to Lebanon

(Daily Star-Lebanon) Michael Young - When Syria's President Bashar Assad withdrew his army from Lebanon in 2005, there was a naive belief he had accepted the new situation and would be satisfied merely with reasserting Syrian political influence in Beirut. In fact, his ambition always was, and remains, to return Syria militarily to Lebanon. Without a military presence in Lebanon, Bashar Assad knows, Syrian hegemony will always be incomplete. Its allies in Lebanon, other than Hizbullah, which is ultimately more Iranian than Syrian, are weak. Only an army in place can intimidate the Sunnis and the Maronites - the two communities at the heart of the Syrian regime's preoccupations since the mid-1970s, when Hafez Assad dispatched his brigades to Lebanon.
2010-04-16 09:07:36
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