… Maher Arar, a Canadian national of Syrian descent, changing flights in the US in September 2002, detained and deported to Syria by US authorities where he was held captive and tortured before being released. He is now back in Canada and making frequent media appearances to discuss his case. This has been front page news in Canada for months now and I find it somewhat surprising that only now it is getting traction in the blogosphere, the reason probably being that Maher Arar was a suspected terrorist, making it difficult for some to advocate the man's rights.

An excerpt form a post I wrote more than two years ago and yes, bloggers continue to be relatively mum about this issue apart from a select group of American left-of-center blogs keen to acquire some ammunition in the ongoing torture debate. This however is not strictly a torture case, but it warrants some critical examination in a way that should be of interest to both the left and the right.

As most of you know, Maher Arar was fully exonerated earlier this week by an independent Canadian commission of inquiry which ruled that Arar has been the victim of inaccurate RCMP intelligence reports and deliberate smears by Canadian officials. Note that these reports were provided to US officials who wasted no time to deport Arar to Syria (he holds dual Syrian-Canadian citizenship) and that the smear emerged following Arar’s return to Canada after a less than pleasant stay in one of Boy Assad’s prison facilities.

There is just too much here to capture in a brief narrative – and you have to make a distinction between the Canadian and American angle here - but let me summarize what is significant:

1. The deliberate smears did their work to the extent that many commentators – and that includes me – while being aware of the problematic behavior of both Canadian and US officials either neglected to defend Mr. Arar or at least presume his innocence. There always was a whiff of jihadist guilt associated with the man, so why bother? Looking away was the better option, an attitude that continues to this very day. Yet, for the sake of honoring independent judicial inquiries we now have to accept that Arar is not guilty of any crime and that he did not deserve the abuse meted out to him by the Canadian, US and Syrian governments.

2. As Majikthise points out, the damage to counter-terrorism operations is phenomenal. There can be little doubt that RCMP heads are going to roll over this affair and even if they don’t, Canada’s venerable police operation will think twice before sharing information with US counterparts. No prizes for guessing what this will do to the already challenged cross-border security situation on the 49th parallel.

3. Like the Hirsi Ali case (where Dutch neocon minister Verdonk ditched Hirsi Ali out of political expediency) it turns out that those who we believed to have staked a certain position in the debate over Islam, terrorism and all that comes with it, would not necessarily remain pure in adhering to that position. The same is true here, but the reverse. Canada’s left-of-center Liberal government (defeated in early 2006) was responsible for this fiasco by adopting an almost Rumsfeldian recklessness in handling this terror suspect. At the same time it wasted no opportunity to distance itself from the Bush administration in order to placate a testy and not overly pro-American electorate. Odd and duplicitous behaviour.

4. In a way this affair also echoes the themes I touched on earlier this week. We can’t under any circumstance allow jihadist terror to put us in a position where the lives of Muslims in general are deemed to be of lesser value. We may not realize it, but the very necessary break with politically correct multiculturalism has gone to an extreme where exactly that is happening. Muslim minorities in western societies need to be assisted and compelled to become the Jews of 17th century Amsterdam, not the Jews of 20th century Warzaw.

5. And torture? Not sure here. There is a good argument to be made that the US simply deported Arar based on immigration law and that there was no arrangement to let its ‘friends’ in Damascus extract some information from the Syrian-Canadian suspect. Seriously, since when have we partnered with Damascus in fighting terror?

So there you have it. My gut feel tells me that we will never learn the real truth here, but the Arar affair provides us with a microcosm of things that can go wrong when pursuing terror suspects. Obfuscating the truth, imperiling future security operations, dishonesty, political expediency, nascent racism and a dose of physical abuse. Incredible failure, highlighting a level of moral ineptitude that will cost us dearly in fighting jihadism.

Via Michael Totten comes this nugget:

On the heels of what it views as a Hizbullah victory against the Jewish state, Syria is forming its own Hizbullah-like guerilla organization to fight Israel in hopes of "liberating" the Golan Heights, an official from Syrian President Bashar Assad's Ba'ath party told WorldNetDaily yesterday.

Well, let's see. As Leon de Winter comments these ventures do not exactly have a great track record:

Syria's latest addition to the world of terror is the Front for the Liberation of the Golan: "We know from history guerilla resistance works against Israel," commented a Baath party official. He couldn't be more wrong. Just look at how much the Palestinians have lost since they chose the path of armed resistance to Jewish settlement more than a hundred years ago: and each time the violence flares up they lose a little more.

To which I would add, be careful with experiments like these Bashar. They have a habit to turn against and replace their creator.

Sometimes you have to admit that you got something wrong, but in this case I don't mind:

The last of Syria's troops left Lebanon on Tuesday after a bittersweet ceremony near the border, ending a military presence that for 29 years helped Syria control Lebanon and confront Israel through proxy militias.

Much faster than expected. The test however will come in the form of elections the date of which was confirmed earlier today:

Lebanon's pro-Syrian parliament speaker promised on Wednesday that elections, the first without a Syrian military presence for 33 years, would start on May 29.

Let's see if with its military withdrawal Syria's influence has indeed become negligible.

For Beirut blogging, check out the Caveman in Beirut. LebanonWire is, well what else can it be, a great newswire for things Lebanese and events have also been covered in detail by Publius Pundit.

The reason I haven't been jumping up and down so far is that I didn't expect things to move so quickly and also because Syrian interests are so entrenched that a simple "pack up and go" scenario seemed pretty remote. Yes, there are some Ukraine-like similarities, but the political dynamics in the Middle East as well of the particulars of the situation make it hard to compare the two. But the US presence next door and the potentially divided Syrian leadership may cause a similar chain of events, even France is weighing in on this one.

If a swift Syrian withdrawal follows, and let's hope it does, then Assad and his cronies' days are numbered. From that perpsective I draw the analogy with Indonesia and East-Timor where international pressure prompted withdrawal and free elections which in turn undermined the political role of the Indonesian army in the nation's capital. Today the balance of power in Jakarta looks very different from only a few years ago, let's hope we can say the same about Damascus soon.

The calls for Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon are gaining momentum, but what is an interesting sub-story is the "why" of Syria’s continued presence. There are reports that there are now up to 1 million Syrian workers in Lebanon, most of them working in low wage positions that reportedly pay twice as much as comparable jobs in the Syrian homeland. Lebanon is and has always been a cash cow for Assad and his cronies and there’s nothing more difficult for a corrupt dictatorship than to let the outside world disrupt the cash stream that sustains it. And having 1 million disgruntled workers flood the streets of Damascus looking for a job will be equally disruptive for Assad and friends. With that in mind, expect a long and protracted battle before Syria will end the occupation of Lebanon.

UPDATE: It seems there's some movement on the withdrawal front which is good news. The occupation, the vested interests and the ensconced position of the Syrians are eerily reminiscent of the Indonesian occupation of East-Timor, which took quite some time (and blood) to resolve.

It has been an under-used category on Peaktalk but today I was able to dust-off "Syria". The horrendous bombing in Beirut is a stark reminder of who is calling the shots in what we once called the Middle East's Switzerland, and that any reform of Bashir Assad's Baathist state will involve, or even start in, Lebanon.

Meryl Yourish has some sensible comments about Bashir Assad. I have always considered him to be a figurehead who out of loyalty to his father ended up in a job that he did not really want to take on. Yet, the shy ophthalmologist is Syria’s President and he is no doubt a convenient front for his father’s henchmen who continue to run affairs from Damascus. He has essentially two options, like North Korea’s Kim Jong Il continue the reign of his father and try to outdo him, or genuinely take on the Baathist hardliners and seek reform in Syria. The first option is unlikely given the mental make-up of Bashir and what he have seen from him so far, the second route would involve a shake-up of Syria’s leadership structure, withdrawal from Lebanon, resuscitate peace negotiations with Israel and move closer to the west. He will have to take his chances and calculate what scenario gives him the best chance of long-term survival, my assessment, like Meryl, is that both the status quo and a move towards reform may lead to a very quick end for Boy Assad, as Mark Steyn affectionately calls him. A tough spot to be in, a life threatening dilemma indeed.

The discussion and diplomatic activity over Syria grew quite intense today and it now seems that the White House has determined that it will not go to war with Syria, at least not immediately. This response addresses the immediate question raised by many as to why Syria has been playing such a dangerous game in recent days. PatioPundit likened it to rabbit going up against an eagle. The reason why Syria would take such a risky approach is not entirely unimaginable. Here are a few good reasons.

First of all, Assad has rightly assumed that the US does not have the political stomach for another war following its swift victory in Iraq. There are a few nation building exercises underway and the cost of war is substantial, as early as tomorrow Bush will refocus some of his own energies towards the US economy and another war would have a detrimental impact on any short-term plans to re-ignite an economy that, even now that Iraq is behind us, is weak. Secondly, the Syrians have gained a measure of confidence from the support offered by the French and the Russians as I suggested yesterday. Although that support might not translate itself directly into military support (although the Russians seem to be well out of control in this department) it would strengthen the Syrian case in the court of international approval. Thirdly, the Syrian leadership may go for the notion that it has very little to lose and gamble that they will survive defying the US forces, or gain such a measure of support and martyrdom in the Arab world that the gamble is well worth it. This may not be likely, but we should not underestimate the relative strength of radicals in Syria itself which brings me to the position of Assad himself as he does not have the firm grip on his country the way his father did. By importing an excess of terrorist elements into the country ranging from Hezbollah members to Baathists to Palestinians to al-Qaeda sympathizers, it may be hard to get a grip on whoever is residing in the country and who is crossing in and out. Border-crossing terrorists may get a hand from some disgruntled rank and file members of the Assad security apparatus as it is not inconceivable that many of them are not that impressed with the western educated son of Hafez Assad and may be considering a regime change of their own.

In any case a direct conflict appears to be postponed for now and Bush, Rumsfeld and Powell may well have engaged in a bit of rhetoric in order to ensure that Syria backs off, but also to set the stage for more direct steps in the near future. The argument is put forward that Syria will feel Saddam’s collapse in its pockets and may now be more susceptible to economic sanctions. Recent history however has taught us that economic sanctions are a pretty obsolete tool in dealing with tyrants, wherever they live. The stage has been set for regime change in Syria and over the months ahead we will be looking at an indirect way of achieving that, but that does not mean Syria is off Washington’s military radar screen. On the contrary.

As I discussed yesterday, many believe that democratic change in Syria will start in Lebanon which has effectively been under Syrian rule for the past 20 years. Yesterday the Lebanese Foundation for Peace issued a comprehensive letter to President Bush highlighting the need for regime change in Syria and substantiating this with a brief history of Syria's contributions to terrorism as well as its role in helping out Saddam over the past few weeks:

Let us not forget that it is Syria who drove the U.S. influence out of the Middle East. Syria pressured Lebanon to abrogate the pro-American May 17th agreements to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1982, by assassinating Lebanese president-elect Bashir Gemayel, by organizing later, with the complicity of Hezbollah, the bombing of the U.S. Marine´s barracks in Beirut, by periodic hostage-taking that humiliated America for a decade before America gave in to the blackmail of the late Hafez Assad, by offering Lebanon to the Syrian occupation. What did the U.S. gain after two decades of Syrian military occupation of Lebanon? More terrorism, more blackmail by terrorist organizations and a self-serving Syrian vote for U.N. resolution 1441, which was designed to help Syria, yet with Syria actually supporting the Iraq of Saddam Hussein.

Go read the entire letter.

Interestingly, when I posted my comments on Syria last night, I thought of “Syria ups the ante” as the right title but for some reason decided against it. Well, al-Jazeera believes it is the other way around and thinks Washington is upping the ante. Here are the facts: since the day Iraqi Freedom started Syria has been very clear as to where it stands and its actions have underlined that position, so: Syria is upping the ante.

As I pointed out last week, the question is what will happen in relation to Syria and Iran. Attention over the past few days has shifted towards Syria as it has opened its borders to let in Baathist refugees from Iraq and to allow Syrian and Palestinian fighters into Iraq to violently disrupt coalition activities in Iraq.

Syria has a number of good reasons to engage itself in Iraq. First of all it had a very sweet deal going with Iraq where it traded consumer goods for Iraqi oil, a business that some valued at approximately 20% of Syrian GDP. That business most certainly will dry up in the next few weeks or, equally likely, will be conducted on an arm’s length basis and not contain the sweet terms the two Baathist regimes allowed one another. Secondly, Syria has had a very close relationship with the Iraqi leadership and is more than happy to help out the defeated Saddamites in order to regain some measure of initiative in relation to Iraq as Syria is now completely encircled by US allies: Israel, Jordan, a liberated Iraq and Turkey. Many have argued that western-educated Bashar Assad is someone the West can do business with, but very little of that has materialized to date, in fact since September 11, 2001 Assad has sat quietly on the fence and it has been very hard to determine if he has indeed forsworn the terrorist antics of his nation. It is also questionable if Assad is firmly in control the way his father was, many competing spheres of influence within Syria may already have set Syria on a collision course with the West.

Michael Ledeen today points out that neither Syria nor Iran will take on the coalition directly but that they will send out their terrorist proxies to destabilize the attempts to establish democracy in Iraq. Ledeen also rightly points in the direction of Lebanon where Syria has been able to govern the country as a veritable colonial tyrant without any international interference as the soft spot where the push towards democratic change in Syria might get a start. This I believe is a very important point: despite what the outside world may believe a real peace deal in Lebanon has never been achieved and to some extent Lebanon continues to be a center of repression and terrorist activity with Syria having a very big finger in the pie. The international community has never taken Syria to task for its role here and Syria may now find its role in Lebanon under intense scrutiny.

Let me highlight some of Syria’s historical antecedents. It has a close relationship with Russia, the Soviet Union had gladly taken care of all of Syria’s defense needs in the past and present day Russia may well be arming it today in the same manner it has Iraq. It also has a close relationship with the country that governed Syria during the interbellum: France. It is no coincidence that French foreign minister De Villepin was visiting Damascus over the weekend. The ever increasing gap between the US on the one hand and Russia and France on the other may well be a signal to Assad and his Syrian cronies to step up their anti-US activities in Iraq. The war in Iraq is part of a larger struggle, the struggle against terrorism. Syria is part of that and now that it is driven into a corner it may well lash out in desperation against the forces that are bringing freedom to the Middle East.

Now that we have entered the end phase of the war in Iraq it is time to focus on the aftermath. There are a number of things that come to mind, but a few things stand out clearly: (1) the administration of Iraq by the US and the first steps towards rebuilding the county and its evolution to a democratic entity; (2) the impact on Iraq’s direct neighbors, especially Iran and Syria; (3) the implications the war has for revising the roadmap to a definitive peace settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians. They are all linked together yet at the same time they are clearly separate discussions and I will try and address most of them over the next few months. The first one deals with Iran and Syria.

One of the key arguments for going to war in Iraq has been the idea that it would unleash a chain of events that would topple undemocratic and hostile terror-supporting regimes throughout the Middle East and set the region on a path to democracy, freedom and ultimately some measure of prosperity. The regimes of especially Assad Jr. and the Iranian ayatollahs have been targeted for such a turnaround. Here is an interesting piece that lays out some of the history of this approach, but I assume most of you are familiar with it. There is very good reason to go after these regimes as they have openly sponsored terrorism over the past few decades (for instance they both support Hezbollah) and Iran appears to be well under way to develop a nuclear capability. There’s no doubt that the collapse of the Saddam regime will have a serious impact on Syria and Iran but to my knowledge there is no clear official roadmap as to how such dramatic changes can be achieved.

Both Syria and Iran must be in a state of utter shock as they have seen with their own eyes the rapid collapse of a regional power like Iraq and they must be wondering how long it will take for the US to start nibbling away at their grip on power. The “Great Satan America” has come a little too close to their doorsteps and the fact that both countries have barely interfered in the Iraqi conflict after some due warnings from both Rumsfeld and Powell is telling. They realize that the tide has turned against them in a fairly dramatic way although that has not stopped Syria from opening its doors to fleeing Baathists.

So, how can the envisioned regional changes be effected? There are potentially a number of ways through which change can come about. Let’s look at them carefully:

Peaceful Cajoling through the UN
Believe it or not, many will get back on the UN train and want to deploy inspectors in Iran and maybe Syria or otherwise find a peaceful solution and cut some sort of deal with these countries. This route is closed and will be so for a long, long time following the successful war in Iraq and with very good reason. I thought I should highlight it for completeness sake only.
Democratic Change from Within
It is hard to believe that a democratic surge will topple these regimes on short notice as terror and repression continue to have a firm hold on the Syrian and Iranian populace and I see little scope for any meaningful uprising in the short term. If we expect to see change from within it will be a slow process that probably will need a hand from the outside world.
Pressure by Middle East Developments
If demands for democratic change are not directly precipitated by events in Iraq they might well get some serious impetus from other developments in the Middle East. A lasting peace deal between Israel and Palestine (which I believe has a long way to go, whatever roadmap is presented by the US) would really take any remaining wind out of the Damascus and Teheran oppressor’s sails. It would signal a fundamental shift in relations in the region and it would eradicate one of the justifications of their very being as both Syria and Iran have used Israel as a demon to deflect attention from more pressing issues at home. Remember that the war with Iraq in the 1980s was a welcome diversion for the ayatollahs. If two foreign demons - Iraq and Israel - have disappeared from the scene attention will shift even more inwards and to the sad state of affairs in each country itself. It is also important to note that Iran as a non-Arab country might very well shift gears directly and focus more on its internal problems which in turn could provide some momentum for pro-democracy groups in Iran.
Indirect Interference
Possibly we can work with resistance movements on the ground, but that is something we would do under any circumstance I believe. Our strong presence in the region now gives us something to work with and we could extend efforts of direct aid to these groups. That is, if we agree on whom we want to deal with. Look at this; it seems that even within Republican circles there is disagreement as to who is on our side.
Direct Interference
Compelling sure, but not very likely in the immediate future. We will have to restructure Iraq, digest the recent physical effort and assess the regional landscape before we can embark on another war. It should however not be ruled out if Iran will start to interfere in Shia affairs in southern Iraq or if Syria starts to meddle in the aftermath of Iraqi Freedom.

Many have called for direct action; some will argue a more gradual approach. It is too early to tell how things will materialize but there is sufficient ground to believe that dramatic change is imminent.