Litvinenko and Gemayel:Assassinations and "Realism"
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[ Subject: Litvinenko and Gemayel:Assassinations and "Realism" ]
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Litvinenko and Gemayel:
Assassinations and "Realism"
by Russell Berman
The assassinations of Pierre Gemayel, the Lebanese Minister of
Industry, and Alexander Litvinenko, the former Lieutenant Colonel in
the Russian secret police who had found refuge in the West, nearly
coincided. Gemayel was gunned down in Beirut on November 21, and
Litvinenko succumbed to poisoning by the rare radioactive material
polonium on November 23 in a London hospital. Syria and its agents are
the primary suspects for the former: killing Gemayel was an obvious
attempt to block the investigation into the earlier assassination of
Rafik al-Hariri, while also bringing Lebanon one step further toward a
recolonization in which Hezbollah would play the role previously
reserved for the Syrian army. Meanwhile, there is hardly any doubt that
the Kremlin ordered the Litvinenko murder: Litvinenko had become an
outspoken critic of the Putin regime. In particular he had accused the
Russian government of carrying out the apartment house bombings in
Moscow in 1999, which served as a pretext for the war in Chechnya.
What links the two events? We know that Russia had been dragging its
feet in the United Nations on the Hariri tribunal and would have
preferred to stop it there. In fact, that process is by no means over,
and there will still be plenty of opportunity for Kremlin mischief to
protect the culprits in Damascus who ordered the killings in
Beirut-unless of course Hezbollah finishes that job first and stops
the investigation on its own.
Or the investigation may end up as a bargaining chip in the prospects
for the "realists," who still have some wind in their sails from the US
elections. This scenario depends on the dubious hypothesis that by
"talking" with Syria and giving Assad something-a pass on
Hariri-Syria will somehow play a role in "solving" Iraq.
This is why the call in the New York Times, for all of its realism, is
deeply unrealistic:
This page believes that the United States needs to begin a dialogue
with Syria, about Iraq and regional peace. But President Bashar
al-Assad needs to understand that neither the tribunal nor Lebanon's
independence will ever be on the bargaining table. Europe, Russia and
all of Syria's neighbors need to join Washington in delivering that
message.
The sentiments are great, and we may still be lead down the road to
Damascus, but the price will be democracy in Lebanon, and the Hariri
tribunal.
Moreover, the expectation is extraordinarily na?ve that Russia will
protect the legitimacy of an investigation into a political
assassination in Beirut at the same time that it is engaged in similar
political assassinations in London. The "realists" at the NYT, driven
by a fundamentalist fervor to distinguish themselves from the
democratizing agenda of the administration, repeatedly refuse to
acknowledge the violence current in an embattled world. Instead they
make a mantra of "multilateralism," which means making foreign policy
contingent on the Security Council vetoes of a Russia that kills its
critics.
But the lessons of this past week of the double murders are more
profound and more urgent than this critique of the obvious illusions of
realism. The murders tell us about the reality of political struggle
today and the nature of the enemies. The political cultures that
assassinated Gemayel and Litvinenko are cut from the same cloth; their
actions are reminiscent of the practices of the totalitarian world of
the Cold War, stripped of its old Marxist ideology but thoroughly loyal
to the core legacy of illiberalism. Both killings were attacks on
democracy and the rule of law (which is why so much in Beirut revolves
around the future of the tribunal). The contempt for the lives of their
political opponents is a good clue to the sort of society the culprits
would like to institute.
Only the technology differs. Syrian proxies ambushed Gemayel in a
Christian neighborhood, sending the message that they are prepared to
risk a new civil war. Their goal was also terroristic intimidation. The
Kremlin, in contrast, is beyond that blatant populism, working instead
with the greater subtlety of espionage. But one element was not subtle
at all and doubtlessly calculated to create headlines: the use of
radioactivity to carry out a murder in the heart of a western
metropolis. The Litvinenko killing was the first dirty bomb.
Some useful context: the history of assassinations in Beirut and the
poisonous legacy of the KGB:
>From the Daily Star in Beirut, of November 21:
Here is a chronology of political killings and attacks since Rafik
al-Hariri's death in February 2005.
Feb. 14 - Former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri and 22 others are
killed by truck bomb in Beirut. Top aide former economy minister and
legislator Basil Fuleihan badly burnt in attack and dies in hospital
two months later.
June 2 - Samir Kassir, journalist opposed to Syria's role in Lebanon,
is killed in Beirut by bomb in his car.
June 21 - Former Communist Party leader and critic of Syria George Hawi
is killed in Beirut by bomb in his car.
July 12 - Car bomb wounds caretaker Defense Minister Elias al-Murr and
kills one person in Christian area north of Beirut.
Sept. 25 - May Chidiac, a Christian television journalist critical of
Syria, is seriously wounded by bomb in her car.
Dec. 12 - Gebran Tueni, staunchly anti-Syrian member of parliament and
Lebanese newspaper magnate is killed by a car bomb in Beirut. An
unknown group, "Strugglers for the Unity and Freedom of the Levant,"
claims responsibility.
Feb. 14, 2006 - At least half a million Lebanese pack central Beirut, a
year after the killing of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.
Nov. 21 - Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel is killed by gunmen as his
convoy drives through the Christian Sin el-Fil neighborhood of Beirut.
>From an article of November 25, signed by Marie J?go, Moscow
correspondent for Le Monde, entitled "The Poisons of the Kremlin":
Coming down with a viral infection in early November, Colonel
Litvinenko, 43, was hospitalized seven days later, because his
condition continued to worsen. He lost his hair, his liver and bone
marrow cease functioning, and he can no longer digest food. Within two
weeks, the metabolism of this boyish-looking man, previously in perfect
health, undergoes an extraordinary decline.
Scotland Yard, whose antiterrorist section has been charged with the
investigation, spoke of an 'apparently deliberate poisoning' on
November 20. [ . . . ]
Produced in very small quantities (allegedly about 100 grams per year),
polonium 201 is not available on the open market. The choice of this
material indicates that the perpetrators of the assassination are not
amateurs. "These people had plenty of resources," explained Dr. Andrea
Sella, Professor of Chemistry at the University College of London,
speaking to Reuters.
Terrorism has gone nuclear. And the trail leads back to Cold War
practices. Le Monde continues:
"The FSB (Russian Secret Police) hates traitors," [ . . . ] insists
General Oleg Kaluginin, who has found asylum in the US. He knows what
he's talking about. Head of Russian counter-espionage in the 1970s, he
provided the Bulgarian Special Services with the poison (ricin) which
caused the death of the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in 1978.
A ferocious opponents of Todor Zhukov, the Bulgarian Communist leader,
Markov, who had fled to London where he worked for the BBC, did not
moderate his criticisms of the regime. One October day in 1978, on his
way to work, he was bumped by a pedestrian who stuck the tip of an
umbrella in his leg. He died a few days later. [ . . . ]
Curare, ricin, strychnine-from Lenin to Brezhnev various poisons have
been used by the soviet secret services, which never hesitated to
persecute "traitors," dissidents and "enemies of the people" on the
territory of the USSR and abroad. With the collapse of the USSR in
1991, the KGB laboratory for toxicology Nr. 12 seemed to fall into
forgetfulness. This however was not the case. In his book published in
2002, after arriving in Britain, Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within
(with Yuri Felshtinsky), Litvinenko asserts that the FSB, successor to
the KGB, has reactivated its "laboratory of poisons."
The death on March 19, 2002, in the mountains of Chechnya, of the
Jordanian Islamist Khttab, a jihadi companion of the Chechen terrorist
Khamil Basseav, proves him right. The Jordanian "Emir" received a
poisoned letter. The Minister of Defense celebrated the "liquidation";
the FSB referred to a "special operation," without elaborating on the
means, due to the need for secrecy. [ . . . ]
The article goes on to discuss Litvinenko's allegations about the role
of the FSB in the Moscow apartment house bombings as well as the fate
of Juri Chekochikin, a journalist for Novaya Gazeta and a deputy to the
Duma, involved in the investigation of the bombings. On June 16, 2003,
at the Duma, he complained of headaches; a week later he was
hospitalized. Le Monde writes:
Loss of hair, premature ageing, loss of white blood cells, cardiac
problems: according to the description given by his relatives, his
condition was very similar to Litvinenko's. He died on July 3.
(The medical records are secret, and no investigation has been
undertaken.)
Le Monde concludes:
There seems to be a veritable curse pursuing anyone interested in the
assassinations of 1999 [the more than 300 dead in the bombings]. A few
months before Juri Checkochikin, his colleague, the liberal deputy
Sergei Juchenkov, 52, a member of the same Duma investigatory
committee, was shot and killed in front of his Moscow how.