MUSLIMS all over the world are so angry about a series of cartoons poking fun at the Messenger of God that by now pretty much every Danish and Norwegian flag in the Muslim world has met its fiery end. And yet only in Damascus and Beirut have institutions--embassies or consulates--representing Denmark and Norway been attacked. Are Lebanese and Syrian Muslims angrier than other Muslims? Or, what's going on here?
First of all, it's important to remember that Syria is an authoritarian state where nothing happens on the street unless the regime permits it to happen. Actually, that's something of an understatement--the government almost always determines and drives public actions. So, many of the Damascus protestors venting their pious outrage likely either work for Syrian security services or are rent-a-mobs being paid to riot.
In Lebanon, it is only slightly different. It appears that the Internal Security Forces were incapable or unwilling to protect the Danish consulate from protestors, many of whom were apparently shipped in from Syria and Lebanese Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon (where Syrian influence and arms are extensive). Indeed, Damascus' Lebanese intelligence networks are still active, even after Syrian troops left the country last April in compliance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559. And of course Syria has lots of Lebanese allies, including Islamist groups such as the Al-Ahbash and Hezbollah, whose General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah asked--maybe not so rhetorically--if someone blowing themselves up in the middle of Denmark constituted "an expression of freedom."
IT WOULD BE INTERESTING to know
precisely the level of involvement of the Syrian mukhabarat, but President Bashar al-Asad does not want to be held accountable for what is practically an act of war. For that matter, neither Denmark nor Norway would want to know the answer and then be forced with having to respond as such. Americans might enjoy some schadenfreude in watching flags other than theirs getting torched, but why is Syria so hostile to a Europe that is by comparison much more accommodating? There are at least three possible reasons: (1) To prevent the international community from bringing down Syria's ruling regime; (2) To raise money for Hamas; (3) To warn against interfering with the Iranian nuclear program.
(1) Syria has been under the international spotlight now for nearly a year, following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri. In a remarkable show of multilateral concord, the United States and European Union have been working together to put pressure on the regime in Damascus. In fact, it is France that has led the way.
Even before the murder of Hariri, Jacques Chirac suggested to George Bush at the 60th anniversary of the Normandy invasion that this was a project they might work on together. The White House was cross with Syria for supporting the insurgency in Iraq and Chirac was angry because, among many other reasons, Syria had handed out oil contracts to non-French firms and squandered money the French president had raised at the Paris II talks in November 2002 earmarked for political and economic reform in Lebanon.
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