����ֱ��

Returning to Beirut from a trip to Damascus, I recalled what I once heard: “Damascus and Baghdad paid in recent decades the price of reckless decisions, while Beirut paid the price of a lack of ability to take decisions.”

It has been 15 years since I last took this road, and I remember the difficulties these capitals had to endure. Time is a master in changing fates. Damascus has changed. We used to visit it before it started to drown in its own blood. It was normal at the time for a visiting journalist to meet the man who made the decisions. That person was President Bashar Assad and he ruled the country with no other partner or aide. At the time, Assad was running Lebanon — before Rafik Hariri’s assassination — and partnering with Iran in destabilizing Iraq, which was under US occupation following Saddam Hussein’s ouster in 2003.

The Syria I visited on this trip was nothing short of exhausted. Countless victims, an economy in ruin, fear of its potential division and fear of its remaining united. The fate of every Arab is tied to that of Syria. Its veins stretch across the region and, through these veins, fire rages or stability reigns. I recalled a number of instances in which dangerous decisions were taken in dangerous games.

Late Iraqi President Jalal Talabani once told me he was worried about Syria. He went on and on praising the wisdom of Hafez Assad as a way to avoid directly criticizing his son. He revealed that he had sent a message to Bashar through his senior adviser, Fakhri Karim. In it, he advised Assad to stop facilitating the entry of extremists into Iraq, because they may be heading to Iraq from Syria for now, but one day they may return. And sure enough, Damascus would in a few years have a taste of what Baghdad experienced. The developments proved that Bashar paid little heed to Talabani’s advice.

How difficult it must have been for an adviser to not even dare to make Mr. President aware of the dangers of his decisions

Ghassan Charbel

At the time, some believed that Assad’s best course of action after the US invasion of Iraq was to speed up internal reforms and mend his country’s international ties, especially with the West. But he ended up heading in the opposite direction. They believed that Assad took a decision that Syria’s composition could not support for long — and that was joining Iran’s regional agenda.

The following years proved that Assad’s choice went against the sentiments of the majority of the Syrian people, especially after he opted to confront the popular uprising with bloody suppression. Soon after, the militias of the so-called Axis of Resistance flooded the country to prop up his regime through an Iranian-Russian understanding.

How difficult it must have been for an adviser to not even dare to make Mr. President aware of the dangers of his decisions. One day, I booked a meeting with Assad. I arrived a day earlier and decided to pay a courtesy visit to then-Foreign Minister Walid Muallem. We discussed Syria’s ties with the Arab world and I told him that the president did not need to escalate against Arab countries that were always generous with their support.

Muallem replied: “You are meeting him tomorrow, so why don’t you tell him that yourself?” I told him: “I am a journalist. I have questions and don’t hand out messages or advice. Why don’t you bring up the issue yourself since you are the foreign minister?” Muallem became flustered — he knew the walls had ears. In almost a whisper, he told me: “You can tell him that, but I cannot.” That was a very dangerous statement. Was he incapable of giving out a piece of advice because he did not come from the same community as the president?

Was he incapable of giving out a piece of advice because he did not come from the same community as the president?

Ghassan Charbel

Dr. Nadim Al-Yassine was the chief of protocol at the Iraqi presidency during the invasion of Kuwait. Following that period, he moved to Amman with his memories and without abandoning his admiration of Saddam. I once paid him a visit to discuss his time working for Saddam. He made statements similar to Muallem’s. Al-Yassine did not have the right to give advice, he didn’t even dare.

But he was friends with Tariq Aziz, deputy prime minister, foreign minister and member of the Revolutionary Command Council and the Regional Command of the Iraqi Branch of the Baath Party. Al-Yassine recalled how he had dinner with Aziz after the latter returned from a meeting of the regional command, during which the decision to annex Kuwait was taken. Aziz confided that he was very worried about the decision and the dangers it would create. He said he tried to bring them up at the meeting, but the attendees glared at him as though he were a traitor. They quickly backed the decision with Saddam in attendance.

There was another decision whose dimensions and fallout Saddam would not be able to foresee. He allowed then-chief of intelligence Farouk Hijazi to carry out a risky mission. He sent him to Sudan to meet a man called Osama bin Laden. Sudanese Islamist leader Dr. Hassan Al-Turabi played a decisive role in convincing the Al-Qaeda leader to meet Saddam’s envoy. They talked for three hours but failed to reach an understanding, as Saddam and Bin Laden harbored very different views, which their shared enmity of the US could not overcome.

The visit did, however, lead to accusations that Saddam was collaborating with Al-Qaeda. It was the same accusation that US President George W. Bush used to justify the invasion of Iraq. This is what happens when Mr. President refuses to involve advisers in decision-making or when advisers dare not anger Mr. President, fearing his terrible rage.

Our countries now lie in ruin because of reckless decisions. There is no room for advisers when Mr. President is in power. There can only be room for officials who applaud his moves. The capitals are weary and need decades to erase the outcomes of the reckless decisions.

The suffering in Beirut is different, however. It has never known a president who is a leader. The Lebanese state has become broken and the powerful share decision-making, playing the most dangerous of games and leading the country to ruin.

As I made my way back from Damascus, a constant humming and buzzing took me out of my memories. It was the humiliating and provocative sound of an Israeli drone that breaches skies in blatant violation of international laws. The drone hovers and observes in search of a victim. The drone now flies over the route that was used by Qassem Soleimani and his rocket shipments. How times have changed.

• Ghassan Charbel is editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. X: @GhasanCharbel

This article first appeared in Asharq Al-Awsat.