Syria's Occupation of Lebanon Continues

A few weeks back, I wrote about how Syria had invaded Lebanon and no one paid much attention to the story. That story indicated that the Syrians had moved six miles inside Lebanon. Well, it turns out that the story missed the bigger picture.

The bigger picture?

Syria has been occupying 177 square miles of Lebanese territory for decades and no one is making so much as a peep about it. The occupation started after Syria's invasion of Lebanon in 1976 and continues to this day. Bret Stephens notes what he found in 2005:

This is a story to which I can contribute my own testimony. In May 2005 I paid a visit to Lebanon, just a month after Syria had announced that it had fully withdrawn its 14,000 troops from Lebanon in compliance with Resolution 1559. The rumor in Beirut was that a company of 200 or so elite Syrian soldiers remained encamped within Lebanon near the Druze village of Deir al-Ashaer. I decided to have a look. After a long drive over rutted roads, I found it.

Or rather, what I found was a hillside outpost that I was able to enter without crossing any apparent international border. The man in charge was a Syrian intelligence officer who "invited" me into a sweltering tent while he phoned his commanders for instruction. After a few tense minutes of silence with the soldiers inside, the officer reappeared, explained that the camp was 50 yards inside Syrian territory, and ordered me to go. From there I went to the village, where the mayor insisted the camp was several hundred yards inside Lebanon.

Who was right? Inclined as I was to believe the mayor, it was hard to sort out contending claims over remote parcels of land. A week later, then Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced the U.N. had "verified all [Syrian military units] had withdrawn, including [from] the border area." It seemed that was the end of the story.

I should have known then that anything "verified" by the U.N. must be checked at least twice. I should have known, too, that anything to which Mr. Annan devoted his personal attention would inevitably become worse. Last September, Mr. Annan paid a visit to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad after the latter had declared he would treat any attempt by the U.N. to deploy peacekeepers along the Lebanese-Syrian border as a "hostile act." To defuse the impasse, Mr. Annan simply accepted Mr. Assad's assurances that Syria would police its border and prevent arms smuggling. "I think it can happen," said the diplomat at a press conference. "It may not be 100%, but it will make quite a lot of difference if the government puts in place the measures the government has discussed with me."

The UN continues to be useless in this situation as the territorial integrity of Lebanon continues to be violated on a daily basis by Syria, which only seeks to reestablish full dominion over Lebanon for its own purposes.

Meanwhile, one has to wonder where is Hizbullah's outrage over this violation of Lebanon's sovereignty? After all, they start wars complaining that Israel has occupied a couple yards of Lebanese territory but yet they don't say one word over Syria occupying 177 square miles for over 30 years? Well, it's tough to bite the hand that feeds you. Syria has long offered support to Hizbullah so they look the other way as Syria carves up Lebanon for its own purposes.