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A Foreign Policy of Instability Cannot Save Syria at Home

(National-UAE) Michael Young - After having allowed foreign jihadists to cross over into Iraq for years to conduct attacks and suicide bombings, Assad lately asked Baghdad to close its border and avoid arms transfers to Syria. The Iraqis responded, as the Syrians once did, that it was a lengthy border to seal, and set as a condition that Damascus returns Iraqi Baathists operating in Syrian territory. On the Palestinian front, there has been a cooling of relations between Syria and Hamas, in part because Hamas has failed to endorse the Assad regime's crackdown. Even Hizbullah leader Nasrallah was careful not to push for demonstrations last Sunday along the Lebanese frontier with Israel to commemorate the Arab defeat during the war of June 1967. Hizbullah quietly consented when the Lebanese army sealed off the border area. Once the Syrian regime's regional leverage disappears, a harsh lens will reveal just how debilitated are its capacities at home. The writer is opinion editor of the Daily Star in Beirut.
2011-06-10 00:00:00
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