In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [42]
In Mainz, Germany, on February 24, Bush announced that Syria must withdraw its troops and “secret services” from Lebanon so as to allow Lebanon’s upcoming elections to be held freely. “We will see how they respond before there’s any further discussions about going back to the United Nations,” Bush said during a press conference with German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who reportedly supported the statement.8
On March 1, in an interview with Time magazine, Assad responded with a vague timetable for a pullback of troops that fell short of a commitment to a full withdrawal. “It should be very soon and maybe in the next few months. Not after that,” Assad said. “The security situation is much better in Lebanon than before. They have an army, they have a state, they have institutions.”9
On March 3, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah visited Damascus and openly called on Syria to withdraw its forces from Lebanon or face Arab isolation. Later that same day, in a press briefing at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Bush turned up the rhetoric against Damascus another notch. “The United States of America strongly supports democracy around the world, including Lebanon,” Bush said. “It’s time for Syria to get out.”10
On March 6, the White House branded Syria’s gradual withdrawal plan “half measures” and “not enough” and demanded that Damascus withdraw its army and intelligence services “completely and immediately,” adding, “the world is watching the situation in Lebanon, particularly Beirut, very closely.”11
Behind the scenes, while the demonstrations in Lebanon pressured Syria to withdraw, the United States worked with the United Kingdom and France at the Security Council to draft a resolution establishing an international investigation into Hariri’s murder. A week after Assad finally agreed on April 3 to withdraw Syrian forces, the council passed Resolution 1595, establishing the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC).
With Syria out of Lebanon, the Lebanese cabinet scheduled elections over three successive Sundays in late May and early June. The Hariri-family-led anti-Syrian March 14 bloc captured seventy-two seats, breaking the numerical threshold needed to form a government. As Fouad Siniora, Rafik Hariri’s right-hand man in government and former finance minister, struggled to build a coalition, Syria initiated an additional “security procedure” on the Syrian side of the frontier, denying access for cars and trucks departing Lebanon for Syria. Nearly half of all Lebanese commercial trade crossed the Syrian frontier on its way to the richer markets in the Persian Gulf—truckloads of vegetables rotted in the hot summer sun as drivers, stuck with their loads, slept in the shade under the trailers.
While most chalked up the blockade to Syrian spite at having been thrown out of Lebanon, it hurt powerful Syrians, too. Less than a year after President Assad came to power in 2000, his cousin, Rami Makhlouf, had built a massive duty-free store on the Syrian side of the frontier. It sold the cheapest alcohol in the Middle East and housed what was then Syria’s only supermarket, where everything from frozen pizzas to Dunkin’ Donuts goods could be purchased by the boxful. At Syrian customs, officers had turned a blind eye to anything in a Syrian duty-free bag. With the advent of the blockade, however, customs officials now restricted passengers from bringing in anything other than personal effects and luggage.
In Syria, individual reaction to Hariri’s assassination was one of shock and dismay. The country’s Sunni population looked to Hariri as someone of their faith who had brought modernity to the Levant. He not only rebuilt Lebanon, he transformed Beirut