Power to the people

Martyrs' Square in Beirut resembled a pop festival for much of this week as hundreds of student demonstrators sheltered from the Mediterranean sun in tatty tents and makeshift shelters in downtown Beirut, plotting how to proceed with their anti-Syria protest.

There were ideological communists and orthodox Christians, Druze socialists and Shia activists, all preaching a message of unity, while passing round bottles of mineral water to the beat of pop music from CD players.

But they had only to look at the martyrs' statue around which their protest coalesced to see proof of Lebanon's propensity for division. The statue, damaged by shrapnel from the country's long civil war, is now daubed with pictures of Rafik al-Hariri, the former prime minister who dared to stand up to Syria and whose assassination by car bomb on Valentine's Day brought a vast public display of anti-Syria sentiment.

"We are the new generation and we know how to get along together," Ghinwa Allaoui, a 21-year-old Muslim, explained. "I have friends who are Maronites and friends who are Druze and we all see ourselves as Lebanese before anything else - at this time that is what is important."

A few Lebanese police carrying AK47s looked on, with little interest.

The Cedar Revolution, named after the elegant national tree which stands at the centre of the Lebanese flag, had clearly lost some of its fizz after the intoxicating moment on Monday when the pro-Syrian government of Prime Minister Omar Karami resigned.

"That was a great moment but the job is not finished," said Richard Bou Bashir, a 21-year-old student. "I know Syria has said it will remove its troops from Lebanon, but we have heard such promises before and we need to keep up our protest until Syria has gone for good."

These were scenes the Arab world's autocratic regimes have dreaded - and through the power of satellite television such action could catch on fast - peaceful, enormous crowds carrying flags and flowers bringing down a government.

What happened in Lebanon this week, analysts say, is the beginning of a new era in the Middle East, in which popular demand pushes the momentum for democracy and the people can no longer be disregarded.

Television stations broadcast Beirut's protests live across the Middle East, with the dramatic images of Lebanese youths wearing red-and-white scarves and waving the country's red, white and green flag as they handed out white roses to troops who had been ordered to block them. Inevitably, it raised the question among many spectators: What about here? "I wish flowers were handed out in Yemen," said Ahmed Murtada, a worker in the Yemeni capital of Sana'a. "But here, tanks would prevail."

Newspapers in Saudi Arabia and Egypt - authoritarian nations where the state heavily influences the press - did not shy away from showing the protests. But in Syria the state-controlled media were largely silent. State television aired none of the footage that the few Syrians with satellite dishes could see with a flick of the channel.

ISRAEL watched the groundswell of protest with great anticipation, with foreign minister Silvan Shalom expressing hope that a truly sovereign Lebanon would soon sign a peace deal with the Jewish state. Despite a long history of meddling in Lebanese affairs, this time Israel is staying on the sidelines.

These are, as United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice put it, momentous times in the Middle East. As people power was bringing down a puppet Government in Beirut, the international community at a Middle East summit in London was committing US$2.1 billion ($2.9 billion) to support the Palestinian regime of Mahmoud Abbas. And Israel continued with its planned withdrawal from the Gaza strip.

However history comes to view the events in Beirut, the popular uprising's implications are clear. Syria's troops and army intelligence service must leave Lebanon. Everyone is waiting to see if a caretaker government will care for Lebanon or for Syria, whose protege General Emile Lahoud is now the lonely man in the capital Baabda presidential palace in the hills above Beirut.

Outside Beirut, the opposition's older generation are plotting how to ensure Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fulfils his promise to withdraw all troops from Lebanon within "a few months". But in a country with 26 political parties and four large religious factions, the process of cobbling together a workable government is elusive.

In theory, the country's constitution, adopted after the end of the 1975-1990 civil war, demands the Karami Government remains in power until a replacement is found.

The political crisis deepened when pro-Syrians called for the formation of a government of national unity, ignoring a list of tough conditions set by the opposition for the future of the country.

But as Bashar flew to Riyadh in search of a face-saving deal, key allies Saudi Arabia and Russia bluntly told him to withdraw his troops.

The Lebanese opposition earlier demanded that Syrian troops and intelligence agents must leave their country and Syrian-backed Lebanese security chiefs resign.

Such open opposition to Syria's role would have been unheard a few years ago, when Damascus' grip was tighter and such opinions would have meant jail.

It was believed that making disparaging comments in public could have been overheard by Syria's loathed security services, who could arrest or question Lebanese at will.

The stirring events in Lebanon are too young yet to have acquired a name that sticks. The US State Department is said to have come up with the Cedar Revolution tag. The Lebanese themselves are calling it their "independence uprising".

Seeing the wonderful flowering of righteous anger, it is tempting to think of it as the Beirut Spring, but that doesn't fit either. Spring, in the context of political upheavals, tends to mean a brief period of freedom before the tanks roll in. And unless Bashar is even more inept than his actions suggest, such action is unlikely.

The nearest parallel is not the democratic revolutions of the Ukraine or Eastern Europe, but the anti-IRA demonstrations in Belfast. There you had a situation - in that case the continued oppression of IRA gangs, in the Syrian case the continued occupation of Lebanon by Syrian troops - which was causing increasing upset among the local community but to which the wider world was turning a blind eye until a murder finally drove the populace on to the streets.

Hariri's assassination, just like the killing of Robert McCartney in Belfast, was the straw that broke the back of citizen tolerance and left the Syrian Government hopelessly trying to catch up and regain the confidence of the community they had taken for granted for so long.

The assassination lifted the lid on bottled-up hate and opposition toward the country's larger, powerful neighbour and the local politicians supporting it. Following the blast that killed Hariri and 16 others, crowds gathered around his grave chanting "Syria out".

After the resignation of Karami's Government, many Lebanese believe an end to Syria's influence could be next.

Bashar's offer to pull out troops should have been made as soon as he succeeded his father as Syrian president four years ago. The Syrians sent troops into Lebanon to help to bring order to a country torn apart by civil war. Once that war was well over and, even more, once the Israelis had withdrawn from southern Lebanon in 2000, there was no reason to keep them there other than as a means of keeping control of Lebanese affairs.

Now it just looks - as with the IRA - as if it is ungraciously giving in to pressure.

Right now it suits everyone to have a go at Syria. The Israelis and Palestinians have an interest in blaming it for the recent bombing in Israel because any other interpretation could upset the new Abbas-Sharon rapprochement. United States and British forces in Iraq like to blame it for the violence there, because that is a lot easier than trying to come to terms with an insurgency that is homegrown.

The reality is rather different. Syria is a problem not because it is strong but because it is weak. The young Bashar's hold on power, and his control of the security forces, is tenuous.

UNTIL his death five years ago, Assad senior treated the country as the Syrian province he sincerely believed it to be. Underneath the thin coat of Western polish acquired during his time studying ophthamology in London, his son thinks the same. But he lacks the black skills his dad brought to the job.

Since the failure of the Israeli peace talks with his father, Damascus has withdrawn in on itself, nervous of its neighbours, frightened of the Americans and uncertain where to turn. So it faces all directions, and allows many groups within its borders, for fear of which way the future will turn.

Yet there is a real desire for change there, particularly economically, and a genuine reform constituency around the new president. The appetite for peace with Israel remains, albeit with a fiercely nationalistic determination to see all its land taken in 1967 returned. There is no great appetite outside certain parts of the security and armed forces for control of Lebanon.

Geography and history mean that Syria will always have a role in Lebanon, a fact that even the demonstrators recognise. But Assad must learn the difference between being a good neighbour and a bullying big brother.

The Middle East is changing and, unless Syria moves with it, there are rough times ahead. Most worryingly for Bashar, there is some real hope of peace in Palestine. The conflict has been used by father and son to justify their repressive rule, claiming that no progress is possible while it remains unresolved. The dynasty claims its presence in Lebanon is necessary to keep the peace and maintain the country's integrity. Syria was invited into Lebanon to secure peace among the warring factions. Remove the Syrians and there is no guarantee they won't tear the country apart again.

But if anywhere is ripe for true democracy in the Middle East it is Lebanon. Even at the height of the civil war, when hatred was at its deepest, the combatants always said that, whatever their faith, Maronite, Muslim or Druse, they were first and foremost Lebanese. The dreadful memory of the war still haunts the Lebanese. Judging by the fact that not a shot has been fired in the present crisis, it seems that use of violence as the natural extension of politics has been bled out of them. The lesson of Monday's demonstrations is that the limits of cynicism have been reached.

The people's fury will not be soothed with the sort of feints and tricks at which Syria and its Lebanese stooges excel - and Bashar's decision to pull out troops suggests he recognises that fact, too.

It is Syria's presence that is the greatest threat to peace and stability. Every day it remains in Lebanon is a day too long. Searching for a way to describe Monday's epic events, a supporter of Hariri said: "Those who killed him don't know what they accomplished. They broke the fear barrier."

- Independent