The rubble of the damaged Saint George Melkite Catholic Church ahead of the Christmas holiday, in the village of Derdghaya, southern Lebanon, on Sunday amid a 60-day ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah. The church was hit by an Israeli airstrike on in October during hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel. Photo by Wael Hamzeh/EPA-EFE
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Dec. 24 (UPI) -- The ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad has ended Iran's 40-year dominance and quest for hegemony in the region, further weakened his allies in Lebanon and created a new opportunity for establishing normal relations between the two countries, Lebanese analysts said.
Most Lebanese breathed a great sigh of relief when Syrian rebels brought down Assad and his Baath Party regime on Dec 8. They had their own share of suffering because of the decades-long Syrian military presence, political domination and manipulation of Lebanon that greatly impacted its governance, political life, economy and stability.
The Syrian Army first entered Lebanon in 1976 as part of a 30,000-strong Arab Deterrent Force to stop the raging civil war that started six months earlier. Soon, the Saudi, Emirati, Sudanese, Libyan and Yemeni soldiers left the country, while the Syrian forces, numbering 25,000, remained.
When the civil war ended in 1990 in line with the Taef agreement, known as the National Reconciliation Accord, Syria imposed itself as the main power broker after having been granted guardianship over Lebanon.
Under the Taef accord, it was tasked with assisting the government to spread its authority over all its territories and was to start withdrawing its troops gradually from Lebanon within two years.
That never happened until it was forced to pull out following the assassination of Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in a powerful explosion that targeted his convoy in Beirut on Feb. 14, 2005.
Syria was accused of being behind Hariri's assassination and the killing -- during the civil war and in peace times -- of top politicians, ministers, parliamentarians, security officials and journalists. Its main Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, also was blamed for some of these assassinations that targeted their opponents.
Moreover, hundreds of Lebanese were arrested by Syria's forces and disappeared in its jails during their nearly 30-year presence in the country. Out of 725 counted by a special Lebanese emergency commission, only nine Lebanese prisoners returned to Lebanon after Assad's ouster.
In contrast, Syria also had strong allies in Lebanon, mainly the once-powerful Hezbollah, to which it provided support and assistance for its anti-Israel resistance.
But its influence on Lebanon began to wane rapidly since 2011, when anti-Assad peaceful protests broke out and soon turned into a bloody civil war.
"The remnants of this influence, if any, ended completely with the present revolution [in Syria]," Riad Tabbarah, Lebanon's former ambassador in Washington, told UPI.
Now, Syria will have to reconstitute itself by unifying the revolting factions into one army, reintegrating the different "Turkish, American, Kurdish and Israeli occupied zones into one country, all that while rebuilding the army" that has been systematically devastated by Israel lately, Tabbarah said.
"No one knows how the present Syrian revolution will end," he said. "What we know is that this transitional period will be long and the old Syrian influence on Lebanese politics will not come back anytime soon."
The atrocities committed by the ousted Syrian regime for decades were widely disclosed after Assad's fall, revealing a shocking reality about tens of thousands of detainees when rebel forces stormed his regime-run jails.
Only 33,000 detainees have been found and freed, while the fate of up to 85,000 remains unknown, according to Syria's Network for Human Rights.
Makram Rabah, a political activist and history professor at the American University of Beirut, said the Syrian regime was the "source of crime and oppression" for the Syrian and Lebanese people, as well as the Palestinians.
That changed overnight.
On Sunday, Syria's new leader, Ahmad Sharaa, told a visiting Lebanese Druze delegation, headed by Walid Jumblat, that the new Syria no longer will interfere in Lebanon and will respect its sovereignty, unity, security stability and the independence of its decision.
Jumblat's father, Kamal, who was a prominent political leader who led the National Movement during the Lebanese civil war, was among the first to be assassinated in 1977 by the Syrian regime under late President Hafez Assad, Bashar's father.
Commenting on Sharaa's comments, Rabah said, "What's happening is a return to normal."
He told UPI that Sharaa, the head of the Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham and better known as Abu Mohammed al Jolani, is "fully aware of the need to put Syria back on the right track" to secure international support and rebuild.
Restoring normal ties with Lebanon goes along with Syria's new reality and constitutes an opportunity for Beirut to "rebuild its own state and institutions" -- something that Lebanese have longed for since the mid-1970s.
"Everything has changed with Assad's fall," Rabah said. It was "a slap" to Iran's Shiite Crescent by breaking its "Axis of Resistance" and ending the control of its armed proxies: Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq.
"Cutting the road from Tehran to Beirut," he said, means that Hezbollah no longer can obtain military or financial support from Iran via Syria, which is now under the control of various armed groups, all opposing Iran and "considering it as an enemy."
Rabah argued that disarming Hezbollah completely is a prerequisite to rebuild the Lebanese state.
The "great political influence" of Hezbollah, which has had a blow of its own in its recent war with Israel, has already "waned significantly," according to Tabbarah. This, he said, will probably become clearer in the election of a new president for Lebanon scheduled for Jan. 9.
However, Tabbarah emphasized that the most important outcome of the present Syrian revolution is the shift in the balance of power within the region.
"The dominance of the Iranian-Russian alliance has been replaced, overnight, by the Turkish-Western dominance," he said.
The Iranians, he explained, withdrew from Syria immediately. The Russians are negotiating, "from a position of weakness," to keep at least a part of their military bases, especially the naval base at Tartus and the air base in Latakia, "their long-sought dream of having a firm foothold at the shores of the warm waters of the Mediterranean."
"We still don't know what the long-term reaction of these two powers will be, but it is clear that, in the meantime, their allies in Lebanon and Syria will be negatively affected," Tabbarah said.
Is the fear of an Islamist rule in Syria justified and how it could be reflected on neighboring Lebanon?
To Rabah, the new regime in Syria, a pluralistic society with a 70% Muslim Sunni majority, will not be "a Norwegian or Swedish regime, but also it will not be a Baathist regime preaching secularism while it is sectarian and racist."
The main challenge is to preserve Syria's unity, engage all constituents to form a unity government in which the many ethnic and religious communities are represented and fulfill people's aspirations for a civil state.
Rabah reiterated that Assad's regime, which claimed to "be protecting all minorities, has in fact harmed them all."
Amin Kammourieh, a political analyst, argued that if Sharaa fails to control Syria and persuade the existing 35 different groups, including Islamist extremists and the Kurds, to drop arms and join the new political process, the emergence of an Islamist rule in Syria is a possibility.
How would that reflect on Lebanon?
"It might open the appetite of the Muslim Salafis who have a presence in the northern part of the country, close to Syria," Kammourieh told UPI. "Hezbollah would then argue that it would need to fight them to protect Lebanon and possibly other Arab countries."
