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February 21, 2005
Was the Hariri Hit a Brilliant Achievement or Fatal Blunder?
Nelson Ascher at EuroPundits, in commenting on the speculation surrounding the February 14, 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, said what he’d "really like to know, and have not been seeing very much addressed anywhere, is more about what kind of power struggle may be taking place in Damascus," the Syrian capital.
Has, for instance, some Syrian faction perpetrated the attack in order to embarrass another Syrian faction? Is the answer to be found in divisions not inside Lebanon, but Syria? A good informative analysis of Syria’s internal problems and quarrels would come in handily."After all," he said, "the last time France and the U.S. worked really close together was precisely in Lebanon over twenty years ago and, even then, they were targeted by the same people: it wasn’t only American marines who died in suicide-bombings, French soldiers were also killed. And also French diplomats and journalists. The killers were almost certainly obeying orders from Hafez Assad."But how independent is Syria itself? If there’s a country interested in upping the ante in the region right now and, perhaps, diverting attention from itself to Syria, that is Iran. My impression is that, nowadays, Baby Doc Assad is nothing but the ayatollahs’ poodle.
What makes things even stranger in this case is that the murdered politician was, ostensibly at least, a close friend of Jacques Chirac’s. One can, and should, say many things about the guy, but he doesn’t look like the kind of person who takes slights lightly. One could expect now a Bush-Chirac anti-Syrian and maybe anti-Iranian alliance: or could one? If, as far as we can know, there’s a spark that could ignite some Franco-American collaboration, this would be it.
Mr. Ascher, who was born in Brazil but now lives in Europe, also asked: "How much do we know about both countries’ joint efforts in Lebanon during the early 80s? What was left of them? Will this murder bring both of them closer together? Was Hariri’s killing a brilliant achievement, a kind of test or a miscalculation, a fatal blunder?" Great questions. If only we could get answers.Here is more of his interesting analysis of the assassination.
Posted by Munir Umrani at February 21, 2005 10:21 PM
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