The Syrian Refugees Problem

[Originally posted at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Sada journal]

A combination of security, economic, and above all political considerations has the Lebanese government seeking for the first time to limit, and ultimately reduce, its Syrian and Syrian-Palestinian refugee population. Human rights groups have criticized these new restrictions on Syrian refugees, saying the denial of refuge to those in need violates fundamental principles of international law. But Lebanon’s political power brokers are fearful of more than just the economic and social burdens of Syrian refugees.

The exact details of the new stipulations, passed by cabinet in June, vary for Syrians and Syrian-Palestinians (that is, Palestinian refugees previously residing in Syria). Refuge will, from now on, only be granted to those “coming from regions where battles are raging near the Lebanese border,” in the words of Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas, with “humanitarian and necessary” exceptions. Additionally, all refugees traveling to Syria, for any reason or duration of stay, are stripped of refugee status upon their return. On top of these restrictions, Syrian-Palestinians also face further monetary charges and onerous administrative requirements that amount in practice to a near-total ban on coming to Lebanon.

Syrian and Syrian-Palestinian refugees number well over a million and are expected to comprise a third of Lebanon’s population by the end of the year. At present, refugees are scattered across the country, living wherever they can afford to, including in over 1,200 ad hoc, self-built camps. A proposal that has been contemplated since the start of the crisis would set up formal camps to house existing refugees along the Lebanese-Syrian border. While this is unlikely to move forward at present for a number of reasons, it could potentially be adopted in a partial or revised form in the future. A recent revival of the proposal divided Lebanese officials, with the health minister calling it the only solution, while the foreign minister vowed to “oppose [it] no matter the pressure.” The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) came out against it, arguing the state would be able to provide neither the infrastructure nor the security necessary for it to succeed.

Either way, there is clearly a new mood shared among Lebanon’s power brokers with regard to the refugees. Although the underlying factors fueling it have been accumulating since the beginning of the Syrian crisis, the translation of this mood into executive action was largely triggered by a single event. On May 28, 2014, tens of thousands of Syrians waving Hezbollah flags and posters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad descended upon the Syrian embassy east of Beirut to vote in their country’s presidential elections, which were widely regarded as illegitimate. The unexpectedly vast turnout halted traffic across the capital for hours, and led to mild clashes with overwhelmed Lebanese soldiers guarding the embassy.

Within hours, Lebanon’s anti-Assad March 14 coalition, which holds over a third of cabinet seats, issued furious condemnations of the spectacle, calling it a “provocation” orchestrated by Syrian intelligence and Hezbollah, and demanding the deportation of all Syrian supporters of Assad. Less than a week later, on June 2, the cabinet decided on the new entry restrictions, and while the official explanation was “security concerns,” a Western diplomatic source cited the embassy controversy as a likely stimulus.1 Similarly, UNHCR said the government had acted in the hope of “ensuring that actions by refugees (including exercising their right to vote inside Syria) do not provoke adverse reactions inside Lebanon or stoke hostility between refugees and the communities in which they reside.”2

To be clear, it was not the relatively benign happenings at the embassy itself that mattered so much as what they represented. Until then, the refugee presence had arguably been politically useful for March 14. More than a million destitute men, women, and children were daily reminders of the tragedy of a brutal war they could blame on Assad and their key domestic rival, Hezbollah. However, seeing that the same refugees could also be mobilized—whether on their own or coerced by political groups—in their tens of thousands against them was an unwelcome surprise for March 14’s public as much as its politicians.

This shifted March 14’s outlook to something closer to that of its pro-Assad rivals, the March 8 coalition, who have never been comfortable with the Syrian refugee presence. Christian members of March 8 in particular, such as the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), have long been accused of stirring xenophobia and paranoia with their public allegations of “conspiracies” to settle the refugees permanently and thereby change Lebanon’s sectarian demography. In 2013, one FPM member, who has since become foreign minister, went as far as calling for deporting all refugees. While March 14’s large Sunni Muslim constituency has no such anxieties about the predominantly Sunni refugees, the embassy episode nevertheless resulted in a degree of convergence of political opinions and interests between the two blocs.

That convergence against the presence of Syrian refugees was also made possible by the shared burden of an economic collapse brought on by a more than 25 percent population increase in three years. Social Affairs Minister Derbas recently put the direct cost to Lebanon of the refugee crisis at $7.5 billion, or 17 percent of GDP. Unemployment in some regions has doubled as Lebanese manual labor is undercut by Syrian competition. Electricity and water resources, already insufficient to meet Lebanese demand alone, have had to be spread that much thinner. The overall impact of the Syrian war and its occasionally bloody “spillover” into Lebanon has been a decline in GDP growth from 7 percent in 2010 to 1 percent in 2014, according to latest IMF estimates. Tourism, which in better years would make up a quarter of national income, has particularly suffered. While none of this, of course, is the refugees’ fault, it has predictably bred resentment and revived xenophobic sentiments picked up during 29 years of Syrian occupation. In short, Lebanese of all political persuasions have become fed up.

For the refugees themselves, the government’s new policy adds yet another source of hardship to an already grueling existence. It is unclear how many Syrians have been turned away since the June 2 decision, but a new Amnesty International report documents a number of what it calls “shocking” cases among Syrian-Palestinians, including pregnant women fleeing the besieged Yarmouk camp in Damascus being denied refuge at the border, and children in Lebanon being separated from parents who entered Syria briefly to renew identity documents. Syrian-Palestinians make up less than 5 percent of all refugees from Syria. As the restrictions spread to the broader Syrian refugee population, the new policy will likely have widespread humanitarian repercussions. All of this serves to underscore the need for a far more determined global response to the Syrian refugee crisis.

1. Interview with the author. ↩
2. Correspondence with the author. ↩

The language barrier: How Islamists outshine Arab secularists

[Originally posted at NOW]

A little over a year ago, I visited a Jordanian friend in Amman. Determined atheists that we both are, as the Black Label bottle steadily drained our conversation turned, as it often would, to the evergreen subject of the woefully elevated positions of the region’s Parties of God in all their forms and guises.

“Man, let me show you something,” he suddenly said, reaching for the TV remote. “This is why the secularists can’t beat the Islamists today.” Flicking to one of at least a dozen available Islamic channels, we listened as a shrouded televangelist expounded on the boundless splendors of the pious path. “Just listen to the guy’s fusha [classical Arabic],” my friend said in sincere admiration. “It’s effortless.” And so it was – without the slightest stutter or pause, our imam filled the room with the music of 7th-century Arabian vocabulary, every single letter adorned with precisely the correct diacritical flourish. Picture someone mellifluously chatting in the tongue of Shakespeare and you’ll get something of the oratorical effect.

“Now compare that with these guys,” said my friend, switching to a political talk show featuring two beardless Jordanians in suits. Clearly ill-at-ease in the fusha they were compelled (by widely-observed custom) to speak on air – which is likely the only time they speak it – the contrast in style was disastrous. In awkward monotone, they would punctuate every other word with an “uhhh” as they frantically scanned their limited mental lexicons for the formally proper noun or adjective. “It doesn’t matter that what they’re saying is a thousand times more enlightening than the Islamist propaganda,” my friend said. “Who could listen to this for more than thirty seconds?”

That thought came rushing back to me on Saturday when I watched another Islamist, the fugitive cleric-cum-militiaman Ahmad al-Assir, mount an 11-minute-long diatribe against the “liberals” (what contempt he put into the word) of Lebanon’s moderate Sunni Future Movement. Secure in his amply-demonstrated fusha proficiency, Assir actually reverted to colloquial dialect to land his most personal jab, directed at Future leader Saad Hariri, “who doesn’t know how to string two words together in Arabic.” It’s a reference to the former prime minister’s famously shaky fusha, most memorably demonstrated in a calamitous 2009 parliament address. But Assir wasn’t trying to score literary points: he meant to undermine Hariri’s religious, and ultimately political, legitimacy as the representative of Lebanon’s Sunnis. It was an assertion of the supposed authenticity, the unshakeable Arabness, of Islamism compared to effete and decadent liberalism.

Older generations of Arab nationalist intellectuals championed the revival and protection of Arabic out of fear that “the nation” and its culture were losing ground to an ascendant West. Today, the new and graver danger is of young Arab minds being seduced by hyper-articulate jihadists, to whose rhetorical charms even this British kafir is not entirely invulnerable.

Among other things, this makes all the more necessary the secular Arabic literary heritage, from the classic pre-Islamic mu`allaqat through such brilliant medieval reprobates as Abu Nuwas to modern giants like Mahmoud Darwish. Indeed, there’s reason to believe a thread running through the entire oeuvre of the permanently clean-shaven Darwish, who never hid his dislike of Hamas and lamented those who “don’t know the difference between the mosque (al-jam`) and the university (al-jam`a),” was an unspoken determination to claim Arabic (and specifically classical Arabic, the clerics’ home ground) for an avowedly secular renaissance, or nahda. (The contribution of those who manage to turn these works into music and other art forms – Marcel Khalifé being perhaps the most obvious example – is also invaluable, not least because of the profanity of music in and of itself in the Wahhabist worldview. One recalls Khalifé’s farcical 1999 blasphemy trial.) Unless and until that is achieved, the Islamists will continue to exploit the appearance of an intellectual – and even cultural – superiority that is of course entirely and dangerously illusory.

Why Baghdadi talks like that

[Originally posted at NOW]

There are a great many oddities with the speech last Friday by ISIS/IS leader Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri (aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, aka “Caliph Ibrahim”), and while many have been amused by his apparently expensive wristwatch, I am myself less inclined to be surprised at a religious megalomaniac indulging the perks of power.

No, for me the weirdest aspect is the way the guy spoke; abruptly elongating various vowels and consonants in a manner that totally disrupts natural oratory rhythm. If one knew no better, one would think he suffered from a stutter or other speech impediment, if not indeed something worse.

But in fact what he’s doing – which is something new, not practiced by the likes of Bin Laden or Zawahiri – is speaking in accordance with the Islamic rules of reciting the Quran, known as tajweed (literally “improvement”). The madd (“extension”) convention, for example, mandates doubling the length of a long vowel if it is preceded by a short vowel (haraka). In addition to tajweed, Quran recitation techniques follow one of at least seven styles (qira’at), each having, according to one Islamic blog, its own “unique mood, flourishes, tempo, pitch, vocal ‘color’ and durations of certain notes and pauses.” I’m unable to ascertain exactly which qira’a Baghdadi adheres to, but it’s safe to assume he’s done some hard thinking on it, and can argue with conviction why it is the correct one (to recite the Quran improperly, after all, constitutes the sin of lahn, which another website informs us “may deprive the reader of any reward in the Hereafter”).

Then again, perhaps Baghdadi needs to brush up on his theory, because according to this website, “It is not permissible to apply the rules of tajweed […] to normal conversation. The majority of the scholars are of the view that the rules of tajweed apply only to the words of the Quran.”

Worse, another website says some clerics go so far as to consider the use of tajweed for non-Quranic recital as tantamount to the grave sin of bid’a (“innovation”), on the grounds that it might lead listeners to confuse the speaker’s own words with those of Allah.

Come to think of it, for the man declaring himself the absolute ruler of every Muslim on earth, the comparison may not necessarily be an unwelcome one.

Palestinian refugees: From fire to frying pan

[Originally posted at The Economist]

THE tiny alleyways of Burj al-Barajneh, the most densely populated of the Lebanese capital’s three Palestinian refugee camps, offer scant relief from a scalding midsummer sun. Only moments after your correspondent enters the labyrinth of passages a young woman falls silently to the dusty cement ground, fainting from a combination of heat and over ten hours of Ramadan fasting. “It’s like Ghassan Kanafani’s ‘Men in the Sun’”, says Abu Bilal, your corrrespondent's companion, referring to the classic 1962 novella about a group of Palestinian migrants roasted alive in a tanker truck while trying to smuggle themselves across the Arabian desert.

Abu Ahmad knows about emigration. At 77, the Haifa native has experienced three exiles—from Palestine to Lebanon in 1948; then to Syria at the 1975 outbreak of Lebanon’s civil war; and back to Lebanon this year courtesy of Syria’s war. Dabbing the sweat off his forehead in his air-conditionless apartment in the heart of the camp, he recalls how he nearly didn’t make it. Lebanese authorities were refusing him entry at the border, in keeping with an undeclared but widely documented new policy of effectively denying refuge to any additional Palestinians from Syria. Only when the infirm Abu Ahmad himself fainted in front of the border guards did they let him through, citing an exception for medical emergencies.

Abu Ahmad is one of the lucky ones. Abu Bilal says his siblings are still stuck in Damascus under threat of bombardment, having tried and been prevented from joining him in Lebanon, even though one is married to a Syrian. It’s an all-too-common story among Palestinians today. An Amnesty International report published this month documents what it called the “shocking cases” of pregnant women and even children being separated from their families as a result of the policy, which it described as “blatantly discriminatory” and in contravention of Lebanon’s obligations under international law. The Lebanese government declined to respond to the rights group’s requests for comment.

Though Palestinians make up only some 50,000 of the 1.12m registered refugees from Syria in Lebanon, their comparatively weak legal status renders them the softest target for a Lebanese government now officially committed to limiting its refugee population, says Abu Bilal. “Syrians benefit from legal agreements permitting free travel to and from Lebanon but we are stateless, we have nothing like this," he says.

Lebanon’s policy change comes as the Syrian government is tightening its 19-month-long siege of Syria’s largest Palestinian camp, Yarmouk, on the outskirts of Damascus. After reports of over 100 deaths by starvation in the camp led to limited provisions of humanitarian aid earlier this year, the UN says it has not been able to get food in since May. Residents contacted by Skype say the days of resorting to eating leaves and animal feed may be returning.

[Continue reading]

Lebanon illegally mistreating Palestinians from Syria, says new Amnesty report

[Originally posted at NOW]

It’s always been the case that, in Lebanon, the only thing worse than being a Syrian refugee is being a Palestinian refugee from Syria. Compelled from the beginning of the Syrian conflict to pay an additional entrance charge at the Lebanese border, and receiving systematically less aid from their UNRWA donors than Syrians get from UNHCR, Palestinians have also for the most part had to squeeze themselves into Lebanon’s already saturated Palestinian refugee camps, where it’s by no means uncommon to find ten or more people inhabiting a single, bare-brick room.

What a brand-new Amnesty International report published today shows, however, is how much worse this discrepancy has become, and – crucially – how the latest turn of misery has come as a direct and deliberate consequence of official Lebanese policy.

A pregnant mother of five fleeing airstrikes and famine in Damascus’ Yarmouk camp left stranded on the Syrian side of the Masnaa border crossing. A 12-year-old boy separated from his parents and brother since last year. A 61-year-old disabled man unable to receive medical care or see his wife. At least 40 Palestinians forcibly deported, or refouled, from Lebanon back into Syria. These are just some of the victims encountered by Amnesty of Lebanon’s new restrictions on Palestinian refugees from Syria, who are now obliged at the borders to produce things like entry permits approved by Lebanon’s General Security – not the easiest documents to get hold of in the smashed wastelands of Yarmouk.

Other highlights – or, rather, low points – include a leaked memo instructing airlines not to transport any Palestinian refugees from Syria to Lebanon, and countless stories of those who have made it in only to be continuously jerked around by General Security; made to pay sums far beyond their means in return for promises of paperwork that never materialize. And so on.

Such “blatantly discriminatory” measures, as Amnesty calls them, constitute “serious human rights violations” carried out in “clear breach of international law.” The report concludes with a call for authorities to scrap the new restrictions and allow “all persons fleeing the conflict in Syria, including Palestinian refugees who are normally resident in Syria, to enter.” Read it in full here.

Dissecting the problem

[Originally posted at NOW]

Regional crises revive ideas of communal segregation in Lebanon.

Graffiti in Beirut reading "Yes to federalism" is altered to read "Yes to secularism" (NOW/Alex Rowell)

As the mangled remains of the 22nd car to have exploded in Lebanon since the outbreak of the Syrian crisis lay smoldering in a mixed Sunni-Shiite Beirut neighborhood last Tuesday, one young male bystander told a television reporter he only had one thing to say. “It’s either them or us. We can’t live together.”

It was a statement of an exasperation felt by many Lebanese – an exasperation that is increasingly leading some to conclude that the country’s decades-old brand of sectarian coexistence has failed, and should be replaced with something that formalizes or to some extent reinforces segregation along communal lines. Adding momentum to these currents is the spectacle of raging Sunni-Shiite warfare elsewhere in the region, particularly in Syria and Iraq, where Islamist extremists have literally demolished the post-WWI border and declared the formation of a theocratic state. At the same time, Kurdish separatists have seized the city long coveted as the capital of their future state and insisted they won’t give it back. Surveying these “great changes and historical turns,” Lebanese Druze chieftain Walid Jumblatt wrote last Monday of the need to “preserve General Gouraud’s Lebanon before it is too late.” (Gouraud was the French High Commissioner who in 1920 decreed the creation of Lebanon within its current borders.)

While few Lebanese seriously advocate the abolition of “General Gouraud’s Lebanon,” there is rising interest in ideas ranging from decentralization to regionalism to federalism. Significantly, enthusiasm no longer comes exclusively from the Christian community – a segment of which has advocated such measures since the 1975-90 civil war – but from a minority of Muslims as well.

At the extreme end are the militant Sunni factions calling openly for an Islamist statelet in the north. On Sunday, June 22, 2014, supporters of Salafist cleric Sheikh Salem al-Rafei in Tripoli held a demonstration during which they chanted, “We want an Islamic state.” Asked by NOW about the slogan, Rafei initially denied that it was intended to be taken literally, but later said he “believed in the Muslim khilafa [caliphate] regime […] this is the ideology I follow.” While he said the concept was “not applicable” in Lebanon, due to its religious diversity, he predicted “the struggle between Sunnis and Shiites will lead to the segmentation of Lebanon, just like Iraq and Syria will be divided into provinces […] The first [part of Lebanon] would be for those who want wilayat al-faqih (Iranian state ideology nominally advocated by Hezbollah) and the second for those who want a just state that assures equality for all its citizens – Sunnis, Druze, Christians, and independent Shiites.”

Rafei’s is a view firmly rejected by mainstream Sunni political factions, who officially oppose any such “segmentation” even in its mildest forms. “Federalism is an illusion,” said MP Ahmat Fatfat of the Future Movement. “Lebanon is a small country. The only solution is the state,” he told NOW.

Yet a minority within the Sunni community disagrees. “I am definitely a supporter of federalism,” said Nabil al-Halabi, a Sunni human rights lawyer, who told NOW the same fear of domination that previously drove Christians toward the idea was now duplicating itself among Sunnis, whose vulnerability “became more apparent” after the violent takeover by Hezbollah-affiliated militiamen of predominantly Sunni neighborhoods of Beirut in 2008. “Federalism will forbid any community from governing other communities.”

Nor is Halabi alone, according to Jean-Pierre Katrib, former spokesman of the now-defunct federalism advocacy group Loubnanouna (“Our Lebanon”).

“This is no longer a function of the Christian community alone,” Katrib told NOW. “You come across people from the Shiite community who are not hostile to the notion of federalism as they once were. You come across very senior Sunni figures – for reasons of confidentiality I cannot disclose their names, but I can tell you these are high-ranking, well-known Sunni figures, enjoying wide popularity – who welcome the idea. I’m saying this because I have met with these people at their request.” [Disclosure: Katrib is an employee of Quantum Communications, a sister company of NOW’s.]

Does it work?

To be sure, federalists remain a minority nationwide, and certainly have many detractors. Among the criticisms of federalism is that it simply does not solve the system’s core problems, and may even aggravate them.

“I don’t think it could work in Lebanon,” said Nadim Shehadi, associate fellow at Chatham House and former director of the Centre for Lebanese Studies at Oxford University. Shehadi points to the final years of the civil war, when the Christians in fact did control their own de facto canton in Mount Lebanon, yet partook in some of the worst violence of the entire 15 years – among themselves. “Controlling your own canton doesn’t necessarily mean homogeneity,” Shehadi told NOW. “So it doesn’t solve much.”

To this, advocates counter that federalism is less about cantonization than tackling inefficiency and promoting regional economic development.

“It’s not about separation or creating a shield for the Christians, because we don’t believe you can have Monaco in Jounieh and Kandahar in Tripoli,” said Albert Costanian, political bureau member of the Kataeb Party, who prefers the term “regionalism” to federalism. By electing regional representatives locally, rather than having them appointed by the central government, and giving those representatives fiscal and executive autonomy, Costanian told NOW that much of the chronic corruption of the central government could be avoided, while regions could pursue their own economic development programs without depending financially and administratively on Beirut.

Federalism or secularism?

Another common criticism of federalism is the argument that, by granting the premise that identity is fundamentally defined by sect, it perpetuates the same communal divisions that fuel the dysfunction and violence for which it purports to be the solution. As the slogan “Yes to federalism” has been spray-painted by graffiti activists across Beirut’s walls in recent months, it has elicited a counter-campaign by opponents, altering the text to “Yes to secularism.”

This dichotomy, according to Costanian, is a false one, akin to “comparing apples and oranges.” Indeed, he argues regionalism will “accompany the people’s march toward secularism” by abolishing sectarian quotas within regional governorates and allowing for regional legislation in favor of things like civil marriage. “Hopefully we will reach a totally secular system in a few years,” he told NOW.

By contrast, in Shehadi’s view, the two concepts cannot be married so easily. “When you have people of different identities on the same land, you have a choice between breaking down the boundaries or reinforcing them,” he told NOW. He cited the example of 19th-century cosmopolitan cities such as Smyrna, where for all the inter-communal mingling in marketplaces and public squares, each ethnic and religious group lived in segregated quarters, to which they would retreat and “lock the gates” at night.

“Of course,” says Shehadi, “in times of crisis, when people feel threatened, they become more sectarian and they want more extreme sectarian solutions.”

“But the bottom line question is, do you protect boundaries, or break them down totally?”

Myra Abdallah contributed reporting.

Felool us twice...

[Originally posted at NOW]

Earlier today, less than 24 hours after US Secretary of State John Kerry rewarded Egypt’s new military dictator with a first-time personal visit, bearing housewarming gifts of over $500m and a fleet of Apache attack helicopters, an Egyptian court sentenced six journalists – an Australian, two Britons, a Dutchwoman, an Egyptian and an Egyptian-Canadian – to between seven and ten years in jail on charges of “spreading false news” and supporting “terrorism.”

The entire ‘trial’ had of course from the start been a spectacle of unabashed thuggery. The judge, who had a habit of wearing dark sunglasses in court, based his decision on such compelling evidence as “videos of trotting horses from Sky News Arabia, a song by the Australian singer Gotye, and a BBC documentary from Somalia,” according to the Guardian. Amnesty International added that “prosecutors obstructed the defendants’ right to review and challenge the evidence presented against them” and “key witnesses for the prosecution […] appeared to contradict their own testimony,” concluding the whole procedure was “a complete sham.”

All perfectly despicable, certainly, but why should anyone be surprised? This is, after all, the same regime that has slaughtered “more than 1,400 demonstrators” since coming to power (according to Human Rights Watch), sentenced hundreds more to death, and arrested no fewer than 16,000 political prisoners, many of whom are routinely tortured. Whatever else today’s verdict may be, it’s hardly a departure from the progress of what Kerry once imperishably called the military’s “restoring democracy” – the jailing of secular figureheads of the 2011 revolution; the silencing of Bassem Youssef; the rounding up and deporting of Syrian and Palestinian refugees; Field Marshal Sisi’s laughable 96% election win.

The one ironic consolation is that a show trial aimed at silencing criticism of the ruling junta has in fact only shone a larger and brighter international spotlight upon its depravity. Martin Amis once said what made literary criticism unique was that the critic was forced to use the same tools – i.e., pen and pad – as the artist he was appraising (whereas, say, a theatre critic need not express his thoughts on a new play by leaping on stage and bursting into song). By the same token, what is so singularly stupid about oppressing journalists is that the people who write the news around the world are also journalists. To that extent – admittedly if only to that extent – the felool in their brutality are fashioning rods that one day may be applied to their own backs.

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.

Blame Assad first for ISIS' rise

[Originally posted at NOW]

The regime has abetted Sunni extremists to influence Western public opinion.

In the week since Al-Qaeda spinoff the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) brought Iraq back into international headlines by seizing around a third of the country in a matter of hours, there has understandably been a great deal of soul-searching and hair-pulling as to how a group that was supposed to have been “decimated,” in a country that was supposed to be last decade’s headache, has once again managed with just a few hundred men to humiliate an army many times its size and generally outfox the entire world.

Fingers have been hastily pointed in every direction, with culprits found ranging from the timeless “conspiracy” (in the Iraqi prime minister’s words) to Tony Blair (who took to his website Saturday to cantankerously declare his complete innocence of all charges). An increasingly widespread claim – appealing perhaps because of its ring of an ironic morality tale about imperial folly – has it that ISIS’ growth is in fact the doing of the West’s closest but most duplicitous Arab allies, the oleaginous Gulf dictatorships, who have done to us once again what they’ve been doing since they backed the Afghan Mujahideen that nurtured Bin Laden in the 1980s. Will we ever learn?

Lost in this din, driven more by the grinding of old axes than dispassionate consideration of the evidence, is the obvious fact that one man has contributed vastly more than anyone else to getting ISIS where it is today: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

First, though, it’s worth exploring the Gulf hypothesis, because like any popular misconception, it does contain elements of truth. It’s unquestionably the case, as Josh Rogin argued in The Daily Beast on Saturday, that the Gulf monarchs make little if any real effort to prevent their more pious subjects from sending considerable sums of money to extremist outfits, including ISIS. That a Kuwaiti man named Ghanim al-Mteiri had no objection to going on the record to the New York Times in November about his financing of Jabhat al-Nusra, Syria’s official Al-Qaeda franchise, says everything that needs to be said about the Al-Sabah regime’s commitment to what Rogin still calls the “war on terror.”

But this is not the same as saying – as Rogin’s title (“America’s Allies Are Funding ISIS”) does, and as others such as Simon Henderson in Foreign Policy and Robert Fisk in The Independent have – that ISIS is actively and deliberately sponsored as a matter of policy by the Saudis and other Gulf rulers and should be thought of as no more than a proxy created to advance Riyadh’s regional ambitions. Quite to the contrary: ISIS has long been at war with Saudi’s actual clients in Syria, the Islamic Front and what is loosely called the Free Syrian Army (FSA), who have successfully driven it out of much of its former turf in the north. Indeed, among the many sources of hostility between ISIS and the other brigades is precisely the former’s rejection of Saudi intervention. While FSA leaders openly express gratitude for Riyadh’s help, ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani mocks the Kingdom as a “state which claims to be Islamic,” and denounces as traitors all factions “supported by the Saudis, America, and the infidels of the West.”

Another cause of friction is the FSA’s frequent accusations of ISIS collaboration with the regime. Though this line of argument, too, can take irrational and conspiratorial forms, there are a number of incontrovertible facts that, taken in aggregate, suggest the “Assad-or-the-terrorists” dichotomy that so much guides (or misguides) Western policy toward Syria is not nearly as straightforward as we’re led to believe:

● For long periods of time, the regime largely spared ISIS’ bases from the kinds of aerial and other attacks it daily visits upon the rest of the country. A government adviser told the New York Times’ Anne Barnard this was indeed a deliberate policy, designed to “tar” the broader opposition and “frame [the] choice” as either Assad or the extremists. As one ISIS defector told The Daily Telegraph, “We were confident that the regime would not bomb us. We always slept soundly in our bases.” He added, in a quote that didn’t make the final text, that ISIS had even been infiltrated by regime agents. “I know men who were officers in the police and Syrian intelligence branches who are now in ISIS. They grew long beards and joined.” Another good reason for Assad not to drop barrel bombs on them.

● According to the same Daily Telegraph report, both ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra have raised millions of dollars through sales of crude oil from fields under their control to the regime, a unique case of overt partnership between ISIS and a state actor.

● Although ISIS only officially formed in April 2013, its roots lie in Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the same group Assad paid and equipped in the mid-2000s to fight the Americans in precisely the region of Iraq now occupied by ISIS. In 2003, on the regime’s orders, Syria’s ordinarily mild-mannered Grand Mufti Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro issued a gladiatorial fatwa calling for attacks, including suicide bombings, against the Americans in Iraq. Those who came back alive after making the trip over the border – following training and funding from the regime – were promptly thrown into Damascus’ notorious Sednaya prison upon their return. Years later, on May 31, 2011, Assad suddenly pardoned and released dozens of Sednaya’s most dangerous inmates, who predictably went on to become leaders in Islamist rebel brigades, including extremist ones. This was at the same time the regime was imprisoning, torturing, and indeed murdering the secular and nonviolent democracy activists out in the streets. What was going on? As Aron Lund, editor of the Carnegie Endowment’s "Syria in Crisis" page, put it, “There are no random acts of kindness from this regime.”

● Nawaf al-Fares, the defected former Syrian ambassador to Iraq, has claimed the regime ordered a series of suicide bombings in Syria in 2012, carried out by the very jihadists he himself had sent to Iraq years previously. Again, the idea was to discredit the opposition, thereby duping the world into preferring Assad. “The Syrian government would like to use Al-Qaeda as a bargaining chip with the West,” he said, “to say: ‘it is either them or us.’” Another defector, former intelligence officer Afaq Ahmad, similarly recalls how “the jihadist groups and brigades” were “very useful for the regime,” which infiltrated them and even brokered non-aggression pacts with some of them.

To be clear, nobody is suggesting ISIS fighters are pure agents provocateurs, or that the regime doesn’t also kill them as and when expedient. Indeed, presumably realizing (or being told by “brotherly” Iran) after the fall of Iraq’s Mosul last week that ISIS had been allowed to grow stronger than intended, on Sunday Assad’s air force began bombing the group’s strongholds across northeastern Syria.

But that, if anything, only underlines the point that the regime knew the locations of those strongholds all this time. There simply is no other actor, not even the roundly assailed Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki, who has done so much for so long to directly facilitate ISIS’ rise. So far from facing a choice between “Assad and the terrorists,” in other words, Syrians – and now Iraqis too – suffer the latter precisely because they have for so long been plagued with the former.

Iran more likely than US to intervene in Iraq crisis

[Originally posted at NOW]

Analysts tell NOW Iran is already acting to counter surprise jihadist gains in Iraq, while US involvement will likely be limited.

In a rapid coup that has alarmed Middle Eastern and international capitals alike over the past 48 hours, an Al-Qaeda spinoff known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has overrun virtually all of northwestern Iraq, including the country’s second city, Mosul, and has made further advances southeast toward the capital, Baghdad.

While few expect the group to make it that far, that it was able with just a few hundred men to so easily rout an estimated 30,000 Iraqi soldiers raises serious questions about Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s grip on the country and has prompted fears of further and bloodier sectarian warfare – not only in Iraq, but also neighboring Syria, where ISIS already controls significant and contiguous territory. Since capturing Mosul Tuesday, the group has acquired unprecedented stocks of US-made military hardware, some of which has already reportedly been taken back to eastern Syria, and looted an estimated $480m in cash while freeing as many as 2,500 prisoners.

So acute is the crisis that an imminent military response seems to be a question not so much of “if” but rather “by whom.” One scenario, supported by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, would make use of militants from the nearby semi-autonomous Kurdistan province, who took control of their much-coveted city of Kirkuk Thursday following the Iraqi army’s flight. At the same time, the United States is said to be contemplating launching drone strikes on ISIS positions in Iraq, something Maliki has reportedly been privately requesting since May.

Yet analysts with whom NOW spoke said the most likely form of intervention was also the most potentially dangerous: that of Maliki’s Iranian ally and its various Shiite Islamist proxies, setting the stage for a repeat of the horrific sectarian warfare that engulfed Iraq in 2006-2007. Already, the Islamic Republic has dispatched an elite military unit of its Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, reportedly including its commander, Qassem Suleimani, while Shiite Islamist leader Muqtada al-Sadr has hinted at a revival of his once fearsome Mahdi Army militia.

“What I’m afraid of is that this is going to be an increasingly sectarian and Iranian-proxy-led [military campaign],” said Kirk H. Sowell, an Amman-based political risk analyst and publisher of Inside Iraqi Politics. “And this is already happening. […] The US is equivocating, but Iran is not going to hesitate. They’re already directly involved.”

“My fear is that the Iranian regime will attempt to swoop in and offer an alternative strategy in which the Quds Force commanded by Qassem Suleimani deploys in force to advise and direct a Shiite sectarian solution resembling what they have done in Syria,” concurred Colonel Joel Rayburn, senior research fellow at the National Defense University. “If Maliki and the other parties accede to this Iranian solution, it will mean the partition of the country into three or four warring sectarian states – just as has happened in Syria,” Rayburn told NOW.

Direct intervention by Shiite Islamist militants would likely further polarize an already fractured nation, dragging a Sunni community that has already for years complained of marginalization further toward the extremists among its own ranks, including ISIS, according to Lebanese analyst Mustafa Fahs.

“The [Sunni] region could even support ISIS and ex-Baathists, and gather troops who are against Iran and the Maliki government,” Fahs told NOW. Already, evidence has emerged of collaboration with ISIS by former Iraqi Baathist Sunni militias in the capture of Mosul.

Despite these risks, Rayburn told NOW he “fear[ed] that a desperate Maliki may choose this course as his best means of holding onto power.”

A much preferable alternative, in Rayburn’s view, would be the utilization of Kurdish forces, though historic tensions between them and the government render it unlikely.

“In my view, partnering with the Kurdish Peshmerga would be the best military course of action for Maliki. Many of the Peshmerga units are well-trained and well-led and know the territory, and they are already based nearby the danger areas. […] But to do this would require a political accommodation between Maliki and the Kurdish parties that it is unclear Maliki is willing to undertake,” Rayburn told NOW.

Moreover, with Kirkuk – sometimes dubbed the “Kurdish Jerusalem” – already in the Peshmerga’s hands, they would have little incentive to take the fight elsewhere on Maliki’s behalf, added Sowell.

“I would be surprised [if the Peshmerga intervened in Mosul.] The areas where they’ve made a move have been areas they wanted to take over anyway. […] They will make their contribution by providing refuge to Arabs” fleeing ISIS-held areas, he told NOW.

As for the United States, despite the possibility of a certain degree of military involvement, up to and including limited air strikes, according to Sowell, President Obama is unlikely to radically revise his traditionally non-interventionist Middle East policy.

“[The US] will definitely be providing arms, ammunition, and what not [to the Iraqi government],” said Sowell. “But air strikes, I don’t know. Air strikes within Mosul would not be effective anyway. We don’t have the intelligence to do this with sufficient precision. It would have to be on a very selective basis: let’s say we have a satellite pickup, there’s a convoy of ISIS guys that leave Mosul, and once they’re outside the city we hit them.”

“But I’m not sure Obama would be willing to do even that,” he added. “There’s a sort of allergy in the Obama White House [against] doing anything related to Iraq, frankly. The 2008 campaign is still determining Iraq policy, even though circumstances have radically changed.”

Myra Abdallah contributed reporting.

One year on, no justice for murdered anti-Hezbollah activist

[Originally posted at NOW]

“Our case has been buried,” says brother of late Hashem Salman.

Salman and his fellow student activists were attacked the moment they arrived at the embassy last year (Source: lebanonews.net)

It was a killing in broad daylight, witnessed by dozens of onlookers, including state security forces and members of the local and international press.

Yet one year after student activist Hashem Salman was shot dead outside Beirut’s Iranian embassy during a peaceful demonstration against Hezbollah’s military intervention in Syria, his killers remain free and a spokesman for the agency undertaking the official investigation was unaware that it was even in his colleagues’ hands.

The case file is currently held at an Internal Security Forces (ISF) branch in the southwest Beirut neighborhood of Ouzai, according to lawyers and activists following up on the case with whom NOW spoke. However, when NOW contacted the ISF, the press officer said he knew nothing of it, and suggested contacting the Lebanese Armed Forces instead.

“I don’t know [if there has been any progress]. I don’t have any information about this case,” said Maj. Joseph Msallem. “Maybe the army [is handling it]. You can ask the army if you want and if you want also to pursue this case you can send a fax to me.” Subsequent requests for information sent to both the ISF and the army went unanswered.

NOW also made inquiries with the Iranian embassy, which had been asked at the time by then-President Michel Suleiman to assist in the investigation. A spokesperson told NOW Monday the embassy had no involvement in the investigation, and no information about it.

For the family of Salman, these are distressing indications that officials are either unwilling or unable – or both – to do anything to bring his killers to justice. “Our case has been buried, and nobody is helping us,” Hashem Salman’s brother Hassan told NOW Monday. “We’ve been left alone. Even the media [ignored] us. Nobody is investigating.”

This is despite persistent and repeated efforts by the family to press officials to move things forward, said Hassan.

“I personally met with everybody. I met with the president. I met with the ministers of justice and interior, in the current cabinet and the previous one. And I met with a lot of politicians. And they all just tell you, ‘We’re going to work on this, we’re not going to leave it,’ but in reality, nothing’s been done. Nothing at all,” he told NOW.

Compounding the family’s grief is, Hassan says, the abundance of evidence available implicating Iran’s principal Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, in the crime. At the time, a Reuters correspondent reported witnessing armed Hezbollah members firing on the demonstrators.

“This case doesn’t need investigation at all,” said Hassan. “They have the pictures of all the killers that were there, and they know to which militia they belong […] It’s the only case, of all the assassinations that happened since [former Prime Minister] Rafiq Hariri’s, that is very clear, with a lot of evidence and witnesses […] My brother was killed by the Iranian militia [i.e. Hezbollah] and it’s very clear, there’s no doubt about it.” Hezbollah has a longstanding policy of not commenting to most media outlets, including NOW.

Consequently, Hassan sees two key reasons why the case has been shelved. The first is that Hezbollah’s influence over the relevant state institutions, backed by its paramilitary muscle, is simply too powerful to overcome.

“Nobody is allowed to come near the Iranian militia. Who’s going to go to them and tell them, ‘Give us the murderers’? No one’s got the balls,” he told NOW.

The second, he believes, is that the anti-Hezbollah March 14 coalition has privately agreed to drop Hashem’s case in return for concessions from its pro-Hezbollah March 8 rivals, with whom it now shares a cabinet.

“There are deals under the table between politicians from March 14 and March 8 – you cover your eyes for this case, we cover our eyes for that case. You give us this, we give you that. This is how it’s working,” said Hassan.

Despite the long odds against them, Hassan says he and his family will continue their fight for justice, starting with a press conference Tuesday to highlight photographic and other evidence they have compiled.

“We’re not going to [abandon] the blood of our Hashem. It’s our blood, [and] we won’t sell it. Because lots of the politicians in Lebanon are buying and selling. They don’t believe in real freedom, they don’t believe in justice, they don’t believe in human rights and our right to be free. We adore freedom. Hashem adored freedom. Hashem died for freedom.”

“The case of Hashem is the case for all free people in the world, not only in Lebanon.”

How it happened

- On Sunday, 9 June, 2013, a small group of unarmed students arrived by bus to the Iranian embassy in Bir Hassan, southwest Beirut, where the interior ministry had given them permission to hold a demonstration calling for the withdrawal of Hezbollah fighters from Syria.

- As soon as the students disembarked, “men with handguns and dressed in black with the yellow arm-bands of Hezbollah” approached and began assaulting them with batons, according to a Reuters reporter at the scene.

- Moments later, according to the same Reuters report, “The gunmen drew their weapons and fired. Several protestors were hit.”

- The leader of the student group, Hashem Salman, was among those shot “in front of the Internal Security [Forces], in front of the Lebanese army,” said his brother, Hassan. According to multiple eyewitnesses, the Hezbollah forces prevented anyone from taking the severely wounded, but then still alive, Hashem to get medical care. “Nobody was allowed to help Hashem, nobody was allowed to take him to the hospital,” said Hassan. He died shortly afterward.

- The following day, Hezbollah officials refused to allow Salman’s body to be buried in the public cemetery in his south Lebanese home town of Adloun, compelling them to bury him on private land instead.

Myra Abdallah contributed reporting.

Tin-pot propaganda at the British Museum

[Originally posted at NOW]

"One thing is certain" - except it's not (NOW/Alex Rowell)

The British tendency to understatement is a virtue rivalled only by an equal and opposite vice of euphemism. The difficulty outsiders often have in distinguishing between the two can cause a great deal of confusion: of innocent self-deprecating humor with gloom, in the former case; and of serious malice with wit or genteel decorum, in the latter. The resulting losses in translation can be costly: one British brigadier in the Korean War, believing that describing his troops’ situation over the radio as “a bit sticky” would adequately convey their total encirclement by Chinese Communists, had the misfortune of having an American interlocutor, who interpreted him as saying all was basically well, and thus failed to send the reinforcements that might have averted the slaughter and capture of hundreds of the British men.

With such rich and various – but comparatively subtle – means of deception, it’s rare to catch British officialdom uttering an outright, demonstrable lie. Which is why it was so arresting for me to read the information panels at the Parthenon marbles display in the British Museum last week. While initially contenting themselves with describing the 19th century disfigurement and theft, by our own ‘Lord’ Elgin, of the finest surviving monument of all antiquity as a “matter for discussion” – a truly magnificent euphemism, trivializing the plunder of Socrates’ Athens to the level of tea-table chatter – the curators then waded overconfidently into the terrain of plain falsehood:

“Elgin’s removal of the sculptures from the ruins of the building has always been a matter for discussion, but one thing is certain – his actions spared them further damage by vandalism, weathering and pollution.”

That is one way of putting it. But consider, if only for “discussion’s” sake, some of the other ways. Here, for instance, is how Edward Daniel Clarke, an eyewitness to Elgin’s conduct, described a day on the job*:

“After a short time spent in examining the several parts of the temple, one of the workmen came to inform Don Battista that they were then going to lower one of the metopes. We saw this fine piece of sculpture raised from its station between the triglyphs; but the workmen endeavouring to give it a position adapted to the projected line of descent, a part of the adjoining masonry was loosened by the machinery; and down came the fine masses of Pentelican marble, scattering their white fragments with thundering noise among the ruins […]”

Nor was this sort of thing uncommon. Take Giovanni Lusieri, an Italian subordinate of Elgin’s, reporting a mishap encountered in making off with a section of the eastern frieze:

“Not being well-sawn, for want of sufficiently fine saws, and being a little weak in the middle it parted in two in course of transport […] Happily it broke in the middle, in a straight line, at a place where there was no work, so that the accident has helped us to transport it quickly […]”

Then there was the time Elgin quite literally lost his marbles at sea, when the Mentor, a ship he had bought for the purpose of carrying the loot back to his house in Scotland (only after he later ran into money problems did he contemplate selling them to the government), sank in the Mediterranean. It was only with what Christopher Hitchens described as “enormous labour on the part of local fisherman” that the stones were eventually recovered.

So far from delivering the masterpiece of Phidias from vandalism, then, it’s obvious that Elgin was himself the principal vandal. But were the marbles, at least, secure once they passed out of His Lordship’s clumsy mitts into the curators’ assiduous custody?

Not according to a 1938 entry in the minutes of the British Museum Standing Committee titled, ‘Damage to Sculpture of the Parthenon,’ in which it is quietly admitted that years of systematic ill-maintenance in Bloomsbury have resulted in “great damage” to several “important pieces,” likely arising from the alarming practice of brushing them all with copper wire.

You really couldn’t make it up, which is why I was unable to stop myself from blurting out loud, while reading the information panel (see above photo), that it was “the sheerest propaganda.” When I did, I was heartened to hear a laugh from a European woman behind me, who had evidently been reading along with much the same thought in mind. How much longer will the British government refuse to accept the Greek request for restitution, and persist in what is not only a moral disgrace and national embarrassment, but an object of mockery and contempt from visitors?

* This and other quotes taken from Christopher Hitchens’ The Parthenon Marbles: The Case for Reunification

What Saudi-Iran talks could mean for Lebanon and the region

[Originally posted at NOW]

Signs of rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran have fuelled optimism in Lebanon, though few expect change in Syria in the short term.

In a potentially momentous surprise move that could herald an alleviation of political and sectarian conflict across the Middle East, Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal announced on Tuesday an invitation to his Iranian counterpart to travel to Riyadh to enter negotiations over the rival countries’ “differences.”

Saudi and Iran, powerhouses of Sunni and Shiite Islam respectively, presently support opposing sides in many of the Middle East’s major confrontations, and are often seen as having radically divergent and competing visions for the future of the region.

Which is why, in Lebanon – a country where the two powers wield extensive influence over their respective allies – the news of a possible rapprochement has already sparked confidence that political deadlock on a number of key disputes may be resolved, perhaps even defying expectations of a presidential vacuum by ushering in a successor to President Michel Suleiman in time for the expiry of his term on 25 May.

“I [now] believe we will have an elected president on the 25th,” said MP Ahmad Fatfat of the Saudi-supported Future Movement. “That [Prince Faisal’s] invitation was public means they already agreed on many points under the table. That means the negotiations regarding the new president have already been done.”

Beyond the elections, Fatfat added the talks would likely also yield wider benefits in terms of security and the economy. Earlier this week, Saudi lifted what has been described as an “unofficial ban” on its citizens traveling to Lebanon, fueling hopes of a boost to the country’s struggling tourism industry. Saudi analysts concurred that the overall situation in Lebanon would likely improve in the near future.

“I think in Lebanon there is already agreement [between Saudi and Iran],” said Jamal Khashoggi, veteran Saudi journalist and former advisor to then-ambassador Prince Turki al-Faisal. “The agreement in Lebanon is to contain the situation.”

In neighboring Syria, however, where Iranian-backed regime forces continue to suppress a Saudi-supported armed rebellion, Khashoggi expects very little to materialize from Saudi-Iranian talks.

“I’m not optimistic,” he told NOW. “The Saudis and Iranians are still far apart. The Iranians must relinquish their expansionism toward the Mediterranean, or we have to give up Syria. And I don’t think we can afford to give up Syria. And besides, even if we decide to give up Syria, the Syrian people are not going to give up Syria.”

“So basically, the Iranians are acting like the Israelis – they want peace, and they want to keep the land.”

Other analysts, while conceding any progress would be slow, had somewhat more positive forecasts on the Syrian front.

“[Syria] is a tough one to happen quickly, but at least if they start talking then it’s a good thing,” said Andrew Hammond, policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and author of The Islamic Utopia: The Illusion of Reform in Saudi Arabia.

“Fundamentally, the chances of the Syrian tragedy being brought to an end, or the beginning of this disaster being brought to an end, require these two countries to come to an agreement […] They are the keys to the Syrian conflict, so they have to start talking, even though it will take a long time.”

Accordingly, with little chance of the two reaching agreement on Syria in the immediate future, the talks may in fact focus on other areas of dispute, such as Iraq, where a new coalition government is being formed following parliamentary elections on 30 April.

“The other issue is Iraq, now that the election is over and all the horse-trading is beginning,” said Hammond. “I wonder whether that actually may have been the main impetus for this invitation.”

Perhaps the most significant changes resulting from Faisal’s initiative in the long run, however, will pertain to Saudi itself. Having been “shocked,” as Hammond put it, by the United States’ decision to pursue warmer ties with Tehran last year, and initially threatening a “major shift” in its relations with Washington as a consequence, Riyadh may now be grudgingly coming to terms with the new order envisaged by President Obama.

“It does suggest there is a potential for them to reassess the situation and try and move things forward, find some way of having a new relationship with the Iranians, given the fact that the Americans clearly want to move forward, and the smaller Gulf states do as well,” said Hammond.

Myra Abdallah contributed reporting.

What happens if there's no president?

[Originally posted at NOW]

Lebanon has just 11 days to elect a new president. NOW looks at what could happen if it fails to do so.

There are only 11 days left before the expiry of Lebanese President Michel Suleiman’s term in office, and two parliamentary sessions scheduled during which lawmakers may reach agreement on his successor. With the country’s key March 14 and March 8 coalitions remaining deeply divided on the issue, expectations are low that these parliamentary sessions will even yield the quorum necessary to assemble at all, let alone deliver a new arrival to Baabda Palace.

Should no one be elected by May 25, then, the question inevitably arises as to what happens next. Article 62 of Lebanon’s constitution stipulates plainly that the cabinet assumes the president’s powers “by delegation” in the event of a presidential vacuum “for any reason.” Prime Minister Tammam Salam has already made remarks to this effect, seeking to reassure citizens that the government would continue to function more or less as normal. Temporary presidential vacuums are by no means unprecedented in Lebanon – indeed, a six month interregnum occurred at the end of the term of Suleiman’s predecessor, Emile Lahoud.

There are, however, other possibilities. One is an extension of Suleiman’s term until a successor is found. This is reportedly favored by the Maronite patriarch – whose influence, over an appointment customarily reserved exclusively for Maronites, is not insignificant – and the US ambassador, among others. All analysts with whom NOW spoke agreed, though, that the proposal is unfeasible, given that it would require a two-thirds majority in parliament to make the necessary constitutional amendment; a majority it could not secure in light of March 8’s firm and vocal objection to it. Suleiman himself, moreover, has stated from the beginning that he rejects the extension of his term.

In which case, observers told NOW the likely alternative is a caretaker presidency handled by the cabinet, as per the constitution, until all relevant political factions come to agreement on a successor.

“It is very difficult [to imagine that] a president will be elected before the 25th,” said Hareth Sleiman, a senior member of the independent Democratic Renewal (Tajaddod) Movement. “We are now looking for a candidate on which both axes will agree.”

This prospect has raised concerns that any presidential void could persist for some time, much as the country went without a cabinet for almost 11 months before the current one was formed in February 2014.

“If there’s no election by 25 May, I don’t know if there’ll be one by 25 June, or 25 August,” said Kataeb Party head Amin Gemayel – himself a candidate – on Monday.

There are a number of reasons why this delay could be substantial, according to observers. One argument postulates that the country’s powerbrokers are waiting for the resolution of numerous regional political question-marks, particularly as regards neighboring Syria, where the outcome of the civil war could have momentous consequences on Lebanon. Lebanese presidential terms last six years, which the country’s factions may deem a long time to endure the consequences of any political miscalculations at this stage. Adding to this is the news earlier this week that Saudi Arabia has agreed to enter talks with its longtime foe, Iran. Both countries wield extensive influence over Lebanon’s March 14 and March 8 coalitions, respectively, and any changes in their relationship would likely have corresponding implications for Lebanon.

“[In light of the Saudi-Iran news,] there might [now] be coordination between different external and Arab powers to get a neutral president, like [Central Bank governor] Riad Salameh,” Sleiman told NOW.

Others observers say the delay will also be caused by conflicting interests between Hezbollah and Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement (FPM); nominal March 8 allies who may nonetheless be supporting different candidates. According to March 14 MP Bassem al-Shab, the FPM seeks to elect Aoun himself, while Hezbollah quietly prefers Lebanese Armed Forces commander General Jean Qahwaji, and this divergence is causing both parties to favor a delay.

“If General Aoun is elected president then the other General’s [political] career would end,” Shab told NOW, referring to Qahwaji. “And if the head of the army becomes president, then the career of [Aoun] comes to an end […] I think a lot of people would like to see the deadline pass without a president because that would really favor [Qahwaji].”

There is, in addition to the above scenarios, another alternative, according to a source within the centrist Progressive Socialist Party who spoke to NOW on condition of anonymity: that of Prime Minister Salam’s resignation. While the source deemed it an unlikely event, its likelihood would reportedly increase if excessive pressure were placed upon Salam in his dual role as prime minister and caretaker president. The effects of such a move, should it transpire, could be considerably debilitating, said the source.

“It isn’t exactly a vacuum if we don’t get a president after 25 May, because the cabinet takes over the president’s powers.”

“But if Salam were to resign, then we would have a real vacuum.”

Myra Abdallah contributed reporting.

Is Lebanon Winning Against Al-Qaeda?

[Originally posted at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Sada journal]

Despite its weak and fragmented state, Lebanon has had evident success against al-Qaeda, though it may be too soon to declare “mission accomplished.”

In the first two months of 2014, Lebanon appeared to be descending rapidly, almost inexorably, into a mire of alarming bloodshed and instability. An unprecedented wave of al-Qaeda-linked attacks on civilians was accelerating, adding 34 deaths to the more than 50 men, women, and children that such attacks had killed in the second half of 2013. And then, almost without anyone noticing, the attacks ceased. April 2014 was the first month to witness no explosion since October 2013. Even before then, a slowdown had been detectable—from five suicide bombings in February 2014 to two in March, the latter confined to the Syrian border region. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, stated confidently in an April interview that “the risk of [further] explosions has diminished very significantly.” While this was a plainly political statement—aimed at retroactively justifying his group’s controversial military intervention in the neighboring Syrian war on the side of President Bashar al-Assad—it appears to have held up so far, and has been echoed by the head of the Lebanese army.

How, then, did a weak and fragmented state like Lebanon manage to prevail against al-Qaeda? The principal reason was that al-Qaeda’s Lebanese franchisees, Jabhat al-Nusra and the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, united Lebanon’s most powerful actors against them. Foremost among these actors is Hezbollah, which, in addition to its paramilitary manpower and hardware, also maintains its own intelligence-gathering and telecommunications networks that allowed them to keep close tabs on the two groups. Jabhat al-Nusra and the Abdallah Azzam Brigades made hostility to Hezbollah their raison d’être, branding it a heretical “Party of Satan” (playing on its name, which means “Party of God”) and stating after every attack that they would continue until the party’s militants withdrew from Syria. Then there are the state forces, which also run multiple and sizeable intelligence-gathering operations. The general outline of the response to the attacks, then, consisted of a manhunt carried out by state security forces in tandem with Hezbollah, based on their combined intelligence, with the blessing of the political establishment and its international backers, including the United States.

This manhunt involved both arrests and targeted killings. In March 2014, a militant wanted for involvement in at least one of the car bombings in Beirut’s southern suburbs was gunned down in a Lebanese army ambush in the mountainous outskirts of the town of Arsal, near the Syrian border. Less clear were the circumstances of the October 2013 killing of a suspect wanted in connection with two car bombings, whose vehicle was reportedly targeted by rocket fire in a remote area, also near Arsal. While state media described it simply as an “armed ambush,” Hezbollah was also accused. Similar mystery surrounded the death in custody of Majid al-Majid, the internationally wanted Saudi leader of the Abdallah Azzam Brigades, credited with masterminding a double suicide attack on Beirut’s Iranian embassy in November 2013. His demise in December, just nine days after his arrest by Lebanese army intelligence, was officially attributed to natural causes—but the Brigades blamed Hezbollah, who in turn pointed the finger at Riyadh.

State authorities also made swift progress on other fronts. A jihadist cleric from Arsal arrested in January 2014 reportedly informed the army of the identity of one Naim Abbas, a Palestinian refugee who became Lebanon’s most wanted suspect and was arrested the following month. Abbas was charged with overseeing two suicide bombings in Beirut’s southern suburbs and reportedly revealed the locations of several explosive-laden vehicles, which were subsequently intercepted by the army. Various other associates of Abbas were also arrested.

As the arrests and indictments mounted, a clearer picture began to emerge of how the militants operated. Prosecutors identified a network linking the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh in the southern city of Sidon with the eastern border town of Arsal. A common denominator in more than one attack was the fugitive Lebanese cleric, Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir, who went into hiding after his militiamen fought a bloody battle with the army and Hezbollah in Sidon in June 2013. At least three suicide bombers claimed in video testimonies to have fought alongside Assir’s men in the clashes.

It was Arsal, however, that Hezbollah officials repeatedly branded as the principal gateway for extremists entering Lebanon from Syria. Three kinds of checkpoints were set up around the town—two manned by the army, and one by Hezbollah gunmen (aptly symbolizing the partnership between the two). Though the latter checkpoints became notorious for harassment and even violence against passers-through, and were eventually removed, the system did have some success as a barricade against attacks—both of the two most recent suicide bombings took place at these checkpoints.

Undergirding all these efforts was the carte blanche given to the army and Hezbollah by the political class, including the patrons of the Sunni community. This in turn was encouraged by influential regional and international powers, including the United States, which has reportedly been sharing intelligence with the Lebanese authorities since July 2013; this was apparently instrumental in the arrest of Naim Abbas. “What happened proves once again that the security situation in Lebanon is directly related to the political situation,” said Riad Kahwaji, head of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis. “Whenever we have political agreement, the security situation suddenly becomes very good.”

With that said, the “mission accomplished” attitude struck by Nasrallah and the army commander may yet prove premature, as well as counterproductive. For while Hezbollah may tout its recent advances in Syria’s Qalamoun region on the Lebanese border as a “grand victory” against “terrorism,” this will only harden the hostility felt toward the Shia group by the many Lebanese Sunnis who continue to see the Syrian rebel cause as a just struggle against tyranny. While the country’s Sunnis are on the whole a moderate community, any inflammation of sectarian animosity can only be a boon to the extremist minority, which has grown in numbers and resources as a result of the Syrian war—particularly after Hezbollah’s intervention there.

That Hezbollah has given no indication it intends to withdraw any time soon—and is, indeed, believed to be eyeing new offensives in Aleppo and Daraa—means a fundamental underlying cause of the jihadists’ proliferation is set to remain for the foreseeable future. Moreover, it remains possible that Hezbollah’s displacement of Syrian rebels, including al-Qaeda-linked militants, from Qalamoun has in fact had the effect of drawing them across the highly porous border into Lebanon. New reports of Jabhat al-Nusra conducting kidnappings in Arsal, following a series of skirmishes between Syrian gunmen and the Lebanese army in the area, suggest this process may already be underway. In which case, Lebanon’s al-Qaeda problem may not have been resolved so much as merely interrupted.

The Pope seems in more danger in Israel than he was in Lebanon

[Originally posted at NOW]

Around three years ago, while doing some desktop research on religious extremism, I signed up for the mailing list of the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) organization, an influential American fundamentalist outfit (boasting over a million members) that advocates the total colonization of historic Palestine by Jewish settlers, to whom God eternally granted the land in the Book of Genesis.

It’s been an invaluable window into the underworld of Christian Zionism ever since, regularly dispatching Christmas greetings from Benjamin Netanyahu; invitations to conference calls with Glenn Beck and Michele Bachmann and; above all else, reminders of the multiple options available to me for making tax-deductible cash donations.

What it takes great care not to disclose, however, are the actual realities of the Christian situation on the ground in the Holy Land today. There is curious silence, for instance, on the fact that Israeli troops occupy the land of the world’s oldest Christian community – the Palestinian one – whose access to religious sites in Bethlehem and, particularly, Jerusalem is subject to the whim of a foreign military authority. Nor is there mention of the steady rise of Jewish fundamentalist bigotry against Christians, which sees churches regularly defaced by fanatics (“Jesus is garbage” read a slogan sprayed on a Jerusalem church last week) and is officially represented in parliament: sent a copy of the New Testament by Christian well-wishers in 2012, MK Michael Ben Ari tore the thing up and threw it in the bin, calling it an “abominable book” that belonged “in the garbage can of history.”

These omissions of detail can often occur with unfortunate timing. Thus, my latest receipt from CUFI, sent six days ago, tells me that:

“The freest Christians and Muslims in the Middle East are the Christian and Muslim citizens of the Jewish state of Israel […] While Christians throughout the Arab world are being bombed, shot and decapitated, the Christian population of Israel can worship in complete safety.”

Which is rather odd, because the Israeli Haaretz newspaper reported last week that anti-Christian hate in Israel has grown so toxic that police fear a “massive hate crime” is being planned by Jewish fundamentalists to coincide with Pope Francis’ visit to Jerusalem later this month; something Christian patriarchates in the city say authorities are doing almost nothing to forestall. Indeed, the only discernible action taken by police so far has been the removal of a sign welcoming Francis to the Old City – lest the fanatics deem it a provocation!

Incidentally, this makes for an interesting contrast to Lebanon, where the Vatican flags erected all over the damn place in anticipation of Pope Benedict XVI’s 2012 visit still haven’t been taken down in some neighborhoods, and where – however contrived it might all have been – every one of the country’s twelve non-Catholic sects wore a smile and professed joy at His Holiness’ arrival (in a vulpine gesture, Hezbollah even sent its Mahdi Scouts to receive him at the airport). Is the Pope, then – and are Christians in general – at greater risk in Israel than in Lebanon?