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Walid Jumblatt - the most fierce liberal in Lebanon
By Michael J. TottenI met the wizened Druze warlord and Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt during Hezbollahs ongoing slow-motion putsch to topple Lebanons government. No other high-profile March 14 leader matches Jumblatts fierce opposition to Syrias Assad regime, its Iranian patron, and its Hezbollah proxy militia. He spends most of his time in his castle at Mukhtara high above Beirut in the Chouf mountains, but he took time out between meeting members of the Socialist International at his house in the capital to meet me for coffee in his salon. Jumblatts history with the imperial Baath government is a long and twisting one. His father Kamal was assassinated by Syrian agents during the civil war in 1977. The details of the assassination are shrouded in mystery even today. In the most common version Baath-aligned terrorists in the Syrian Social Nationalist Party pulled the trigger. Another (unreliable) version of the story goes like this, as told to me by a young Druze friend while we stood on the murder site in the Chouf: Kamal Jumblatt was ambushed on the forested road by two Palestinian gunmen. The Palestinian hit men reported to Damascus after the deed was finished. Two Syrian exterminators then shot Assads Palestinian agents and buried them in the desert. The two Syrian hit men were then murdered by yet two more Syrian hit men, all the better to cover the tracks of original and cover-up crimes. I dont know what actually happened. Syrias decades-long assassination and terrorist war in and against Lebanon has always been fought, serial killer style, from the shadows. Diabolical theories about the precise methods of Syrian terrorism serve Syrian interests just as much as the murders themselves serve Syrian interests... Long, worthwhile interview with Wally. Lotsa good insight on the Leb-Syria-Iran nexus. Posted by: Fred 2007-02-15 |
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