Dail "M" for Murder!
The Baathist’s way -
Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s cold-blooded murder in Beirut reminded me of one episode of The Simpsons where Bart dials 911 and is greeted with a recording, "If you know the name of the crime being committed, press 1 now." To which he exclaims, "I don't have time for this!" and hits several random buttons on his phone to which the recording replies, "You have selected regicide. If you know the name of the king or queen being murdered, press 1 now." If Bart was in Beirut on Feb. 14, he could have pressed 1 and said ‘Hariri.’ One really needs several buttons to press for explanations of ‘Regicide’ especially when the ruling underworld clique of a dreadful Baath party undertakes it. Rafik Hariri’s liquidation was a classical Regicide à la Baath.
The regicides sit deep in the conscious of nations. Hariri, as a popular leader, was the king of hearts. His murder would not subside quietly. There is some divine justice associated with elimination of leaders. The regicide of Charles I of England resulted into the final dissolution of the rump Parliament. In France, the judicial penalty for regicides was torture so as to make the regicide name names of his accomplices. The hand that attempted the murder was burnt and the regicide was dismembered alive. The murder of the Crown Prince Francis Ferdinand led to the outbreak of the First World War. In 1975 King, the assassination of Faisal of Saudi Arabia by his nephew Faisal ibn Musad, who was publicly beheaded. The repercussions for a regicide are immense. The Allawite Baathists failed to comprehend the fallout from this dirty regicidal.
In poetic justice, what goes around comes around. Perhaps the noose around Ghazi Kanaan tightened a little too fast. UN chief investigator Detlev Mehlis made his suspicions clear to Kanaan that Syrian intelligence services kept tabs on Hariri before his assassination by wiretapping his phone. There was evidence that a telecommunication antenna was jammed near the scene of the car bomb that killed him and 20 others on Feb. 14. Ghazi Kanaan’s elimination is tyrannicide. It was an orthodox Baath-style eradication of members of a ruling mob that became superfluous or a threat to the familial collegial hierarchy.
Ghazi Kanaan’s suicide was not of the first Syrian official to be "erased" by Assad's Ba'athist machine. Some political analysts are speculating that Kanaan was killed to use him as a scapegoat to hide the truth about who really killed Hariri. Once it was known that the forthcoming report has incriminating evidence from a deep throat within Syrian Intelligence sources in Lebanon testifying that Syrian intelligence services in Lebanon, and in all probability naming Maher Assad, Assef Shawkat, Hassan Khalil, Bahjat Suleyman and Jamil Al-Sayyed as key conspirators of the cabal who decided to assassinate Rafik Hariri, approximately two weeks after the adoption of Security Council resolution 1559, Ghazi Kanaan was dead meat. He had to be taken out. He was the smoking gun and could have virtually connected the ‘Baathists Allawites’ to the murder of Rafik Hariri.
Power has a price and that price, more often than not, is paid in blood. From the cruel world of organized crime to the hidden encounters behind the Iron curtain, from the ancient empires of Romans and Ottomans to the corridors of despotic powers in the Middle East, hired guns have ruthlessly pursued their trade of erasing foes and friends. Today’s friends can be tomorrow’s enemies and for the sake of continuation of power or alleged protection of state, no sacrifice is big enough.
It is never simple. The background is too complicated; several leads and motives are available but none can be pursued, although glaringly, the story is that of a cold-blooded termination of a pawn. He put the barrel of the pistol in his mouth and felt its chill—he set his finger on the trigger, the bullet was fired. This may have been a 'suicide', or remotely possible, a preventative move on Kanaan's part, but most probably it was a forced suicide. It was better to go quickly than undergo the humiliation of a Baathist’s show trial, the end of which was definite. Ghazi Kanaan was the sacrificial lamb, who is now conveniently out of the way. Kanaan's family was indignant by the stance of the Syrian security services, and continues to firmly reject the hypothesis that their relative had committed suicide.
A parallel can be drawn between Nazification of Germany under Fuehrer and the Baathists of Iraq and Syria. Ghazi Kanaan in all probability met the fate of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (1891-1944) C-in-C of the Afrika Korps (1942-43) | Army Group West (1944) the desert fox October 14. Soon after the conspiracy to kill Hitler fails, two generals visit Rommel at his residence in Errlingen and hand him a cyanide capsule with a message from Hitler: commit suicide and be buried with honors, or stand trial for high treason and be hanged which implies loss of his family's livelihood. Rommel bids farewell to his wife and son and is driven off in an army car. Having swallowed the capsule, Rommel was buried with full military honors and given a hero's farewell.
Ghazi Kanaan is the second high-ranking Syrian official who allegedly committed suicide since Bashar Al-Assad became president of Syria. The first was Prime Minister Mahmoud Al-Zu'bi, in June 2000. He also killed himself in similar circumstances. The circumstances behind Kanaan's death are a little too coincidental with the events to be termed a suicide. Its occurrence hours before Assad II was to go on air for a landmark CNN interview suggests the president may have been preparing to sacrifice close aides to mute Washington’s pressure on his own policies. Ba'athist Minority Rule in both Iraq and Syria had never hesitated to use murder as the most effective tool of continuation of a narrow familial-based dynasty.
Two facades of ‘termination’ are vital to distinguish. The first is the ‘state-sponsored ‘erasures’ and second, ‘political assassinations.’ These were finally banned by Gerald Ford, but not until botched attempts to take out figures like Cuba’s Castro with toxic cigars, exploding seashells and poisoned bathing suits and other attempts on Haiti's Jean-Claude Duvalier, and Indonesia's Sukarno. Today, new innovative definitions allow States to eliminate their enemies without any due process of law. A state committed to terror that impacts others is liable to be attacked. In 1986, without stating any clear purpose of killing Muammar Gaddafi, Ronald Reagan ordered the bombing of the Libyan leader's compound, remarking that he would shed no tear if Gaddafi were killed. President George Bush Sr took a similar tack in hitting Saddam Hussein's palace in Baghdad in 1991, offering up the statement, "No one will weep for him when he is gone."
President Bill Clinton further loosened the military's hands with a secret memorandum expanding the use of deadly covert actions and authorizing lethal force against al-Qaeda in 1998. Bush gave the green light for operatives to kill Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, a suspect in the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. From 150 miles away at a base in the east African country of Djibouti, the CIA launched a remote-controlled unmanned drone to track al-Harethi, and when his car reached an open road in the Yemeni countryside, a Predator missile was fired from 10,000 feet overhead. Al-Harethi and five other passengers in the vehicle were immediately incinerated.
In a new extended characterization of edict, States today see no restriction or accountability in eliminating their enemies on any global terrain. The international booty on the heads of Alqaeda leadership is one sign of departure from the earlier self-restraint. The order of restraint in liquidating key class 1 enemies has been rescinded and expanded to contain the deadliest of enemies to be erased by extra judicial killings.
The other face of extra judicial killings is a totally private enterprise organized by the mob. Their lethal cloak-and-dagger operations and never-ending chain of assassinations by the likes of Al Capone, Lucky Luciano gangs are courses of ‘Murder 101’ for the prospective criminals. Erasure and forced silence continues to be a way of life in the sordid world of despots too. It is not the ‘enemies of state’ or committed ‘terrorists at war’ who are to be silenced here; it is the perpetuation of dynastic power that encourages dissent to be silenced at all cost. Freedom needs to be muzzled. When tyrannical rulers with powers of state walk down the aisle with mob strategies, a new metamorphosis emerges. Sometimes, a new mutated strain of ‘mass erasures’ appear; a mentally deranged and politically motivated leader, like Hitler, married with a concept like that of Nazism plays havoc. Hitler, Stalin and Baathists of today have one thing in common: they were and are able to marry the state-sponsored extra judicial killings with mob rule of their own party, and transform ‘authority’ into a new realm of absolute terror. They work on Stalin's favourite proverb: To get rid of the person is to get rid of the problem.
Saddam's favourite film was The Godfather - and he seemed, as president, to become the personification of Al Pacino's murderous gangster Michael Corleone. He married the state and the mob successfully. He told Adel Darwish, the author of “Unholy Babylon,” "Once loyalty to the family and its head is in doubt, the life of the individual concerned, or a few men, becomes worthless." The killing of his own son-in-laws was live recreation of Godfather’s scene when Michael Corleone ordered the killing of his brother-in-law. Saddam and Hussein Kamel had defected with their families to Jordan. Pardoned by Saddam and nagged relentlessly by their wives, the brothers finally consented to return to Iraq if their protection would be assured. However, no sooner had they crossed the border than Uday split his sisters from the two traitors and had the two men confined at their family home in Baghdad. Hours later, Uday and a unit of Iraqi Special Forces attacked the Kamel house, killing the two brothers, their father, their sister, and her three children. Not to forget the killing of Saddam’s brother-in-law, Adnan Khairallah, who was also eliminated in a fatal helicopter incident. Godfather derives his legitimacy from loyalty and obedience, secured by a system of terror and reward. Once the state adopts the doctrine of ‘pre-emptive erasure’, under which, as the head of the family, the tyrant can liquidate anyone.
Traditionally, liquidations were justifiable tools of terrorization and perpetuation of tyranny of the subterranean world of medieval masters. However, modern age despots and tyrants are using this tool with equal effect. Every one is expendable if any danger is posed to the permanence of the ruling clout. Life is of least concern if control of the state is at stake. These back-to-back erasures are a big blow to the UN investigating commission. Kanaan knew a lot about what went on in Lebanon and who was behind Hariri's assassination. In the wake of his ‘suicide,’ it is now incumbent on Syria "to clarify a considerable part of the unresolved questions" facing UN investigators. Syrians have to come clean. There is a need to clean up the Baathist structure that holds so many people firmly enslaved by a ruling cabal. Is it really such a stretch of the imagination to believe that a regime built upon an inherently amoral ideal that devalues human life and holds the State and the Great Leader above all else could not be culpable of assassinating anyone who is deemed an existential threat?
The façade of the international community has to be as one. After dismantling of one Baathist state, this one is apparently lesser of the evils hence more of a reason to be nicer to the ongoing status quo. One thing needs to be understood: It is not just the regicide of Hariri or tyrannicide of Kanaan by a state that is the problem, it is the extinguishing of freedom and democracy within the region that is threatened by those who want to continue stifling the process of reconciliation and peace. The killing of Hariri was an oppressive show of denying democracy and the change that has enveloped the entire Middle East. The question needed to be asked is that in ritualistic killing of opponents in many of these despotic states, what has brought this change and seasons of revolution? Why is the mentality changing? These maniacal killings were not even spotted as newsworthy in pre-Iraq freedom era! It is indeed going to be a dull existence for the tyrants from now on. The world has unquestionably changed considerably for their tastes. The fun of freelance ‘eradication’ has just vanished. What a wretched life to look forward to for a tyrannous regime!
A UN resolution can be enacted under chapter 7 of the UN charter that deals with threats to international peace and security which can finally lead to the use of force. A UN resolution demanding Syrian officials to be questioned aboard is in the offing; it will probably be a kneel-down-in-the-confession-box kind of questioning. In these cases, the façade of international community cannot be maintained in concert. The Chinese consider chapter 7 as a sensitive issue. According to them, ‘Chapter 7 is the dog that will bite, not just bark.’
The Libyan option of forced confessions and then retirement from an active life of terrorism is becoming a currency. One thing is most probably sure, Assad Jr.’s reign as a totalitarian ruler may survive this storm, but he would need to adopt the ‘Libyan option’ of coming clean and becoming less of a threat in the heart of the Middle East. These are changing times and the despots are learning it the hard way. The ‘names’ of the accomplices leaked intelligently need to be saved; they implicate the Presidential Palace directly into the plot. For a brother or a brother-in-law to survive, something has to be given up. The ophthalmologist generals are well advised to learn from the lessons and experiences of the neighbouring Baathist regime.
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