Syria betrayed by one of its own

Former Syrian vice-president Abdul-Halim Khaddam, who was forced to resign his post last summer, has thrown a spoke into the wheel of Syria's professed innocence vis-à-vis the assassination of Rafik Hariri.

During an interview on Al Arabiya last Friday, Khaddam blasted the Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, accusing him of making threats against Hariri prior to the former Lebanese prime minister's demise.

In response, Khaddam was immediately expelled from the ruling Baath Party while shocked Syrian parliamentarians have called on the government to indict the self-exiled vice-president on grounds of treason and corruption.

"You don't deserve to be a Syrian," said one. "You can go to hell because no Syrian can ever forgive you who hoped to return to your country one day on an American tank."

On the other hand, those who championed the UN-sponsored Mehlis report are very happy. The Mehlis report was generally considered to be deeply flawed, especially since the investigation's leading witness against the Syrian government was later to retract his story on television.

The question now is this. Just how seriously should Khaddam's accusations be taken?

Let's take Khaddam's veracity for starters. When asked about Syria's role in Hariri's death last February, the Israeli daily Ha'aretz quoted Khaddam as saying, "The Israelis have assassinated an entire people [the Palestinians] and an entire region. So we should expect the worst from them."

Now bear in mind that by this time if we believe Khaddam's recent revelations he knew of Bashar Al Assad's threats, but chose to blame the Israelis, which says little for his credibility. Khaddam was, indeed, close friends with Hariri. But could that friendship have inspired such devotion that Khaddam would burn his bridges with his own country and risk being labelled a "Judas" among his former friends and colleagues?

Revenge against the Syrian president could be a possible motive when one bears in mind that Khaddam was the only senior government official to have remained in office since March 1963 when the Baathists took over the country. His rise was phenomenal. In 1968, he was appointed governor of Damascus, and when his longtime friend Hafez Al Assad grabbed power in 1970, he was promoted to deputy prime minister before taking over the foreign affairs portfolio.

Architect

In 1976, it was Khaddam who proposed that Syria should intervene militarily in Lebanon's civil war and he was later dubbed the architect of the Syrian occupation of that country.

For five weeks in 2000 following the death of Hafez Al Assad, Khaddam tasted power as the acting president. In July of that year, he relinquished his office to Al Assad's heir, retaining the vice-presidency. Khaddam's ousting after such a long and illustrious career by someone he probably once bounced on his knee could not have sat well with the veteran politician.

Lastly, one might ask whether Khaddam has received some kind of deal from Syria's Western protagonists. Here there are parallels with Iraq.

Take Ahmad Chalabi, for instance, who actually did ride into Iraq protected by US marines. Like Khaddam, who was the architect of Syria's intervention in Lebanon, Chalabi, is considered to be one of the chief architects of the US invasion of his own country via his links with Defence Minister Donald Rumsfeld and neo-con ideologue Richard Perle.

To this end, Chalabi put about the Iraqi WMD myth, using disgraced former New York Times reporter Judith Miller to spread the word.

Never mind that Chalabi, once a CIA asset, had been indicted in Jordan for embezzling his own bank, accused of spying for the Iranians and of counterfeiting Iraqi dinars, Chalabi was at one time slated to become president of Iraq. Last week he was handed the oil ministry as a consolation prize.

Another former CIA asset Iraq's ex-interim president Eyad Allawi, is another turncoat, who was welcomed with open arms by Downing Street, which conveniently forgot his own Baathist antecedents while anointing him for the top chair. The Iraqi voters had other ideas.

Knew nothing

Then there was Khidir Hamza, an Iraqi scientist, who raised the ante concerning Iraqi WMD by writing the book Saddam's Bombmaker: the Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons. In fact, although Khadir had spent 10 years with the programme, he knew nothing of the its status in the run-up to the 2003 invasion and even less about Iraq's biological weapons. Yet, he was celebrated as some kind of oracle.

One of Hamza's former colleagues Emad Khadduri says this of Hamza. "? he wallowed in Iraq in nice Mercedes cars while attending scientific conventions with lavish stipends. He kept deluding himself, as he naively mentions in his book, that the International Atomic Energy Agency or the CIA would contact him, and magically whisk him out of Iraq, as if on a flying carpet."

The point is this. Whistleblowers, especially those who flee their country only to denigrate it on the international arena, generally have an angle. Sometimes sanctuary, often riches and occasionally power, and they are usually willing to use downright lies and exaggerations to feather their own nests.

Who knows! Khaddam could be on the line. Then again, he could equally be a Syrian version of Chalabi. In the meantime, the UN investigators and the international community would do well to keep an open mind and take everything he says with a fistful of salt.

Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She can be contacted at lheard@gulfnews.com