Lebanon Gets a Hariri Tribunal

Despite the new crisis involving the radical Islamist Fatah al-Islam group, the March 14 coalition, Lebanon's multi-confessional, pro-independence and pro-democracy grouping, is surprisingly confident. Checking in with various contacts in the coalition this week, I found two reasons for this. As bad as the clashes in Tripoli have been, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's government believes that it has pre-empted Fatah al-Islam's plans to wreak much greater havoc sometime down the road. The government also believes that it has collected solid evidence of Syria's secret backing for Fatah al-Islam, which it feels will further undermine the Syrian regime in Lebanon, the region and the world.

That leads me to the other reason for the confidence: the U.N. Security Council's vote on Wednesday to set up an international tribunal to try the perpetrators of numerous recent assassinations in Lebanon, notably that of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. March 14 leaders see the tribunal not only as a means of seeking justice for the victims, but as an instrument with which to punish the Syrian regime and terminate its ability to manipulate events in Lebanon. Syria's allies in the parliament had blocked Siniora's efforts to establish the tribunal in Lebanon, so the Security Council, at the government's request, has moved to set it up as an international body. This is indeed a major breakthrough for the March 14 coalition; a U.N. investigation into the killing of Hariri has already implicated two close relatives of President Bashar Assad in the 2005 plot. March 14 leaders assert that the Fatah al-Islam group was sent to Lebanon by the Syrian regime to sow chaos as a way of derailing the tribunal. The tribunal may represent the first instance in which an Arab dictatorship is held accountable for its crimes before international justice.

A few hours before the 10-0-5 vote on U.N. Resolution 1757 in New York, I passed by the village of Bikfaya high in Lebanon's mountains for a chat with former Lebanese President Amin Gemayel, whose son Pierre's assassination last year is among the crimes that will be brought before the tribunal. Gemayel's brother Bashir was also assassinated, back in 1982, in a bombing widely blamed on the Syrian regime. Gemayel lost another relative in a bus bombing three months ago along the road I drove up to Bikfaya that the government has blamed on Fatah al-Islam.

As we sat in a salon filled with Oriental carpets, antique swords and modern Lebanese art, birds chirping outside the open windows, Gemayel was clearly relieved and pleased about the tribunal. But his manner was gracious rather than vengeful. Although March 14 personalities generally blame Syria for all the killings, Gemayel once again preferred not to point fingers, saying he would await and respect the findings of the U.N. investigation and the verdict of the tribunal. But he obviously saw the tribunal as a breakthrough in Lebanon's struggle for independence from its neighbor.

When I asked him about concerns that the creation of the tribunal will itself spark further tensions and violence, which Syrian officials have indeed predicted, Gemayel replied, "The situation was not so calm, was not so pleasant, was not so comfortable until now. What's going on in the camps in Tripoli, the bombs in Verdun, in Achrifieh and in Aley, the assassination of several leaders, the bombs in the Ain Alaq area: the chaos was prevailing here."

Now with the tribunal, he went on, "Maybe they will try to make more bombs and assassinations, but this time, in my opinion, it is the end of this process. We have to expect a change in behavior of those parties. Maybe it can inaugurate a new era of justice. For the first time, the criminals are under international scrutiny, for the first time in the Arab world. It's a message to other criminals elsewhere. The fact that those criminals can imagine they will be discovered and taken to justice is a deterrent by itself.

Gemayel told me he felt that the tribunal could help launch a new era of peace in Lebanon as well.

"I want to tell you something," he said. "The tribunal will not revive my son. I know very well that I lost him forever. I lost a part of myself. But in fact what is essential for me is to avoid more tears, more blood. That's important for us to inaugurate an era of serenity and security for our children. The Lebanese society paid a very high price. That's why for us the tribunal is not a question of revenge, or a victory for us, but a way to stop the tears and blood and build a better future. We are looking for the future, not the past. The past is over for me. When I look around me, it is horrible, the number of widows, mothers still wearing black, like my wife, my daughter and my daughter-in-law."

--By Scott MacLeod/Bikfaya