Judging from the rhetoric and actions of Russia, it seems Moscow has not given up the aspirations that led to the war of last summer. Throughout the first half of the year, Russian policy towards Georgia and the rest of Russia’s so-called Near Abroad seemed to have three priorities or claims:

1) Russia has a sphere of interest, where it wants to be recognized as the sole and unchallenged hegemon. Georgia belongs to this sphere. Western powers and especially NATO should keep away from the Russian sphere of interest.

2) The sovereignty of the countries that happen to be located in the Russian sphere of interest must be limited and undermined. These countries must not be free to make their own decisions on matters of foreign policy and security. An excess of freedom and democracy only makes them choose the West instead of being led by elites loyal to Moscow. In the case of Georgia, the undermining of Georgia’s sovereignty has been manifest in the Russian massing of military power into Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and thereby further cementing Russian capture of these “independent” territories.

3) Russia must also prevail in the information war. This has meant a massive campaign of Russian propaganda and disinformation, unforeseen since the Soviet times, aiming at isolating and liquidating any objective account of history that would be “harmful for Russian interests”. In addition to Georgia, also the Baltic countries, Ukraine, Poland and other countries between Russia and Germany have become targets of this information war. New legislation has been passed, criminalizing any but pro-Moscow interpretation of history, and a “commission of historical truth” consisting of few historians but many Kremlin polit-technologists and security people has been established to safeguard the Kremlin’s imperial interests in shaping the world’s perceptions of history.

Everything in Moscow’s behaviour still suggests that Russia aims at a regime change in Tbilisi. It also must be assumed that Moscow has both the capacity and the political will to push for this goal, and no significant political restraints to prevent it from attempting to achieve the goal also through military provocations or violent subversive operations.

At the same time it appears clear that the shift of presidency in the United States did not, as some in Russia had probably hoped for, lead to naïveté concerning Russia’s aspirations. Instead, the Obama administration has continued to support Georgia’s sovereignty - to which extent Washington’s principles will hold is another question. Within the European Union, Poland has unsurprisingly taken up the role of a major defender of Georgia. Warsaw probably foresees that if Georgia would lose its sovereignty, Ukraine would be next in line.

The summer may become critical on the Georgian front. It adds to the probability of a renewed conflict if Russia, in its probing actions, senses any weakness or appeasement from the Western powers in regard to Georgia and Ukraine. President Obama has so far not yet been invited to his real foreign political test in fire, although he will undoubtedly face such tests from both Russia and Iran.

Once again the Russian celebrations of the “Victory Day” saw aggressive and often outrageous threats directed against Russia’s smaller neighbours.

From the beginning of May, Russia formally assumed the control of the borders of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. President Dmitri Medvedyev signed agreements with the heads of the separatist administrations of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Sergei Bagapsh and Eduard Kokoity, in the Kremlin on 30 April 2009, in which the two separatist leaders agreed to subject the security and borders of their “countries” to Russia. Abkhazia additionally handed over the control of its Black Sea coast to Russia.

Moreover, the security and intelligence services of the separatist republics - the Abkhaz FSB and the South Ossetian KGB - were subjected to the Russian FSB. As a result of the agreement, Russian army and security services do not need any permissions from the separatist administrations for their free movement and operations in the two republics, whereas the Abkhaz and South Ossetian authorities need official Russian permission if they are to move close to the border areas or the Russian military and security bases, which are estimated to increase in great numbers in the future.

These concessions to Russia may seem dramatic at the first glance, but in fact they change nothing on the ground, compared with the de facto situation from the early nineties onwards, with Russian occupation troops doing as they please under the Orwellian cover of “peacekeeping”. The Kremlin’s agreements with Bagapsh and Kokoity were rather just necessary formalities after Russia had recognized these two entities as independent countries. The agreements may therefore provide new opportunities for bending international law and media perceptions. Such manipulation could later serve various scenarios similar to the “shots of Mainila” that were once used to launch the Winter War against Finland. Therefore elements of these agreements may appear in the future to “legitimize” further aggressions against Georgia.

The Abkhaz foreign minister Sergei Shamba has referred to five hundred Russian troops to be stationed along the land border of Abkhazia and Georgia, but the numbers are kept purposefully vague. Russia has announced it intends to station at least 10 000 troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and, in addition, to establish new military bases and in Abkhazia also a naval base.

The impact of all this militarization is suffered mainly by the ordinary people inhabiting the frontier area on both sides of the administrative border, since it will become even more difficult to keep contacts over the borderline. Thus, local mistrust is bound to increase and Abkhazia and South Ossetia will be ever more tightly isolated from any except Russian-controlled information. The “trust-building measures” that international organizations have called for in Tbilisi’s relations to its separatist regions will therefore become ever harder.

Leading Western powers have sought to take Russian belligerence into account, but with soft and cooperative means. The act that may have seemed symbolically the toughest was the implementation of a NATO military practise in Georgia from 6 May to 1 June. The practise, titled “Cooperation Longbow - Lancer 2009”, was planned long ahead - and long before the war of August 2008 - and there were expected to be around 1000 military personnel from 19 countries. The practise was open also to the non-members of NATO through the Partnership for Peace programme, part of which the practise was. NATO had also normalized its relations with Russia that were shortly frozen due to the summer 2008 war. The military practise in Georgia would concentrate in administrative and command structure cooperation in a crisis scenario, which would portray a UN-mandated NATO operation participated by PfP partners. The practise would take place in the Vaziani base twenty kilometres outside Tbilisi. One would not see any shooting in this practise, but rather computer simulations and group workshops.

Russia’s threats did not succeed in frightening off any of the crucial supporters of Georgia, although Kazakstan, Moldova and Serbia did remove themselves from the practise. As expected, Russia responded with harsh rhetoric. President Medvedyev called the practise a provocation and Foreign Minister Lavrov claimed it would destabilize the Caucasus. The Russian ambassador to NATO, Dmitri Rogozin, warned that Russia would remove itself from the NATO-Russia cooperative council. However, Russian removal from its NATO cooperation would be highly unlikely since Russia wants to have a say in NATO, which privilege is not shared by those neighbours of Russia that are not members of the alliance, like Georgia, Ukraine and Finland.

The Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze replied to Rogozin by stating that “as a sovereign nation Georgia has the right to host in its own territory whatever practises it wants, and Russia has the right to have its opinion about them. Russia would still do well if it, instead of commenting Georgia’s NATO practise, would start removing its occupation troops from Georgian territories.”

Since 9 April 2009, the Georgian extra-parliamentary opposition maintained street demonstrations against President Saakashvili and the Georgian government. The opposition coalition consists of 14-17 parties, mainly small, which have established in central Tbilisi a similar more or less permanently but lightly manned camp as Hizbullah and its allies had in central Beirut from December 2006 until May 2008. Also other tactics used by the Georgian extra-parliamentary opposition seem to repeat the models of counter-revolutionary tactics as tested in Lebanon. As soon as in 2004, in the aftermath of the Ukrainian events, Moscow polit-technologists created a conception out of “spreading our own orange revolutions wherever our hand can reach”.

However, the demonstrations of the Georgian radical opposition did not, throughout the first month, spread anywhere outside Tbilisi, and even in Tbilisi they did not gain as much crowd or enthusiasm as the opposition had hoped for.

The extra-parliamentary opposition in Georgia consists partly of dusky elements but mainly of genuine opposition parties, many of whom are by no means pro-Russian. They seem to have a problem with the personality of Saakashvili rather than with his actual policies. Many of Saakashvili’s former allies in the Rose Revolution now lead their own opposition parties and they are frustrated or feel sidelined from crucial positions in the administration. This development has been familiar also in the other aftermaths of coloured revolutions in Ukraine and Lebanon, where the democratic coalitions later proved tense and frictional. On the other hand, one cannot forecast any more solid unity for the current Georgian opposition in case that Saakashvili would really step down or consent to yet another early election, as the unconstitutional street parliament of the opposition now demands.

One of the more credible leaders of the current Georgian opposition for foreigners is probably the former foreign minister Salome Zurabishvili, who heads a party called “Georgian Way”. Mrs. Zurabishvili used to be moderate and constructive but according to several Georgia watchers she has recently become tempted to radical agitation. More moderate opposition is represented by the former diplomat Irakli Alasania, whose weakness may be limited backing in the streets. Other opposition leaders include Irakli Melashvili, the leader of “National Forum”, and a famous singer Gia Gachechiladze. One guess for Saakashvili’s successor has also been his one time partner in the Rose Revolution, former chairwoman of the parliament Nino Burjanadze. More radical nationalist opposition is represented by figures such as Saakashvili’s former defence minister Irakli Okruashvili, who was often criticized for his hawkish attitude towards Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

With its past policies on Georgia, Russia has managed to alienate most of the political field from its cause of regional hegemony. Now pro-Moscow elements can mainly be found among the Soviet-nostalgic far left and in the anti-Western and conspiratorial Orthodox far right. However, even though these rather marginal political camps may include many representatives of the former KGB and other secret services, it might prove impossible for them to mobilize any significant popular backing that would show in the polls. This is the main reason why the Russian interest in Georgia cannot be bound to normal constitutional shift of democratic mandate.

Russia’s problems with Georgia would not be fixed by simply defeating Saakashvili in a normal democratic election that might replace him with someone like Alasania, Zurabishvili or Burjanadze. As soon as any of them would have gained power, they would more or less continue along the lines of Saakashvili’s administration - driving reform policies and trying to engage Georgia with strong Western relations. From the Russian point of view, it would therefore be more desirable to back into power someone who has much more questionable legitimacy, and who would resort to authoritarian policies. This way, the leadership would depend on Russian backing for his power, and Georgia would be isolated from the West.

Moreover, Saakashvili has announced that he would give up power “in constitutional order” in 2012, when he would finish his second term. After all, Saakashvili won the previous early election, which was arranged in January 2008 due to the opposition’s protests of the late 2007. Saakashvili also clearly won the last parliamentary election. Both elections were considered free and fair by Western and independent observers. They were not without problems, but still fulfilled the standards of fair elections better than most elections in the former Soviet republics.

In early May, the situation escalated as some of the young mobs of the opposition beat up journalists working for pro-government media. This led to the arrest of three opposition activists, which served as an excuse for the opposition to storm police stations. The police responded with limited use of force and by protecting the assaulted media outlets, but the opposition still accused the police for arbitrary use of its powers, for beating up people etc. Although the three arrested opposition activists were soon released after an appeal from Patriarch Ilia II, the opposition accelerated its demands for Saakashvili’s resignation and early election. The opposition threatened with roadblocks that would paralyze traffic in the capital.

However, the opposition had not yet blocked the roads when the Ministry of Defence suddenly announced that Georgian security services had thwarted a plot for coup d’état. According to Defence Minister David Sikharulidze the scandal concerned a Russian-machinated military mutiny in the Mukhrovani base, thirty kilometres from Tbilisi. Government spokesman Shota Utiashvili told that the plot had aimed at sabotaging the NATO practise and “possibly” also at executing a military coup. Among evidence, the Ministry of Defence presented a secretly video-taped meeting where a former special troops commander Gia Gvaladze was seen explaining to a small group of men that the Kremlin would back a coup: “Russia will come to our aid; they’ll send 5000 troops.” Russia of course denied involvement in any such plot and the anti-Saakashvili opposition suspected the government had staged the mutiny just to divert attention from their protests.

On 11 May, Saakashvili and the speaker of the parliament David Bakradze met a delegation representing the opposition. So far the opposition had rejected repeated offers from the government for negotiations, maintaining their maximalist demands. In the meeting the opposition was represented by Salome Zurabishvili, Irakli Alasania, Levan Gachechiladze and Kakha Shartava. Zurabishvili and Alasania were already mentioned. Shartava represents Orthodox nationalist right, while Gachechiladze is considered as someone with hot temper. Although the meeting did not reach any actual agreement, Saakashvili considered the existence of dialogue as a victory for democracy, and warned that the path of radicalism had led to civil war in the 1990s.

Next week the opposition protests continued, physically much weaker as most of the protesters had gone home, but verbally increasingly radical. Only few hundred activists now manned the opposition camp in central Tbilisi. According to reports, they were paid 30 lari for day and food rations for nights. The opposition leaders repeatedly appealed on their supporters in media in order to make them start protests also outside the capital, but there were no reports to suggest such development ever took place. The opposition continued to enjoy free access to various Georgian media outlets as well as foreign ones.

A serious problem was constituted by the repeated threats of the opposition to block traffic and communications in and around Tbilisi, since this would cause serious negative consequences to Georgia’s economy and especially to the country’s Western relations, because such measures would damage the confidence of investors. Especially it would put into doubt Georgia’s ability to secure the important transit trade from Azerbaijan through Georgia into Turkey and vice versa. This trade route also includes the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline that passes through Georgia and constitutes the only eastern energy vein for Europe that is not controlled by Russia.

Russia, of course, would benefit from any damage caused to the trade passing through Georgia and bypassing Russia, and in fact, it would probably welcome any deterioration of Georgia’s economic situation. However, Armenia, one of Russia’s allies in the region, would suffer from the siege of Georgia, as the Armenian borders to Turkey and Azerbaijan remain closed due to the Karabagh conflict. Armenia’s land borders are only open to Georgia in the north and to Iran in the south. From Moscow’s point of view increasing Armenia’s hardship might be beneficial since it would make Armenia increasingly dependent on the Russian-controlled air bridge that Russia also uses to move troops and weapons into Armenia and towards Iran and the Middle East.

If the Georgian government would take up forceful measures to guarantee the functioning of its roads, ports and airports, even this could be useful for Russia, since it would then be able to provoke local conflicts within Georgia, thereby presenting Saakashvili’s administration in a negative light, as an “authoritarian” and “oppressive” regime. Such publicity would restrain Western solidarity and support to the democratically elected government of Georgia under the pressure of an extra-parliamentary regime change. Any escalation of forceful measures would also offer Russia new opportunities for military and clandestine operations against Georgia.

The government spokesman Shota Utiashvili warned that “if we come to see protracted roadblocks on our roads and railways, we will eventually have to take up measures to open them.” No doubt, for any government of any normal state, it would be considered legitimate to take up such measures in such situation, but when it comes to small Western-leaning countries under the Russian threat, it seems that any measure whatsoever would be considered “unwise”, “a grave mistake”, or “walking into the Russian trap”, if not downright “provocation” or “aggression”. It seems that when it comes to a country like Georgia or Estonia (as in the case of the bronze statue dispute), normal measures of guaranteeing law and order are not accepted by the international community. It often seems that for those countries to be acceptable in Western eyes, their democratically elected governments should only submit to Russian street mobs and gangsters or to capitulate when faced by provocations machinated from abroad.

On 19 May, opposition activists blocked for an hour the Kakhetian highway outside the city centre of Tbilisi, close by the new building of the Ministry of Interior. Their action caused a big traffic jam and small skirmishes between angry drivers. The police had strict instructions not to interfere by force. Mrs. Burjanadze showed up at the roadblock and declared in the national television that the block was a “warning”. She also claimed Georgia is a “police state”, which in the light of the events of the last months does not seem a justified accusation at all. The opposition also claimed that “as many as twenty” vehicles had been confiscated from them.

Later in May, Georgian police reportedly managed to thwart an attempt to blow up the trans-Georgian railway - which had obviously only recently been repaired after the Russians blew it up last summer. The director of the national railways Irakli Ezugbaya expressed his concern about the opposition’s threats against the railway. According to Ezugbaya, international oil companies and other strategic customers had already reduced their transport by Georgian railways and the daily cargo traffic had dropped 35 % since the opposition started its protests in early April.

The Georgian east-west traffic routes are very vulnerable, since they all pass along the Kura Valley through Greater Tbilisi, and South Ossetia, with its Russian outposts, poses a fundamental threat to Georgia’s unity, as it penetrates the core of the country in the middle. For example the mobility of the Georgian army from the centre and the east to address an armed machination taking place in the west could easily be blocked soon after the western outskirts of Tbilisi. It would be relatively easy to support an armed machination in let’s say Adjaria or Mingrelia from Abkhazia, or an Armenian machination in Djavakhetia. In such a situation, foreign supplies to Georgia could be blocked by a siege of the port of Poti.

Symbolically, it was the port of Poti where Saakashvili gave out a declaration that he would “not allow anyone any more cut Georgia’s transport routes to the world” and “turn our country to some kind of banana republic, where there are coups and extraordinary elections every year.”

Muslim Brotherhood also rejected President Obama’s initiatives for a peace in the Middle East, as well as his openings to Syria, Iran and Jordan. The deputy head of the organization Muhammad Habib suspected that the only reason for these openings by Obama was Washington’s desire to make these states better serve United States interests, where the primary objective still was to ensure the security and regional supremacy of the Zionist entity.

India is no stranger to terrorism since between 2004-2007 nearly 3700 people were killed in terrorist attacks across the country conducted by separatist, (Hindu-) nationalist or radical islamist terrorist groups. Strikingly, only Iraq suffered more terrorism related casualties during the same time span.

In the last two years there have been several devastating terrorist attacks in India, which have been linked to radical islamist terrorists. These attacks include:

-       The July 2006 Mumbai train bombings which killed 180 persons,

-       The February 2007 bombing against the “Friendship train” between India and Pakistan which claimed the lives of 65 people,

-       The August 2007 bombings in Hyderabad against a popular restaurant and a movie theatre leaving 42 people dead.

The usual suspects in terrorist attacks in India are Pakistani and Bangladeshi linked militant groups such as “Lashkar-e-Taiba” and “Harakat-ul-Jehadi Islami”. Until recently, India has seen radical islamist terrorism as an imported problem linked to its rivalry with Pakistan and the Kashmir issue. Indeed India’s minority of 150 million Muslims has been generally well-integrated. Indian Muslims have been noteworthy absent from the battlefields of Afghanistan or al-Qai’da –linked terrorist plots. However, since 2007 a new trend of home grown islamist terrorists has been emerging. Not to dismiss the Pakistan linked groups completely, this particular attack was most probably conducted by the home grown Indian Mujahedeen.  In fact, the Indian Mujahedeen threatened in September to attack Mumbai.

Some Indian security analysts have traced the roots of the Indian Mujahedeen to the banned Students Islamist Movement of India while others have seen the Indian Mujahedeen as a front for Pakistani and Bangladeshi militant groups. According to recent reports, a previously unknown group, Deccan Mujahedeen, has claimed responsibility for the attacks. Although it is impossible to verify this claim, it underlines the likelihood that indeed radical islamists are responsible for the attack. The name Deccan Mujahedeen follows a rather typical logic of islamist terrorists: a previously unknown name has a stronger psychological effect in creating the impression of ever growing number of terrorist groupings. It additionally creates confusion among security authorities and analysts.

The Mumbai attacks are most likely the latest in a string of terrorist attacks claimed by the Indian Mujahedeen.

In November 2007 the rather unknown group took responsibility of a string of attacks in Varanas, Faizabad and Lucknow. Six months later on May 13^th 2008, at least 65 persons were killed in Jaipur in a series of bombings against markets and the popular tourist site of Hawa Mahal, “Temple of winds”.  On July 26^th over 50 people were killed and 200 wounded in 19 bomb explosions and car bombings in Ahmedabad. The attacks were conducted in two waves with the second wave targeting security- and emergency authorities. The Indian Mujahedeen took responsibility for the attacks stating that the attacks were a response to the 2002 Gujarat pogroms, when Hindu extremists massacred approximately 2000 Muslims in an outburst of communal violence. On September 13^th the attacks continued with a series of bombings in the centre of Delhi. The bombs, which killed at least 24 persons, were planted in shopping malls and business districts. One of the bombs was placed near one of Delhi’s most popular tourist attractions, the “Indian Gate”. The bombs were identically manufactured with the other bombs found in Jaipur and Ahmedabad.

Unlike the large number of previous and somewhat similar attacks, the latest attacks were conducted with a vastly different modus operandi. While the previous attacks were conducted by using bombs and improvised explosive devices mainly against soft targets such as market places and religious sites, the attacks of November 26^th were targeted against harder and better secured targets using small arms and grenades. Most of the strikes seem to have been aimed to incite communal violence between India’s Hindus and Muslims. In contrast to earlier attacks in which the victims have indiscriminately been mainly Indian citizens, westerners seem to have been the primary target in the attacks of November 26^th. It seems that the “Indian Mujahedeen”, or at least the most radical elements of it, have recognized that the attempts to incite religious violence have not produced expected results, and have therefore shifted to more radical tactics aiming for maximum international attention.

This time the Mumbai attacks were conducted by terrorists who obviously knew that they would most probably get killed or caught in the operation. The amount of well secured targets indicates that the attack was carried out by an unusual large number of determined attackers. This further suggests that the operation needed to be patiently planned and coordinated. It is highly unlikely that any other than a home grown terrorist group could have mobilized such a number of dedicated terrorists and been able to strike with such precision against such difficult targets.

Reports of attackers trying to single out American and British nationals strongly indicate a radical islamist motivation. This, together with tactics used (well coordinated, simultaneous attacks) shows at least al-Qa’ida’s ideological influence to the attackers. It is also possible that members of al-Qai’da or al-Qai’da linked persons have contributed to the planning, coordination and training of the attackers.

According to latest reports the head of Mumbai’s anti-terror branch and his closest aides are among the casualties. Interestingly in Iraq al-Qai’da has used and developed similar methods – sophisticated and bold attacks with small arms fire and grenades – for the past year against high profile targets, such as the awakening council leaders. The RGCT has anticipated similar tactics to spread to the toolkit of terrorists worldwide and to be used alongside and in addition to the conventional bombings and IED attacks against civilian targets.

The fact that the terrorists are holding such a large number of hostages makes it plausible to assess that taking hostages was in fact a part of the initial operational plan. Many of the hostages are probably westerners and this indicates that the message of these latest attacks is aimed first and foremost to the international community. It is also a clear attempt to harm India’s tourism sector and generally India’s economy. The attack will undoubtedly also have an impact on India’s internal politics, strengthening Hindu nationalists which have accused the Indian government of inadequate measures against radical islamists. Indeed, India’s lack of success in solving and prosecuting past terrorist attacks has not been encouraging.

The arson attack in Helsinki has to be put into its wider context. A quick open source survey from the past week shows a common pattern emerging in anti-Turkey actions in Europe:

-      On Friday (17.10.08) in Vienna, Austria Kurdish activists tried to storm the UN-City. The demonstrators stated that their aim was to hand out a petition on behalf of the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan and to raise international awareness.

-      In Basel, Switzerland, one person was injured (18.10.08) when four attackers threw two Molotov cocktails around 01:30 am into a café. According to the Basel Attorney-General, the four suspects escaped. The exploding Molotov cocktails set fire to the clothes of several of the 18 guests at the café. The attacked café is a well known meeting point for local Turks. According to the Basel police, local residents suspect PKK for the attack. Another likely PKK motivated attack occurred in the same night in Bern, when a Turkish owned travel agency was set on fire. The police is investigating whether the attacks in Bern and Basel are connected.

-      On Sunday night (19.10.08) around 04:25 am, the Turkish consulate in Salzburg, Austria, was attacked, according to the Salzburg police spokesman, with a “fire bomb”. In the attack in Salzburg, a window was broken and a Molotov cocktail thrown into the building.  Fire fighters, who quickly put out the flames, said they found in one room stones and fragments from a broken bottle that could have contained a flammable substance.

-      Later on Sunday evening (19.10.08) in Vienna-Hernals, a Sport- and cultural centre, “Selçüklü Teşkilati” was attacked with two Molotov cocktails around 23:00 pm. Nobody was injured, but the head of the Centre stated, that he is now “fearing for his life”. The authorities believe the attackers were Kurdish extremists.  

-      On Sunday evening (19.10.08) around 22:00 pm, two Turkish owned firms, a fruit shop and a travel agency were attacked in Hamburg, Germany. In both attacks, the windows were broken and Molotov cocktails were thrown in. German security service and the national criminal police are investigating: it is suspected that both attacks are connected to a protest action of around 700 PKK supporters, who earlier during the day protested against the alleged mistreatment of Abdullah Öcalan.   

-      On Monday (20.10.08) around 13:00 pm, 200 demonstrators protested in Helsinki, Finland, against the prison conditions of Abdullah Öcalan.

-      On Tuesday night (21.10.08) at around 03:00 am, four young men attacked the Turkish embassy in Helsinki with at least one Molotov cocktail. One embassy member was slightly injured after inhaling smoke from the fire. Finnish police arrested the four suspects early in the morning with the help of an eyewitness. A fifth suspect was arrested later.

Interestingly, Austria, Finland and Switzerland share some common characteristics. First of all, the three countries in question share a tradition as “neutral” countries. Secondly, in comparison to Germany, were there has been attacks against Turkish interests every now and then (according to Interpol, in the year 2007, there were 15 attacks against Turkish interests in Germany, mostly arson attacks), Austria, Finland and Switzerland have been largely spared from attacks like these. In the Finnish context, Finnish police agreed that Tuesday night’s arson attack was an escalation from the usual small scale vandalism of throwing eggs and painting graffiti’s.    

Austrian ministry of interior has stated that it is suspecting that PKK sympathizers are involved in the arson attacks, due to their timely connection to the other attacks across Europe. However, while not ruling out a political motive, the Finnish police have been playing down the significance of the arson attack by stating that the suspected four arsonists were “quite young”. According to Finnish media, the arrested are between 16-20 -years old, with a Turkish Kurdish background and Finnish nationality. All live in the Helsinki, the capital area.

An act of terrorism

According to a traditional interpretation, an act of terrorism demands an actor, an objective, a strategy, a tactic as well as a target. The Molotov cocktail attack against the Turkish embassy in Finland meets these demands.

An act of terrorism naturally requires an actor. The criteria for actor are met whether the perpetrators belong directly to a terrorist organisation or act as a small collection of individuals who are influenced by the aims of a terrorist organisation or its leaders. Most propably the perpetrators of the embassy attack were symphatizers of PKK and not hardcore members of the organisation itself.

The attack that took place on 21st of October 2008 at early morning was a part of a larger strategy to further tarnish Turkey’s image as the sole “bad guy” of the Turkey-PKK conflict. The tactical element of a violent act that constitutes an act of terrorism is usually easier to point out. Terrorist acts are always violent in nature wheter perpetrators actually commit violent acts or threatnen with them. Most often the tactic used violates the accepted rules and norms of the society at hand. The tactic in the embassy attack was an attempt to set the Turkish embassy on fire by using Molotov cocktails and is, as pointed out earlier, a continuum of attacks elsewhere in Europe. And for the Finnish society attack with potentially lethal force against an embassy did come as unanticipated.

The attack had a clear target as well: the Turkish Embassy in Finland and more broadly the state of Turkey. Thus the message was aimed beyond the immediate victim, typical for manifestion through an act of terrorism. The target selection and the manifestation of the attack through the earlier anti-Turkish demonstration can be assumed to be directed at Turkey but intended for international and Finnish audience as well. The perpetrators and sympathizers will argue that this is an extension of separatist war waged against Turkey. It is true that the line between insurgent and terrorist attacks have become greyer than ever due to an increasing amount of attacks against civilian targets in conflict zones as well. Finland, however, is neutral ground, and a state of war or a state of emergency are not current, which makes the distinction clear. Finland authorities also have obligation to protect the foreign embassies and their staff as well as civilians (whether foreign or native) on Finnish territory.

The attack was somewhat of a failure since it did not spark a larger media attention and shock reaction so vital to terrorist acts. Demystification of course, is important in minimizing the effects of terrorist acts, but it should not however lead to the belittlement of the seriousness of such acts. To not call the embassy attack an act of terrorism works well for the perpetrators since it probably gives sympathy in some form by the public for the “desperate” attack against a stronger aggressor. Perpetrators of terrorist acts usually don’t accept the label of terrorism since it inevitably has a negative connotation. They prefer themselves as fighters of a just cause and as if they were forced to act by global or local injustice. Even though there is no reason to provoke panic of fear, downplaying the attack also gives a false sensation that the reasons behind the attack lie solely outside of our sphere of influence or that it was just a single desperate and even justified act. In modern society it should already be clear that the official newspaper- and tv-orientated media is not the only source to manifest a message violently or set an example for future action. Internet forums, for example, are an active channel for discussing, debating and spreading radical ideas and tactics. It is of utmost importance to condemn the embassy attack strongly and to acknowledge it as a terrorist attack even if it failed, since this will set a strong message that this type of action will not be tolerated. Condemning it strongly will also effectively diminish the glorification of the attack. There is nothing glamorous of being judged as a criminal.

It serves the PKK’s larger objective, which is to create an independent socialist state of Kurdistan and/or to materialize the PKK’s vision of political and cultural rights of Kurds in Turkey, that symphatizers commit acts of terrorism outside the borders of Turkey under the eyes of an international audience. It is relevant to remember that by acts of terrorism power can be created or consolidated where there is none or little. Acts of terrorism after all are necessarily political in aims and motives. In the case of the embassy attack this is not diminished by the fact that perpetrators were young, between 16 and 20 years of age. In comparison, the average age of global jihadists in recent years has gone down from 26 to 20.

What does not define terrorism however, is the amount of victims. Neither is terrorism defined by the thoroughness of the plan or by the perfection of the execution of that plan. What does constitute an act of terrorism on its part is the perpetrators’’ aim, their motivation and the single act manifestating the larger objective, since terrorism ultimately is not a spontaneous act, and has to have altruistic motives and objectives. In this context it is important to recognize the significance of the demonstration held in front of the Turkish embassy in Finland even if the attackers didn’t participate in it nor had direct link with it. Since it is enough to constitute an act of terrorism if perpetrators are influenced or motivated by the objectives and ideologies of an existing terrorist organization or its leaders. Ultimately an act of terrorism aims to cause repercurssions beyond its immediate victim or target and as part of this aim the political motivation for the Molotov cocktail attack can be discovered by acknowledging the role of the demonstration, and thus more broadly the influence of the PKK.

The attack should raise a larger question: what led these perpetrators to use such a radical method as part of a political manifestation, which prior to 21st of October was so untypical to Finnish society. And more importantly what and who will follow, since now that this vice is out of Pandora’s Box, it cannot be forced back in.

The March 14 majority in the parliament would be entirely powerless, but would still act like a human shield to protect Hizbullah from more direct actions by Israel or the Western powers. General Michel Suleiman, who had traditionally been close to Syria, was made president of Lebanon with “consensus.” Moreover, Hizbullah got free hands regarding its telecommunications networks and weapons, and an undisputed monopoly of power in large territories of Lebanon. One of the consequences of the May conflict was also emergence of the junior allies of Hizbullah – small parties and militias such as the SSNP and Lebanese Ba’ath, which directly coordinated with Syria – as visible armed actors in Lebanese politics. After the May conflict it became evident that in the future the Lebanese army or police would not be able to touch or prevent activities of any of these groups, which virtually extends Hizbullah’s reach and operational immunity well beyond its Shi’a areas.

It took one and half months more after the Doha Accord before a “national unity government” was finally formed in Lebanon on 11 July 2008. In the new government, president-nominated neutral persons took over the posts of minister of interior and minister of defense, which was a temporary relief for the March 14. However, March 8 captured the ministries of telecommunications, foreign affairs, energy, agriculture, industry, labor and social affairs. As a weak compensation, March 14 got only two heavy posts, those of the ministers of justice and finance, as well as a bunch of light-weight and powerless portfolios. Especially the takeover of the ministry of telecommunications by March 8 can be expected to strengthen March 8’s intelligence capacities, and will probably make it even harder in the future to gather evidence on the investigations of the political assassinations.

The Doha Accord was also succeeded by a redirection of international support to Syria, although the country had done nothing in reality that would have indicated a change in its policies. Quite the contrary, the Syrian leadership highlighted the fact that Syria hasn’t changed any of its positions, but Europe had moved closer to Syria, due to the victories of Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas. After May, the most striking coat-turning was performed by France, who also happened to hold the new European Union presidency from July 2008. French-led change in EU positions on Syria led to an unforeseen European courtship in favor of Syria in the Mediterranean summit in Paris.

France considered that Syria should be somehow rewarded for the Doha Accord and the nomination of Suleiman as the Lebanese president, although it remained unclear what Syria had done to deserve this. European diplomatic messages were received with triumphant mood in Tehran, Damascus and among Hizbullah, whereas the pro-Western camp of Lebanon and among the Syrian opposition greeted the European ambivalence with sentiments of desperation, defeatism and even panic. The European policy change can be interpreted as an indirect encouragement for more belligerent and anti-democratic policies in the region.

The Syrians as well as the pro-Syrian camp in Lebanon explain Europe’s change of policy as a consequence of their successful and steadfast resistance to what they consider as Western strategies, and they attribute the honor for breaking Europe’s will to Hizbullah’s military victory in May. The pro-Syrian camp also regards the events of the aftermath of the May offensive as a proof for their previous belief that military and paramilitary power forms the primary source of influence. This power has forced both the Lebanese government and the international community to unilateral concessions and finally to surrender to the will of the pro-Syrian minority camp in all core political questions. Many in both the pro-Syrian and the March 14 camps have started to suspect that the investigations of the political assassinations will be eventually watered down, and the Special Tribunal in The Hague will probably end up in some kind of “politically correct” version where blame is put on a new previously unknown Sunni Islamist extremist group of Fatah al-Islam type.

An international change of opinion concerning Syria took place immediately after Syria had started negotiations with Israel through the mediation of Turkey. It is significant that in the Western camp Israel has been a main advocate for the idea that Syria could be lured out from Iran’s orbit of influence by engagement and some concessions. Simultaneous development in the fourfold alliance of Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas has indicated the exact opposite. All the four are convinced that their alliance has been victorious and there is no indication that Syria would now want to change the policy they believe is winning. Quite to the contrary, Damascus is now more convinced than before that it will still manage to gain many more unilateral concessions from the West – especially in Lebanon. Meanwhile, Israel’s interests in Lebanon have been tied up with a narrow security point of view, where the activities of Hizbullah and Palestinian groups from the territory of Lebanon matter but support for democracy in Lebanon is not a priority.

It is significant that during the negotiations between Syria and Israel, Hizbullah has abstained from all operations directed against Israel and concentrated in activities against March 14. At the same time, Israel has rewarded Hizbullah with direct contacts as well as with another propaganda victory by handing over several Lebanese prisoners and dozens of bodies of militants killed in Israel in return to the dead bodies of the two captured Israeli soldiers who served as casus belli for Israel’s war on Hizbullah in summer 2006. Among those handed over by Israel to Hizbullah was Samir Qantar, a Lebanese militant imprisoned as a teenager for cruelly murdering an Israeli girl. The rather unilateral “prisoner swap” appeared as an obvious and entirely unilateral victory for Hizbullah and Syria.

If a deal with Syria could bring about a “stability” in Lebanon tolerable for Israel, Israel’s interests would in fact appear in alignment with those of the Syrian regime and run counter to the majority of Lebanese population and counter to the Western interests in Lebanon. It is to be expected that Israel does anything in its power to prevent improvement in relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, although for the wider stability and future of the Middle East such détente between Iran and the Sunni Arabs and between Iran and the United States would be most beneficial, since it could reduce the overall tension in the region. Many analysts believe that for the same reasons Israel seeks to ensure that the Alawi sect stays in power in Syria. Therefore Israeli lobbies are marketing to the West an anti-Sunni propaganda vision of the region that is surprisingly identical to the views offered by the Syrian regime.

Syria has not changed its policy towards many of the issues that lie behind its tension with Lebanon. According to various sources the presidents Bashar al-Assad and Michel Suleiman agreed in Paris that diplomatic relations would be formed between Syria and Lebanon, and that discussions would be launched concerning the demarcation of the Syrian-Lebanese border and the Lebanese disappeared to Syria. These “agreements” were greeted with worldwide praise and they were considered revolutionary steps forward although in fact Syria just repeated the same promises it has made many times over the years, without ever fulfilling them. The visit to Beirut of the Syrian minister of foreign affairs Walid al-Muallem again raised the same themes, but without any concrete indication of implementation in the foreseeable future.

The message between the lines that Syria has put forward is that everything could well wait until the Lebanese parliamentary election in 2009 would bring in power a pro-Syrian government. Syria has in fact for a long time made a rhetoric promise to solve the issues of demarcation, diplomatic representation as well as to cooperate with the murder investigations, but it has always indicated between the lines that these all depended on the conditions that the results would fit Syria’s interests. That would mean that Lebanon should have a pro-Syrian government, Hizbullah should be allowed to keep their weapons and to strengthen further, and that the murder investigations would come to a “solution” that does not implicate Syria or Hizbullah.

After March 8 has managed to paralyze March 14, effectively stripping the latter from political power, the active role in Lebanese politics has fallen to President Suleiman. After Syria and Hizbullah first blocked Suleiman’s election for more than half a year, Syria and Hizbullah finally returned to their former position that Suleiman was always and continues to be close to Damascus. Although Suleiman’s background is closely bound to the Syrian occupation and military rule in Lebanon, he has also had three years time to diversify his contacts, especially through cooperation with leading Western powers such as the United States, Britain and France, who have all offered sizable support and training for the Lebanese army. However, clear majority of the very highest officers are pro-Syrian nominations.

In the May conflict and its aftermath, the Lebanese army has been remarkably impotent in regard to any activities of March 8 militias. After the Hizbullah takeover of West Beirut and attacks on the Shuf, bloody fighting continued throughout the summer especially in Tripoli, but occasionally also in parts of Beirut and Central Bekaa. The Internal Security Forces (ISF), traditionally loyal to March 14, were intimidated into submission in May, and the militiamen of the Amal party started appearing in ISF uniforms in the occupied Sunni neighborhoods of West Beirut. Lebanese army and ISF offered no resistance, not only to Hizbullah but even to the minor March 8 militias. Yet when Muallem was making his historical visit to Beirut, the Lebanese army crushed with force a demonstration of unarmed Lebanese family members and civil society organizations who demanded the release of the hundreds or even thousands of Lebanese still in Syrian prisons.

The Hamas victory in Gaza, the Hizbullah’s perceived victory in Lebanon in summer 2006 and its coup in May 2008, and Syria’s victory over European official policy have convinced Iran, Syria and their regional militant allies that there policies have been right and successful. This encourages them to expand similar policies further. This is particularly alarming news for all the Sunni Arab countries led by moderate and pro-Western governments. Hostile armed militias receiving ever better training and weapons from Syria and Iran are active in their territories, and becoming potentially more offensive as a result of the recent developments. At least one Hamas activist told the media: “Last year we took over Gaza, this year we took over Beirut – next years we will take over Jordan and Egypt.” This sentiment was probably shared by many of the supporters of Hamas, Hizbullah and the Syrian regime.

In Lebanon, the public opinion concerning Hizbullah is deeply divided. Outside the Shi’a community it is more feared than loved, and in many circles even openly hated. However, in many other Arab countries, radical Sunni Islamists have started admiring Hizbullah as a symbol to resistance against America and Israel. Hizbullah’s professional and highly effective propaganda machinery has worked with even more success than its firepower, and its impact in the Middle East has probably brought victory over more hearts and minds than official Iranian and Syrian propaganda combined with the new Rusiya al-Yawm, Arabic satellite TV that floods the region with newly aggressive and imperialist Russian propaganda.

As Syria has rightly assessed that its political gains have followed mainly from the victories of Hamas and Hizbullah, it is obvious that this will be the direction Syria will invest also in the future. This means there is no way it would be planning to part from its alignment with Iran, or from its support to regional extremist groups. Iran poses no threat whatsoever for Syria, or at least not for its leading Alawi elite. The alliance of Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas is a political one, not a religious one, and it is for this very reason that it will hold very well as long as the political interests of these countries coincide in their shared anti-Western agenda.

Syria’s negotiations with Israel must have full blessing from Tehran, and Iran actually seeks a similar contact with the United States. Their final goal is a division of the region into spheres of interest, where Iran and Syria would gain considerably more political power in the Middle East than they nowadays possess. The biggest immediate losers would include Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and perhaps also Egypt. Democracy and Arab reform would also be among the losers, whereas radical Islamism would only gain more weight.

Syria continued its support to various extremist groups that worked to undermine Syria’s neighboring countries. The only one of Syria’s neighbors who actually managed to normalize its relations with Syria was Turkey. There is no other way to interpret Turkey’s success in this than to notice that Turkey took up the task of speaking a language that the Syrian regime respected: Turkey threatened Syria with war, and when the threat was serious enough, Damascus had finally no difficulty in abandoning their support to the Kurdistan Workers Party (Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan, PKK), a communist-background Kurdish extremist movement that had regularly resorted to terrorism in its fight against Turkey and non-PKK Kurds. Syria also banned PKK, closed its most obvious offices in Syria, and expelled the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan to his exile odyssey through Moscow and Western Europe until his final arrest took place in Kenya. Treaty of Adana was signed between Turkey and Syria, and the bilateral trade relations were soon to flourish between the two very different countries.

What is less known is that the collapse of Syrian state support to PKK eased the pressure among most Syrian Kurds, who had long suffered of a double tyranny since they were oppressed on one hand by the Arab nationalist regime of Syria and on the other hand by the PKK, whose internal organization and values were based on Soviet-style political radicalism. Within a couple of years, the PKK’s grip on Syrian Kurds and the party’s influence on their ideology fell into marginal.

At the same time the vacuum was filled by the growing importance of Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which dominated the western parts of Iraqi Kurdistan. The new role of the KDP peaked in 2003 when the party finally reached an alliance with its long-time foe, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which dominated most of the eastern parts of Iraqi Kurdistan. The truce between KDP and PUK just preceded the Iraq War, in which both the Kurdish parties became important allies for the US-led Coalition. Probably due to the influence of the KDP, the Syrian Kurdish opposition soon became the only relatively well organized secular opposition in Syria, having its strongholds mainly in the northeast and north of the country, Qamishli and a number of smaller Kurdish towns and villages stretching from Kubani to Derik.

In spring 2004 it became evident that the Kurdish scene in Syria had somehow slipped out of the iron grip of the Syrian intelligence, mukhabarat, who had their provincial headquarters in the city of Hasaka. In early spring 2004, the football stadium of Qamishli became the starting scene of riots that soon escalated into a Kurdish uprising later known as the Qamishli Spring. The uprising, although it was soon crushed by the Syrian security machinery, at once elevated the Syrian Kurds from virtual invisibility into regional politics. Qamishli has become an unofficial capital of the Syrian Kurds and it is also the place where the organization of the Syrian Kurds has developed farthest.

In spring 2004, a football game was played in the stadium of Qamishli, and the team representing the ruling Syrian Ba’ath party started performing slogans in support of Saddam Hussein and against America, in a show of organized political manifestation typical to Syria. The predominantly Kurdish local audience in the stadium reacted, however, by chanting anti-Saddam slogans and support for Iraqi Kurdistan. Kurdish flags and symbols soon materialized among the crowd, and some youth cadres of the Ba’ath party as well as plainclothes militias attacked the Kurds, provoking an uprising that soon spread out to other Kurdish areas as well as into Aleppo and Damascus.

The Ba’ath regime crushed the Qamishli Spring uprising but things were never again quite the same among the Syrian Kurds. Throughout the twentieth century, Kurdish resistance had been dominated in turns by Turkish, Iranian and Iraqi Kurds, leaving Syrian Kurds in oblivion. Now they soon established deepening contacts with Iraqi Kurds and started visiting Iraqi Kurdistan regularly.

Also the Arab opposition in Syria was slowly recovering from the crackdown on the Damascus Spring, and was gaining some new momentum. During the years 2004—2005 the Syrian opposition was gathering in all kinds of peaceful forums and created cooperation networks over ethnic and religious boundaries. The Syrian opposition was still powerless and it did not of course have any capacity for armed operations, but the Syrian regime nevertheless got deeply concerned of the development. Their anxiety was further fed by the rapid collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq as well as the colored revolutions that had suddenly transformed political landscapes in Georgia and Ukraine, causing many sleepless nights to the rulers of autocratic countries.

The Iraq War had offered Syria a chance to channel radical Islamist sentiments, both international and domestic, to target the occupation in Iraq. By fomenting jihad in Iraq, the Syrian Alawi regime bought time and political leverage, escaping the most radical forms of the anger the Sunni majority of the country felt towards the ruling Alawi minority. Syria employed some official Islamism as an undercurrent to the secular regime, using official muftis as well as radical preachers and provocateurs close to the Syrian intelligence. The case of Abu Qaaqaa in Aleppo offered some revealing evidence of this. Syria has maintained a long tradition of subversive tactics and proxy war against its neighbors and the jihad in Iraq made no exception. This way, Syria could also use radical Islamists to marginalize domestic Sunni Islamist opposition, consisting of primarily moderate Islamists linked with the Muslim Brotherhood. The leader of Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Ali Bayanuni, had for a long time been based in London.

Potentially the most powerful and populous domestic opposition to the Syrian regime seemed to be offered by moderate Islamists and Islamic conservatives, who attracted calling all over the country among Sunni Muslims, an overwhelming majority of the population, deeply dissatisfied with the regime. Moderate Islam, however, was much less likely to be politicized than radical Islam. Sufi brotherhoods, especially Naqshbandiyya, steadily increased their popularity among educated middle class, university students and especially Kurds, but the religious elements tended to avoid politics. A moderate Kurdish Sufi sheikh named Mashuq Khaznawi had become an eminent authority especially among younger Kurds by connecting moderate Islam with the democratic thinking of the Kurds and other secular opposition. In consequence, Sheikh Khaznawi was abducted and assassinated and the Kurds again were provoked into mass protests, which were, like the Qamishli Spring, soon crushed.

Then enter the Beirut Spring of 2005 and the real shock for the Syrian regime. The Lebanese popular uprising had been cooking for some time but still the peak of it after the assassination of Rafiq Hariri seemed to surprise the Syrian regime and led in March 2005 to the Cedar Revolution, also known as the Independence Uprising (Intifadat al-Istiqlal). Massive Lebanese protests and wide international pressure forced Syria to remove its military occupation from Lebanon. Many indications have later suggested that the high echelons of the Syrian regime deeply regret their speedy reaction to international pressure, and consider the removal of their troops as a historical error, for which they have ever since sought a revenge as well as gaining back their hegemony in Lebanon.

The events of Beirut and the Lebanese uprising had a wide impact on the societal atmosphere in Syria itself, too. From spring 2005 onwards, Syrian civil society and secular political opposition grew notably more active, and the general atmosphere in Syria became significantly freer. The popular feeling among students and educated classes in Syria expected a lot to change in Syria, too, as a result of the events of that spring. Even the Syrian government itself started openly discussing reforms and anticipated a gradual release of social and political life in the country. Vice Premier Abdallah Dardari, the regime’s official reformist, was given a mandate to guide Syria towards economic, administrative and political reforms. One year later, however, only economic reform lingered.

What had changed as early as by late autumn 2005 so that Syria again returned to its characteristic uncompromising political culture? Like had happened after the Damascus Spring of 2000, also after the Beirut Spring of 2005 the Syrian regime reacted with some delay but the more revengefully against those figures of civil society and intelligentsia who had dared to take liberties, advocate democratic reforms, or even worse, criticize the ruling Ba’ath party. Human rights activists and journalists were imprisoned, internet fell under heavy restrictions, and bloggers were convicted for “spreading false information” or “undermining the cause of Arabism.” This detrimental trend continued unabated through 2006—2007, steadily growing worse by the spring 2008.

Meanwhile, an internal power struggle within the regime raged throughout the latter half of 2005. Many eminent members of the Syrian elite perished, most notably those representing the Sunni majority of the population, who had had solid contacts with the Hariri family and the Gulf. Many were eliminated or simply isolated from power. Minister of interior Ghazi Kanaan was killed in what was dubiously claimed as suicide. Former vice president Abdul-Halim Khaddam fled to exile in France and became a sworn enemy of the regime he had been part of. Many influential members of the business elite were exiled or imprisoned. The reformers within the regime, who had originally been given a mandate to reform, were now pushed aside and disempowered.

By 2007 it was clear that the power struggle had ended with a victory of the hardliners and the Alawi elite had solidified their ranks, fortifying against the rest of the region with Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas as their only regional friends. Syria could now again concentrate in strengthening authoritarianism at home, and gaining from the alliance with Iran and regional extremist movements, as it had become obvious that they did not need to be afraid of an imminent military intervention by the United States or even Israel, and that there would also not be a formidable domestic “color revolution.”

After the Israeli-Lebanese war of summer 2006, Hizbullah presented it as a propaganda victory, which came for the Syrian regime as a long-needed confidence booster. They indeed took all the joy out of it. The Ba’ath party decorated official buildings in Syria with Hasan Nasrallah’s pictures and Hizbullah flags, and declared Hizbullah’s victory over Israel to have been also a Syrian victory over the United States and over the March 14 movement of Lebanon, whom Syria had consistently branded as Western-backed. Ever since a truce came into power, Syria continued steady flow of armed, political, intelligence and training support to Hizbullah, as well as channeling Iranian support to Hizbullah and other militias operating in Lebanon. While Americans and Israelis have blamed them for support of terrorism, Syria has maintained that it only supports what it considers legitimate resistance - and does not make a secret of it.

In the next year 2007 fighting between opposite Palestinian groups intensified in Palestine, the Syrian-backed Hamas operating constantly against the more moderate Fatah, which continued to be supported by Western powers. Palestinian infighting peaked at Hamas taking over the Gaza Strip in a coup d’état which further empowered the Iranian-Syrian alliance that had provided Hamas with the necessary support. In Gaza, Hamas used similar tactics and similar rule to those of Syria and Hizbullah in the areas under their control.

At the later phase of the Israeli war on Lebanon in summer 2006, small numbers of Sunni militants crossed into the Palestinian camps of Lebanon - a move that probably demanded coordination and assistance from Syrian military and Hizbullah. The origin of this new group, Fatah al-Islam, was in the pro-Syrian militia Fatah al-Intifada, which used to be closely connected with the Syrian intelligence. Fatah al-Islam split from its mother organization over night to form a radical Islamist offshoot. When the Lebanese army and Palestinians loyal to Fatah expelled them from Ain al-Hilwa and the Beirut camps, Fatah al-Islam got foothold in the northern camp of Nahr al-Barid, which used to be firmly controlled by Syrian intelligence and where the pro-Syrian Palestinian militias, mainly Fatah al-Intifada and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), were strong. Fatah al-Islam was empowered by robust weaponry and infrastructure offered by Fatah al-Intifada and PFLP-GC, but the group also launched active recruitment of volunteers jihadists from all over the Arab world. Although the key commanders, including the leader Shakir al-Absi, had close connection with the Syrian intelligence, many of the foot soldiers were jihadists who had thought they would travel from Syria to the jihad in Iraq, but found themselves instead sent out to Lebanon.

In 2007, Fatah al-Islam set up for a bloody and months long armed rebellion against the Lebanese army. One of the objectives of the provocation was probably to split up the ranks of Lebanese Sunnis, mainly to the detriment of the ruling Mustaqbal party of the March 14 alliance, although this did not quite work the way some people hoped, since the Sunni reaction was in general that of firm support to the Lebanese army. Hizbullah and other Syria’s allies in Lebanon, on the other hand, were from the beginning opposed to the army entering Nahr al-Barid, but the army entered the camp nevertheless, and suffering heavy losses, it crushed the rebellion, shelling the camp into rubble. Most of the jihadi foot soldiers of Fatah al-Islam perished, while Shakir al-Absi mysteriously disappeared, perhaps returning to Syria.

At the end of 2007, the pro-Syrian president of Lebanon, Emile Lahoud, finally resigned as his term extension ended, and the pro-Syrian political groups, headed by the parliament speaker Nabih Berri, prevented election of a new president for over half a year. By its political boycott and backed by Hizbullah’s weapons, March 8 started gaining a dictating position to Lebanese politics by sidelining completely the democratically elected state institutions where March 14 possessed majority. Berri prevented the Lebanese Parliament from functioning. Political stalemate continued. Each time when the March 14 alliance came offering concessions to reach a compromise, March 8 introduced new demands and reacted by hardening their line.

With its consistently negative role in the Lebanese situation, Syria still gained increasing concessions from the international community, especially from the large member states of the European Union, who seemed to be eager to provide Syria with more political and economic support, believing that engaging Syria would change Syrian policies. France and Britain did pressure Syria for Syria’s destructive role in Lebanon, but Germany, Spain and Italy seemed never prepared to participate in the alleged isolation of Syria. Quite the contrary, they seemed to continue their passive support to the Syrian regime in spite of the latter’s many destabilizing policies in the region. It seemed also that the European Union was very eager to reach an association agreement with Syria in the EU neighborhood policy program.

Syria congratulated itself for significant regional gains due to Hizbullah’s success in the aftermath of the summer 2006 war, and due to the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007. Syria considered these victories to have followed from its consistent policy of supporting armed resistance and refusing from any Western demands. Many successful assassinations of the critics of Syria in Lebanon, and successful violent provocations in Lebanon had served the regional interests of Syria’s regime. In addition, the Syrian regime had completed its power struggle within the elite, and cracked down on local dissidents and opposition.

Syria’s alliance with Iran was by spring 2008 going stronger than ever. Both Tehran and Damascus were emboldened and confident in the power of their alliance. They believed they had driven the United States and Israel in a corner, and that regional victory was almost imminent. Through the use of their proxies, they had managed to halt democratic development in Lebanon, and paralyzed the March 14 alliance. They had significantly increased their influence in Palestine through Hamas and undermined Fatah both in Palestine and in the Palestinian camps of Lebanon.

All these successes were highlighted by praise that Syria received especially from Europe. This signaled to some, at least, that Syria would no longer need to fear too much that the Lebanese murder investigations or the Special Tribunal in The Hague would reach dangerous levels. Even less Syria now needed to fear a military intervention or a “subversive machination” such as a colored revolution taking place in Damascus.

Geagea and all those of his supporters who were of any significance were thrown into prisons for the time the Syrian occupation lasted, whereas Aoun had escaped and fled to exile in France, leaving his supporters in the hands of Syria. During the Syrian occupation, thousands of Lebanese disappeared and political assassinations kept the country on its tows throughout the occupation. Political nominations and government decisions were subject to Syrian approval. The higher officers of Lebanese army and intelligence were handpicked by Syria and by time the high officers all consisted of elements loyal to Syria.

In spite of all this, Lebanon managed to preserve its unique character, its own version of democratic system based on the Ottoman model of autonomy of each confessional community, its capitalist economy with flourishing bank sector, and its freedom of expression, which was exceptionally liberal compared with most of the Arab world, even during the Syrian occupation. The Lebanese freedom of speech maintained lively political and social atmosphere.

Many in Lebanon have indeed compared the Lebanese situation in 1990—2005 to the Finnish situation during the Cold War, known as “Finlandization.” There were however significant differences: Finland as a whole was never occupied by Soviet troops, although it lost the eastern territories of Karelia, and the KGB resident in Helsinki did not directly decide on Finnish nominations like did the resident of the Syrian military intelligence based in the small town of Anjar close to the border. For the higher Syrian military and intelligence elite, Lebanon was not only a window to the western world and western entertainment, but also a lucrative source of income. The massive corruption flow tapped by Syrian security elites from Lebanon was among the most important sources of income for the ruling Alawi elite of Syria.

Another result of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon was the gradual strengthening of various extremist groups operating against Israel and the West. Syria’s ally Iran had built in Lebanon its own powerful proxy, Hizbullah, originally as a revolutionary Shi’a movement, and Hizbullah had strengthened significantly on the expense of the traditional pro-Syrian Shi’a party, Amal. The Amal militia had suffered a devastating military defeat to Hizbullah, after which Amal’s original leader Musa Sadr disappeared on his trip to Libya, assumedly abducted and murdered. He was replaced by Nabih Berri, who was very close to Syrian and Soviet intelligence agencies and accepted his role to be in the shadow of Hizbullah. Thus Hizbullah had taken over from Amal the position of the dominant Shi’a militia, and Syria became committed to strengthening Hizbullah.

In a couple of decades Hizbullah became the most efficient, best organized and best armed non-state actor on the field of armed factions in the world. Among all the guerrilla organizations of the world, only perhaps the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) of Sri Lanka might reach the same category of a state within the state. In addition to Hizbullah, Syria also continued its political and armed support of several Palestinian factions operating from Lebanon, most importantly of the PFLP-GC, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, led by Ahmad Jibril.

Throughout the occupation, however, a deep dissatisfaction at the Syrian dominance smoldered among the Lebanese. A watershed was reached when the Syrian leadership forced, against the Lebanese constitution, an extension in power for their puppet president Emile Lahoud. The highly criticized moved led to the resignation of Lebanon’s millionaire prime minister, Rafiq al-Hariri, who consequently became a powerful figurehead for the opposition. With Hariri, the emerging popular uprising had gained political weight and financial resources. Hariri had channeled a lot of Saudi investment and aid to rebuild Beirut’s beautiful Solidère, or Downtown, and he had managed to lift the Lebanese Sunnis into eminence, making them a balancing force between Christians and Shi’as. The Sunni middle class had also grown increasingly wealthy during Hariri’s period, especially in Beirut and in Hariri’s home city Sidon. During the occupation Hariri also possessed strong ties with Syria, especially with the Sunni business elite who had become more powerful in Damascus during the years 2000—2005.

Rafiq Hariri was assassinated on 14 February 2005 with a massive car bomb blast in the center of Beirut. In addition to Hariri, the bomb killed also the trade minister Basil Fuleihan and more than twenty other people, including their bodyguards, assistants and passers-by. The outrageous assassination immediately turned public opinion in Lebanon, elsewhere in the Arab world and in the West into an outrage against Syria, which was and still is for obvious and valid reasons the prime suspect of organizing Hariri’s murder. Nothing since 2005 indicates that anyone else than Syria and its Lebanese allies should be seriously suspected of the assassinations that targeted Hariri and many other anti-Syrian figures in the following years.

The Hariri assassination acted as the last push for a popular uprising that had gained momentum for years in Lebanon. Many influential figures especially of the younger intelligentsia had been warming it up and carefully organizing it in the media and in the universities. Among the most important of these figures were Samir Qasir, a journalist, historian and university lecturer, and Gibran Tueni, a publisher and editor-in-chief of the leading newspaper an-Nahar. Qasir had founded a new party, Democratic Left (Yasar ad-Dimuqrati) based on his liberal democratic version of leftist thought, which united liberal and secular educated people across confessional lines, but also represented a new leftist divorce from the Arab socialist and communist traditions of Arab left. Although Hariri had in his last year become an important figurehead for the popular anti-Syrian sentiments, the main ideologues of the following democratic revolution were Qasir and Tueni.

The peak of the uprising was achieved one month after the assassination, on 14 March 2005, when crowds of over a million people occupied Beirut’s center and continued protests for days and nights. The date of the protest gave its name to a new political front that shook the foundations of Lebanese political traditions. The March 14 front gathered together clear majorities of Lebanese Sunni Muslims, Christians and Druze, who all swore to unity over confessional boundaries in the mass demonstrations of March 2005. They compared their uprising with the democratic revolutions that had taken place in Georgia and Ukraine in the previous two years.

The opposite front got its name from a Hizbullah demonstration supporting Syria that was held on 8 March 2005. An overwhelming majority of the March 8 demonstrators were Shi’a Muslims, although they were also supporters of the small pro-Syrian parties – such as SSNP, Marada and Ba’ath – representing other religious communities. From the events of March 2005 onwards, the March 8 front has been perceived as a pro-Syrian and the March 14 as a pro-Western camp, and to a large extent these characterizations are true, although the great heterogeneity of both camps makes the issue a bit more complicated.

The March 14 victory shook and touched the world. Most of those who demonstrated in Beirut in that spring were under the twenty-one year age limit for voting in the election. The young supporters of the democratic revolution could get almost drunk of the fact that their non-violent Cedar Revolution, with the backing of the Western countries and the UN Security Council, had forced Syria to remove their military might from Lebanon after twenty years of occupation, and the pro-Syrian government of Omar Karami to resign. What had happened in the colored revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine in the previous years had now for the first time succeeded in an Arab country. The events in Lebanon raised hopes for democracy and reforms in the Arab world, which had suffered due to the Iraq war and the general condemnation it provoked.

The Karami government was replaced by an interim government headed by a moderate pro-Syrian, and another Tripolitan Sunni, Najib Miqati. The parliamentary election of the same year was the most free and honest in the history of Lebanon so far, and in it, March 14 triumphed, capturing the majority of the seats in the parliament. Fuad Siniora, former close aid to Rafiq Hariri and representative of Hariri’s Future Movement (Tayyar al-Mustaqbal), became new prime minister. Siniora had a reputation of a skilful technocrat from his former posting as minister of finance. The slain former prime minister’s son Saad Hariri became the head of the Mustaqbal party and the heir of the family’s business empire.

If Lebanon was a Western democracy, March 14 could have formed the government alone and rule Lebanon for the next electoral period, while March 8 would have constituted the opposition to monitor and criticize the government. However, vague traditions of Lebanese democracy insisted on a so-called consensual rule, which meant that the opposition should be represented in the government. During the Syrian occupation of course only pro-Syrian politicians could have real power. Political differences were blurred by references to the interests of sects. After the March 14 electoral victory and removal of Syrian troops, a solution in accordance to the Lebanese tradition would have been to accept powerless March 8 Shi’a ministers to share government responsibility but to keep all strings in the hands of the March 14, in order to rear the country to a course towards Western democracy for a sufficiently long period, so that a state of normalcy would have been achieved after the long occupation.

However, still in 2005 the capacities of March 14 were not enough to reach such a solution and predominance, since even after the removal of Syrian troops large parts of the country were under the control of another armed force that operated completely outside of the government’s control: Hizbullah. Hizbullah could any time blackmail and coerce the rest of Lebanon with its weapons, intelligence and intimidation capacities. Although Amal still probably had more direct supporters among the Lebanese Shi’a than Hizbullah, the latter overwhelmingly dominated, both with its weapons and with its propaganda. At least as long as Iran and Syria are political allies, also Hizbullah and Amal are. Those groups in Lebanon that are directly controlled by Syria are much smaller, but nevertheless, even they – including SSNP, Ba’ath and pro-Syrian Palestinian radical groups – are armed to teeth, and Hizbullah has managed to integrate them into its military and intelligence structures.

The other side, March 14, lacked in spring 2005 any militia, and only two out of the groups that constituted March 14 had some combat potential. These were the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) of the Druze led by Walid Jumblatt, and the Christian Lebanese Forces (LF, Kuwat al-Lubnaniyya) led by Samir Geagea. These mountainous groups had highly motivated supporters in possession of relatively large quantities of small arms. They controlled easily defendable geographic areas with strong local cohesion. Meanwhile, especially the secular Sunni party Mustaqbal, who led the government, was virtually unarmed and urban, and from the beginning militarily in the mercy of Hizbullah. It was therefore in the interests of Mustaqbal and some of the Christian March 14 allies – most notably Amin Gemayel’s Phalanx Party (Kata’ib) – to ensure that Jumblatt and Geagea would stay committed to the March 14 alliance.

In addition and due to the same imbalance in arms, Mustaqbal and some of the other March 14 parties favored the formation of a coalition government with Hizbullah and Amal, to include the Shi’as and to bind these two parties in responsible politics. The solution, however, sidelined what was at the time the largest Christian party, Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement (Tayyar al-Watani al-Hurri), which ended up in opposition. Behind Aoun’s split were his personally strained relations with most of the March 14 leaders. Aoun had sought to be recognized as the sole leader of the entire Christian community, and therefore ensure the election of nobody else but Aoun himself as the next president, when the pro-Syrian Lahoud was to leave. The most eminent Christian leaders of the March 14, Geagea and Gemayel, could not tolerate Aoun’s monopolistic ambitions for the Christian throne.

In the election of 2005 Aoun had got majority of the Christian parliament seats, but it should be remembered that at the time his campaign had been based on March 14 values and antagonism against the Syrian occupation. After his break-up with the March 14 leaders Aoun, however, turned his coat entirely and allied himself instead with Hizbullah, which changed the whole balance of the Lebanese political field. While on 8 March 2005 the pro-Syrian demonstrations had been almost exclusively Shi’a activity, Aoun’s alliance with Hizbullah suddenly split the Lebanese Christians bitterly in two, revived the civil war grudges between rival Christian groups, and infected political life in the country.

Because of the special features of the Lebanese political system, political power struggle is largely contained within each confessional community, while strategic alliances are created across the religious lines. For an outsider, Lebanon might look like a clash of religions, but this picture is illusory. The grand ideological divide in Lebanon lies primarily in foreign policy. Hizbullah insists on turning the country into a “resistance state”, a political and armed front against Israel and the United States, and this corresponds fully to the interests of Iran and Syria. The March 14 alliance, on the other hand, seeks to free Lebanon from the Syrian and Iranian grip, and guide it towards Western-modeled democracy.

Foreign political orientation divides Lebanon in two camps, probably roughly equal in numbers. However, for many individual parties the choice has been more based on local politics and opportunism. This is the case first and foremost with Aoun, whose support base consists mostly of the same kind of Christian middle class that also forms the support bases of Geagea and Gemayel. Most of Aoun’s foot soldiers do not share the foreign political thinking of Hizbullah and the Syrian regime, and they do not want to see themselves as lackeys of Syria let alone Iran. They do not even consider the anti-Israeli struggle as the first priority of their political life. In the case of Aoun’s supporters, their allegiance has been based on blind following of their leader as well as their deep antipathy towards Sunni Muslims. In some areas the choice has resulted from intra-Christian antagonisms and in other areas from hatred against Druze neighbors, all these derived from civil war traumas. Most of the Aounists do not live in direct contact with the supporters of Hizbullah and Amal. It can be said that the political views of the March 8 Christians – Aounists, Marada and SSNP – are more characteristically sectarian and somewhat far right than those of the March 14 Christian parties, regardless of the fact that the backgrounds of Geagea and Gemayel, too, are in the far right Phalanx movement. For many Western leftist journalists remembering the civil war events understanding this new situation within the Lebanese Christian scene has appeared difficult, which to some extent distorts their current analyses.

Whereas the supporters of Geagea and Gemayel perceive the biggest threat to Lebanese Christians to be posed by Hizbullah’s political radicalism and the lack of state control on their armed force, the Aounists typically perceive the increasing demographic and economic power of the Sunnis as a bigger threat. Regarding Aoun himself, probably the main reasons for his turn was his ambition for supremacy within the Christian community, in which Hizbullah and Syria came to his aid. Aoun’s supporters were disappointed in the outcome of the government formation and considered the March 14 to have betrayed their leader in favor of Geagea and Gemayel.

Anyway, Aoun’s defection and the consequent split-up of the Christians into two opposite camps, seemingly equal in numbers and influence, stripped the Christians off their traditional balancing role between Sunnis and Shi’as. The split has also bitterly divided many Christian regions and produced tension within Christian areas as especially supporters of Aoun and Gemayel live mixed up in many parts of East Beirut, Metn and Mount Lebanon. In North Lebanon the division is clearer as Geagea controls Bsharré and his rival Suleiman Franjiyya (Marada) dominates in Zgharta.

All this being the case, the first Siniora government was from the beginning totally disunited and quite paralyzed. Hizbullah and Amal, which were part of the government coalition, were making opposition politics from within the government. At the same time Aoun was waging a bitter campaign against the March 14 from opposition. The Siniora government could in fact achieve much more than is generally thought in every field that was not too paralyzed by the political divide – for example in improving the state economy and managing reconstruction. Nevertheless, the implementation capacity of the government was extremely limited and subject to downright sabotage by the disloyal coalition partners. Hizbullah drove the national dialogue process and the electoral reform into dead alleys. Meanwhile, Hizbullah developed and strengthened its “state within the state”, acting completely outside of any government control and massively arming itself and its allies.

The situation further deteriorated due to the continuous new assassinations that targeted only one side: March 14 opinion leaders and parliamentarians, and especially the persons who had had an important role in the opposition to Syrian occupation, and in the organization of the Cedar Revolution. Most of the assassinations were carried out by using car bombs, with the exception of the assassination of Gemayel’s son and minister of industry Pierre Gemayel. The murder series indeed seems to meet the criteria for terrorism both tactically and because its obvious goal has been to terrorize and coerce March 14 to give in to the political will of Syria and Hizbullah.

• October 1, 2004: assassination attempt against the Druze MP Marwan Hamadi (PSP).
• February 14, 2005: assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri (Mustaqbal), minister Basil Suleiman and more than twenty others.
• March 19, 2005: a bomb explosion in New Jdeidé, North Beirut.
• March 23, 2005: a bomb explosion in Kaslik, north of Beirut.
• End of March 2005: a bomb explosion in Sed al-Bouchrié, North Beirut.
• April 1, 2005: a bomb explosion in Brummana, north-east of Beirut.
• May 7, 2005: car bomb in Jounié, north of Beirut.
• June 2, 2005: assassination of Samir Qasir, journalist of an-Nahar, university professor and founding member of the Democratic Left, March 14.
• June 21, 2005: assassination of George Hawi, former secretary-general of the Lebanese Communist Party, who had turned to the March 14 camp.
• July 12, 2005: assassination attempt against minister of defense Elias al-Murr.
• July 22, 2005: a bomb explosion in Monot Street, Ashrafiyé, East Beirut.
• August 22, 2005: a bomb explosion in Zalka, North Beirut.
• September 15, 2005: assassination attempt against journalist Ali Ramiz Tohmé.
• September 17, 2005: a bomb blast in Jeitawi, Ashrafiyé, East Beirut.
• September 25, 2005: assassination attempt against journalist May Chidiac, LBC star anchor, March 14.
• December 12, 2005: assassination of MP Gibran Tueni, journalist, publisher and editor-in-chief of an-Nahar, March 14.
• May 2006: assassination of Mahmud Majzub, head of the Islamic Jihad in Lebanon, and his brother Nidal Majzub.
• November 21, 2006: assassination of the minister of industry and MP Pierre Gemayel (Kata’ib), Amin Gemayel’s son, March 14.
• February 13, 2007: terrorist bombing of two civilian buses in Ain Alaq, north of Beirut, a day before March 14 commemoration of Hariri’s assassination.
• June 2007: assassination of MP Walid Eido (Mustaqbal), March 14.
• September 17, 2007: assassination of MP Antoine Ghanem (Kata’ib), March 14.
• December 12, 2007: assassination of Brigadier-General François al-Hajj, who was expected to be General Michel Suleiman’s successor as the commander of army, and was very close to Suleiman.
• January 25, 2008: assassination of the police (ISF) intelligence officer and telecom expert Wissam Eid. Eid had been working on collecting information of the previous murders and cooperated with the IIIC. He was also pushing for important reforms in the Lebanese police’s criminal investigation techniques along Western standards.
• June 2, 2008: a bomb explosion at military intelligence base in Abda, North Lebanon, killed one Lebanese soldier.
• August 13, 2008: terrorist bombing against a bus killed nine soldiers and nine civilians in Tripoli.

The continuing series of assassinations that seemed to target exclusively the critiques of Syria and Hizbullah – with the exception of the blast that killed the Jihad brothers, suspected on Israeli intelligence – strained the relations between Lebanon and Syria into a virtual war, yet without conventional battles. Syria and its allies targeted March 14 with a massive propaganda war, trying to isolate the Lebanese government. Assassinations and smaller bomb blasts only strengthened the effect.

March 14’s means to oppose Syria, on the other hand, were limited to seeking international help and trying to push forward the murder investigations as well as an international tribunal to judge them. In these efforts March 14 was backed especially by France, the United States and several Arab countries, most notably Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. The simultaneous Iranian and Syrian support to March 8 was, however, massively bigger and concentrated in strengthening the armed capacities of Hizbullah and its junior partners. Western powers did not in fact direct their support partially to March 14, but backed the official institutions of Lebanon, trying to strengthen the capacities of the Lebanese judiciary, police, and army.

Hizbullah also continued its reckless military actions against Israel from South Lebanon. After several smaller incidents had only led to limited Israeli retaliation, finally in July 2006, a Hizbullah strike into Israel, rain of Hizbullah rockets into Israeli settlements and kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers provoked Israel into a war against Lebanon. The war took 33 days. When it ended with a truce, South Lebanon and the Hizbullah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut were in ruins and Hizbullah had lost a large amount of its weaponry and infrastructure, but Israel was not able to effectively wipe out Hizbullah from anywhere and it could not halt the continuous Iranian and Syrian weapons supplies to Hizbullah. Therefore, after Israel removed, Hizbullah with its allies turned the war into a great propaganda victory and used it for a political assault against the Lebanese government.

Hizbullah argued that as it had “won” the war against Israel, it should also gain political victory over March 14. According to Hizbullah the government had done nothing to defend against Israeli aggression while it was Hizbullah, whose overwhelming resistance had forced Israel to back off. Hizbullah demanded virtual control of foreign and security policies of the state as well as a veto rights to all government decisions in order to ensure the government could not proceed with a pro-Western political program. Hizbullah and its supporters Syria and Iran wanted also to make sure that the UN resolutions calling for the disarmament of all militias would not be implemented, and that the political assassinations in Lebanon would not be properly investigated.

The aftermath of the war led Lebanon into a political crisis between March 14 and March 8, and this has been the situation in the country ever since, occasionally drifting alarmingly close to a full-scale civil war. When March 14 refused to yield to Hizbullah’s will, the March 8 ministers resigned from the government, and as this meant the government lost all its Shi’a members, the pro-Syrians, backed by Syria and Iran, declared the Siniora government illegal. New ministers could not be nominated to replace the resigned ones since presidency was controlled by the pro-Syrian Lahoud, who refused from any cooperation. The speaker of parliament Nabih Berri, representing Amal, stopped all parliamentary activities and Lahoud paralyzed all government and public administration nominations.

In December 2006, Hizbullah and its allies erected a tent camp in Beirut Downtown and launched a tiring campaign against the government with occasional March 8 provoked violent clashes. It lasted until May 2008, when Hizbullah’s full-scale military actions finally pushed the country into a small civil war and forced the tormented March 14 government to give up. Meanwhile, ever since the Syrian troops were pulled off Lebanon, Syria had adopted extreme hostility against the Siniora government and against the entire March 14 movement, and Syria openly supported March 8 subversive actions to overthrow March 14 government and parliament. New assassinations of March 14 influential figures and violent provocations in various parts of Lebanon speeded up the project.

In addition to the ambitions of the United States and Soviet Union, two regional great powers had a strong and radicalizing effect in Middle Eastern politics: Israel and Iran. None of them was an Arab country, but both of the regimes were built on religious exclusivity. One of the explaining factors of the Middle East’s instability since the beginning of the Cold War is certainly the fact that among the states in the region only the conservative Arab countries have sought to maintain a stability of the status quo while practically all other major players in the region have sought to radically change the regional situation. The foreign politics of the latter group has therefore been radical.

It is important to notice that since the Cold War, two potentially very influential regional powerhouses have remained significantly passive in the Middle East. A first such passive giant was Europe, whose integration process since the Cold War proved an unforeseen success story. By the twenty-first century this process succeeded in the integration of almost twenty new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe into the previously exclusively Western European Union. The emancipation of the formerly Soviet-occupied new democracies was a direct result of the West’s victory in the Cold War. The second passive giant was Turkey, a country that for centuries had been the imperial ruler and towards the end of the empire a colonial power dominating the Arab countries of the Middle East. Turkish rule was succeeded by British and French colonial mandates over the Middle East, at the end of which era the independence of the currently known states became true. The policies of the European Union and Turkey in the Middle East even after the end of the Cold War remained significantly state-centered and sought to promote “stability” by supporting prevailing governments mainly diplomatically and financially.

Conflicts of the Levant are not at all as deep and age-old as the superficial media image lets us understand. During the Ottoman Empire and the Pax Turcica maintained by the empire, the region was relatively calm compared with many other regions, and this was true if compared with Europe till the end of the Second World War. The roots of the currently witnessed conflicts can be traced back to three historical upheavals, which are all modern, and which are all linked up with European conflicts:

1) The destruction and disintegration of the Ottoman Empire by the imperial great powers of Europe, especially Russia, Britain and France, which split up the former Turkish dominions to form spheres of interests and mandates among their own dominion.

2) The creation of the state of Israel abetted by the same great powers, and the settlement of Jews expelled or emigrated from Europe into Palestine, resulting in mass expulsion of local Arab population to surrounding countries.

3) The spread of European ideological antagonisms into the Middle Eastern countries, first fascist-inspired ideologies and after the Second World War especially Soviet-agitated socialist and anti-Western ideologies, which in the Arab countries incarnated in the emergence of politically radical military dictatorships.

In view of the latest period, a fourth background factor can be added to these roots. In current fashion it is easily overemphasized, but it should be set in its right proportions in any analysis of the conflicts of the Levant:

4) The emergence of modern radical Islamism as a third radicalism after radical nationalism and radical socialism, starting at the late nineteenth century but rising into bigger force in world politics only since 1980s.

As the Cold War had ended in a Soviet defeat, Russia was bound to the internal matters of the remaining Russian empire and conflicts directly surrounding it, and this emphasis on “near abroad” dominated Russia’s offensive agenda until the end of the 1990s. Therefore a slow but significant process of change started in the Arab countries, influencing both the conservative monarchies and the former allies of the Soviet Union. The unification of Yemen wiped out from the map the communist South Yemen. Shift of generation in the royal houses of Morocco and Jordan brought into power young kings and reformist elites, which have ever since guided these countries towards genuine democracy, although this has not quite been achieved yet. In the small monarchies of the Gulf, the Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, economic freedom supported also significant liberation of the society, although this did not extend much into political democratization.

In Saudi Arabia and Egypt authoritarian centralism has sat tight, but even in these countries some slow and at times contradictory progress has taken place. Also Algeria and Tunisia have remained quite authoritarian but their foreign policies have not been offensive and radical for a long time, with the possible exception of Algeria’s conflict with Morocco over the separatist Western Sahara. This left, by the beginning of the twenty-first century, only Iraq, Syria and Libya, which remained stuck in radical anti-Western foreign policy and desperate arms race, while maintaining some of the world’s most illiberal dictatorships.

Libya managed to reach a deal with the Western powers, abandoning its long-range missile program and receiving in return an enthusiastic Western engagement. By the end of the anti-Libyan sanctions, Western countries could enter Libyan oil market, but Libya was not required to democratize at all, or to abandon Muammar al-Qaddafi’s authoritarian dictatorship.

In Syria, Hafez al-Assad’s death and the subsequent rise into power of his son Bashar al-Assad in 2000 raised a lot of wishful thinking and expectations of a major change in Syrian policy, especially as the new president’s initial steps seemed promising, and as a political movement known as the Damascus Spring emerged in Syria to demand reforms and gradual democratization. However, the Damascus Spring was mercilessly crushed within the very same year and its activists were thrown into prisons. Even though economic and social conditions in Syria continued to improve slowly even after this setback, and Syria never fully returned to the totalitarianism of Hafez’s times, Syria still remained an anti-Western dictatorship and remained among the ten least free countries of the world.

What happened, however, as a result of the risen hopes towards Libya and Syria in the beginning of the new millennium, was that the Western powers and especially United States focused their attention on the cruel dictatorship of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. As the only Arab country, Iraq seemed to show no intention of changing direction. At the same time, Iraq was seen as a potentially strong Arab country, which would have good prospects, due to its vast oil riches, to build a strong democratic state. Such a state could contain the threat posed by Iran. The failure of the Iranian student uprisings and President Mohammad Khatami’s reform policies increased general frustration on Iran’s situation even before the radical Islamist Mahmud Ahmadinejad came in power. A democratic Iraq could also function as a motor for Arab reforms, contain radical Islamism, and set a warning example for other dictators by showing how easily Saddam would fall, and how hated he would turn out to be in his home country.

Something along these lines was probably the calculations among the so-called neoconservative circles in Washington during the early years of the twenty-first century, as the lobby in favor of a new war against Iraq grew. In one decade earlier, the United States had finally decided to leave Saddam Hussein’s regime in power in Baghdad, thereby bitterly betraying its Iraqi allies who had paid for their allegiance with their lives under Saddam’s ruthless revenge. This grave mistake of the George Bush I administration should be corrected by the administration of George Bush II. Consequently, the war on terrorism and the threat of weapons of mass destruction were made casus belli for launching a new war against Saddam. When the war broke out in 2003, the military calculations of the Americans proved mostly right, as Saddam’s regime collapsed in a moment and with few American or civilian casualties. Saddam’s regime also turned out to be exactly as hated in its home country as the Americans had assessed. Still five years later, as the world watches continued instability in Iraq, it is mainly only outside Iraq that people long for Saddam.

The problems started with the aftermath of the war, and with the planned construction of a strong democratic Iraq. The Americans had obviously miscalculated how decisively destabilizing and frustrating effect could be inflicted on them and on the entire world by asymmetric resistance of small extremist movements, almost entirely based on terrorist tactics, supported by Iraq’s neighbors Iran and Syria with their coordinated offensive policies through Iraqi and non-Iraqi proxies. Iran and Syria had taken the role that the Soviet Union had had in the asymmetric conflicts of the Cold War era. They backed the intelligence officers and networks of Saddam’s regime who had taken refuge in Syria, and Iraq-based radical Islamist groups on both Sunni and Shi’a side.

Since the end of the Cold War, it has become a fashion in the West to see the conflicts in the Islamic world as religious ones, although this assumption is deeply illusory and misleading. It has nevertheless led to a lack of vision for observing that the conflicts continue to be primarily political, just like in the Cold War. Iran has a Shi’a majority and Islamist regime, and Syria has a Sunni-majority population but a secular regime virtually monopolized by a small Alawi sect. Yet they have had no problem maintaining a strong alliance and coordinating their subversive policies by jihadi groups operating in Iraq.

In addition, it seems that still after the events of early twenty-first century, Western strategists had not fully understood what revolutionary effect mass media and especially television had on modern conflicts. In the logic of traditional warfare – or even guerrilla warfare – it would have been an absurd idea to fight the United States by continuously and indiscriminately killing Iraqi civilians. In the era of television, however, this worked very effectively undermining the global position and credibility of the United States, fomenting anti-Americanism into an unforeseen level, and making the Iraq War and practically the entire American struggle against terrorism seem failed. The American strategy started seeming a defeat regardless of the fact that since the launch of the war on terror in autumn 2001, not a single major terrorist operation had succeeded on United States territory or against United States civilian population. It is needless to remark that this is certainly not resulted by lack of will of the terrorists to strike against the United States.

The invasion of Iraq sought to overthrow the most ruthless tyrant of the Arab world, and to establish a brand new democratic Middle East, but instead, the Iraq conflict became literally a war on terror. Situation in Iraq soon resembled a civil war between Iraqi groupings using terrorist tactics against each other’s civilian population, and the Americans were mired in this by force since a quick removal of Coalition forces could only disastrously damage Western interests in the entire Islamic world by empowering the most harmful ideological elements. The Coalition was faced with no army, not even a guerrilla force, but faceless extremist movements using terrorist tactics and roadside bombs. The trapping of American military force in Afghanistan and Iraq has simultaneously meant that Iran and Syria could be relatively sure that no American force would threaten them, and therefore change any policy of reforms into a final restoration of dictatorial regimes with offensive foreign politics, aiming at subversion in pro-Western Arab countries.

For many years now Tehran and Damascus have not been seriously afraid of any American military intervention, which left possible limited Israeli aerial strikes as the only significant external security threat to these regimes. Both regimes continued to build their parity to Israel by supporting and constructing ever strengthening non-state militia forces, among which the most eminent ones were Hizbullah and Hamas. While al-Qa’ida would keep Western powers busy and pro-Western Muslim governments weak, Hizbullah and Hamas would take care of the Levant. It is important to remember against this background that al-Qa’ida has left the Levant almost completely in peace (except in their rhetoric) and respected the monopoly of Syrian and Iranian supported groups over the operations in Palestine and Lebanon. Many analysts consider this strategy as a coordinated choice.

There was however one new thing that shook the settings in the early twenty-first century once more in favor of the West and democracy, causing sleepless nights among the ruling regimes of Tehran, Damascus and Moscow. This factor was manifested by the so-called colored revolutions, which through bloodless popular uprisings in 2003—2005 increased the number of pro-Western democracies with a couple of more countries. First the Rose Revolution of Georgia in 2003, then the Orange Revolution of Ukraine in 2004, and finally the Cedar Revolution of Lebanon in 2005 changed radically the threat analyses of authoritarian regimes. Moscow, Tehran and Damascus saw the colored revolution as subversive operations machinated by the West and especially by the United States, although in the reality all the cases concerned genuine popular uprisings which just finally enjoyed a credible Western moral backing.

Governmental think tanks in Moscow and Tehran immediately set up for planning countermeasures and remedies to these “Western-machinated geopolitical operations”, and as the foreign political tradition of Moscow and Tehran has strongly relied on subversive operations and conspiracies, it did not take long when the series of color revolutions was cruelly ended in the last attempts of uprising in Uzbekistan and Iran, which were crushed with bloodshed. A Tulip Revolution succeeded in Kyrgyzstan, but a Russian-machinated counterrevolution soon overthrew the pro-Western government and replaced it with a pro-Russian one. Yet in spite of this also in Kyrgyzstan a change brought about by the Tulip Revolution lingered in the political atmosphere of the country, and Western influence can still be sensed much better in Bishkek than in other Central Asian capitals.

The Research Group for Conflicts and Terrorism has been in existence in one form or another since 2003 when first established by its founding members at the University of Turku, Finland. It was formalized in 2004 and from that year on, it has regularly produced an open source intelligence (OSINT) based report on conflicts and terrorism, in Finnish language. The report has been distributed confidentially due to the fact that many of the members of the Research Group have been employed by national and international agencies and therefore prefer some level of anonymity in their academic research work.

The idea of the Research Group has been from the beginning to bridge the gap between “purely” academic studies and the application of the information and analysis in policy, intelligence, development programs and journalistic work. The Research Group has provided a network of young researchers and experts and promising students to combine and compare knowledge and analysis. Many of our members have spent long periods in the field, working in several unstable and conflict areas, learning to know the languages and cultures of these regions and developing an insight into the situations there. The Group has provided their expertise and experience to various official, journalistic and academic partners in Finland.

The purpose of this blog is to open a window for the Group’s activities in English language. Members of the Group can publish here instant information and comments on the events and developments in the field. We hope that this will be useful for our many international contacts as well as for people generally seeking sharp analysis on ongoing developments.

Hizbullah’s leader Hasan Nasrallah made a casus belli out of the government’s decisions to fire the security chief of Beirut airport, Brigadier General Wafiq Shuqair (as excessively pro-Hizbullah), to order removal of Hizbullah’s surveillance cameras from the airport, and to consider as illegal Hizbullah’s telecommunications network that the organization uses for intelligence purposes. Considering that the government was expecting violent riots by the Hizbullah-dominated March 8 opposition anyway, it was a bit strange timing for suddenly appearing tough on Hizbullah, after years of compromise and without apparent chance to implement the decisions on the ground. Certain developments should be kept in mind when analyzing the government’s “mistaken” decisions against Hizbullah.

First, there were the investigations of the political assassinations committed in Lebanon during the last three and half years against March 14 politicians and intellectuals and generally influential persons critical of Syria and Hizbullah. March 8 was unable to block the formation of an international special tribunal, which is being established in The Hague. During the criminal investigations, attention was paid in the role of telecommunications networks and telecom intelligence in the assassinations. Finally, the leading Lebanese expert on the telecom aspect of the criminal investigation, ISF intelligence officer Captain Wissam Eid, was assassinated with a car bomb in January. The assassination was instantly followed by violent clashes with Hizbullah and Amal provoking the Sunni supporters of March 14. Public attention was diverted from the assassination.

Then, the leader of the March 14 affiliated Druze party PSP, Walid Jumblatt, broke a taboo in Lebanese politics by allegedly accusing Hizbullah for a role in the assassinations, which most March 14 leaders had so far blamed on the Syrian intelligence. Around the same time, journalistic sources started publishing information on Hizbullah’s telecom network, which has been continuously expanded since the summer 2006 war with Israel. According to the sources Hizbullah’s network was directly connected to the networks of Syrian military intelligence, and enabled tapping on Lebanese telecommunications lines, while the Lebanese state had no access to Hizbullah’s lines.

Just before the government’s decisions on airport security and Hizbullah’s telecom lines, Jumblatt made another bold accusation against Hizbullah, referring to intelligence that Hizbullah would be planning a major terrorist attack at the airport. Since April, everybody was expecting Hizbullah to revenge the assassination of its external operations commander Imad Mughniyya in Damascus in February. Mughniyya used to be one of the most feared terrorist leaders of the world before the time of Osama bin Laden. Hizbullah and Syria widely blamed Mughniyya’s assassination on Israeli intelligence.

Therefore, major clashes were expected on 7 May. It was also known to the Lebanese army and government that Hizbullah had the capacity of taking over Beirut by military means whenever it wanted, and there were many rumors of Hizbullah having practiced and planned such a take-over of the Sunni parts of Beirut over the past year. Indeed, everything during the first several days of the conflict indicated careful operational and tactical preparations that had probably started long before the government’s famous decisions.

The riots started as in many earlier occasions with militias erecting road blocks and massing young Shi’a supporters into the Beirut central and western districts. During Wednesday evening and Thursday the clashes got ever more violent and on Friday morning Hizbullah had captured all of West Beirut, a predominantly Sunni area with strong support especially for the Mustaqbal party of Saad Hariri and Prime Minister Fuad Siniora. (East Beirut is predominantly Christian and South Beirut predominantly Shi’a.)

March 8 media declared military victory over “Sunni militias,” but what happened in reality was something different. Most of the noise of the first two days in Beirut - assault rifles, heavy machine guns, RPGs and mortars - was made by March 8 militias roaming the streets of West Beirut. Lots of Shi’a teenagers, especially from the Amal party, had been mobilized and equipped with assault rifles and RPGs with the obvious purpose of making as much noise as possible and scaring off the Sunni population while the well-trained and well-equipped Hizbullah militiamen took care of actual military operations, suppressing any resistance and taking over streets, buildings and blocks in a blitzkrieg operation.

Hizbullah’s military victory was undoubted, but the other side of the claim was false: there was really no Sunni militia fighting back. All resistance to Hizbullah in West Beirut came from poorly armed Sunni residents of the neighborhoods, many of them teenagers. One of the victims was an eight-year-old boy. March 14 politicians ordered their supporters not to resist Hizbullah at an early stage, and in the case of Beirut (unlike Tripoli) these orders were mainly followed. The private security companies linked with the Hariri family and Beirut’s rich Sunnis, which were portrayed as “American-trained Sunni militias” in the pro-Syrian propaganda, were nothing but normal security companies protecting buildings and providing close protection and escort to their clients. They were bodyguards rather than militias and not trained in combat.

After capturing West Beirut, Hizbullah handed over control to its allied militias of the Shi’a Amal party and the Syrian Social-Nationalist Party (SSNP) - a party dating back to the 1930s and still sporting fascist symbols such as black shirts and the party’s swastika symbol on their armbands.

The army did not intervene. In fact, the army even persuaded the pro-government Future TV staff to leave, and then handed over their buildings to Hizbullah. March 8 militias then burned and destroyed March 14 media outlets in the captured areas, along with many private companies and homes, and replaced Hariri’s pictures with March 8 symbols and pictures of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. While roaming the streets without intervention from the army or the ISF, the March 8 militias also captured March 14 supporters, broke into houses in search of certain individuals, collected and removed documents, files and computers from party offices, media outlets, internet and telecommunications companies and private homes. Also general looting and vandalism was outleashed, although this was not necessarily intended.

In Tripoli, Sidon and Central Bekaa the Sunni supporters of the government were faced with armed provocations by March 8 militias, and in many occasions they wanted to retaliate against Hizbullah’s allies in these areas. In Majd al-Anjar, the Sunni residents blocked the road linking Syria to the Bekaa Valley. Sunni residents were among those who wanted to block the northern border crossing to Syria, too, while the army kept this border mainly open throughout the conflict. In Sidon, hometown of the Hariri family, the army sought to contain the local Sunni residents from confronting Hizbullah’s local allies.

In the northern areas of Tripoli and Akkar, however, clashes got really ugly. March 14 sympathizers, mainly Sunni, wanted to take over the party offices of pro-Syrian SSNP and Ba’ath parties, which in turn opened fire against the Sunnis. After rejecting several calls to surrender, the SSNP office in Tripoli was stormed and burn by government supporters and many were killed in the fighting. The Ba’athist Alawis used heavy weaponry against their Sunni neighbors. Although in Tripoli the fighting showed unruly and violent elements on the March 14 side, the clashes there also revealed the same fact that could be observed throughout the conflict: March 8 parties, also others than Hizbullah, were armed to teeth and maintained militia organizations, while on the March 14 side most of the resistance came from irregular home protection units organized spontaneously by local residents to confront militia attacks against them.

There were however two March 14 parties which have probably maintained capacities that would be able to resist March 8 operations: the PSP of the Druze leader Jumblatt, and the Lebanese Forces of the Christian leader Samir Geagea. These civil war enemies and present-day allies control motivated mountaineers and a terrain difficult to penetrate for invading forces. The outcome of the conflict concerning these groups was interesting.

After occupying West Beirut, Hizbullah attacked with heavy weaponry and obvious military strategic objectives against the Druze strongholds of the Shuf Mountains. Jumblatt, who was trapped in Clemenceau in West Beirut, ordered his supporters not to fight Hizbullah, and negotiated a quick hand-over of many of his party offices and strategic positions in Aley, Shueifat and other foothills of the Shuf to a small Druze ally of the Hizbullah, Talal Arslan. Arslan’s party was then supposed to hand over the gains to the Lebanese army, for which Jumblatt promised full access to the Druze heartland.

After failing on the western side of the Shuf mountains to penetrate deeper than the places that Jumblatt handed over with little resistance - places Jumblatt knew he could not hold for long - Hizbullah then attacked the Druze from the eastern side, again trying to penetrate deep into the Shuf with the obvious aim of taking over this geostrategically crucial area. Again Hizbullah failed and was pushed back by PSP militia that inflicted Hizbullah with significant losses. The core of the Shuf area remained effectively beyond the control of Hizbullah.

Christian areas remained calm throughout the week of conflict, and therefore Geagea did not get involved at all. The decision of Hizbullah not to attack Christian areas was probably related to the fact that the Christian allies of the March 8, the parties of Michel Aoun and Suleiman Franjiyya, were not in a possession of strong and capable militias comparable to those of Hizbullah and Amal, and could not effectively confront Geagea’s highly motivated Christians. Moreover, the March 8 Christians clearly benefited from the Christian reluctance to become involved, and started portraying the whole conflict as a Sunni-Shi’a thing. Especially Aoun, whose support had suffered significant losses during the months before the conflict, could greatly benefit from the Christian fears and present himself as a guarantee that Hizbullah would not threaten the Christians.

In addition to the relative Druze success in resisting Hizbullah’s invasion, time started playing a role. Blitzkrieg was no longer working since everybody in Lebanon knew by now what was going on - even though the international media seemed to have lost their interest since Friday when fighting in West Beirut, where most international journalists reside, had ceased. March 14 supporters had started mobilizing active resistance in many areas, in spite of the calls of their leaders to abstain from armed resistance. Hizbullah had failed to capture the higher areas of the Shuf, which gives a strategic advantage against Hizbullah’s strongholds in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Hizbullah categorically denied intention to commit coup d’état, and it seemed plausible that they did not want to capture power in the whole country. Hizbullah is a state within the state in its own strongholds but it is essentially an armed resistance movement, a militia. It wants to secure its state within the state as untouchable, and to dictate to some extent the foreign and security politics of the country, but it seems not interested in the responsibility of forming a government, which would inevitably incorporate Hizbullah to the official legal system of the country. For Hizbullah, it is more beneficial to stay outside of the constraints of official state.

Two crucial factors could be added to the probable reasons of why a ceasefire was reached and why the Doha negotiations could lead to some kind of a solution, however temporary. The first factor was the army, which had to maintain the perception of its unity and impartiality even though these were put in serious question during the conflict. March 8 sympathizers in the ranks of the army and ISF were even seen participating the Hizbullah and Amal take-over of West Beirut. Still days after the ceasefire, army units were observed by witnesses in West Beirut guarding SSNP’s provocative swastika flags in the Sunni quarters of Hamra, and even at the gate of the celebrated American University of Beirut. Army troops were also seen marking their roadblocks in the Sunni neighborhood of Mussaytbe with huge Amal flags. A widespread March 14 narrative throughout the conflict complained of the partiality of the army, only confiscating weapons and positions from March 14 people while doing absolutely nothing to intervene the actions of the March 8 militias, not even the smaller mobs like those of SSNP.

Within a couple of days also the March 14 sympathizers within the ranks of the army and ISF started breaking off the rows. Druze soldiers headed to their home mountains to fight Hizbullah, and there were rumors of mass resignations by Christian, Sunni and Druze army officers - even though General Michel Suleiman rejected these resignations and maintained that the army stays united. The threat that the army could break up was frequently the apology that Suleiman gave for the army not intervening the clashes or protecting the residents of the neighborhoods seized by March 8 militias.

Finally, the events in Tripoli especially started giving the conflict a strongly sectarian flavor. For Hizbullah, the operations were political, not sectarian. The purpose of the operations was to oust a government that Hizbullah and its foreign backers in Tehran and Damascus perceived as pro-Western and American-backed, and to shift power balance in Lebanon to March 8. Hizbullah’s primary objective was of course to ensure that nobody would dare to threaten the organization’s “state within the state”, with all its military and intelligence capacities. Hizbullah could count taking over as much as could be achieved in a short blitzkrieg, frightening the Western and Arab backers of the March 14 into submission, and paralyzing all resistance to its hegemony. However, Hizbullah could not risk a full-scale civil war, and that was never their intention.

As the conflict started looking increasingly like a civil war, and as it became quickly connected with sectarian antipathies and religious rhetoric, Hizbullah knew it was entering a territory that could seriously backfire against the party itself and especially to its Iranian and Syrian backers. For the Syrian regime, where power is concentrated to the small Alawi sect while the overwhelming majority of the country’s population are Sunni, a Sunni-Shi’a conflict - and moreover, a widespread Sunni hostility against the Syrian regime and its agents - forms a fundamental threat. For Iran, a widespread Sunni-Shi’a conflict, and mobilization of the huge Arab majority against Iranian intentions in Lebanon and in the Arab world in general, formed a serious threat to its aspirations to regional political hegemony.

The main strategic goals of both Iran and Syria are primarily political and geopolitical - forming and expanding a radical block against the US and Israel, dominating the Arab world, and thwarting the threat posed to these regimes by the emancipation of democracy and free media, in which respect Lebanon might be the most dangerous country of the region to dictatorships. All these goals would have been seriously risked if their actions in Lebanon actually plunged the country from the desired low-level instability and paralysis (that ensures the weakness of Lebanese democracy) into a full-scale civil war, and moreover, a sectarian one.

For the March 14 side, there seemed to be no other option than surrender in one form or another. They could not win the conflict militarily, and they could not hope for an international intervention in their support since many recent signals from leading Western powers had been conciliatory towards Iran and Syria. There was a serious risk that at the time when negotiations over the Palestinian question and the Syrian-Israeli negotiations were given preference in international politics to the fate of Lebanon, the small Middle Eastern democracy could have been easily sacrificed in the name of “stability”. The March 14 knew that unlike March 8’s power, its power and international support could not lie in bullying the society but in being the democratic, reformist and progressive forces in the region. In any conflict, they would need to be vastly higher on the moral ground than their opponents in order to receive any international fairness, and even this would not guarantee anything.

The Druze could resist with some relative success, but how long? Hizbullah was clearly far stronger militarily to anyone else in Lebanon, and therefore the Druze resistance could only slow down a devastating conflict of which the Druze population would suffer a lot. It was in their strongest interest to end the fighting as soon as possible. The Christians of March 14 clearly did not want to get involved in the first place, as this would have had devastating consequences to the entire Christian population of Lebanon. It was in their good memory how the previous Lebanese civil war first started as a Muslim conflict and the Christians on the eastern side of Beirut hoped to be out of it - until bloody clashes broke out between the supporters of Aoun and Geagea.

Therefore, it was evident that the March 14 would need to compromise and give up. They started surrendering from the two government decisions which they could not have implemented anyway. They had given up their right to elect president already earlier, declaring Michel Suleiman as an acceptable consensus candidate. And in Doha, they gave up their long-guarded advantage by handing over the blocking minority and veto to March 8 in the forthcoming government. As time had lapsed, the blocking minority in the government could no longer cause as much damage as it could have earlier. Ever since the opposition started their blockade and declared the government as “illegal” in autumn 2006, the March 14 had not really been able to use the democratic mandate they got in the 2005 election. And the next real struggle is still ahead, concerning who dominates the rules of the coming 2009 elections and therefore the future parliament and government of the country.

President Suleiman and the new government will now face extremely tough challenges in securing national unity, integrity and the sovereignty of democratic Lebanon. The first serious tests have been posed within a day from Suleiman’s inauguration by March 8 militia provoking Sunnis into clashes in Beirut and Central Bekaa. According to recent news, the Central Security Council has declared a ban on street riots, distribution of political propaganda posters and slogans throughout the capital, and even on motor cycles. It will be a real test to the national security institutions whether they can make militias to obey the law, or whether March 8 militias can continue their illegal use of force against other Lebanese with impunity.