Hezbollah's next steps unclear as bomb revives fears in Dahiyeh

[Originally posted at NOW]

Iraq situation seen as potential factor in attack that reveals limits of Hezbollah’s and security forces’ power.

BIR AL-ABED, Lebanon: NOW was queuing at a Lebanese army checkpoint at the entrance to Beirut’s southern suburbs when the news broke over the radio Friday morning. A suicide bombing had struck a police checkpoint in Dahr al-Baydar, some 35km away on the road to Damascus, putting an end to a 12-week lull in a series of such deadly attacks to have hit Lebanon since the previous summer. Security forces would begin immediately sealing roads across the country, the radio presenter then said, in light of “information” that a number of other explosives-rigged cars were presently dispersed and ready to blow in “several neighborhoods.”

It was perhaps unsurprising, then, that once inside “Dahiyeh,” as the southern suburbs are collectively known, NOW found the streets emptying quickly as residents made their way indoors. While some of the young men still loitering on the sidewalks in the Bir al-Abed neighborhood put on brave faces, telling NOW the suicide bomb was “nothing,” others admitted to renewed fears that the attacks would once again strike in the heart of Dahiyeh: of 21 vehicle explosions in Lebanon since the outbreak of the Syrian conflict, six have been in Dahiyeh, two in Bir al-Abed itself.

“How’s the situation? Look, here’s how the situation is,” said a jeweler who would only identify himself as Hassan, pointing at live footage of the destruction in Dahr al-Baydar on the television inside his store. “The world powers, America and Russia, are pulling strings” – he made a puppet master gesture – “and we civilians are paying the price.”

“Certainly, the fear is back,” said Hassan’s assistant, who declined to give his name. Even before Friday’s bombing, he told NOW, persistent rumors of attacks – such as an alleged plot to target hospitals in Dahiyeh earlier in the week – had kept many residents’ nerves on edge. “Look at all the shops on this street, they’re offering 50% discounts but still they’re empty, because customers are too scared to come here.”

That alleged hospital plot had reportedly sparked one of the largest deployments of Hezbollah militiamen onto Dahiyeh’s streets in months. Now, after Friday’s attack, residents told NOW they expected further security measures to be taken by the party in the area. NOW saw gunmen wearing the party’s signature black t-shirts standing guard outside several mosques, but beyond that no additional measures were immediately evident.

Indeed, analysts told NOW they did not expect the party to do significantly more than it already is doing – namely, securing Dahiyeh, coordinating with the Lebanese army in attempts to neutralize Al-Qaeda-linked groups both within the country and on the border, and continuing its military intervention in the Syrian war, which the party controversially argues is of benefit to Lebanon’s stability.

“There won’t be much of a new reaction from Hezbollah,” said Ali al-Amin, an analyst and Dahiyeh resident. “Except that, after [the takeover of significant Iraqi territory by Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) jihadists,] the Iraqi Shiite groups fighting alongside Hezbollah will move back to Iraq, and new Hezbollah units will be called to Syria to replace them.” This is consistent with what NOW’s South Lebanon correspondent first reported last week.

Amin added the party will seek to capitalize on the bombing, and the heightened fears it has generated, to further reinforce its retrospective justifications for intervening in Syria. In his most recent remarks, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said “ISIS would be in Beirut now” were it not for Hezbollah’s military offensive.

Other observers believe Friday’s attack signals a new danger deriving from the Iraq situation, suggesting events may be moving beyond Hezbollah’s ability to control them.

“Of course, there will be heightened security,” said Qassem Kassir, another analyst residing in Dahiyeh. “But it’s no longer just about Hezbollah. Today’s explosion didn’t target Hezbollah: it targeted the Internal Security Forces. The [alleged threat against Beirut’s UNESCO building] wasn’t targeting Hezbollah, it was targeting [Amal Movement leader] Nabih Berri. It’s no longer just Hezbollah or the Shiite community that’s at risk. Now everyone is.”

In Kassir’s view, the bomb was intended as a message from ISIS and its affiliates that events in Iraq will have an impact across the entire region.

“It’s as if, after what happened in Iraq, groups everywhere linked to ISIS felt they should do something,” he told NOW.

“Iraq portends more to come, in Dahiyeh and outside Dahiyeh. They will target everyone.”

Myra Abdallah contributed reporting.

Sudden prisoner releases raise suspicions

[Originally posted at NOW]

Some activists allege clandestine political bargain behind the abrupt release of two anti-Hezbollah Shiite clerics with a pro-Hezbollah businessman.

The unexpected release of three high-profile, Hezbollah-linked Lebanese prisoners in the last few weeks has drawn accusations from some activists of political interference in the judiciary.

The three convicts – businessman Saleh Ezzedine and Shiite clerics Sheikh Hassan Mshaymish and Sayyid Muhammad Ali al-Husseini – had officially been serving time for unrelated crimes: financial fraud in Ezzedine’s case, collaboration with Israel in the others’. Yet all were released almost simultaneously, before the ends of their sentences, with the bail amounts in Mshaymish’s and Ezzedine’s cases both being 5,000,000LL ($3,333). The similarities have led some to argue an under-the-table political agreement forced the judges’ hands.

“Obviously there was a kind of deal, which [stipulated] that all three, coming let’s say from two different parts of the political spectrum, were released,” said Lokman Slim, an activist who has long campaigned for the release of Mshaymish and Husseini, whom he argues were imprisoned on false charges at the behest of Hezbollah, to which the clerics are vocally opposed. NOW was unable to obtain comment, at the time of writing, from the courts responsible for the men’s release.

In Slim’s view, the alleged political deal is a result of broader efforts to calm tensions between the various regional actors that wield influence in Lebanon.

“The timing is interesting […] because at least in the cases of Mshaymish and Husseini, the release could have happened several months ago,” he told NOW. “I think it’s very simple to explain. All of them were ‘caught’ [during] the Saudi-Syrian rupture, or divorce. So now that we’re seeing a new honeymoon between, on the one hand, Hezbollah, and on the other, its opponent. It’s a way to get rid of these files which are no longer useful.”

Moreover, the alleged deal represents a net gain for Hezbollah, Slim argues.

“If the price of releasing Ezzedine is only the release of Mshaymish and Husseini, it’s a cheap price.”

Indeed, Ali al-Amin, another longtime campaigner for Mshaymish’s release, told NOW any political strings that were pulled would have been on Ezzedine’s behalf, rather than the clerics’.

“Ezzedine has people he can reach out to. Mshaymish didn’t even get the smallest of his rights.”

Husseini, for his part, agrees his case was politically motivated from start to finish, though he distanced himself from Mshaymish, whom he accused of striking a bargain with Hezbollah to obtain his release.

“I was arrested because of political issues, and I think I was released for the same reasons as well,” Husseini told NOW. “The investigating judge, Riad Abu Ghaida at the military court, decided to stop the trial because [there was no evidence] I cooperated with Israel.”

Instead, Husseini believes, it was his courting of Iranian opposition groups, including the Mujahidin-e Khalq (MEK) organization banned in Iran, that led to his being framed. Iran is the principal state sponsor of Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

“All I did was create an opposition within the Shiite community […] against wilayat al-faqih [a religious and political ideology shared by Hezbollah and the Iranian state],” said Husseini. “I communicated with Iranian opposition Shiites and the MEK, and that was the [reason]. It is in Iran, not in Lebanon or Israel.”

Another aggravating factor was his opposing Hezbollah’s military intervention in Syria, he claimed.

“I also said that Syrian people have a right to determine their politics regarding Bashar al-Assad and we should not interfere in this,” he told NOW. “These three issues – my dealings with Iranian opposition in general, with the MEK in particular, and what I said about Syria – were the reason behind my detention.”

NOW was unable to reach Mshaymish or Ezzedine, or their lawyers, though Mshaymish’s lawyer has previously told NOW that all charges of collaboration made against his client were based on falsified documents. The charges made against Ezzedine, by contrast, have never been disputed.

While corruption at almost all levels of Lebanese state institutions is a poorly-kept secret, specific allegations such as Slim’s are all but impossible to verify. Lawyer and legal expert Marwan Sakr told NOW he found the claims “far-fetched,” adding that it was not uncommon for judges to request the same bail amounts for separate crimes. But with military court proceedings being secretive by nature, few people besides the judges themselves will ever know the facts with certainty.

Who they are

Sheikh Hassan Mshaymish: A Shiite cleric and former member of Hezbollah until the late 1990s, Mshaymish subsequently became an outspoken critic of the party and its wilayat al-faqih ideology. In 2010, he was arrested in Syria on undisclosed charges, a detention criticized by human rights groups including Amnesty International. He was transferred to Lebanon in 2011 and sentenced in 2013 to five years’ imprisonment for collaboration with Israel. He was released in April 2014 for a bail of 5,000,000LL ($3,333).

Saleh Ezzedine: A once highly-regarded Lebanese businessman on warm terms with Hezbollah, Ezzedine became nicknamed “The Lebanese Madoff” after he was found in 2009 to have defrauded investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars through ostensible investment funds that were, in reality, little more than Ponzi schemes. Among his victims were several senior Hezbollah officials. Detained since 2009, he was released in April 2014 for a bail of 5,000,000LL ($3,333).

Sayyid Muhammad Ali al-Husseini: A Shiite cleric who, like Mshaymish, was once a Hezbollah member and even claims to have been a personal friend of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, Husseini turned against the Party in the mid-2000s. Details of his earlier life are murky, though he was reportedly once jailed in Iran. In 2007, he claimed he was the victim of an assassination attempt at the hands of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Tyre. Then, in 2009, he told NOW he had formed an independent militia, the Arab Islamic Resistance, to rival Hezbollah in fighting Israel. His open courting of the Iranian opposition Mujahidin-e Khalq (MEK) group was, he claimed to NOW, the real reason behind his jailing in 2011 on charges of collaborating with Israel. He was released in 2014.

Myra Abdallah contributed reporting.

As bombs mount, Hezbollah edges back toward 'self-security'

[Originally posted at NOW]

The Party is struggling to stem a new wave of deadly attacks at home.

When on Tuesday a group of humanitarian NGO workers were leaving the remote northeastern border town of Arsal, the target of frequent, sometimes fatal shelling by Syrian regime air and land forces where the team had been aiding Syrian refugees, they might well have imagined they were putting the day’s danger behind them and heading for safer terrain.

If so, however, that illusion was dispelled when their van – clearly marked with the logo of their organization, the Lebanese Institute for Democracy and Human Rights (“LIFE”) – encountered an ad hoc checkpoint manned by plain-clothed gunmen near the town of al-Labwe, between Arsal and the highway that would reconnect them to the rest of Lebanon.

Ordered out of the vehicle, the five of them were detained for six hours, according to Nabil al-Halabi, LIFE’s director and a human rights lawyer, who told NOW they were subjected to hostile interrogation and even beating. Some, indeed, were left with “serious injuries,” according to a statement issued online. As a consequence, LIFE has decided to suspend all activities in Arsal for the time being, on account of the “chaotic insecurity” in the area and the “absence of control by the [state] security forces and army.”

Asked who he believed was manning the checkpoint, Halabi told NOW it was “obvious” it was Hezbollah, the party-cum-militia which has long maintained a significant presence in the wider Beqaa Valley region surrounding Arsal. The Party routinely crosses the Syrian border to do battle with Syrian rebels who, in turn, are largely supported by Arsal residents.

While Halabi’s claim could not be independently verified, recent appearances of temporary Hezbollah checkpoints in the same area have also been reported by NOW’s Beqaa correspondent, Abdallah al-Hojeiry. For around a month, wrote Hojeiry, Hezbollah gunmen have deployed on the Baalbek-Labwe highway, stopping and searching cars from Arsal and generating local resentment in the process.

Such measures, which come as the country’s security agencies struggle to stem a wave of deadly bomb attacks in predominantly pro-Hezbollah neighborhoods (including two in Hermel, the nearest large town to Arsal), are reminiscent of the abortive “self-security” program implemented in the wake of the August 2013 car bomb in the south Beirut suburb of Ruwais. For weeks, Hezbollah erected checkpoints at the entrances to the southern suburbs, a move that became increasingly unpopular, particularly after a dispute at one checkpoint led to the killing of a Palestinian refugee. In late September, the Party abandoned its program, handing over its checkpoints to the army, which maintains control of them to this day.

But with attacks now coming much faster – there have been five in 2014 alone – Hezbollah appears to be quietly edging toward taking security into its own hands once again. In the suburbs themselves (collectively known as “Dahiyeh”), the Party has markedly bolstered its street presence, according to local resident and political analyst Qassem Qassir.

“We noticed […] many of Hezbollah’s men are always on the ground – unarmed, but observing anything suspicious,” Qassir told NOW. “There is also talk of Hezbollah getting new tools and materials to check for explosives around the entrances to Dahiyeh. And many of the main roads leading to Hezbollah headquarters have been closed.”

In tandem with its own campaigns, the Party is also said to be pressing state security agencies to redouble their efforts. A forthcoming security plan for the south of the country, involving the erection of new checkpoints and increased surveillance of Palestinian refugee camps, reportedly comes at the request of Hezbollah and the Amal Movement.

Above and beyond mere security-related decisions, however, a broader political or strategic response from Hezbollah to the recent spike in deadly bombings has been more difficult to discern. While Party officials continue to describe the attacks in terms of an international campaign of “takfiri terrorism” that underscores the necessity of its continued military intervention in Syria, there has been no word from General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah since a televised address in December 2013 – an uncharacteristic silence which, some observers say, may indicate uncertainty within the Party regarding its next steps.

“There have been [six] explosions since [Nasrallah’s] last appearance, which raises a lot of questions,” said Ali al-Amin, a political analyst and Dahiyeh resident. “Doesn’t he have anything to say? Or is he unable to reassure people that everything will be okay this time?”

“Many among Hezbollah’s supporters are asking themselves these same questions, and maybe this time the leadership has no answers. Hezbollah has no means of predicting or preventing the explosions now.”

Luna Safwan and Maya Gebeily contributed reporting.

Hezbollah critic to fight "revenge trial"

[Originally posted at NOW]

After nearly three years of detention by Syrian and Lebanese authorities, a Shiite cleric has been sentenced to five years’ imprisonment on charges of collaboration with Israel – charges that activists and his lawyer say were fabricated in a bid to silence the cleric’s criticism of Hezbollah. The verdict, handed down by the Lebanese Military Tribunal on April 15, is set to be appealed.

Sheikh Hassan Mshaymish was first arrested in Syria in July 2010 on undisclosed charges. The Syrian government’s official silence on his continued detention prompted criticism from Amnesty International, and his family alleges he was tortured during this period. He was transferred to the Lebanese authorities in October 2011, after which he was formally accused of collaboration with Israel, a crime under Article 278 of the Lebanese penal code.

Mshaymish had in fact been a member of Hezbollah until the late 1990s, after which he became an outspoken critic of the party and its ideological adherence to wilayat al-faqih, the authoritarian system of religious government pioneered by the late Iranian Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. As NOW has previously reported, a number of prominent Lebanese Shiite critics of Hezbollah have long maintained that it was these open attacks on the powerful Syrian ally – typically expressed in his monthly publication Difaf (“the riverbanks”) – rather than any dealings with Israel that led to Mshaymish’s arrest.

As is typical of cases handled by the military tribunal, no information pertaining to the trial has officially been made public. However, a legal source involved with the case who requested anonymity due to its sensitivity told NOW the evidence presented by the prosecution chiefly comprised telephone records purporting to show calls made by Mshaymish to Israelis. Mshaymish’s lawyer, Antoine Nehme, alleges these records were falsified, and claims to possess originals proving as much that were ignored by the court.

In addition, the legal source told NOW the prosecution had pointed to a meeting Mshaymish had in Germany in 2005 with an individual whom he suspected of working for “an intelligence apparatus seeking to collect information about Hezbollah.” Mshaymish himself informed Hezbollah of the meeting upon his return to Lebanon. In court, says the source, Nehme argued this meeting failed to violate Lebanese law; first because the man Mshaymish met was German, not Israeli, and second because Article 278 pertains only to divulging information about the Lebanese government, not a party such as Hezbollah.

Adding to these question marks is the comparative lightness of the sentence, which some commentators have interpreted as further evidence of the dubiousness of the charges. (Collaboration with Israel carries a maximum sentence of death.)

“Is it logical that his sentence is only five years for cooperating with the enemy?” asked Ali al-Amin, al-Balad journalist and a fellow Shiite critic of Hezbollah who has campaigned for Mshaymish’s release.

“This trial is political, it’s not based on any evidence. It is a revenge trial, to punish Sheikh Mshaymish for his stand against Hezbollah,” Amin told NOW.

Similar sentiment was expressed by Lokman Slim, another Shiite supporter of Mshaymish who has raised awareness of his case through his “Hayya Bina” NGO.

“For someone collaborating with Israel, five years is not exactly the heaviest sentence he could receive,” Slim told NOW. “So for me the philosophy of such a sentence is that it achieves a moral assassination of Mshaymish. It’s neutralizing and killing the man symbolically, a kind of murder without blood.”

Looking ahead, Mshaymish still has a chance of clearing his name with a successful appeal. The legal source told NOW that Nehme, the defense lawyer, is confident of overturning the verdict.

Yet Slim told NOW the appeal, even if successful, would likely take a long time, adding to the two years and nine months of detention Mshaymish has already undergone.

“The appeal could take years. Given he’s already served nearly three years in prison, he could end up serving the full five years with his appeal still in process.”

Yara Chehayed contributed reporting.

Piety and politics in the Dahiyeh

[Originally posted at NOW Lebanon, with Luna Safwan]

One didn’t need to be told where to find Monday night’s rally in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Long before we reached the arterial Hadi Hassan Nasrallah Street, we saw them: the men, women and children in their tens of thousands, swarming in a single mass through the alleys and sidestreets like a tidal wave washing ashore.

And we heard them. “Libayka ya rasool Allah!” roared a voice several blocks away (the phrase roughly translates as “We’re at your service, Messenger of God!”). Once on the ground in the midst of the marching crowd, we saw the source of the noise: dozens of men on platforms, spaced every few hundred meters apart, reading chants from a prepared sheet through a gigantic set of loudspeakers. “Death to America, death to Israel!” came next, followed by “America, America, you are the greatest Satan!”

So large was the procession – spanning several kilometers and snaking around right-angles – that when Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s voice first sounded, nobody around us realized he was speaking in person from a stage up ahead. They assumed they were listening to a video transmission. For those witnessing the moment of his appearance, of course, it was a different story entirely.

Demonstrators, who did not give their names, offered discrepant reasons for turning up when interviewed by NOW Lebanon, ranging from simple offence at the “Innocence of Muslims” film that has sparked outrage around the Muslim world, to a wish to show defiance against what they see (and what Nasrallah described on Sunday) as an American-Israeli plot against them.

“We are here because a movie insulting Prophet Muhammad is out,” said a man in his early twenties. “We want to send the message to the world that we are here to defend the prophet. We hope for the movie to be banned for the sake of respect for religion.”

“We came to this protest to defend Prophet Muhammad, and also to show Israel that we are here and that we won’t keep quiet,” said a woman of around eighteen. “The movie should be taken down.”

“I came because Sayyed Hassan requested us to come, also out of respect for Prophet Muhammad,” said a man in his fifties. “America should lay off our back. This movie has to be taken down, otherwise things might escalate.”

That refrain was echoed by a woman of around thirty, who told NOW that, “It is requested of every Muslim to participate for this is an insult to Islam. We hope that they take the movie down because if they don’t, something else might happen, something bigger.”

Indeed, in his speech Nasrallah warned that “America, which is objecting and deceiving [others] under [the pretext] of freedom, needs to understand that the complete broadcast of the film will yield very dangerous repercussions.”

Ali al-Amin, a prominent analyst of Lebanese Shiite politics, believes that this threat is essentially empty, being in reality a counter to the violent reaction of the Sunni community. It was “part of the general political rhetoric [in Lebanon],” he told NOW. “The Shiite street seemed as if it were not reacting to the film” as much as its Sunni counterpart, and thus Hezbollah sought to one-up their rivals by “taking stances embellished with threats.”

Amin argues that the demonstration in general was a means of deflecting attention from the ongoing killings in Syria – a view shared by veteran Lebanese blogger Mustapha Hamoui. For Hezbollah, the film arrived “on a silver platter,” said Amin. “Previously, Hezbollah used to take a defensive position, e.g. when justifying the Syria issue. This time, Hezbollah was not required to talk about Syria.” All the same, a number of demonstrators chose to assert a pro-Syrian government stance, waving the red, white and black national flag as well as posters of President Bashar al-Assad.

The calls for “death” notwithstanding, the rally was comparatively civil overall. Unlike other protests against the film in such countries as Libya, Afghanistan and Pakistan, there was no burning of flags or effigies, and no violence (though two people were reportedly wounded by celebratory gunfire).

However, it remains to be seen what may unfold if the full film is made public. As NOW was leaving the rally, a bespectacled man in his forties approached, speaking a mixture of English and French. “I don’t care about the filmmaker,” he said. “God will give him his own punishment. Listen, Hassan Nasrallah is not a bad guy. Muslims are not bad. We’re not going to attack you first.”

“But if you attack us, we’re going to attack you back.”

Noam Raydan contributed reporting.