In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [100]
I began asking around, and sources told me that someone from the Syrian embassy in Washington had reported me to Syrian intelligence regarding my presentation and a recent article I had written on the Syrian opposition. This was not a complete surprise—in the spring of 2007 I had a professional dispute with Joshua Landis, whose blog, Syria Comment, had become noticeably closer to the Syrian regime’s line following the Hariri assassination and the 2006 war in Lebanon. It was a small but important matter; Landis had cited one of my articles in his autumn 2007 journal article on the Syrian opposition to prove his assertion that a Syrian opposition figure, Michel Kilo, had met the Muslim Brotherhood two days after Hariri’s assassination. My article did not make that claim, as I could not prove the assertion and was sensitive to the fact that Kilo, who was standing trial at that time, could be affected. After a number of attempts to settle the matter, I asked the journal for a clarification, which they granted.13 Landis is widely known to be close to Imad Moustapha, whom Landis quotes regularly on his blog. Only a few weeks before the Palestine Branch showed up at Syria Today, I interviewed Moustapha during work on a report on US-Syrian relations for the International Crisis Group. During the interview, the kind and welcoming Moustapha that I had known in the past seemed annoyed by my presence.14
The Palestine Branch was Syria’s strongest intelligence agency. Just saying its name was enough to send shivers up the spine of any Syrian, as the agency dealt with espionage from Israel. Suddenly I was caught in a dilemma: if I left Damascus and spoke openly about what I knew, I would almost certainly be cut off from my professional livelihood. But if I stayed in Damascus, I would have to toe the regime’s new hard lines on the nuclear file, on jihadists infiltrating Iraq from Syria, and on the deteriorating human rights situation in the country. As I didn’t know where the new red lines would be set, the chances were high that I would trip over them, putting not only my own position in Syria in jeopardy but my colleagues at Syria Today in jeopardy as well.
It was time for me to go. I tendered my resignation to the magazine’s owner, Abdul Ghani Attar, moved my base of operations to Beirut, and began writing this book.
After nearly five months without a president in Lebanon and sixteen months with a capital divided between the tent cities of the Hezbollah-led opposition and the prime minister’s palace, tensions in Beirut finally came to a boil in early May. Walid Jumblatt, then a pillar of Lebanon’s pro-independence government and sharp critic of Syria and Hezbollah, accused the latter of using cameras to monitor the runways at Beirut’s international airport. It was a sensitive area—it was located in the Lebanese capital’s Hezbollah-dominated southern suburbs and was allegedly one of the group’s ports for arms shipments from Iran. Jumblatt also accused Hezbollah of operating its own fiber-optic telephone network, which could be used to monitor the calls of private citizens. A few days later, the Lebanese cabinet ordered a judicial investigation into the network. They also fired General Wafiq Shuqeir, the head of security at Beirut airport and a close ally of the Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri, whose political movement, Amal, was aligned with Hezbollah.
Hezbollah immediately branded the inquiry into the fiber-optic system an “act of war,” as the organization’s military wing relied heavily on the network to communicate with its forces throughout the country. Hezbollah fighters quickly set up checkpoints and roadblocks throughout Beirut. They met only token resistance from private security guards hired by March 14 leader Saad Hariri. Hezbollah also overran the Hariri-owned Future Television in west Beirut, setting its offices on fire. Hezbollah forces quickly surrounded Hariri’s mansion in the suburb of Koreitem as well as Jumblatt’s nearby offices at Clemenceau.
In the space of a few hours, Hezbollah