CLAO

Founded in 1989 to serve the USA and Lebanon.

THE COUNCIL OF LEBANESE AMERICAN ORGANIZATIONS

       Eastern USA: P.O. Box 181116 Cleveland, OH 44118  ***  Western USA: P. O. Box 661823, Los Angeles, CA 90066

October 13, 2004                                                                         PR 041013

To Whom It May Concern – The Syrian Plot

Remembering October 13, 1990

On October 9, 2004, the Syrian president, Bashar El Assad, gave his audience false information related to the Syrian involvement during and after the war in Lebanon, portraying his regime as the savior of Lebanon. His defiance to the United Nations Security Council resolution 1559 was evident in his speech.

 On this occasion, the Council of Lebanese American Organizations (CLAO) would like to remind Mr. Assad that the following are the factual events that took place in Lebanon in the past decades:

   Syrian troops entered Lebanon in the 1970s after directly and actively destabilizing the country by arming its resident Palestinian refugees in the pretext of “armed struggle against Israel from South Lebanon.” Prior to April 13, 1975, the day Lebanon plunged into its so-called “Lebanese civil war”, Palestinian contingents of the Syrian Army had for years engaged in kidnappings, assassinations, ambushes, and other hostile acts against the Lebanese population and Lebanese army regulars. Under the guise of supporting the Palestinian Resistance in its struggle, Syria prevented Lebanon from restraining the Palestinians through a series of agreements that were constantly breached by the Palestinian side.  In 1973, an all-out confrontation took place between the Syrian armed Palestinians and the Lebanese Army in a battle that lasted several weeks and ended with the mediation of Arab and other countries. During the confrontation, Syria closed its borders with Lebanon and threatened the use of force.

 By April 13, 1975, the Syrian army and intelligence were fighting alongside the Palestinians against the Lebanese, under the umbrella of the Al Saiika division. In 1976, the Syrian occupation army was “legalized” when it was instituted as the largest contingent of a multi-Arab “peacekeeping” force known as the “Arab Dissuasion Force”. Those troops were supposed to bring the “Lebanese civil war” to an end, but within months all but the Syrian forces returned to their home countries, leaving Syria in complete control of Lebanon. Ever since, the Syrian forces remained a force of occupation that continuously orchestrated the criminal strategies of the Syrian regime aiming at deepening and amplifying divisions and fighting among Lebanon’s multiple political parties and religions communities. Many ordinary citizens were killed or kidnapped to the Syrian jails of terror and numerous leaders were assassinated, President-elect Bashir Gemayel and Kamal Jumblatt to name a few. Raping, looting, killing, and humiliations are what the Syrian soldiers and intelligence practiced against the Lebanese, while the Syrian Ba’athist regime were a step closer toward their goal of annexing Lebanon.

 In 1982, the Israeli armed forces invaded Lebanon and reached its capital Beirut. The invasion drove the heavily armed Palestine Liberation Organization, PLO, out of the capital and the south of the country. Israel later withdrew to the so-called “buffer zone” and its occupation ended in May 2000.

 In 1988, the term of the former Lebanese President, Amin Gemayel, came to an end in the midst of heavy fighting that was ignited by the Syrians who feared the outcome of free elections. Literally at the eleventh hour of his last day as President, Gemayel used his constitutional prerogatives to appoint an interim cabinet headed by General Michel Aoun, then Commander-in-Chief of the Lebanese Armed Forces, whose task was to manage the country until free elections became possible. General Aoun, enjoying a reputation for honesty and patriotism, vowed to unite the Lebanese people, fight corruption, and re-institute the legitimacy of the Lebanese State against the gangsters, militias, and their Syrian patron. This posed a threat to Syria’s regime that would lose its grip on the affairs of the country and on the lucrative drug trafficking high officials in the Syrian regime were running from Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. The late Mufti Hassan Khaled, Grand Mufti of the Lebanese Republic who lived in Syrian-occupied West Beirut, was assassinated shortly after making pro-unity remarks that included criticism of the Syrian occupation. The late Mufti’s famous saying was: “West Beirut is being bombarded from West Beirut,” indicating that it was bombed by the Syrians.

 In February 1989, Syria escalated tensions and concentrated its shelling on the Baabda presidential palace and Lebanese army positions. Several assassination attempts where directed against P.M. Aoun. By March 1989, P.M. Aoun had exhausted all diplomatic means and was facing pressure to retaliate.  On March 14, 1989, P.M. Aoun declared a “war of liberation” in the midst of a major Syrian military assault. At first, the Syrians suffered military defeats, especially in August 1989 at the “Souk El-Ghareb” battle. However, later in 1989, and under international pressure, the Lebanese Parliament was hauled to the city of Taef, Saudi Arabia, where the aging parliamentarians – in power since 1972 because no election had been held since – signed their country into complete submission to the Syrian regime.  The “Taef agreement” gave Syria a license to stay in Lebanon for an indeterminate period of time since the Syrians refused to sign the agreement or commit to a schedule for withdrawing their troops from Lebanon. Aoun called for a public referendum. The people of Lebanon answered when half of a million Lebanese marched to the Baabda Palace, denouncing the agreement and asking Aoun to do the same. Meanwhile, the Syrians orchestrated a mockery of a presidential election by the same obsolete parliament and Rene Mouawad became president. Mouawad attempted to peacefully negotiate the impasse with P.M. Aoun, but the Syrians uncovered his attempts and he was assassinated by a bomb. The Syrians installed Mr. Elias Hrawi as the new president and he ruled Lebanon with faithful obedience to his Syrian masters until 1998, when General Emile Lahoud, the current Lebanese head of state who maintains a close subservience to the Syrian regime, succeeded him.

 On October 13, 1990, the Syrian jets bombed the Presidential Palace in which P.M. Aoun’s government was bunkered, and as the Syrians were committing atrocities and massacres against the population and Lebanese Army regulars, P.M. Aoun instructed the Lebanese Army to take orders from the Syrian puppet, General Emile Lahood, as he and his government were forced into exile. He has been living in France ever since.

 Since 1990, Syria has had a free hand in running the internal and external affairs of Lebanon, jailing dissidents who call for ending the Syrian occupation, and imposing in treaty after treaty and vicious set of agreements that completely subordinates Lebanon to Syria in all matters of foreign affairs, security, education, the military and the economy. Syria and its Lebanese installed puppet regime drove over a third of the Lebanese population to emigrate and ran up the Lebanese National Debt to an unprecedented high level of over $40 Billion, which represent three times the amount of the Lebanese GDP.

 As a result of occupying Lebanon, the economic rewards to Syria are all too apparent and only a brief summary will suffice here:

 a)      While Lebanon’s financial crisis is very severe and is leading it toward imminent bankruptcy, Syria has been collecting significant tolls and taxes from most Lebanese money-making public institutions: Airport, Sea ports, etc…

b)      Despite the fact that most of the Lebanese people are unemployed and unable to feed their families, over a million low-wage Syrians are enjoying relatively good income from Lebanon. On average these workers make $250 per month, sleep on site at their workplaces or squat in abandoned buildings, spend less than $50 on “bread and eggs”, and send about $200 monthly back to their families in Syria. This represents a drain on the Lebanese economy estimated to at least 2.4 billion dollars annually, all of which goes to Syria. The Lebanese government’s annual budget is just over double that amount. The Lebanese government has no power to enforce its own laws or try to impose some regulation of this illegal activity.

c)      Thanks largely to the “brotherly agreements” signed between the two countries since 1990, Lebanese farmers have been watching their crops rot while Syrian agricultural goods, produced at much lower costs in Syria, are dumped onto the Lebanese street. Syrian agricultural goods, among many other products, have almost totally replaced Lebanese goods. Prior to 1990, the Syrians were using the Lebanese Bekaa Valley for its multi-billion dollar drug industry, taking advantage of its soil fertility to produce opium and process heroin on site. With the exposure of high profile connections between the Syrian ruling families and the Colombia drug lord Pablo Escobar, such operations have taken a much lower profile since.

d)      Syrian looting, protected by Syrian Intelligence operatives, is widespread in Lebanon and generates significant income to the underworld mob with ties with or supported by the Syrian regime. Looting included stealing expensive cars, breaking into jewelry and other expensive product stores, homes, churches, and on some occasions kidnapping children in exchange for ransom money.

e)      Syrians have effectively used Lebanon to circulate counterfeit money, especially American dollars. Many Lebanese have fallen victims to these Syrian industry products.

f)       Unlike the state-controlled banks in Syria, Lebanon’s banking system is technologically advanced and offers total secrecy to its accounts, much like the Swiss system. This has prompted Syrian money-laundering agencies with close ties to the Syrian regime to take full advantage of it. In April 2001, and under international pressure, the Lebanese regime issued laws that are supposed to counter such operations. However, no laws and measures could ever be enforced under the Syrian hegemony.

g)      While Lebanon’s tourism industry has been decimated by the instability of more than 3 decades, fueled in large part by the image of the Lebanese as an unruly bunch of crazed terrorists and of Beirut as a haven for violence, Syria’s tourist industry has seen an unprecedented renaissance. Busloads of Asian and European tourists are ferried from Damascus to the archeological vistas of Lebanon’s ancient sites, without the Lebanese government or private sector benefiting from these Syrian-owned operations.

 In summary, the Syrian occupation has been devastating to Lebanon and the Lebanese. Unlike its heady period between independence in 1943 and the early 1970s, Lebanese democracy is practiced in form and not in essence. It is none more than a façade with Institutions that have become instruments in the hands of the Syrian Regime to exercise its complete hegemony on Lebanon. The current Lebanese democracy is far from being representative of the population with all the election fraud and blatant and often criminal misconduct of the Syrian installed corrupt Lebanese Government Officials.

The Syrian president is trying to hide the deplorable facts about the occupation of Lebanon and still is attempting to falsify history while the world is watching. Assad seems to be unable to get it yet: The free world is serious about implementing UN Security Council Resolution 1559 and it would be best for his country and his Ba’athist regime to comply – immediately.