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| World Atlas map of the Syria-Lebanon borders |
Syria is now depicting Lebanon as a Taliban-infested
Afghanistan, its eastern and northern regions as the hills and caves of
Tora Bora and its seaport city of Tripoli as Kandahar.
The innuendos, Lebanese political analyst Rosanna
Boumounsef writes in her daily column for Beirut’s an-Nahar, portend three menaces:
1.
Cross-border
Syrian Army raids on Lebanese regions abutting Syria
2.
Pressure on
Beirut to emulate Damascus in pouncing on its own people
3.
Dragging vast
swaths of eastern and northern Lebanon into the Syria cauldron.
Boumounsef, among several other analysts, was
commenting on Syria’s letter to the United Nations accusing some
Lebanese areas of helping al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood terrorists set up
home along the Syrian border.
"Some Lebanese
areas next to the Syrian border are harboring terrorist elements from al Qaeda
and the Muslim Brotherhood, who are jeopardizing the security of Syria and its
citizens and striving to undermine the UN Special Envoy's six-point plan,"
Syria’s UN Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari wrote in a letter marked “Urgent” and
dated May 17.
The seven-page letter (six
of them in Arabic) was addressed to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and copied
to the current UN Security Council president, Agshin Mehdiyev of Azerbaijan.
"In some Lebanese
areas bordering Syria, several warehouses have been set up to stockpile weapons
and ammunition that are reaching Lebanon illegally, either by sea, or at times via
the airplanes of specific countries that are used to transport weapons to
Lebanon before smuggling them to Syria, under the pretext they (the aircraft)
are carrying humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees in Lebanon," Ja'afari
said in the letter.
He said, “On March 13,
an unidentified warship anchored off (the Lebanese coastal city) Jounieh as
small boats went about moving its arms cargo to shore so it could then be moved
to Syria. Weapons-laden vessels also docked at the Aquamarina near Jounieh.
Their weapons shiploads were moved first to Akkar, then to Wadi Khaled, ahead
of their smuggling into Syria.”
Ja’afari said,
“Premises of charities run by Salafists and the Future Movement in Lebanese
areas bordering Syria are being used to provide safe havens to al-Qaeda and
Muslim Brotherhood terrorists to launch hit-and-run criminal operations inside
Syria. The injured among them are treated under fake names in hospitals and
clinics affiliated to those (Salafist and Future Movement) groups and funded by
Saudi Arabia and Qatar.”
In the Tripoli
governorate town of Kalamoun, he said, “there are about 50 terrorists led by
Khaled el-Tanak, Khaled Hamza and Zakaria Ghaleb el-Kholi” who carry IDs
rubberstamped by the UN allowing them to travel unhindered first to Danniyeh, on
to Akkar and then to Wadi Khaled, where they would infiltrate into Syrian
territory to mount terrorist operations.
Ja’afari added in his
letter that Colonel Riad al-Asaad, head of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA),
“recently arrived in Lebanon to prepare for creating a Syrian buffer zone commencing
in Lebanese territory.”
Lebanese Premier Najib
Miqati Friday picked holes in the Ja’afari letter and said his government “is
fully performing its duty in combating all terror operations, in monitoring the
Lebanese borders, in controlling the security situation and in addressing any
security gaps.”
Miqati said, “Violations
are also occurring from the Syrian side of the border, as everyone knows the crisscrossing
nature of the frontier between the two countries and how difficult it is to
control the extensive border area between them.
“Therefore, we consider
the remarks voiced by the Syrian envoy as exacerbating the disputes, at a time when
we are seeking, through the relevant diplomatic and security channels, to bridge
differences and tackle problems calmly, carefully and in such a way as to safeguard
the good relations between the two countries and peoples.”
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| Rosanna Boumounsef |
Rosanna Boumounsef, in
her news analysis for an-Nahar, says Lebanon is “immensely and deeply troubled”
by the Syrian charges. The account by Ja’afari is “extremely dangerous” as it
engrosses Lebanon “forcibly and publicly” in the Syrian quagmire.
The likely fallouts,
she says, are at least three:
1. There
is the prospect of more frequent thrusts by the Syrian army into Lebanese
border area under the pretext of the “hot pursuit” of so-called terrorists. The
Ja’afari letter effectively delineates all the targeted Lebanese Christian and
Sunnite area, including Jounieh, Danniyeh and Akkar. The letter also came hot
on the heels of Lebanese Alawite warlord Rifaat Eid’s remark welcoming the
Syrian army’s return to Tripoli to restore law and order in the troubled city.
(See my earlier post, “How
Syria fire is creeping up on Lebanon”).
2. The
second possibility is to pressure Lebanon’s political and security authorities
to emulate the Syrian regime’s crackdown on what its dubs Muslim Brotherhood
terrorists.
3. A
third likelihood is to stir up internecine strife in Lebanon. Syria’s Lebanese
allies have long been describing Tripoli as an “outlaw city.”
Boumounsef notes the
Syrian regime’s modus operandi is to
try and take advantage of the situation in Lebanon to pressure its Arab and
foreign detractors by threatening to sow chaos in neighboring countries. Only
this week, she says, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told a Russian
broadcaster, “If you sow chaos in Syria you may be infected by it yourself, and
(Syria’s detractors) know this very well.”
