Syria can be Lebanon”s friend, but only when it starts acting like one
Relations between Lebanon and Syria have taken a marked turn for the worse in recent days, and the latter”s pronouncement that it faces a dire threat emanating from inside the former”s borders has poked the proverbial hornets” nest. Nascent crises of this sort have a way of quickly moving beyond the ability of any party to control, making it incumbent on both Beirut and Damascus to reduce tensions that imperil their separate and shared interests – and to do so quickly. Much of the foreboding stems from the purported parallels between today”s situation in North Lebanon and that in South Ossetia during the runup to Russia”s August humiliation of the Georgian Army over the breakaway region. The rumblings from Damascus are widely viewed as particularly ominous in light of the fact that Syrian President Bashar Assad made a point of visiting Russia in the immediate aftermath of the conflict – and of endorsing Moscow”s right to have intervened. But Lebanon is not Georgia, and Syria is emphatically not Russia, two conditions that need to be acknowledged all around if additional and unnecessary deterioration is to be avoided.
Whatever its current intentions, the Syrian leadership includes plenty of people who understand that instability in Lebanon does not serve their country”s interests, especially when they can plausibly be blamed for it. Despite this fact, Damascus has repeatedly contributed to the breakdown of the Lebanese political process in the past few years – meaning that even if its portrayals of a gathering danger in North Lebanon are accurate, it bears considerable responsibility because its actions have helped open up the space for sectarian conflict and resultant radicalization.
Luckily, it will never be too late for Lebanon and Syria to be allies: Virtually everything about the two countries” individual and shared circumstances demands that they identify and pursue common causes, so it is just a matter of time before they do. But opportunities for partnership have a tendency to advance and recede according to a variety of factors. Given the challenges facing the Arab state in general and Lebanon”s and Syria”s in particular, now is no time to let that tide roll out. The concept of Lebanon can work, and so can Lebanese-Syrian relations – but only if and when both parties accept one another as equals.