This is a recent (May 1^st 2005) second draft of a text by Melancholic Troglodytes, minus all the pictures but one, and minus a chronology and some statistics about the region; we shall publish the latter as soon as we have it in electronic form. Our main problem with it is its largely detached academic style, which not merely reflects the habits and limitations imposed on analysis by the University, but also the author's personal emotional distance from the subject; we hope he'll also publicly tackle something subjectively far closer to him, namely the situation in Iran, about which he has a wealth of information and experience. Moreover, Iran looks like it could well be the focus of international attention in the not so distant future. Until then, this is still a highly informative and clear bit of research:

Godfathers of Levant:

the Syrian-Lebanese dispute and its implications for the class struggle

"...U.S. interlocutors were impressed by al-Hasad's ability to hold
his bladder during marathon negotiating sessions..."

Bertolt Brecht (1955) once wrote, ‘When the leaders speak of peace the common folk know that war is coming. When the leaders curse war, the mobilisation order is already written out’. Since in recent months a number of leading bourgeois politicians have praised ‘peace’ in the Levant (the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean, namely Syria, Lebanon and Israel), Melancholic Troglodytes felt it was high time we understood the region more comprehensively. Unfortunately, a proletarian analysis of the Levant is faced with a number of immediate obstacles: the current low level of class struggle in the region; the prevalence of nationalistic and religious bigotry amongst large sections of the world proletariat; lack of communication between us and autonomous proletarian elements within the region; and, finally, the unreliability of information pertaining to the Levant. By choosing to foreground the class struggle in Syria (and to a lesser extent Lebanon), we have not made our task any easier. The internal volatility of Syria and Lebanon and the real threat of military intervention by Israel or USA make prediction of future events unfeasible. We, therefore, apologise to readers for the shortcomings of the present work and hope their constructive criticisms will help us improve our understanding of the Levant.

Godfather II (you know, the one with Robert De Niro)

The Ottoman empire (Circa. 1516-1918), ‘the longest continuous dynastic state in human history’ (Beinin 2001: 5), has left an indelible mark on the region. This influence did not suddenly vanish at the end of World War I, when the victorious entente powers dismantled the empire.

Under the ‘tutelage’ of the Ottomans, Syria was a largely self-sufficient agrarian and trade-based economy (Lesch 1999: 94). ‘The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, as well as the continuing economic problems of the Ottoman Empire in general by the 1870s (climaxing with its bankruptcy in 1875), forced a downturn in the Syrian economy that lasted into the early twentieth century’ (Lesch 1999: 94). According to Beinin (2001: 16), ‘the Ottoman agrarian regime was neither an Asiatic nor a feudal mode of production’, although it shared a number of characteristics with both. The Ottoman state administered the largest share of the land. Interestingly, the ‘Ottoman peasants who farmed state administered lands had more rights than European feudal tenants because they could not be evicted so long as they maintained cultivation and paid taxes’ (Beinin 2001: 15).

In urban areas, artisans were organised into a guild system that grew out of ‘popular religious or social solidarity associations that became consolidated as craft associations between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries’ (Beinin 2001: 17). Guilds turned into impressive nodes of power acting to ‘restrain unfair competition, regulate entry into professions, and establish standards of quality’ (Beinin 2001: 17). They worked on the assumption that every producer had the right to a certain share of the market. This approach led to the producers of Aleppo selling more goods to France than they imported by the end of the eighteenth century (Beinin 2001: 23).

When whiggish and orientalist historians decry the slow uptake of capitalist relations in the Middle East, they tend to portray the strength of artisans and peasants in maintaining their class interests as mere economic impediments or cultural backwardness. Hinnebusch (1997: 249) has shown how such a perspective can easily lead to either economic or cultural determinism. The defensive reflexes of the Levant’s underbelly need to be born in mind when contemporary analysts disparage proletarian rejection of bourgeois progress, whether the promotion of progress emanates from Bashar al-Asad’s technocrats, the deceased Hariri or White House ayatollahs.

In modern times, external forces began interfering with the Levant during the nineteenth century but it was the crumbling of the Ottoman empire that gave Britain and France the opportunity to move in. The secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 was the diplomatic culmination of this process. Accordingly, ‘this envisaged a French sphere of influence in Lebanon and Syria, while Britain would control Palestine, Iraq and a new kingdom of Jordan’ (Ashford 2005: 8). The French bourgeoisie gerrymandered their sphere of influence, as will the Syrian bourgeoisie many years later, to ensure the newly created Lebanese state would have a competing patchwork of ‘ethnicities’ and religions. The Muslims were divided into areas more or less associated with Shi’a, Sunni and Druze communities. However, it was the Maronite Christians (The Maronites took their name from the fifth century Saint Maro, a Syrian hermit who died in 435 AD. They have been the traditional allies of the French bourgeoisie) who were given a ‘wafer-thin majority’ in Lebanon (Ashford 2005: 8; Schwartz 2005: 2). In Syria proper, the French pursued their divide and rule policy by creating ‘a semi-autonomous Alawi state in the north–west and a similar Druze state in the south’ (George 2003: 65).

There were anti-colonial uprisings, peasant uprisings and strikes in what used to be called ‘Greater Syria’ (today’s Syria, Lebanon and parts of Turkey, Jordan and Israel). ‘In fact’, writes Beinin (2001: 61), ‘from the late eighteenth century to the Syrian revolt of 1925-27 there were over thirty Druze and Alawi peasant revolts and half a dozen or more revolts in Mount Lebanon and the coastal mountains over northern Syria’.

In 1920 ‘Railway and tramway workers, printers, glass and textile workers, electric company workers and artisans launched a wave of strikes demanding higher wages’ (Beinin 2001: 90). When in the same year, Emir Faisal acquiesced to a French ultimatum, ‘crowds took to the streets, accusing the emir of selling the nation like merchandise and denouncing him as an outsider and traitor. Government buildings, including the emir’s palace and citadels in most cities, were attacked, political prisoners were freed and the arms stored in the citadels distributed’ (Gelvin 1994: 39). ‘Between 1925 and 1926’, writes Ashford (2005: 8), ‘a massive [peasant-based] revolt spread in opposition to colonial rule which the French crushed with difficulty, twice bombing the capital Damascus. Finally, in 1946 another popular rebellion forced the French to evacuate their troops’. It would be erroneous, however, to portray the resistance that took place in this period as merely part of a nationalistic revolt against colonialism. Many workers refused to succumb to the oily charms of nationalism and struggled against both native bosses and French authorities.

The 1946 struggle of women tobacco workers at the Beirut branch of the Regie (a French-Lebanese consortium which held a monopoly of Lebanese tobacco) is a case in point. It is suggested that the ‘overwhelming number of female strikers may have been single and below the age of thirty’ (Abisaab 2004: 69). The workers occupied the factory and the central warehouse of the Regie to prevent the loading of shipment of cigarettes. They also formed a strike committee ‘and called upon male workers to follow suit’ (Abisaab 2004: 56). By their actions they tied together anti-colonial and labour demands, ‘casting their roles not in terms of domesticity or pre-industrial images of motherhood, but rather in terms of waged work’ (Abisaab 2004: 55). The management of Regie with the help of the Lebanese government smashed the strike but not before the strike became the focus of proletarian unity throughout Lebanon. There were even solidarity strikes by Syrian workers who refused to be used by Regie as scabs. Just as significantly, ‘the women exhibited little national paraphernalia during this phase and in later confrontations with the police, thus avoiding the use of nationalist symbols to claim their rights as citizens’ (Abisaab 2004: 57). The contrast with recent Lebanese flag-waving demonstrations cannot be starker. When one observes that there was an abundance of nationalist paraphernalia in both the 2005 anti- and pro-Syrian demonstrations in Beirut, the radicalism of the 1946 Regie strikers becomes even more impressive.

In Syria, from the outset, there were two forms of nationalism competing for the people’s affections (Tripp 2001: 200). First, there was the pan-nationalism of the ruling elite, aided by the ‘men of letter’ who circulated petitions demanding the right to shape the national identity in return for ‘educating the masses’ (Gelvin 1994: 26); and, secondly, there was the populist nationalism of all those who felt neglected and marginalised ‘by economic and status revolutions and who shared a common resentment and nostalgia’ (Gelvin 1994: 27). At the end of W/W I, this latter populist grouping of nationalists included ‘conservative notables, lower-middle class religious dignitaries, shopkeepers, textiles and grain merchants, and local toughs’ who joined together to form innovative national and local defence committees (Gelvin 1994: 26). The two nationalistic camps attempted to mobilise the masses behind reactionary demands. It is claimed that much of the urban population was indifferent to the activities of both camps (Tripp 2001: 201). When nationalists were successful in galvanising crowds, the pan-Arabist elite used demonstrations to reinforce the verticality of political relationships and induce sacrifices such as acquisition to conscription and supplementary taxes. ‘In contrast, populist groups used demonstrations to represent a political community in which relationships of power were primarily horizontal and in which civil society was not only separate from the state, but was predominant’ (Gelvin 1994: 6). In short, those in charge (pan-Arabist elite) emphasised political society and used civil society in order to modernise their hold on power whereas those seeking power (populist nationalists) emphasised civil society as a tool for winning power. Today these tendencies still compete with each other in both the Levant and in large swathes of the ‘anti-globalisation’ racket (see the conclusion for a vital distinction between ‘middle class anti-globalisers’ and ‘anti-capitalists).

By the 1920s and 1930s, pan-Arabism had begun to get the better of local populist nationalism as ‘Arabism came to be defined by language rather than by geography’ (Devlin 1991: 1397). However, the gradual evolution of pan-Arabism into Baathism in Iraq and Syria was mired by inconsistencies and antagonisms. At the outset Baathism’s apparent ability to transcend religious and ethnic divisions appealed to various factions within the elite. Two of its main theoreticians, the orthodox Christian Michel Aflaq and the Sunni Muslim Salah al-Din Batar, were from ‘Damascene merchant families of middling status’ (Devlin 1991: 1397). Their slogan ‘Unity, freedom, socialism’ encapsulates their politics: ‘Unity’ of all Arabs, ‘freedom’ from foreign control and ‘Socialism’ (meaning ‘state capitalism’), as the tool for achieving their modernist goals. The founding congress of the Baath Party took place in 1947, in Damascus, with about 200 attendees (Devlin 1991: 1398). Most of the members were ‘students from rural background- a reflection of the high proportion of teachers in the Party’s leadership’ (George 2003: 66). So the Baath Party had played no part in the rebellion that finally ousted the French a year earlier in 1946. Ashford (2005: 8) writes, ‘the landowners and merchants who formed the first post-independence government soon faced workers’ strikes for better pay and conditions, while peasants rebelled’.

In the 1950s, as a result of political mergers, the Baath Party had become ‘a coalition of the white-collar urban class, school teachers, government employees and the like, with revolutionary [sic!] peasants’ (George 2003: 67). During this time ‘vigorously supported by the Baath leaders, a delegation of [nationalist] Syrian officers went to Cairo … and asked Nasser [the foremost Arab nationalist of the era] to agree to the union of Syria and Egypt’ (Devlin 1991: 1400). In time Syrian nationalists would come to rue this overture, since Nasser was a dictator who tolerated no rival and brook no power-sharing arrangement. Nasser agreed to the request after much deliberation on condition that all political parties in Syria dissolve in favour of a single, mass party. Most Syrian leaders agreed, some with misgivings. The Communist [i.e., Leninist] Party of Syria knew what was coming and decided to go underground. Aflaq and Bitar foolishly agreed to dissolve the party without consulting members, a move that stunned party members and caused much friction and alienation amongst working class members. Nasser became the de facto leader of the United Arab Republic (UAR). ‘The union cabinet sat in Cairo, and decisions were made there’ (Devlin 1991: 1400).

Nasser’s dictatorial approach, his treatment of Syria as Egypt’s Northern Province, and the economic impact of his land reforms led major units of the Syrian army to rise in rebellion in 1959. The rightist officers were ably supported by Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Although Nasser’s instincts were to fight to save the UAR, he was left with few options and in 1961 the UAR was dissolved. Apologists for Nasserism (e.g., see the latest sycophantic rants of the reactionary wanker, Tariq Ali, 2004: 33-34), should note that the infamous mukhaberat made their first appearance during Nasser’s reign over Syria. Moreover, the labour code banning strikes in Syria (which are still operational today) were imported from Egypt courtesy of Don Nasser.

Syrian Baathists became even more authoritarian after their bitter experience with Nasser. Military commanders became more influential in the everyday running of the party. ‘Selection … replaced election’ (Devlin 1991: 1402) and when in 1963 a coalition of Baathist and non-Baathist officers joined forces to seize the state, the Baath had only around 2,500 members (George 2003: 68). Most of the officers seem to have been from the Alawi clan, ‘a historically underprivileged and oppressed rural community from a minority Shi’a sect’ (Mora and Wiktorowicz 2003: 108). Their lack of a popular base made the Syrian Baathists paranoid and repressive from the outset, a custom they were unable to relinquish even in those brief periods when they enjoyed social popularity (Seale 1995: 85). The next seven years witnessed a protracted intra-classist feud within the Syrian ruling class with two poles- the state capitalist oriented wing supported by Baath party and the more ‘pragmatic’ military wing supported by a very shrewd and opportunistic Hafiz al-Asad. Using the 1967 defeat by Israel as a pretext to get rid of his rivals, Asad united these two factions under the auspices of the Alawi clan who have been at the apex of Syrian society ever since.

The Godfather (the original with Marlon Brando)

Hafiz al-Asad ruled Syria from 1970-2000. Numerous US presidents privately described him as ‘extraordinarily intelligent and the premier strategic thinker of the Arab world’ (Kessler 2000: 69), whilst U.S. interlocutors were impressed by his ability to hold his bladder during marathon negotiating sessions (Zizzer 2003: 31). During this time Syria fought and lost another war to Israel (1973), two attempts at economic ‘liberalisation’ met with limited success, a Muslim rebellion was crushed by the state (1982), and Syria became embroiled in Lebanon (1976-present) and the First Gulf War (1990), both at the behest of the USA. Despite these setbacks the period is perceived nostalgically by many Syrians as a golden age of stability!

One of Hafiz al-Asad’s first tasks was to restructure the weakened Baath party. He needed the party, after all, to garner proletarian support for various economic and military campaigns (Perthes 1995: 154). But what he needed was a more conformist party that would do his bidding. He dramatically expanded membership figures. According to Alan George (2003: 71) ‘Today, party membership is put at 1.8 million- 18 per cent of the fourteen plus age group’. He also increased the remit of various ‘populist organisations’ in order to enhance his grip on rural and urban workers. The largest of these organisations is the General Union of Peasants with just under one million members. Urban ‘public’ workers are controlled by the General Federation of Trade Unions which links 194 trade unions with a slightly smaller overall membership than the General Union of Peasants. Some of the most strategic segments of the proletariat such as petroleum and chemical workers, transport and information workers are ‘mobilised’ by Syrian godfathers within this body. Workers in the ‘private’ sector have been conservatively estimated at 400,000, around 20% of whom are unionised (terms like ‘public’ and ‘private’ are mystifying since all property in Syria, as elsewhere, is private property and the overwhelming majority of this private property belongs to the ruling classes). There are women’s organisations, writers’ organisations, university student organisations and various professional organisations. These latter groupings of doctors, lawyers and engineers have traditionally been less conformist and, in fact, played ‘an important role in the opposition movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s when their members suffered arrests and torture’ (George 2003: 75-76).

Aoude (1997: 191) writes, ‘by 1970, Syria became a net importer of food stuffs, which eventually, along with industrialisation and consumer goods imports, increased the trade deficit and developed a serious foreign exchange crisis’. The ruling class decided to use this crisis to restructure Syrian capitalism. Once Asad felt secure, he launched the first attempt at liberalisation in 1973. Pretentiously referred to as ‘the infitah [opening] of abundance’ (1973-1981), the measure was intended to increase the rate of exploitation by restructuring both rural and urban environments. In the countryside land reform allowed middle-ranking peasants to forge a profitable alliance with wealthy farmers and agribusiness at the expense of small peasants and rural wage-slaves (Aoude 1997: 192). Since the state bourgeoisie (meaning Asad, the Baath party, high ranking military officers and the trade union hierarchy) still had the upper hand within the ruling class, they managed to draw a red line around nationalised industries such as banking, mining, oil, insurance and manufacturing of strategic goods. Entrepreneurs would have to wait many years before gradually resting these segments of the economy away from the state bourgeoisie. However, Asad was more than willing to use the ‘infitah of abundance’ to create a mixed economy in areas such as tourism.

A closer look at the changes instituted in tourism sheds light on the evolution of Syrian capitalism. The reasons they moved into tourism are not very different from the Corleone family seeking interests in the tourist industries of Cuba and Las Vegas. ‘First’, explains Gray (1997: 58), ‘the potential for tourism to generate foreign currency is important, all the more so in states ... suffering balance of payment problems. Second is the fact that tourism is labour intensive, and creates employment throughout the economy; tourists spend money on hotels, transport, and meals, but also on a wide variety of goods and services. Third, is the fact that the tourism industry does not, on the whole, require expensive or complex technology or a highly skilled workforce [with the exception of the need to operate an airline]’. Syria, by all accounts, has a whole host of tourist attractions, spread across the country and easily accessible. Traditional industries in the countryside (bedrock of the Syrian ruling class) could potentially benefit. Finally, and this is very significant for a regime as paranoid as the Syrian state, ‘tourists themselves pose little threat to the stability or popularity of the regime’ (Gray 1997: 60).

In keeping with the historical analogy of the mafia in Las Vegas, the initial profits from the Syrian tourist industry were small. However, during the second infitah (1986-2000), substantial expatriate investment began to filter through and a ‘new bourgeois class’ coalesced around hotel and restaurant ownership. These new capitalists are said to be exempt from labour laws, allowing them to sack ‘obstinate’ workers at will (Gray 1997: 65). Vast profits have enabled them to converge with the bourgeois elite represented by the chambers of commerce and industry. Although relative late-comers to tourism and not as successful as Israel, Turkey, Egypt and Morocco in this regard, Syria has been developing joint-tourist agreements with Lebanon and Jordan. It is hoped that tourism will become one of the three most important sources of foreign income and employment for Syria. This section of the economy, at least, could gain greatly from a ‘peace-dividend’ with Israel.

Contrariwise what has become known as the Syrian ‘military-mercantile-complex’ does not seek a lasting capitalist peace throughout the Levant (nor, incidentally, does this grouping seek a full frontal confrontation with Israel which would be suicidal given the imbalance of forces, but rather the continuation of a fake state of emergency). At the core of this ‘military-merchant-complex’ is an uneasy alliance between Alawi officers (state bourgeoisie) and Sunni capitalists (old private bourgeoisie). The unease and lack of trust is illustrated by the low incidence of intermarriage between the two groups (Hinnebusch 1997: 252). It has been suggested Bashar al-Asad’s marriage to a young Syrian Sunni woman from London was perhaps an attempt ‘to widen the family base within the country and open it to Europe’ (Glass 2005: 1).

As Mora and Wiktorowicz (2003: 113) make clear, ‘the regime has lavished spending on the military, though it has not been involved in major combat operations since 1973. From 1977 to 1988, military spending (including Soviet arms transfers) was estimated at 30 percent of GDR and the army (including reserves) employed 21 percent of the male labor force … the high level of spending attracted strategic rents from regional sponsors …’. The rent (not dissimilar to the protection money the Corleone accrue from their clients) is not to be scuffed at. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the dividend from other Arab countries was at 5 to 6 percent of GDP (Mora and Wiktorowicz 2003: 113). There is also open ‘protection’ work for the army, which in the continued absence of a proper and binding legal system, offers its muscle to businesses for ‘protection’.

The military through its contacts in the government and the Alawi clan has over the years gained substantial interests in various sections of the economy including ‘public works, construction, basic industry, farm production, and the manufacturing of batteries, bottled mineral water, and furniture’ (Richards and Waterbury 1997: 431). Hanna Batatu (1999: 215-225) estimated that 61% of the inner circle of decision-makers, whose power exceeds the parliament and the party and who are only unanswerable to the President, came from the Alawi clan. In return for their loyalty, many military officers were allowed to run illicit smuggling operations from Lebanon (Mora and Wiktorowicz 2003: 113) - a perk which has recently come to an end. Drugs, tobacco and luxury cars used to be favourite commodities for the smugglers. Although the ‘military-merchant-complex’ may prefer to continue the pretence of hostility against Israel in order to guarantee its budgetary cut, it is also ideally placed to take advantage of further liberalisations. Access to cheap labour power and raw materials gives them the edge over rival bourgeois ‘families’.

Following Marx (1852/1981: 143-249), a number of writers have described the Syrian regime as a Bonapartist state (Hinnebusch 1997). There is some truth in this, at least under the rule of Hafiz al-Asad (1970-2000). By Bonapartism Marx was referring to an exceptional situation where the working classes are too weak to affirm their own hegemony and where factions of the ruling class cancel each other out and thus cannot rule amicably through the more stable form of liberalism and the rule of law. The executive branch, usually under the ‘divine’ leadership of a ‘charismatic’ individual, then steps in as a kind of dictatorial mediator, acquiring for the moment, a certain degree of relative autonomy. This ‘charismatic’ individual who ‘represents’ the small-holding peasantry, attempts to speak for all classes in society through a populist ideology (Bottomore et al. 1988: 53).

Syrian ‘Bonapartism’ certainly enjoyed formidable power under Hafiz al-Asad, although it would be folly to assume emergency-Bonapartism can last for three full decades without ‘normalising’ tendencies reasserting themselves. Perhaps it would be more accurate to characterise the state as a kind of ‘presidential monarchy, resting on huge civil and military bureaucracies, whose chain of command are reinforced by patronage and kinship’ (Hinnebusch 1997: 250). This ‘Bonapartist’ regime, based on the passive ‘support’ of unionised workers, public employees and small peasants, knows itself to be a temporary measure. It must modernise its base, structure and superstructure if Syrian capitalism is to grow and yet to do so would be to attack the very constituencies it depends on for its survival.

Moreover, a strong state is needed to manage liberalisation and the synchronisation of base, structure and superstructure. ‘The proper sequence of liberalisation is to expand the private sector before tackling reform of the public sector so as to have a dynamic private economy able to absorb the resultant unemployment’ (Hinnebusch 1997: 255). The creation of a mixed economy in tourism and agriculture was a prerequisite of this strategy. The state contributes land and infrastructure, while the ‘private’ sector contributes capital and entrepreneurship. Following this first phase, carried out in the 1970s and 1980s, the welfare system (notably subsidised food, fertilisers and medicine), will be curtailed. Already this has led to murmurs of discontent amongst workers. According to Hinnebusch (1997: 261), ‘the private sector, which had only accounted for about 35% of gross fixed capital formation from 1970-85, climbed to 52% of the total in 1989 and 66% in 1992’.

However, even Bonapartism is not always in complete charge of affairs. There were a number of challenges to the state under the reign of Hafiz al-Asad, admittedly not all of them emanating from a revolutionary proletarian direction. There was, for example, the persistent recalcitrance of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, with serious consequences for Syrian stability itself. An alliance between these refugees with the Lebanese left (i.e., the left wing of capital in the shape of the National Movement, an assortment of Baathists, Nasserists and Leninists) in the 1970s, threatened the pro-Western (Maronite Christian dominated) government. Syria was encouraged to intervene by both the US and Israel. After calculating the pros and cons of the situation, the ever-pragmatic Hafiz al-Asad decided to invade. The Palestinian proletariat had to be subdued.

Almost immediately the Syrian army had to get its hands bloody. One of the most notorious barbarities of the occupation occurred at the Tel al-Zaatar refugee camp, in East Beirut. According to Ashford (2005: 8), ‘In April 1976 Syrian troops encircled a Palestinian camp at Tel al-Zaatar while the Christian militias carried out a massacre – the Israelis would do the same at Sabra and Shatilla camps in September 1982’. Whilst Israel’s invasions of Lebanon (in 1978 and then again in 1982) was posing new challenges, a prison revolt inside Syria (in the eastern desert near Tadmur) was put down at the cost of 1,000 lives (Ashford 2005: 9). Before 1980, the prisoners were mostly military personnel who violated military rules or were punished for misdemeanour. With the increasing military activities of the Muslim Brotherhood Movement, the prison regime became more brutal. The Tadmur massacre was in retaliation for a failed assassination attempt on the life of Asad in June 1980. Rumour has it that some of his own guards tried to kill him while he was coming out of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus’s Old City.

A more serious threat surfaced in 1982 which culminated in a three-week uprising led by the Sunni Islamists of Muslim Brotherhood in the central city of Hama. Yassin-Kassab (2005: 1) has described how the Syrian regime’s response resembles the US army’s more recent destruction of Fallujah, ‘Enraged by what they perceive as the Westernising, anti-Islamic policies of the authorities, militants take control of a conservative Middle Eastern city. They impose their harsh version of Shari’a law on the inhabitants and launch attacks in other cities on government forces and any civilians associated with them … Military command is unable and perhaps unwilling to distinguish between insurgents and civilians. Besides, an example needs to be made. The city is besieged, its roads closed so nobody can escape. The historic centre and residential areas are pulverized by aerial and artillery bombardment. There is intense house to house fighting, and then clearing operations … Thousands are killed …’. George (2003: 16) estimated the casualties to be between 5,000-10,000, whilst Ashford (2005: 9) argues ‘at least 30,000 civilians’ were killed. As Yassin-Kassab has argued this is an accurate description of the Hama massacre of 1982 which could double up as a narrative of the ‘liberation’ of Fallujah in 2004. The fear that this brutal massacre instilled in Syrians did not just scupper the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power, it also suppressed the nascent proletarian movement that was beginning to assert itself.

The 1980s also witnessed a drop in oil prices, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon (1982) and a mafia-style succession crisis (1983-84). The drop in oil prices ‘not only [adversely affected] Syria’s own oil export revenues, but it also reduced remittances from abroad as well as financial aid from oil-rich Arab Gulf countries’ (Lesch 1999: 96). The 1982 Israeli invasion could not be met by the Syrian military directly thus exposing the regime’s hollow jingoism. The succession crisis occurred after exhaustion or a mild heart attack (depending on which report you choose to believe) had temporarily incapacitated Hafiz al-Asad. According to George (2003: 18), Asad ‘vested responsibility for managing state affairs in a six-man committee of trusted associates’ (the Corleone would call them consiglieri). Alawi generals angered by their apparent demotion, encouraged Asad’s brother, Rif’at, to oust the six-man committee. When Asad recovered, he punished his brother and seventy Alawi generals who were banished abroad. All but Rif’at were soon recalled. Rif’at became a bit player of little consequence after this episode. Ironically, before Rif’at so clumsily ruined his chances of heading the family, he was Hafiz al-Asad’s first choice as successor (Ghadbian 2001: 24).

Having weathered these storms, the regime was in a better position to tackle economic stagnation in the 1990s. It was aided in its task by ‘good harvests throughout the 1990s’ which ‘produced a tremendous grain (mostly wheat) surplus’ (Lesch 1999: 93). Greater agricultural output was prevented mainly due to the migration of many small peasants and rural wage-slaves to the cities. Incremental economic progress was made when Syria ‘concluded significant contracts with European partners (such as a $118 million deal with Ericsson to install telephone lines and a $400 million oil and gas deal with Elf Aquitaine and Conoco) and recently signed a framework for an association agreement with the European Union … [known as the] Euro-Mediterranean Partnership Program’ (Lesch 1999: 101). Shell and TotalFina also invested in new oil fields (Ashford 2005: 9). The multi-national, Nestle, is also an investor in the country’s economy (Robinson 1998: 162). All this points to a patient strategic manoeuvre on the part of the European Union whose interests would be undermined by a US-Israeli military invasion of Syria. However, since ‘Europe’ was so woefully unable to prevent the loss of its investments in Iraq, it would be naïve to assume it could be used by the region’s ruling class as a counterpoint to US aggression, unless the balance of forces between Europe and USA shifts in favour of the former.

During the 1990s the number of wage slaves grew steadily. No reliable figures are available and the ones brandied about by scholars employ sociological criteria and should, therefore, be treated with extreme caution. However, to give an idea, we could quote Aoude (1997: 192), ‘Many in the urban working class are of rural origins. This class is weak politically even though it comprises 35 percent of the population. In the early 1990s, the average wage in the public sector workers covered only one-third of a worker’s family expenses. However, private sector workers are employed in small enterprises where the labor code does not apply fully’. Aoude also mentions another dubious sociological category, the ‘semi-proletarians’. He defines this group as ‘the temporarily employed and vendors, comprising 15 percent of the population’ (Aoude 1997: 192). This latter group, he argues, is a greater threat to the regime since their precarious existence compels them to seek violent confrontation. Similarly, ‘the self-employed middle class [about 17 percent of the population] is anti-regime and religiously conservative but poses no threat because a significant part of it has reached a modus vivendi with the regime’ (Aoude 1997: 192). Given that revolutionary definitions of social class are more expansive than sociological categorisations, it is likely that many rural workers, ‘semi-proletarians’ and even ‘self-employed middle class’ individuals should be included as part of the Syrian proletariat. When one adds to this estimate, Syrian workers employed throughout Lebanon and the Gulf States, the contours of the new Syrian proletariat begin to take shape.

The Syrian proletariat found itself increasingly at odds with the regime’s modernisation policies. The alienation of this vital group, forced the state bourgeoisie to forge more durable ties with other factions of the ruling class as a precaution against future social unrest. The ‘private bourgeoisie’ is, according to Hinnebusch (1997: 252), ‘still politically weak … it is divided between pro-regime new bourgeoisie and elements of the older bourgeoisie still unreconciled with the regime’. Although some sections of the ‘private bourgeoisie’ have entered into a long-term alliance with the ‘state bourgeoisie’, other factions have preferred to forge alliances with the urban petty bourgeoisie.

We would not like to give the impression that the new bourgeois alliances being forged are merely a knee-jerk response to proletarian intransigence- that would be wishful thinking. Sometimes the reason is far more mundane. For example, in the 1980s lack of funds prevented the state bourgeoisie ‘[from preventing] scrap metal to run the public iron and aluminium factories’, forcing it to rely on private bourgeois financiers (Hinnebusch 1997: 253). A division of labour seems to be forming ‘in which the public sector continues to meet local needs and serve the regime’s constituency [i.e., public workers and peasants] while the private sector specialises in production for export’ (Hinnebusch 1997: 255). The establishment of a stock market is a measure intended to further this internal accumulation of capital and catalyze the ‘natural expansion of small industries into larger scale firms’ (Hinnebusch 1997: 262). It is also hoped that once a transparent investment law is operational, it will attract some of the $60 billion held by Syrians abroad. At the end of Hafiz al-Asad’s reign, we were therefore witnessing a recomposition of both capitalists and proletarians - a process pushed forward by a combination of internal and external tensions.

Godfather III (the one with Al Pacino and Andy Garcia)

After his father’s death in 2000, Bashar al-Asad came to power with a clear agenda. As with Michael Corleone, who dreamed of legalising the family business, Bashar al-Asad’s main objective was to normalise Syrian capitalism. And again just like Michael Corleone, Bashar’s carefully thought-out plans soon lay in ruins due to the machinations of dark and secretive forces beyond his control.

In his inaugural speech, Bashar’s buzz-words were ‘modernisation’ and ‘technology’ (George 2003: 32). By Arab bourgeois standard, his assessment was frank. His intentions were to speed up his father’s reforms, starting with the ‘base’ and the ‘structures’ of Syrian capitalism and hope that the ‘superstructure’ will fall into concordance at a later date and with a minimum of friction. The ‘superstructure’, or at least that part of it characterised by marginalised middle class activists, however, had a different agenda. Long-standing intellectual dissidents, such as the filmmaker Nabil al-Maleh and the writer Michel Kilo, lost no time in inaugurating what later became known as Syria’s civil society movement. Kilo was very clear that ‘the only social force able to implement a political project is the middle class’ (quoted in George 2003: 34). Intellectuals, lawyers, professionals and students were to be galvanised as the agent of political change. In a throw-back to previous bourgeois/petty-bourgeois reform movements, the ensuing political upheavals of 2000 became known as the ‘Damascus Spring’.

The ‘movement’ soon won the support of ‘independent’ parliamentarians such as Riad Seif who, benefiting from his parliamentary immunity, organised study groups at his home. This ‘dialogue’ was extensively reported by Al-Jazeera satellite station resulting in a surge of ‘civil society’ forums across Syria. Although cognisant of ideological parallels with both western and eastern European conceptions of civil society, the movement’s intellectuals prefer to emphasise its native credentials. Western liberals tend to describe civil society as an ‘order in which morally and intellectually fallible citizens organize themselves to monitor an incorrigible state, seeking either to minimize state intervention in their lives or to use some state intervention to check allegedly oppressive elites outside the state’ (Metzger 2001: 1). This western notion of civil society can be expressed by either ‘rightists’ (with the emphasis on upholding the rule of law, private property and capital mobility) or ‘leftists’ (with the emphasis on ‘empowering’ disadvantaged groups and minorities).

Middle Eastern liberals and social democrats, by contrast, prefer to find equivalents from within ‘native soil’. For instance, the Syrian intellectual Sadiq Jala al-Azm believes tanzimat is a far more valid historical precedence for the Syrian civil society movement. Tanzimat was a state-sponsored project introduced around 1830 by the Ottoman Turks as a way of cementing an identity around the notion of ‘citizenship’ which transcended ethnic, religious, and familial allegiances (George 2003: 38). This new notion of citizenship was to act as a platform for modernisation in commerce and technology. Al-Azm makes a direct analogy with Gorbachev’s perestroika. Other Syrian intellectuals prefer to link their promotion of civil society to the teachings of the Muslim scholar, Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), who was attempting to renew the ‘social covenant’ based on a new set of rights and obligations which were mediated by emerging bourgeois law and not ‘divine right’ claimed by dictators and emperors (George 2003: 184).

Regardless of its historical baggage- whether it is put forward by European or Middle Eastern intellectuals and again irrespective of its ‘rightist’ or leftist’ orientation- the civil society movement does not question the essence of capitalism (Melancholic Troglodytes 2004: 40-45). Moreover, despite a predilection for reform, the notion of the state as a historically given entity remains sacrosanct. Its aim is to humanise and regulate capitalism and not to overthrow it. The humanisation of capitalism is itself promoted with a view to creating the preconditions for increased profitability. This is true of all the NGOs which uncritically take onboard the project of civil-society-building.

What we wish to underline here are the doctrinal ties of continuity between Bashar al-Asad, the Syrian ‘opposition’, most sections of the emergent Lebanese ‘opposition’, huge chunks of the ‘anti-globalisation movement’ and the European liberal bourgeoisie. The fact that there is also real competition between these groups for a bigger piece of the cake should not blind us to their common anti-working class agenda.

It would be an oversimplification, however, to suggest that the ‘Damascus Spring’ contained no proletarian element. The protests did attract fragmented proletarian elements but it is fair to say that these currents remained subservient to the petty-bourgeois and bourgeois leadership of the civil society movement. What is incontestable is that at first Bashar tried to utilise the protests in order to modernise Syrian capitalism and ease the system’s internal tensions. ‘Political’ prisoners from the Muslim Brotherhood and the Communist Action Party were released in batches of hundreds throughout the second half of 2000 (George 2003: 40). The notorious Mezzeh prison was closed down. Unofficial human ‘rights’ organisations began to re-emerge with the tacit consent of the regime. Bashar also encouraged the parties allied to the Baathists in the Progressive National Front (a collection of Leninists, state-capitalists, social democrats and nationalist hangers on) to publish their own newspapers once again. In short, Bashar’s plan was to reinvigorate a manageable ‘opposition’ from both political and civil societies and use this dynamic to push through changes.

Predictably, the plan soon ran into a brick wall of hostility in the shape of regime ‘hardliners’ centred, in this instance, on the Vice President Abdul Hakim Khaddam. The brick wall was guarded by a coalition of party and trade-union bureaucrats, state-dependent writers, journalists and professors who owed their position to the system (Perthes 2004: 14). Civil right activists were denounced as corrupt foreign stooges. Students protesting against the ‘neo-liberal’ policies of the government were arrested. Scare stories about the possibility of Syria imploding like Algeria or Yugoslavia if the tempo of change is not slowed down were spread to divide the ‘opposition’. The licenses of many civil society forums were revoked. The veteran Leninist leader, Riad at-Turk, was rearrested after he criticised the regime’s corruption in an interview on Al-Jazeera. The civil society movement was put on ice to be thawed out at a more opportune moment.

It is noteworthy, however, that the endemic corruption of Syrian society has a real material basis. The mediation (in Arabic, wasta) of the so-called five-percenters (corrupt officials who for 5% of the total deal put you in touch with the right people or provide the correct paper work) is in reality ‘an additional form of control by the state that fragments the bourgeoisie from the upper middle class, who might in its absence coalesce into a recognizable opposition. In addition, it spreads the wealth to certain classes, supplement the income to government officials tied into the five-percenter organisations, and co-opts more people into the idea of maintaining regime stability’ (Lesch 1999: 93). What the father built, the son cannot dismantle overnight. Therefore, Bashar has consolidated his own position patiently, first within Syria and second in the wider Arab arena, as a prelude to instigating new economic reforms. The ‘Damascus Spring’ had turned into a chilly ‘Damascus Winter’.

Perthes (2004: 9) claims that by 2002, ‘three-quarters of the 60 or so top political, administrative and military office-holders had been replaced’ by technocrats loyal to Bashar. Whenever Bashar feels safe, censorship becomes milder (Perthes 2004: 20). More businessmen, tribal and religious leaders are becoming parliamentarian deputies thus widening the regime’s basis. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, as with Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, ‘have been developing a democratic discourse, and [have been reaching] out to liberals and leftists’ (Perthes 2004: 22).

In 2003 a group of French consultants were brought in to restructure and modernise a number of ministries (Perthes 2004: 24). A concerted effort has been made to teach bureaucrats new skills such as languages and computing. Bashar who is himself a keen computer user has encouraged the production of local affordable computers and Net connectivity. This is crucial if the 20% unemployment rate is to be reduced. Gradually the private sector has become more prominent so much so that by 2001, ‘the entire private sector accounted for an estimated 65% of GDP and employs almost 75% of the workforce, compared to less than 70% a decade earlier’ (Perthes 2004: 30). A law based on the Chinese model has created zones for foreign investment. In January 2004 the first private bank opened its doors. ‘Privatisation’ may have contributed to a marginal increase in GDP but income differentials have widened despite budget increases and Syrian capitalism still relies on 10% of ten to sixteen year olds working for pay (Perthes 2004: 31).

Bashar improved Syria’s relationship with Iraq. Old Baathist rivalries took a back seat to economic imperatives. Iraq’s need for cheap consumer goods provided Syrian industrialists with a great opportunity. The Kirkuk-Banias pipeline came on stream after two decades’ closure and Syria became Iraq’s main export route outside the UN-controlled oil-for-food agreement (Perthes 2004: 39). Troop numbers were reduced in Lebanon and redeployment of troops made the Syrian presence more low-key, even before the anti-Syrian movement had gained ground. On 26 April 2005, the Syrian army completed its withdrawal from Lebanese territory. Hezbollah’s combat operations were also ‘reduced to almost zero’ although Syria ‘wants to maintain the organisation as a means of putting pressure on Israel’ (Perthes 2004: 43).

Relations with Europe were also cemented. After all, Europe is Syria’s main trading partner. Initially Syria kept away (and made sure Lebanon did likewise) from the Euro-Mediterranean meetings but after the second Gulf War, and Syria’s unavoidable ‘blunder’ in supporting Saddam Hussein, there was a desperate need to reorient toward Europe. ‘Unavoidable’ because the Syrian population demanded resistance against US-British aggression and also because the Syrian economy had a lot to gain from supporting Iraq in the short term. Co-operation between Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan resulted in the connection of electricity networks. Syria also delivered badly needed water to Jordan. Under military pressure from Turkey over its support for PKK, Syria expelled Abdullah Öcalan, who is now languishing in a Turkish jail. Moreover, realising that the costs outweigh benefits, Syria has stopped encouraging ‘jihadist tourism’ through its porous border with Iraq (Perthes 2004: 51) and has even ‘denied entry to escaping Iraqis’ (Zizzer 2003: 34).

If we were to project into the near future, it must be concluded that the regime seems reasonably stable, at least, internally. Bashar has established himself. The Baath administration, political affiliates, the parliament and trade unions are firmly in the grip of the regime. Huge segments of the rural population and the urban petty bourgeoisie actively support the regime whilst the private bourgeoisie are making profits and, therefore, reasonably content. The petty-bourgeois intellectuals have been silenced; their forums curtailed and, so long as the US acts aggressively, this will remain the case. Bashar even felt secure enough to release some 317 Kurdish ‘political prisoners’ as a good-will gesture. Some 250,000 Kurds who have always been denied citizenship are having their cases reviewed. All this despite of, or perhaps because of, Jalal Talabani’s (current Iraqi President and Kurdish feudal chieftain) avowed aim of mobilising Kurds in Syria to stage demonstrations against Damascus (The New Worker 2005: 1).

The major class that has felt alienated in recent years and whose living standards will fall even further once ‘modernisation’ is speeded up is, needless to say, the proletariat. This is as true of the urban as the rural proletariat. Whether this class will have the might to exert itself autonomously remains to be seen. Meanwhile Syria has external threats to contend with. If the disengagement from Lebanon is botched up, the failure will have dire consequences for the longevity of the regime. It is to an analysis of the Syrian-Lebanese dispute that we must now turn.

St Valentine’s Day Massacre

The authorities in Lebanon began ‘clearing up the scene of Rafik Hariri’s assassination on St Valentine’s Day before forensic evidence had been collected, although they stopped in the face of protests’ (Whitaker 2005: 13). As it becomes clear below, this was not the only unusual aspect of the assassination. The assassination was claimed by a hitherto unknown and unpretentious sounding bunch of dickheads called, ‘Group for Advocacy and Holy War in the Levant’. The analysis that follows aims to clarify some of the issues triggered by the killing of Hariri.

We do not know who was really responsible for his murder nor, frankly, do we inordinately care. A number of ‘families’ could have potentially benefited from such a spectacular manoeuvre: ‘Islamic fascists’ (e.g., Hariri and Hezbollah publicly clashed twice over the latter’s military operations against Israel); Hariri’s Lebanese business rivals; the Syrian authorities; the Israeli ruling class (Hariri had used his prestige to prevent Hezbollah’s name being added to US’s list of terror organisations despite his disagreements with Hezbollah); Palestinians (e.g., Palestinians were accused of attacking Rafik Hariri’s Beirut television station in 2003); or US capitalism. The point is not to indulge in idle speculation but to understand the implications of the event for the class struggle in the Levant.

Hariri was a billionaire of Lebanese-Saudi origin who attempted to ingratiate himself with Beirut’s proletariat by restoring the city to its former glory after the devastations of the 1980s. He hired thousands of workers to cleanup the beaches, resurface roads and plant palm trees (Fisk 1991: 465). He used his ‘philanthropy’ to purchase devalued land and by the 1990s he possessed a great chunk of Beirut through his shares in Solidere, the company that owns ‘buildings, roads, services, security, cafes, hotels, office blocks, pavements, parks, and even Beirut’s municipality’ (Ghassan 2005: 1). When occasionally another capitalist objected to his take-over, such as the St Georges Hotel west of the corniche which refused to sell up, pressure was brought to bear through dubious means (Ghassan 2005: 1). It is even claimed, although we have not been able to verify this, that ‘when people refused to vacate buildings [Hariri] wanted demolished, he had the buildings collapse on them, killing 12’ (Knox 2005: 2). He used his massive influence to marginalise rival capitalists. For instance AbuKhalil (2001: 1) writes, ‘Before returning to the prime ministership in 2000, he halted many rebuilding projects and orchestrated a daily drumbeat of economic doom and gloom in the media to undermine the government of former prime minister Salim al-Huss. These moves basically spread the message that economic misery would not end as long as Hariri was kept out of the premier's office’.

Gradually downtown Beirut was turned into a business and entertainment centre for the Middle Eastern bourgeoisie. It is even claimed that security routinely prevents ‘people wearing Palestinian headscarves’ and young proletarians from entering the area (Ghassan 2005: 2). As’ad AbuKhalil (2001: 2) condemns Hariri’s rebuilding ethos in these terms, ‘Beirut's new Olympic stadium, expanded and modernized airport and lavish conference centre do little for the average Lebanese. The rebuilding effort also aims to recapture for Lebanon its pre-war status as the casino, playground and brothel of the region’. Hariri then moved into politics, becoming the Lebanese prime minister before resigning in protest at Syrian machinations, although he remained an advocate of investment in Syria’s recently privatised industries (Ashford 2005: 9). It is ironic that his first cabinet consisted of many ‘ex’-warlords and pro-Syrian collaborators, any one of whom could be responsible for conspiring to have him killed.

The real ‘conspiracy’, of course, relates to the fact that the assassination of Hariri and subsequent moves by the US ruling class has overshadowed the rising tide of class struggle in Lebanon. In 2004, some 200,000 Lebanese protested against the US occupation of Iraq. This was followed a week later by strikes and demonstrations for lower petrol prices. The protestors included ‘public and private school teachers, bank employees, transport workers, the workers of the national electricity company … Lebanese university staff, farmers, agricultural workers, the water authority workers … construction workers, the workers of Trans Mediterranean Airlines and civil servants …’ (Schwartz and Weston 2004: 1). The anti-government protests were not confined to Beirut and all over Lebanon taxi services and van drivers brought the traffic to a standstill. Ironically, ‘the Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri, was actually travelling back from a state visit to Syria, [when he] was blocked by the protests and had to find an alternative route’ (Schwartz and Weston 2004: 2). The response of the Lebanese ruling class was rather brutal. It is claimed that ‘by the end of the day … the army had killed at least five people and wounded more than 30 demonstrators …. Enraged by the killings of civilians, the protestors stormed the Labour Ministry and set it on fire’ (Schwartz and Weston 2004: 2). The General Confederation of Labour and Trade Unions did its utmost to sabotage the class struggle by refusing to expand the strike but in the process only managed to expose its distance from the proletariat. Even the bourgeoisie was beginning to criticise the unions for their incompetence in recuperating the struggle.

The images of mourners crying uncontrollably at Hariri’s funeral are in stark contrast to his general unpopularity following the saddling of Lebanon with a $35-40 billion debt. His economic policies as prime minister and his behind the scene dealings as the Godfather of Lebanon are directly responsible for this huge debt (Schwartz and Weston 2004: 2). Significant economic growth between 1994-1997 began to slow down and by 2000 Lebanon was once again in recession (Schwartz and Weston 2005: 4). Hariri was also unwilling (as are the rest of the warlords running Lebanon) to publish a list of the 17,000 Lebanese who disappeared during the civil war (Freeman et al. 2001: 5). We are referring here to the second Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) which severely dislocated the economy, destroying an estimated $25-30 billions, whilst ‘most of the rest of the Middle east enjoyed an economic boom’ (Cohen 2003: 2).

Even a lame South African ‘truth and reconciliation’ type of commission (which is a reactionary co-option of proletarian anger using legal and religious discourse) was considered too risky by the Hariri government. Too many skeletons still need to remain buried. His tenure as prime minister (1992-98 and 2000-2004) is, therefore, characterised by mismanagement, corruption and huge budget deficits. His attempts to down-size a bloated administration, as for instance in Lebanon’s national airline, ran into entrenched proletarian and ‘ethnic’ interests and had to be abandoned (Freeman et al. 2001: 11). Even though his relationship with Syria went through a number of tense periods, he was by and large an ally of Syria (Freeman et al. 2001: 16).

The Syrian position on Lebanon itself has gone through a number of phases. When Hafiz al-Asad was pressurised into invading Lebanon in 1976 by Henry Kissinger and the Israeli government, it was to ‘repress the PLO and the Muslims’ and prevent a Christian defeat (Schwartz 2005: 3). Hafiz al-Asad was reluctant to police Lebanon but when he was told the alternative was for Israel to do the job, he succumbed. Asad sought and received ‘Arab League validation for Syria’s move’ before embarking on his Lebanese mission (Freeman et al. 2001: 2). Ironically, Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 anyway thus exposing Syria’s anti-Israeli rhetoric for a sham. As Syria became entrenched in Lebanon, the occupation began to accrue certain political, economic and military advantages. The USA, in the shape of James Baker, once again granted Hafiz al-Asad the right to invade the Christian eastern half of Beirut in order to impose ‘order’ (Glass 2005: 1).

Politically, it maintained ‘some control over potentially restive Palestinian communities in Lebanon’ (Freeman et al. 2001: 3), since the Lebanese bourgeoisie proved incapable of policing Palestinian proletarians. It is noteworthy that Palestinian proletarians in Lebanon ‘cannot work outside the refugee camps except in two categories of work, common labor in construction and agriculture’ (Freeman et al. 2001: 8). They are not allowed to own property or passports. Their children cannot attend public schools. There are stark anti-PLO sentiments amongst Palestinians in Lebanon since they feel abandoned by the Palestinian bourgeoisie. Even NGOs have now directed their attentions to the West Bank and Gaza leaving Palestinians in Lebanese refugee camps at the mercy of ‘Islamic welfarism’. Incidentally, this trend in Islamification chimes with the Syrian regime’s attempt ‘to impose Syrian-style standards on the school curricula, including the requirement that Arabic and Islam be taught’ (Pipes 2000: 22).

Economically, Syrian capitalists have become dependent on the legal and semi-legal business opportunities the more dynamic Lebanese economy has to offer. George E. Irani claims, ‘out of any business deal that goes ahead in Lebanon, the biggest example being the mobile phone companies, the Syrians take a cut. The same applies for a cement factory in North Lebanon. There’s a very close connection between the ruling elites in Syria and the ruling elites in Lebanon’ (in Freeman et al. 2001: 8). Syrian capitalists have benefited from the more ‘liberal’ (i.e., profitable) Lebanese banks and financial institutions, which both launder money and invest profitably. Their opaque banking laws are also a boon to capitalists who need to keep their transactions secret. Syrian ‘state-capitalists’, as already mentioned, have accumulated huge sums through smuggling operations across the border with Lebanon. Despite these monetary benefits there is still a considerable disparity between the countries of the Levant. Per capita income in Syria is estimated around $1000, compared with $3000 and $17,000 for Lebanon and Israel respectively (Ghadbian 2001: 32). Finally, there is the thorny question of Syrian workers in Lebanon.

An extremely racist (though comprehensive) account of the tensions between Syrian workers and Lebanese society is provided by Gary C. Gambill (2001). We would advise readers to treat this source with particular scepticism. Gambill estimates there are some 1.4 million Syrian workers in Lebanon (this has been questioned as an exaggeration), a figure which roughly distributes as follows: construction (39%), seasonal agriculture (31%), municipal and sanitation jobs (20%), services, including street vendors and taxi drivers (8%) and industry (2%) (Gambill 2001: 2). In addition the 35,000 Syrian soldiers stationed in Lebanon (2001 figures) often work to supplement their meagre income. The Lebanese state may not receive much taxation from these workers, since ‘Syrian workers are nor required to pay taxes’ (Gambill 2001: 2), but Lebanese employers prefer Syrian workers to Lebanese counterparts because the transaction is off the books. According to Gambill (2001: 3), ‘Syrian workers remit around $4.3 billion from Lebanon to Syria every year. The Asad regime has worked carefully to discourage Syrian workers from spending their wages in Lebanon. It is illegal, for example, for workers to send Lebanese-made consumer durables back to their families in Syria’.

Gambill (2001: 4) not only recounts instances of resentful Lebanese attacks on Syrian workers but positively cheers them from the side-line, ‘In December 1996, a van carrying three Syrian workers from North Lebanon to Beirut was attacked by an armed gunman in a passing vehicle … A number of Syrian workers were brutally assaulted by Lebanese Shi’ite youths after the Lebanese soccer team’s loss to Syria in the Summer of 1997 … In October 1998, townspeople in the Mount Lebanon village of Iklim al-Kharroub attacked and injured 54 Syrian laborers after a 17-year old girl was raped by two Syrians’. However, and admittedly we are indulging in speculation here, the spontaneous examples of resentment against Syrian workers began to give way in 2000 to a more organised, politically motivated form of hatred by a ‘shadowy terrorist group calling itself Citizens for a Free and Independent Lebanon’ (Gambill 2001: 4). A Syrian workers’ hostel, for example, was attacked by dynamite on two consecutive nights. A parallel form of these terroristic anti-working class attacks is to be found in Michel Aoun’s ‘grassroot organisation’ known as the Free National Current (a.k.a. Free Patriotic Movement). The organisation encourages students on summer holidays to take over the selling of produce and bread from Syrian street vendors in an orgy of nationalistic ‘self-sacrifice’. One of the reasons, therefore, Syrian godfathers wished to retain a presence in Lebanon was to protect this source of wealth from hostile Lebanese godfathers.

Militarily, Syrian presence also strengthened Hezbollah, allowing the latter to engage in raids and sneak attacks on the vastly superior Israeli machine, especially in the disputed Sheba farms (area occupied by the Israeli state since the 1967 war). Admittedly, these operations have been scaled back in recent years. However, the dividend of Syrian protection is powerful enough for Hezbollah and 17 smaller pro-Syrian groups to organise ‘pro-Syrian’ demonstrations, the latest of which in March 2005 attracted around half a million people (Fisk 2005a: 4). It was by all accounts a very ‘disciplined’ march (Fisk 2005a: 5) with Hezbollah black shirts imposing bourgeois-Islamic law and order. No dissent or criticism of the party line was tolerated. Sheikh Hassan Nasrollah, the leader of Hezbollah, thanked Syria and its army and apologised to Syria for the ingratitude of the Lebanese’ opposition (Schwartz and Weston 2005: 2). It is significant that many ‘rank-and-file’ Shi’as as well as prominent families like the Baydouns and Khalils, only gave their passive support to the demonstration while staying home (Malik 2005: 1). Presumably some of the non-participants consisted of Hezbollah families with long memories, whose loved ones were ‘massacred’ by the Syrians in 1987 (Fisk 2005a: 4).

The ‘Shi’a group, Amal, as well as [some] Sunni politicians are [also] in favour of continued Syrian military presence in their country’, and ironically until very recently ‘a small but important segment of the Lebanese Christian community [had come] to accept the Syrian role in the country’ (Ghadbian 2001: 23). The top military aim of the Syrian ruling class is to regain the strategic water-rich Golan Heights through negotiation and to prevent the Bekaa valley from being used as a conduit by Israel to attack Syria.

There had been anti-Syrian grumblings by various sections of the Lebanese people in the past but what distinguishes the current anti-Syrian mood is twofold: first, there seems to be a part-genuine, part-engineered reemergence of Lebanese nationalism which has encouraged Maronite Christian, Druze and even Muslim ‘communities’ (i.e., capitalists, clerics, intellectuals, students and some workers) to unite in opposition to Syria (Blanford 2005: 2). We say ‘genuine’ despite being fully cognisant that there is a well orchestrated campaign behind the anti-Syrian demonstration. As Abhinav Aima (2005: 1) asks rhetorically, ‘… how come thousands of Lebanese demonstrators spontaneously pulled out thousands of Lebanese flags and identical red and white sashes in the Beirut Square? The presence of large screen TVs and the complex technical infrastructure behind the demonstrations raises questions regarding who is behind Lebanon’s velvet revolution’; and, secondly, alongside this partly engineered and partly genuine nationalist upsurge there is an ongoing US-Israeli strategy of discrediting Syria which is taking full advantage of the prevailing mood.

We do not object to these demonstrations on the grounds that they consist of too many middle class people (some have derisively referred to it as the ‘Gucci revolution’), since we cannot ascertain the crowd compositions from afar. We merely observe its nationalistic character and the total absence of social demands. In true Stalinist fashion one member of the Democratic Left has tried to justify this, ‘… we are concentrating on getting [the Syrians] and their Lebanese political allies, out. Then, in the elections, we’ll raise issues about poverty and education’ (Knox 2005: 1).

To complicate matters, the ineptitude of the Syrian ruling class has played into the hands of Whitehouse ayatollahs. For example, (and again this is based on the dubious work of Gary C. Gambill 2001: 3), it is claimed ‘in 1994, under pressure from Syria, the Lebanese regime granted citizenship to over 200,000 Syrians resident in the country. Many of these newly-naturalized citizens were registered in the electoral districts of pro-Syrian political elites, such as former Interior Minister Michel Murr, in order to consolidate Syrian authority over the Lebanese political system’. If true, this is heavy-handed gerrymandering that would have sooner or later caused a backlash amongst the Lebanese people. Furthermore, the ‘constitutional amendment to extend the term of President Lahoud in the face of almost universal Lebanese opposition’ made matters worse (Rabil 2005: 1).

It is also patently true that one does not have to go back to the era of the eleventh century assassins (Ridley 1988) to realise that the Syrian elite has traditionally rather enjoyed making its enemies ‘sleep with the fishes’. The assassination of Kamal Jumblatt, President-elect Bashir Jumayil and the assassination attempt on an ally of Walid Jumblatt (the current Druze leader who in 2001 aligned himself with the Maronite Christians probably because with bourgeois Shi’a buying land in the Chouf mountain, the Druze are feeling vulnerable) in October 2004 were widely believed to be Syrian inspired (Rabil 2005: 1). The February 2005 Bristol Hotel opposition meeting which demanded a ‘total withdrawal’ of Syrian troops was endorsed by Hariri. The assembled guests ranged from the Democratic Left Movement (a splinter from Lebanese Communist Party), ‘centre-left’ intellectuals who supported the US-led invasion of Iraq, the Phalanges (extreme right wing Christians influenced by German Nazis, Franco’s and Mussolini’s black shirts), and the Druze sect (Ghassan 2005: 3). A very nice bunch of Godfathers whose relations with the Syrians had turned sour in recent years. So, to summarise, it is not inconceivable Hariri was bumped off by the Syrians for his ‘treachery’ - just unlikely.