Syrian instincts
Here's an article I published in today's Daily Star on Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq Sharaa's sinister comment last weekend that American pressures to force Syria to disarm Hizbullah would “awaken [Lebanon’s] confessional and religious instincts.”

The most disturbing word ­Sharaa used, I wrote, was “'instinct'­, as if the Lebanese were instinctually awaiting the moment they could resume murdering one another, after years chafing under the unsettling burden of a 13-year peace."

It has long been a part of the Syrian political dicourse to argue that Syria alone stands between peace and carnage in Lebanon. Those of us who have seen how the Syrians operate here know better. Of course they have an advantage over us, as the Syrians don't know anything about confessional and religious instincts. Nothing at all.