A Tale of Two Assassinations

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Syria has no reason to kill him, a Lebanese colleague told me last week soon after the Beirut assassination of Pierre Gemayel topped the headlines. It is clear who has the incentive, he said. To make Syria look bad, “either Israel or America” committed the bloody deed.

In addition to the Beirut shooting, an elaborate poisoning scheme in London — which ended in the death of a former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko — captured the imaginations of conspiracy theorists worldwide.

Saner observers pointed to Damascus as the likely perpetrator behind the shooting and to Moscow as the power behind the poisoning.

Well, not so fast, voices sympathetic to Russia and Syria retorted. Unlike my knee-jerk pro-Hezbollah colleague, some theories used by the it’s-not-whatit-looks-like crowd were not all that farfetched.

Litvinenko was a former KGB man tied to dissident émigrés living in London. He had publicly accused President Putin of bombing a Moscow apartment building to reignite the Chechnya conflict. Similarly, some in Moscow are now accusing Litvinenko of poisoning himself in the spook-world equivalent of suicide bombing.

Litvinenko’s ties to the anti-Putin tycoon Boris Berezovsky are the most cited by Moscow pro-government apologists. The poisoning of Litvinenko could have resulted from “joint actions between former Russian special service agents and the fugitive oligarch Boris Berezovsky,” the pro-government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported.

The key to solving the case is likely to be the rare radioactive substance used in the poisoning, polonium-210, and those who had access to it. By contrast, the murder weapon in Beirut — an automatic weapon equipped with a silencer — is accessible to anyone in Lebanon with an interest in purchasing it.

The possible suspects are many: in addition to Hezbollah, Syria has control over Palestinian Arab groups active in U.N.-run refugee camps all across Lebanon. The Maronite Christians in Lebanon are going through a bitter internal struggle. President Lahoud and a former general, Michel Aoun, are bitterly fighting to preserve Damascus’s hegemony over Lebanon, while the Gemayel clan and allies such as Samir Geagea — who was recently released from jail after his life sentence for crimes committed in the 1980s was commuted — along with Sunnis and Druze leaders, are eager to maintain the Cedar Revolution that edged Syria out. The Gemayel assassination could very well have had something to do with the internal rivalry between the Christian factions, some of the most astute Lebanon watchers say.

However, alternative explanations should not lead investigators to ignore the simplest, most straightforward ones.

Litvinenko was a thorn in Mr. Putin’s side. While not necessarily leading to Kremlin high-fives, his elimination allows some pro-Putin players to breathe easier. Lebanon’s government yesterday approved a U.N. plan to set up an international court that might convict the closest allies and family members of the Syrian president, Bashar Al-Assad, in the 2005 Hariri assassination. Getting closer to toppling it by killing one of its members could ease some Damascus anxieties.

Ah, but Syria was on the verge of gaining international legitimacy, including from Washington. Would it risk all that by involving itself in a crude gang-like street execution? And would Russia now revert to Cold War tactics? Such foreign-policy egghead questions apply chess rules to games like dodge ball.

Mr. Putin is a highly sophisticated player on the international stage, but he has never forgotten the life lessons he learned during his KGB days. By contrast, Mr. Assad is isolated, as are the worldliest among his father’s advisers, and he is bound to misread how he is seen by the rest of the world.

Although different, both leaders might see the advantages of being suspects in political assassinations as long as they deny involvement. This stance would instill the right amount of fear in real and perceived enemies, yet it would allow enough deniability to avoid outright condemnation.

With their Sherlock Holmes reputation, London cops may or may not solve the Litvinenko murder. In the case of Lebanon, the need for outside help to boost local law and order authorities is obvious and is at the heart of the Gemayel case.

After the U.N. Security Council formed an international tribunal, its establishment now depends on survival of the Beirut government, which could collapse with one more assassination. Turtle Bay, and specifically the Security Council, must now remain vigilant, because it can determine Lebanon’s independence and freedom.

And yes, this is the Security Council where Mr. Putin’s Russia, a Damascus benefactor, has veto power.

bavni@nysun.com


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