Assad announced that he is pulling back Syrian troops to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. This entry from The Dream of Lebanon explains the stated reason for staying in Bekaa:
Assad Withdraws 12,000 Troops, Keeping 3,000 Behind as Bekaa Garrison
President Assad is expected to announce a major redeployment of the Syrian army in Lebanon in a speech at Syria’s People’s Council, or parliament, on Saturday, pulling out some 12,000 troops by March 23 and leaving behind a 3,000-strong garrison in the Bekaa Valley, the Beirut media reports.
Assad believes the March 23 deadline would enable him to fend off a potential storm at the Arab summit conference set for the same day in Algiers against Syria’s 28-year-old breath-choking tutelage over Lebanon, media reports said.
The alibi for retaining the Bekaa garrison, complete with four mountaintop early warning systems, is to guard against an Israeli army flank attack on Damascus via Lebanon. Some Lebanese opposition leaders may go along with the Bekaa concept provided Syria’s secret services are withdrawn altogether from every inch of Lebanon, reports said.
The local media is focusing enormous interest on the Assad speech Saturday afternoon, wondering whether he would make any reference to the withdrawal of secret service centers that are abundant in Beirut and other major Lebanese cities.
An Nahar said in a terse remark Saturday that residents of the Upper Metn district spotted movements by the Syrian troops stationed in the region. It did not elaborate.
The Turkish Weekly has a couple of quotations from Assad’s speech:
Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad addressed the Syrian parliament this evening. As expected he vowed a `gradual withdrawal` but no timetable for the withdrawal was given.
Assad : `We have to act positively to the stability of Lebanon`
Assad defended the role of Syria for stability, and emphasized that the Syria has no interest in Lebanon. Syria’s presence in Lebanon is just for the stability of the Lebanon and the region.
Assad says forces will withdraw to Bekaa Valley in E. Lebanon. He claimed they were already pulled back troops in 1999 when there was
no pressure at all.Assad: “We should not stay one day if consensus asks us to leave”
When I first heard that Syria was pulling out of Lebanon, I knew that Syria would still try to set up a puppet government, so there was a lot that would have to happen before Lebanon was free. But I also had a tangential thought that a pull-out might allow the US or some other reliable investigators to search the Bekaa Valley to see what the Iraqis may have shipped there before the Iraqi War. One of the claims that was made before the Iraqi War by the sometimes unreliable Debka.com was that WMDs were shipped to Syria. After the War, both US and coalition officials said that they tracked shipments to Syria, but could not know whether there were any WMDs in them.
For example, Coalition WMD inspector David Kay told the Telegraph on Jan. 24, 2004:
“We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons. But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam’s WMD program. Precisely what went to Syria and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved.
Debka.com reported that one of the sites where WMDs were buried was the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon:
Indeed the US administration and its intelligence agencies, as well as Dr Kay, were all provided with Syrian maps marked with the coordinates of the secret weapons storage sites. The largest one is located at Qaratshuk at the heart of a desolate and unfrequented region edged with marshes, south of the Syrian town of Al Qamishli near the place where the Iraqi, Syrian and Turkish frontiers converge; smaller quantities are hidden in the vast plain between Al Qamishli and Az Zawr, and a third is under the ground of the Lebanese Beqaa Valley on the Syrian border.
Since the Syrian pullback is to the Bekaa Valley, I guess the Syrians will have a chance to cover their tracks (if their tracks need covering). We know that the WMDs existed in Iraq in 1998 because inspectors found them, and we know with reasonable certainty that there were no major stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq when the war started because we found only a few isolated WMDs in Iraq after the war. What we may never know is when they were removed or — what is more likely — destroyed.
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