Worthless Threats

A lot has been made of the Syrian-inspired “Diesel demonstrations” that will allegedly rock Beirut on Thursday, and perhaps topple Seniora’s government. This blogger predicts that such demonstrations will fail miserably.

When a Syrian newspaper calls for a demonstration to take place in Lebanon, with the intent of causing mayhem, a lot of Lebanese people automatically feel their stomachs twirl. How can they not? One should only go back to March 8 where Hezbollah gathered around 800,000 people to “thank Syria”, to realize that Syria can indeed mobilize a lot of people (who have arms) to jeopardize our fragile stability.

But our fear is mostly based on bad past experiences, not on rational thinking: The demo in question will be so weak it might have to be cancelled due to “bad weather” (to recall Omar Karami’s famous cancellation of the Tripoli Pro-Syrian demos back in early March)

There are many reasons why one should not be afraid. For example, back in March, the borders between Lebanon and Syria were too lose to be controlled. Busloads of Syrians were hauled in on March 8 to give Nassrallah’s crowd its beef. Today, as Annahar reports (via Tayyar) the Syrian-Lebanese borders have been under constant monitoring for two months.

The other reason why we should relax is political: The unpredictable Michel Aoun, whom the Syrians rely on to ‘power’ the demos, might pull the same trick as the one he pulled on President Lahhoud, where he cancelled a widely publicized meeting at the last minute and embarrassed the President. The fact that he is in the US right now makes this even more probable.

Even on the Hezbollah front. One could sense that they’re not as die-hard pro-Syrian as their image conveys. Hezbollah assigned Naim kassem to echo Bashar’s speech in Lebanon, while Hassan Nassrallah himself would have been the more logical person to do so (it was the Syrian President that spoke after all). I personally suspect that Hezbollah is puffing its chest just for negotiation purposes and is smarter than following the suicidal policies of Bashar.
Moreover, P.M Seniora has aborted Hezbollah’s plans to demonstrate over diesel prices by assigning their own minister to come up with a solution.

The Level of Syrian influence on Lebanese politicians is dwindling quickly; all you have to do is read the Tishreen article to see the kind of people who are supporting Mr. Assad these days: Omar Karami, Zaher el Khatib, Salim el hoss; people who can’t get their own mothers to vote for them, let alone mobilize masses of people to destabilize a country. It’s a golden rule, nobody follows the losers.

We should all remember that March 14 was a reaction to March 8; this is why the pro-Syrians will think twice before going down to the street, lest they be humiliated again in the numbers game. The Syrians have also lost their control of the Lebanese security apparatus, and the Army would not let a social demo turn into anything other than that.