First Syria, then Lebanon

 

Beirut

On New Year’s Eve 2011, I asked a senior Swedish diplomat, who had just crossed over from Damascus and was ready to see in the New Year Beirut-style, how long he gave Bashar al-Assad as Syrian president. ‘Longer than we think, but not as long as he thinks,’ he said with a wink. That was still in the days of what we naively called the Arab Awakening; we Lebanese assumed we could sit back and wait for Syria’s hated system to fall. But the weeks have turned to years, and not only is Assad still in place, he might just be prevailing. Lebanon, meanwhile, is falling apart. Fighting alongside Assad’s troops, arguably tipping the conflict in his favour, are up to 7,000 mercenaries from the Lebanese Shia party Hezbollah, which is once again driving a wedge through Lebanese society. The Party of God was the darling of the Arab world after it fought Israel to a draw in 2006, but it has drifted from its admittedly dubious core business of defending Lebanon from ‘Zionist aggression’ and taken sides in Syria, presumably on the orders of its paymasters and spiritual bosses in Iran.