Other Voices: Michael Young

'Other Voices' is a periodic Hot Zone feature in which we highlight the commentary of local journalists working in a region Kevin Sites is covering.

As opinion page editor of Lebanon's Daily Star, a premiere English-language newspaper in the Middle East, Michael Young has followed one of the most turbulent years in Lebanon's history from the center of the storm: Beirut.

The assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February sparked civil outcry and international pressure that led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. Evidence of Syrian involvement in the killing is mounting as a

United Nations investigation led by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis continues.

But the politically-motivated attacks haven't stopped with Hariri. Thirteen other journalists and politicians, mostly anti-Syrian, have been killed, and 14 others were injured in explosions since Hariri's death.

For Young, it has meant the loss of friends and colleagues. On Dec. 12, 

Syria critic Gibran Tueni, a lawmaker and journalist for prominent Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar, was killed in a car bombing as he drove to work.

In the following article, published a day after Tueni's murder, Young reflects on the implications.

Young is also a contributing editor of Reason magazine, and has published articles in western newspapers such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. He also appears as a commentator on various radio and television stations, such as CNN, the BBC and NPR.

This article originally appeared in the Daily Star Dec. 13, 2005. These views are not necessarily the views of Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone or Yahoo!, and their publication here does not represent an endorsement.

-Hot Zone producer Robert Padavick 

Defeat Them With the Truth
By Michael Young

It seems only yesterday that I watched as a stunned Gibran Tueni looked down at the crumbled body of journalist Samir Kassir, shortly after the latter's assassination in his car on an Achrafieh street. Perhaps it was his own death that Tueni saw foretold; or more likely he was trying to come to grips with what was then the still-novel happening of seeing journalists and politicians butchered at the start of their working day.

An-Nahar has paid too high a price for its criticism of the Syrian regime. Tueni himself only recently returned from a spell in Paris, well aware of the dangers to his life. It is to his considerable credit that he accepted the risk of an uncertain homecoming, though how desirable, in hindsight, it would have been for him to spend his days working out of his home - isolated, but safe from the death squads dispatched to liquidate him.

That Tueni's death was linked to the Mehlis inquiry, and reports that the German investigator would name Syrian suspects in his latest report, cannot be doubted. At the least this murder must be dealt with in a different way by the international community, because the United Nations investigation will take many more months - time enough to kill many more people. What happened on Monday was a finger in the eye of the Security Council, and few could miss that the road on which Tueni was killed is essentially the same one used on a regular basis by UN investigators descending to Beirut from their Monteverde redoubt.

In killing Tueni, the murderers hoped to strike a mortal blow at Lebanon's most prestigious newspaper. For them, the real danger has always been independent thought - against which they can only muster media that threaten, crowds that threaten, and security services that best them both by implementing the threats. Ideas are absent from their endeavors; human development is absent; amelioration is absent; self-determination, freedom, imagination are all absent, crushed by a regime that can only warn that if it goes down, the region will go down with it.

There are those who cretinously swallow that contention hook, line and sinker; who argue that the gentlemen in Damascus must be left alone, maintained, because their departure might indeed bring disorder. That incredible interpretation somehow assures us that Gibran Tueni was, in the end, a martyr to order. A remarkable order it is, then, the very same that protected

Saddam Hussein until 2003, and that today props up the authority of a cornucopia of greater and lesser criminals, from Nouakchott to Sanaa, wardens all of what (Gibran's father) Ghassan Tueni has called "the great Arab prison."

What does one do now? At the Security Council, the outrage must be used to convince the Russians and Chinese that what they are abetting, by opposing sanctions in the UN investigation, is more death. While an expansion of the investigation to cover all assassinations since that of Rafik Hariri seems unlikely, it's time for the council to make a clear statement on who it believes is responsible. The Lebanese security services have already blamed individuals allegedly linked to the Syrian intelligence services, and there seems no reason why the Siniora government should not once again highlight that evidence.

But isn't that the real problem? There is still little courage in Beirut. It took a lesser-known magistrate to sign the judicial order looking into the mass grave found in Anjar, most of his more senior colleagues not daring to do so. One very much suspects that somewhere in Tueni's investigation, someone will get cold feet and just let the matter slide. That's what happened with Marwan Hamadeh, Samir Kassir and George Hawi, lest we forget. Already, some politicians are mouthing banal generalities. Yesterday, for example, Michel Aoun showed remarkable reluctance in expressing his real hunch of who had killed his onetime devotee.

A rapid sign of daring would be for Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to compel the government to endorse an international tribunal in the Hariri case as soon as possible. If Hizbullah opposes the measure and threatens to withdraw from the session, or from the government, then the ministers must go ahead and vote anyway. The majority will win. A Lebanese consensus should not mean giving a minority the right of veto when it means defending against state-sponsored terrorism. The message on a tribunal will have a strong impact in New York, where the Security Council must know Lebanon is willing to partly internationalize its security, since it has been left with no other choice.

None of this will bring Gibran Tueni back, nor his charm, elegance and perpetual dissent. Nothing will reassure us that the venerable An-Nahar can survive this latest crime. Ghassan Tueni will soon have to bury another child, the most heartbreaking duty of all. But deep down it's another wish we have: that the Tuenis, Ghassan but also Gibran's widow and children, will stick to their guns and demand that the truth come out. At the end of the day, his murderers remain most afraid of one thing: the truth.

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