Syria fires on a fickle border

Nasri Khoury, the long-serving head of the Lebanese-Syrian Higher Council, may have been a tad hasty in stating last month that the Syrian army “has not made any incursions onto Lebanese territory” and that the town of Arsal in the eastern Bekaa might in fact be in Syria rather than Lebanon. First of all, despite the declared withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon in April 2005, there remains a large number of Syrian troops in the hills south of Deir Al Ashayer and east of Kfar Qouk in the district of Western Bekaa. The locations of these Syrian military positions are clearly visible on Google Earth. The United Nations team charged with confirming the withdrawal of Syrian troops noted in its May 2005 report that there was a discrepancy over the delineation of the Lebanon-Syria border south of Deir Al Ashayer. “As a result, the team was unable to verify