Hariri back with mission to stabilize, say analysts

[Originally posted at NOW]

After a more than three-year absence from Lebanon on grounds of personal security concerns, Future Movement leader and former Prime Minister MP Saad Hariri took the country by surprise Friday morning with an unannounced return, appearing suddenly on live television feeds making his way to a meeting with Prime Minister Tammam Salam in downtown Beirut.

His return – which he says will be a “long” one – has been hailed by Future officials and their March 14 allies as a significant boost for Lebanon’s fraying stability, and a timely boon for the moderate and pluralistic majority of the country’s Sunni community at the expense of a small but growing extremist minority.

Yet the exact reasons for the move at this particular time remain a subject of debate. Officially, Hariri has said he came back to “address the implementation” of a recent $1bn donation to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) by Saudi Arabia, the principal regional backer of the Future Movement. Future official Rashid Fayed expanded on this, implicitly putting it in the context of Saudi’s reportedly broader efforts to crack down on regional jihadist militancy in recent months.

“Hariri is a party in the war against terror, and his return was engineered at the international, Arab and regional levels” in that capacity, said Fayed.

Triggering this initiative, several analysts told NOW, were the recent clashes in the eastern border town of Arsal between the LAF and foreign jihadists, which raised fears – both domestically and internationally – of a potentially dramatic destabilization in Lebanon along the lines seen in Iraq in June. Significantly, the rhetoric of Future and other March 14 officials regarding Hariri’s return has emphasized the notion of combating extremism within the Sunni community itself, rather than combating Hezbollah, the Syrian regime, or any other of March 14’s traditional foes.

“It seems he came back now because of the major incidents happening in Lebanon,” said Hazem Saghieh, a widely-published political commentator. “I think the international community pushed him to come back because it is not acceptable that he stays away with all this chaos.”

The urgency of the Arsal situation and what it could portend may also have convinced Hariri’s traditional domestic opponents, Hezbollah and the pro-Damascus March 8 bloc, along with their regional backers that his presence in Lebanon was desirable, thus easing his fears concerning security (five Hezbollah members stand accused by a UN-backed international tribunal of carrying out the assassination of his father, former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri).

“[Perhaps] the problems that led him to stay away for three years have been resolved,” said Hussam Itani, a columnist at Al-Hayat. “If so, that would be a very positive thing; akin to a Saudi-Iranian agreement.”

Quite apart from security considerations, however, there has been talk, including from officials such as Telecoms Minister Butrus Harb, that Hariri’s return could be intended to reinvigorate efforts to end an 11-week-long presidential vacuum. How exactly Hariri’s physical presence would substantially change the dynamics on this front, however, remains unclear.

Indeed, some observers also questioned the extent to which Hariri could influence the security situation, either, no matter how well-meaning his intentions.

“I don’t know what it will change, I’m very skeptical,” said Mosbah al-Ahdab, a former Tripoli MP with the independent Democratic Renewal (“Tajaddod”) Movement.

“It is impossible to boost Sunni moderation as long as Hezbollah has weapons,” said Saghieh. “As long as Hezbollah still has weapons and security incidents are happening, the Sunni community will continue to be drawn to extremism.”

To this, Future MP Mustafa Alloush countered that “part of combating terrorism is political,” arguing Hariri’s political and religious moderation would have a positive influence on the Sunni community at large.

“He felt that he should be here in order to try to reconcile and guide the community again toward the essentially pluralistic and non-extremist point of view that the Future Movement represents.”

Myra Abdallah contributed reporting.

What now for cabinet formation?

[Originally posted at NOW]

Lebanon’s nine-month-long absence of a government, which briefly looked as though it might come to a resolution earlier this week, now appears set to persist even further following Thursday’s deadly car bombing in Beirut’s southern suburbs, which came just six days after the assassination – also by car bomb – of former minister and ambassador Mohamad Chatah.

Efforts overseen by Prime Minister-designate Tammam Salam to form a cabinet have long been stalled by irreconcilable conditions and counter-conditions imposed by the country’s two key political blocs. The March 8 coalition has demanded a one-third share of ministerial seats to guarantee veto power over any decisions deemed unwelcome, while March 14 has in turn rejected the participation of Hezbollah in the cabinet so long as the party is fighting in neighboring Syria, in contravention of a bipartisan agreement reached in June 2012 to “dissociate” Lebanon from the Syrian conflict.

Nevertheless, Salam and President Michel Suleiman had reportedly decided to form a so-called “fait accompli” cabinet, composed of 14 neutral figures, by 8 January. That proposal has now seemingly been shelved – at least for the moment – in light of Thursday’s attack, with Salam telling one local paper Friday that he was giving parties one more chance to agree on an alternative option. Should they fail to do so, however, a number of sources suggested the fait accompli cabinet could become a reality once again.

“The Dahiyeh bombing definitely slowed down the cabinet formation process,” said an adviser to a current caretaker minister who requested anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the press. “President Suleiman will now launch new efforts toward a ‘national unity’ government” – the option favored by Hezbollah and the Progressive Socialist Party, among others, under which all major parties would be represented – “to see if there is any change in March 14’s position.”

“But if these efforts fail, Suleiman and Salam will likely go back to the fait accompli option. This could happen as soon as 15 January,” he told NOW.

Other sources, however, suggest the fait accompli proposal will remain inherently unviable for the foreseeable future. For one thing, there are fears it could trigger violent clashes reminiscent of those in May 2008, when March 8-aligned gunmen occupied much of Beirut after deadly gun battles with March 14-affiliated opponents. On several occasions over the past few months, Hezbollah officials and their supporters in the local press have appeared to either imply or directly threaten such an outcome. On Monday, March 8 sources reportedly told the Al-Akhbar newspaper that a fait accompli cabinet would be opposed by Hezbollah “even if it meant storming the Grand Serail,” the seat of the prime minister.

“They are threatening [violence], definitely,” said former MP Mosbah al-Ahdab of the Democratic Renewal (Tajaddod) Movement. Ahdab characterized the March 8 stance to NOW as follows: “Either you accept a cabinet with a blocking third, or a cabinet that they call ‘national unity’ that is impossible to implement... [Otherwise,] we will go down to the streets.”

Another problem with the fait accompli option, according to Future Movement MP Bassem al-Shab, is opposition to it from the Maronite Patriarch, which is of particular significance in light of the ostensibly impending presidential elections.

“Salam and Suleiman are unlikely to go for such a cabinet when the Maronite hierarchy is against it,” Shab told NOW. “If there is a fait accompli cabinet, it means for sure there won’t be presidential elections, because one side will boycott them.”

For that reason, Shab suggested the cabinet formation question may be sidelined until consensus is reached on the next presidential candidate, the election of whom will require a new cabinet in any case, according to the constitution.

“If there’s no government, there may be an incentive to find a common [presidential] candidate which would open the way to a new government. I think it’s going to push all parties to agree on a common candidate.”

The death of a statesman

[Originally posted at NOW, co-written with Ana Maria Luca]

NOW explores Mohammad Chatah’s political role and the possible reasons behind his assassination.

On his way to a political meeting of the March 14 coalition, Former Lebanese Finance minister Mohammad Chatah tweeted, “Hezbollah is pressing hard to be granted similar powers in security and foreign policy matters that Syria exercised in Lebanon for 15 years.” Within minutes, a car bomb exploded in Downtown Beirut, and Chatah was dead. It damaged six buildings around the Starco building, killing five other people and wounding scores in one of the most crowded business and administrative areas of Beirut.

It was political statements like his last tweet that led to Chatah’s assassination, friends, analysts, and fellow politicians told NOW. Chatah did not have a very important position in government anymore, but he was one of the political strategists of the Future Movement and the March 14 coalition. Considered a Sunni moderate, he was also a very vocal political adversary of Hezbollah and of Syrian government influence over Lebanese politics.

“He had a very dynamic role. He was a man of principle, was very involved in the decisionmaking in March 14. His killing will definitely complicate the mission of the Sunni moderates in this part of the world,” Mosbah al-Ahdab, prominent Sunni politician from Tripoli, told NOW.

“Mohammad’s mind never stopped thinking. The only way they could stop him from thinking was to kill him,” journalist Nadim Koteish, Chatah’s close friend, also told NOW.

Born Mohamad Baha Chatah in Tripoli in 1951, he attended the local Evangelical primary school and the International College secondary school in Beirut. He obtained a BA in economics from the American University of Beirut in 1974, and later a PhD in the same field from the University of Texas in 1983. Upon completing his postgraduate studies, Chatah joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington D.C. as an advisor to the executive director. In 1993, he returned to Lebanon as Vice Governor of the Central Bank, a post he would hold until becoming Ambassador to the United States in 1997.

In 1999, with his ally the former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri no longer in power, Chatah returned to the IMF in Washington as an advisor on external relations. He would remain there until Hariri’s 2005 assassination, at which point Chatah moved back to Lebanon for good, serving as a chief advisor to Prime Ministers Fouad Siniora and Saad Hariri, as well as Minister of Finance from 2008 to 2009. He remained a senior aide to both Future Movement officials.

Chatah was also a prominent public figure, regularly appearing on radio and television and posting frequently on his blog and Twitter account, where he would write on Lebanese political and economic affairs, the Syrian conflict, Palestine, the Arab uprisings, and Western foreign policy, as well as jokes and other light-hearted topics.

Hours after the bomb went off, analysts and politicians were still trying to make sense of what the former minister’s assassination meant for the Lebanese political scene. Some interpreted Chatah’s assassination as a message to politicians in the pro-Western March 14 coalition, especially Saad Hariri, who has been in exile for over two years for fear he might be assassinated.

Future MP Khaled Zahraman told NOW that “the assassination aims at intimidating and threatening March 14… We see in this assassination a resemblance to prior assassinations like al-Hariri’s and other assassinations that are investigated by the STL,” he added.

The trial of the case of Rafiq Hariri’s assassination is due to start mid-January in the Hague. The prosecutors charged four Hezbollah members and supporters with the crime.

Moreover, according to Koteish, the former minister was very active in the past few months in supporting a neutral Lebanese government. Chatah played an important role in the debate among political factions in recent weeks, acting as a political messenger between political leaders in the negotiations for forming Tamam Salam’s government. “He was more than a messenger: he was one of the most prominent Lebanese political engineers,” he added.

Zahraman stressed that the bombing was a message sent to intimidate the entire political faction Chatah was part of. “This is a new phase. The assassinations which we witnessed between 2005 and 2008 were trials by the Syrian regime to cause fractions in the internal Lebanese affairs through igniting sectarian divisions and clashes. It seems that the Syrian regime’s trials have failed earlier, so they are now using the methods of assassinations again now to provoke more fractions and tension,” Zahraman said.

Analysts don’t expect a great impact on the Lebanese Sunni community. “Whoever killed Chatah was very smart,” Koteish argued. “Mohammad Chatah was not a prominent Sunni figure whose death would translate among the Sunnis as an attack on the Sunni community. He was a Lebanese moderate figure,” Koteish said.

Luna Safwan contributed reporting.

Little relief for Tripoli's grief

[Originally posted at NOW]

Reconstruction efforts are hampered by systematic corruption in relief distribution, say local citizens and politicians.

For residents of Tripoli’s Maarad and Zahrieh neighborhoods, where twin mosque blasts killed 47 civilians and damaged hundreds of homes moments after Friday prayers on 23 August, the task of reconstruction is being compromised by systematic corruption in government relief distribution, according to local citizens and politicians.

On 29 September, former MP Mosbah al-Ahdab of the Democratic Renewal (Tajaddod) Movement held a press conference in which he condemned what he called a “scandal” within the Higher Relief Commission (HRC), the government body tasked with providing emergency humanitarian aid, in which substantially higher cash amounts were being paid to those with well-placed connections.

In his spacious but crowded apartment opposite Tripoli’s Rashid Karami International Fair on Saturday, just a few hundred meters from the al-Salam Mosque explosion site, Ahdab spoke to NOW in between quick meetings with a constant rotation of visitors – clerics, youths from the troubled Bab al-Tabbaneh neighborhood, and a poet, among others. “My place is like a train station,” he grinned as he excused himself for what might have been the tenth phone call in as many minutes.

“It’s been the same story for over two years, during which we’ve had at least fifteen rounds of destruction” between the feuding Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen neighborhoods, Ahdab told NOW. “Certain people get compensation without even opening a file with the HRC. Others are registered in Tripoli but they actually live elsewhere. On the other hand, people who really live here, and had their homes destroyed, get cheques for a few hundred dollars.”

As evidence, Ahdab handed NOW photocopies of three cheques, clearly marked as paid by the HRC, issued to three individuals in July 2013 (see above images). One received 805,000LL ($537); another 380,000LL ($253); and the last 235,000LL ($157). “What’s the point? It costs more just to paint the house,” he said.

Another phone call later, and Ahdab arranged for the son of one of the cheque recipients, Mustafa*, to join us at the apartment, along with some friends, all of them in their mid-twenties. Dragging deeply on back-to-back cigarettes, Mustafa’s bony arms trembled as he told NOW how his family’s Bab al-Tabbaneh home was devastated twice during clashes with Jabal Mohsen.

“We lived without electricity or water, and the state did nothing to help us. The first time, we rebuilt the place by ourselves,” he said.

The second time, the HRC offered them $537. “It would cost 100,000LL [$67] just to open a bank account. I’d rather rip the damn thing in half,” he told NOW bitterly.

“You’re one of the lucky ones,” snorted a friend. “Others got just 50,000LL [$33].”

The difference between those who receive hundreds of dollars and those who receive several thousands, they allege, is connections – with security forces, with army intelligence officers, or simply with “the state” (they use the word contemptuously, as though describing an enemy). Ahdab, moreover, says Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Miqati, who lives just a few buildings away, is the most valuable contact of all, since the HRC legally falls under the control of the prime minister’s office. Indeed, under previous administrations, the HRC has faced similar accusations of favoring partisans of the incumbent prime minister.

NOW was unable to obtain comment from the HRC, though its Secretary General Gen. Ibrahim Bashir previously denied to NOW in December 2012 that bribery took place within the organization, dismissing such allegations as having “a political dimension” intended to “tarnish the reputation of the Lebanese army.”

As far as Mustafa and his friends are concerned, however, the institution’s corruption goes far beyond inflating cheque payments.

“The state sides with Jabal Mohsen. Their agents in Tabbaneh call up militants in the Jabal and tell them to fire shots at Tabbaneh, and they collect more money from the state that way. Others block the roads, fire machine guns into the air, and then call up army intelligence and get money to open the roads again,” said Mustafa.

“I don’t want to do things like that. I don’t want anything but my rights.”

*At the interviewee’s request, a pseudonym has been used due to the sensitivity of the subject.

Tripoli figures skeptical of security plan

[Originally posted at NOW]

City leaders tell NOW plans to replicate Dahiyeh's security measures in Tripoli are fraught with complications.

The deployment of state security forces across dozens of new checkpoints in Beirut’s southern suburbs – intended to replace the controversial private measures taken by local Hezbollah strongmen – has sparked proposals to implement a similar move in the northern city of Tripoli.

Both Dahiyeh (as the southern suburbs are informally known) and Tripoli were struck by highly deadly car bombings in August, prompting a nationwide security clampdown that critics from both sides of the political divide argue has favored Dahiyeh at Tripoli’s expense. “Is what happened in Tripoli any less serious than what happened in Dahiyeh?”asked Caretaker Youth and Sports Minister Faisal Karami, one of Hezbollah’s relatively few allies in the northern city. “The people of Tripoli have the right to ask: Why is it that every time we ask for security measures […] we are told […] that we must make do with what we have?”

Accordingly, Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Miqati – himself a Tripoli native – has called for a meeting Friday with Caretaker Interior Minister Marwan Charbel along with security officials and other politicians to discuss the possibility of replicating the Dahiyeh plan in Tripoli.

No specific details of the proposals on the table have thus far emerged. Yet leading political figures in the city told NOW that while they would welcome effective measures by state institutions to tackle Tripoli’s chronic instability, they were highly skeptical that anything meaningful would come out of Friday’s discussions.

“This is a déjà vu phenomenon, because we have seen previous plans about fourteen or fifteen times over the past few years in Tripoli, and many of them were really serious, and we as citizens and politicians don’t understand why they have ceased to exist all of a sudden,” said Future Movement MP Mustafa Alloush. “What we [typically see] in Tripoli is all of a sudden we have a security plan, thousands of troops and security officers gather for a week or two, maybe a month, and then it disappears.”

“I don’t see anything new,” agreed former MP Mosbah al-Ahdab of the Democratic Renewal (Tajaddod) Movement, who added that such efforts have invariably been sabotaged in the past by corruption and political patronage, some of it involving Miqati himself. “Miqati has requested the state many times to make this security plan in Tripoli, and it’s always secretive, and at the end of the day it ends up having roadblocks stopping people, but those who should be arrested have permits to pass and are not allowed to be arrested.”

“If Miqati wants to […] do something, let him stop financing fighters,” said Ahdab, echoing prior accusations that the caretaker prime minister is a prominent sponsor of various armed groups in the city.

Adding to the complications is the question of whether these militias, many of which distrust state security forces, would accept the deployment of the army in their quarters. In June, gunmen clashed with the army when it intervened to quell the latest in a long series of battles between the Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen neighborhoods.

Sheikh Salem al-Rafei, a cleric with ties to many of Bab al-Tabbaneh’s militants who narrowly escaped assassination in one of the car bombs last month, told NOW he did not know enough about the security plan to comment on whether or not he would support it. He implied, however, that it was unnecessary because there were no checkpoints comparable to Hezbollah’s in Dahiyeh to replace.

“I do not understand the nature of this security plan because we don’t have ‘self-security’ in Tripoli, as they did in Dahiyeh,” Rafei told NOW. He added that he thought investigating who carried out the previous car bombs was a more pressing concern.

Alloush, for his part, opined that if militants would actively oppose the security plan, that in itself would only underscore the urgent need for it to be executed.

“If we have to wait for the agreement of militiamen to surrender their arms, we will be in a comedy, not a state.”

Luna Safwan contributed reporting.

Humbled Qatar may curb Lebanon extremists

[Originally posted at NOW]

As Saudi Arabia elbows aside Qatar’s influence across the region, militant Islamists in Lebanon may feel the squeeze.

The dramatic ouster of Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi last Wednesday has been quickly interpreted by analysts as a significant setback for the foreign policy of Qatar, the Gulf state which had asserted itself as the prime supporter and financier of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated government since the overthrow of former President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

Having poured $8bn into the country under Morsi, the argument goes, Qatar had placed its biggest bet yet on the Islamist movement of which it is the key global patron, and with the fall of Morsi this has turned out to be a blunder. The revelation Tuesday that Qatar’s rivals Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have collectively pledged $8bn in aid to the post-Morsi government – exactly matching the sum offered by Qatar previously – appeared to further signify the Gulf state’s loss of influence.

Egypt is not the only country in which Qatar appears to have lost ground to the Saudis. Last month, NOW reported the Kingdom was seeking to monopolize control of the political opposition in Syria, which has long been criticized as too heavily weighted toward the Brotherhood. The subsequent selection of Saudi-backed Ahmad Jarba as head of the Syrian National Coalition, quickly followed by the resignation of Qatar-backed Ghassan Hitto from the post of rebel prime minister, have been seen as the successful fruits of these efforts.

Not all analysts, however, see such developments as straightforward losses for Qatar. “It’s not really that clear,” said Andrew Hammond, recent author of The Islamic Utopia: The Illusion of Reform in Saudi Arabia, currently based in Doha. “The Qataris in recent months have obviously been involved in a process of succession… so I think they’ve been happy to be out of the picture to a certain degree and [to be] acceding to these pressures of the Saudis muscling in on the scene,” he told NOW, referring to the recent replacement of Emir Hamad al-Thani by his son, Sheikh Tamim, as head of state. “I think they’ve bought themselves time by having this shift in who’s in charge officially here. I don’t think it necessarily means they’re not going to come back.”

Nor, argues Hammond, is Qatar likely to drop its historical alliance with the Brotherhood. “The Brotherhood’s representatives in Qatar have been here for a long time. [Prominent pro-Brotherhood cleric Sheikh Yusuf] Al-Qaradawi is just as close to the new emir as he was to the father. So, it would be a lot to imagine that they would suddenly shift in one go when they’ve had a relationship with these people for a long time.” Indeed this relationship, adds Hammond, while partly based on self-interest, is also “more nuanced.… there is a certain sympathy [Qatar] has for [the Brotherhood]. They do genuinely see them as being in the middle of the Arab political spectrum.”

In any case, to the extent that Saudi has gained at Qatar’s expense, the effects could be beneficial for Lebanon, according to former MP Mosbah al-Ahdab of the Democratic Renewal (Tajaddod) Movement. Ahdab told NOW that while Saudi chiefly sponsors the non-Islamist Future Movement, Qatari funds in recent years have been primarily directed at Islamist factions, including the majority of militant groups in his native city of Tripoli.

“It would be very reassuring if the Saudis started taking an interest in Lebanon again, because for some time we have been in the hands of Qataris who have been throwing money left and right, radicalizing the whole situation, and creating fighters who have no coordination and no goal. It’s been very dangerous.”

Future MP Mustafa Alloush agreed, adding to NOW that the unwinding of Qatari influence in Lebanon is already underway, as evidenced by the recent crushing of the armed movement of Sidon-based cleric Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir, often rumored to be a Qatari client.

“Qatar played some dangerous games by financing radical and extremist movements in an attempt to counter the Saudi influence on moderates. What happened [to Assir] and the [limited] reactions proves that these movements are weaker now. So in Lebanon, we will see empowerment of the moderate movements, and weakening of the extremist ones.”

Hammond, however, argues that Lebanon may not necessarily benefit from an ascendant Saudi Arabia.

“My impression is that it won’t necessarily make the situation more peaceable in Lebanon because the Saudis have their people there, and they’re going to push them, and that’s going to lead to more conflict with Hezbollah. From their perspective, they just want to fight Hezbollah, to push their influence back, and whether that in the short term leads to a calmer situation in Lebanon is another question entirely.”

Yara Chehayed contributed reporting.

Law enforcement, or rough justice?

[Originally posted at NOW]

Seated under a large rectangular tent in the village of Wadi al-Nahleh on the northeastern outskirts of Tripoli Monday afternoon, surrounded by about a hundred men in suit jackets clutching prayer beads and small plastic coffee cups, the father of Muhammad Abdullah Seif spoke calmly but with iron conviction.

“We will wait for the court to hold the officers responsible to account,” he told NOW. “We don’t want to block more roads – I myself went yesterday to re-open them. But if the court does not act objectively, they can expect our reaction. We are a tribal community, I cannot control the neighborhood. Maybe we will choose to forgive the officers, or maybe we will take revenge.”

In between answering our questions, he rose to greet more well-wishers, coming to pay condolences for the loss of his 19-year-old son, killed Sunday along with fellow villager, 24-year-old Mahmoud Raya, in a shootout with the Lebanese authorities that also took the life of Internal Security Forces (ISF) officer Ali Saqr.

The clashes broke out after the ISF, along with the army, attempted to demolish some illegally-constructed buildings in the village. Wadi al-Nahleh is an impoverished shanty quarter on the hills below the Beddawi Palestinian refugee camp, inhabited by a few hundred Lebanese tribespeople. Its one tarmac road splinters into gravel alleyways, flanked by unpainted brick shacks with corrugated iron roofs held in place by old tires and planks of wood. Aside from a few small “Free Syria” flags, there is little sign of any political affiliation.

How exactly the gunfire began is disputed. The villagers’ version of events has it that the ISF “opened fire at children who were throwing stones,” at which point locals returned fire in self-defense. Sporting a bandaged arm and head, 38-year-old Mustafa Seif told NOW he was the victim of unprovoked aggression. “I came down to disperse the kids who were throwing stones at the police and army. I turned my back to the army, I trusted them, and they shot me. I now have bullet shards in my neck, back, and hand.”

Another resident identifying himself as a cousin of the deceased Muhammad Seif described a darker scene. “I have to tell you, this was a massacre. My cousin was injured and still the officer shot him again. As for Mahmoud Raya, he was shot from just thirty centimeters away, execution-style.” Such claims cannot be independently verified, though local children showed NOW photos on their phones of a corpse on the floor, a thick pool of blood seeping out of a mangled skull.

By contrast, an ISF spokesperson told NOW their fire only came “in response” to shots from the villagers, who turned violent when the ISF verbally ordered them to remove the illegal buildings.

The mayor of Wadi al-Nahleh, Majed Abd al-Rahman Ghamrawi, could not be reached for comment.

For decades, illegal construction has taken place in hundreds of locations all over Lebanon, and it is unclear why Wadi al-Nahleh was singled out for disciplinary treatment this time. Commenting on the clashes, former ISF head Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi suggested the construction was being driven by the influx of Syrian refugees to the area, though NOW saw no Syrians in the village and residents denied any were living among them.

An alternative explanation, cited in some reports, lays the blame on corruption within the ISF ranks. According to unnamed sources, ISF officials had been accepting bribes in return for allowing illegal buildings to stand. When the bribe money was no longer forthcoming, the ISF took punitive measures. This echoes accusations reported by NOW after a similar incident in Tyre in 2011, when two men were also killed by the ISF following attempts to remove illegal construction. On that occasion, residents told NOW that obtaining permission for such buildings by paying bribes to ISF members was commonplace.

None of the Wadi al-Nahleh residents explicitly made this allegation to NOW on Monday, though the late Muhammad Seif’s father said that for four years, disputes with the ISF over illegal construction had been “dealt with peacefully,” a possible allusion to bribery. An ISF spokesperson denied any corruption within the organization to NOW.

Former Tripoli MP for the Democratic Renewal (Tajaddod) Movement, Mosbah al-Ahdab, also finds the theory somewhat far-fetched.

“Unfortunately, there is bribery in this country, absolutely,” he told NOW. “Everything’s falling apart, and corruption is everywhere, to say the opposite would not sound credible. But I don’t think security forces would start shooting at civilians over this.”

In any case, as Seif’s father’s talk of “revenge” made clear, the matter is not yet settled, and more blood may spill before it is. The ISF spokesman told NOW the organization is currently conducting an internal investigation, after which it may resume its attempts to clear Wadi al-Nahleh of illegal buildings.

“We are waiting for the judicial decision. If there is a decision to remove more buildings, then we will do so.”

Yara Chehayed contributed reporting.

The battle for Rifi's successor

[Originally posted at NOW]

That former Prime Minister Najib Miqati brought down his own cabinet on Friday over a failure to agree on the leadership of Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces (ISF) is testament to the extraordinary political significance of the position. As NOW reported last week, MPs from the March 14 coalition as well as the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) had urged cabinet to extend the term of current director-general Major General Ashraf Rifi, who is seen as a political ally of theirs. When the cabinet majority loyal to March 14’s rivals Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement opposed the idea in a session last Friday, Miqati announced his resignation.

March 14 is still attempting to extend Rifi’s term, presenting parliament speaker Nabih Berri with a proposed draft law Wednesday that would put the issue to parliament in its next session. But in the event that such efforts fail – as Rifi himself has suggested they will – then a fierce battle over Rifi’s successor may follow.

In the wake of Miqati’s resignation, allegations emerged from sources including PSP leader Walid Jumblatt that the March 8 coalition had pushed for controversial former ISF head Gen. Ali al-Hajj to replace Rifi. Indeed, al-Hajj himself proclaimed his entitlement to the position on Saturday. ISF sources, by contrast, told NOW that, according to internal procedure, the post would go to Rifi’s deputy, Inspector Gen. Roger Salem.

From March 14’s perspective, few candidates could be less welcome than al-Hajj, whose tensions with the Future Movement date back over more than a decade. Head of security for former PM Rafiq Hariri since 1992, Hajj had come to be distrusted by Hariri over time due to his close ties with Syrian military intelligence. He was thus fired in 2000, after which Syria appointed him head of the ISF in the Beqaa. By 2004, he had risen to the ISF premiership, and incurred Hariri’s further suspicions by reducing his personal protection unit from 40 officers to 8. When Hariri was assassinated in a car bomb the following year, al-Hajj was accused of tampering with evidence at the crime scene, and was arrested in a pre-dawn raid on the orders of Detlev Mehlis, commissioner of the UN International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC) into Hariri’s killing. Though he was eventually released from prison in 2009 due to lack of evidence, there remains a conviction in March 14 and other circles that he was not fully innocent, with Walid Jumblatt saying Friday that he continues to “consider him politically involved in [Hariri’s] assassination.”

Accordingly, should al-Hajj secure nomination to the post, it would likely provoke major objections from March 14. “Al-Hajj cannot take over this position,” Future MP Ahmad Fatfat told NOW. “If we imagine the scenario of al-Hajj coming back to power, we are imagining the return of the Syrian intelligence dominance era.”

On the same question, Democratic Renewal (Tajaddod) Movement former MP Mosbah al-Ahdab – who, as an early opponent of Syria’s occupation of Lebanon, has had his own run-ins with the Damascus regime – told NOW that, “unfortunately, March 8 is trying to put their hands on all the security institutions in Lebanon, and this is not correct and not viable.”

Without a cabinet currently in place, however, it’s unclear how al-Hajj would actually obtain nomination. On Wednesday, NOW met with former judicial police commander Gen. Anwar Yehya at the ISF’s military beach club in Ras Beirut, who said ISF rules clearly dictate that, as the next-highest ranking official after Rifi, Inspector Gen. Roger Salem will take over as director-general when Rifi steps down on April 1st, until Salem himself reaches the maximum age of 59 on June 13th. Al-Hajj’s claims that he outranks Salem, Yehya added, were invalidated by an April 13th, 2005 decree to cancel al-Hajj’s ISF position and move him to the Interior Ministry.

“The only way for al-Hajj to become director-general is if a cabinet is formed and it meets and agrees to appoint him by a two-thirds majority,” Yehya told NOW. By implication, the March 8 coalition would need to make up at least two-thirds of the next cabinet – a prospect that looks improbable amid the various current proposals for non-partisan “unity,” “salvation,” and technocratic cabinets.

Assuming al-Hajj is not appointed, there remains the question of who will replace Salem in June. Yehya told NOW that, as next-highest in rank, the post would go to Brigadier Gen. Ibrahim Basbous, who will remain eligible for office for another year at his current rank, and two more if he is promoted to Major General.

While Yehya declined to discuss the political leanings of Salem and Basbous, he remarked that Rifi is unlikely to have appointed successors to whom he is personally opposed.

If this is the case, the ISF may well remain amicable to March 14 for the foreseeable future after all.

Yara Chehayed contributed reporting.

March 14 scrambles to keep top security ally

[Originally posted at NOW]

In an abrupt departure from wrangling over electoral laws, MPs from the Future Movement along with their March 14 allies and Walid Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party have made urgent attempts this week to pass a draft law that would raise the mandatory retirement age for top security officials, several of whom would otherwise be forced to step down later this year.

These officials include 59-year-old army chief General Jean Qahwaji and Internal Security Forces (ISF) head Major General Ashraf Rifi, who will turn 59 in April – the maximum age for the post. The draft law would extend both men’s terms for another three years.

President Michel Suleiman submitted the bill to cabinet on Thursday. Rifi himself expressed doubts Friday that it would pass cabinet, saying it “needs the approval of two thirds of the ministers and this is not possible because more than half of them object to an extension of my term.” Both Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), who collectively occupy 9 out of 30 seats, have explicitly opposed the proposal, arguing the government should appoint successors to the posts. Should Rifi’s extension be rejected and a successor not appointed, Rifi indicated his deputy Brigadier General Roger Salem would replace him – though Salem, himself, is due to reach retirement age this year. Rifi could not be reached for comment.

The loss of Rifi would be taken by March 14 as a significant setback. Though the movement’s leaders have officially touted the draft law as a non-partisan move to preserve national stability, few observers are in doubt that their priority is keeping Rifi in place, and indeed one Future MP admitted as much to NOW.

“After the [October 19, 2012] assassination of [ISF Information Branch head Brigadier General] Wissam al-Hassan, our security is exposed to many factors and parties, and Rifi is bravely filling his station,” said MP Ahmad Fatfat. “We trust Rifi and need him in this position. If someone is trying to move Rifi away, then he is definitely part of the assassination process, and he wants us as March 14 to be exposed,” he added, in a likely reference to Hezbollah and the FPM.

“Even Jumblatt is feeling the need for this extension,” added Fatfat, referring to the former March 14 firebrand (and long-rumored assassination target) whose party now has three ministers in the March 8-aligned cabinet. Echoing the official March 14 line, Jumblatt says his support for Rifi’s extension derives from general security concerns.

Rifi’s close ties to March 14, and the Future Movement in particular, have long been something of an open secret. “There’s a certain balance in security, based on the fact that some institutions are controlled by March 8 and others are controlled by March 14,” said former Tripoli MP Mosbah al-Ahdab of the Democratic Renewal (Tajaddod) Movement. “[Rifi] is one of the main people representing [March 14].”

This is further borne out in the US embassy cables leaked in 2010, which generally portray Rifi as a determined opponent of the Syrian regime and its key Lebanese ally, Hezbollah. The cables also make clear that sees himself and the ISF he helped build as locked in a “race against time” to neutralize the threats he believes these parties pose to Lebanon. Former US ambassador Jeffrey Feltman wrote of the ISF’s “connections to [Future Movement leader] Saad Hariri and its heavily Sunni (i.e., essentially anti-Hizballah [sic]) officer ranks.” Such ‘connections’ may even be military – one cable from 2008 quotes Jumblatt claiming that Rifi was assisting Hariri in amassing a 15,000-strong militia. In the same year, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea also reportedly told former US chargé d’affaires Michele Sison that both he and Jumblatt were trying to buy ammunition from Rifi for their own militias.

Whatever the exact nature of Rifi’s ties to March 14, the bloc evidently deems him an invaluable asset – a fact which analysts say reflects the top-heavy structure of Lebanese security institutions in general.

“This demonstrates the continuing importance of individual authorities within the Lebanese security architecture,” said Elias Muhanna, assistant professor at Brown University and author of the Qifa Nabki blog. “There is no such thing as institutional memory in these intelligence branches; the inner circle is extremely small and therefore extremely valuable.”

Indeed, this heavy reliance on individuals is a key weakness of the system that requires reform, according to Ahdab.

“I think this all needs to be reviewed,” he told NOW. “Because prolonging the mandate for Rifi also means maintaining the same security structure and renewing other [security] positions. So the question is do we want to renew this, or would we like to change it?”

“Of course, we’d like to change it. Perhaps the timing is not right. But definitely this is not the solution; this is prolonging a situation where the state is absolutely losing ground and not controlling what is happening.”

“We saw that starting in Tripoli, and now it’s spreading all over Lebanon.”

Yara Chehayed contributed reporting.

Tripoli sliding into lawlessness

[Originally posted at NOW]

Rami Nasser and his friend had been slightly apprehensive about riding their motorbikes through Tripoli late last month, but it had been three weeks since the last bout of armed clashes had subsided, and a local friend assured them the situation was calm. As they were soon to discover, however, the definition of “calm” in Tripoli can be flexible.

“We were on our way to see a friend in Minyara [north of Tripoli] around noon,” Nasser told NOW. “When we entered Tripoli, we kept to the main roads. Everything looked very normal; the streets were full of people. Then, just a hundred meters or so after passing the Abu Ali Roundabout, on which the army had heavily deployed, we suddenly saw about five young guys blocking the road in front of us, shouting at us to stop.

“They started pushing our bikes and then one put a gun to my friend’s head, so he got off the bike and handed him the keys. At this point we thought it was a robbery. The five turned into over 20 within less than a minute. I thought about just slamming on the gas and trying to get away, but then one took out a handgun, cocked it, put his finger on the trigger and held it right to my face. So I got off and gave him the key too.

“Then, after we took our helmets off, a man looking like a sheikh – with the Salafist beard and shaven moustache – walked up and looked at our faces and told the guys, ‘No, no, it’s not them, let them go.’ So they gave us back our keys, and as we turned around, one shouted, ‘You should thank your god nothing happened to you. Go!’”

Abandoning the Minyara plan, Nasser and his friend made for a nearby army base to report what happened. They received a mostly indifferent response. “They didn’t care. They told us, ‘Good thing you made it out unharmed; they could have taken the bikes, they could have shot you,’” said Nasser.

“When they tried to write a report, they realized they didn’t have a pen, and they had to buy one from a nearby supermarket. And while they did this they told us to park our bikes inside their barracks, in case the guys came to check if we were talking to the army. It was really ironic, because we were with the army and they were afraid of them, not vice versa.”

To this day, Nasser has heard nothing back from the army regarding the report, and still doesn’t know why he and his friend were held up by the gunmen, though an army intelligence officer at the time suggested they were looking for two people on motorbikes who had recently “done something” against them.

Nor were the army the only ones to shrug at what happened. Ordinary pedestrians, some of whom had stopped to watch as the gunmen closed around the bikers, simply carried on with their days once Nasser and his friend fled the scene.

“It was as if it were a totally normal, everyday thing to put guns in people’s faces,” he told NOW.

Indeed, such occurrences do appear to be increasingly typical of the city that Tripoli has become – heavily weaponized, largely lawless, and violently divided along political and sectarian lines. Local resident Mustafa Ramadan told NOW that the notorious antagonism between the Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen neighborhoods has only made things worse.

For example, “A few weeks ago, a young man was walking through Tabbaneh, and someone decided he was a fighter from Jabal Mohsen who had killed Sunnis in the recent clashes,” said Ramadan. “So right then and there, in broad daylight, he pulled out a handgun, shot the guy dead and ran away. A few hours later, they discovered it was the wrong man.

“You can get killed nowadays just for looking like people.”

Why has it become like this? According to former Tripoli MP Mosbah al-Ahdab of the Tajaddod Movement, the problem is that the gunmen are politically covered. “The security institutions are more protective of fighters than civilians,” he told NOW. “You know, someone like me, if I request permits for my own protection from the Lebanese army, I have problems getting them. But they throw them right and left to all those fighters.”

Moreover, “The only money that comes into Tripoli is for buying weapons, on both sides, to create insecurity and to create an atmosphere that has nothing to do with the traditions and social fabric of Tripoli. This is an agenda that is regional; it has nothing to do with the state of Lebanon.”

Therefore, the solution, says Ahdab, is “to have a big decision coming from the government to say no more weapons and to protect civilians, rather than giving instructions to the security institutions to protect fighters.

“But if there is no political decision, nothing can be done, and unfortunately there has not been one. A blind eye is being turned to what’s going on.”

Some of the above names have been changed for security reasons.

What's next for March 14?

[Originally posted at NOW Lebanon]

Wednesday’s postponement until January of a national dialogue session scheduled for Thursday demonstrated the continuing failure to break the political deadlock into which the country plunged after October’s dramatic assassination of intelligence chief Wissam al-Hassan.

In the days following Hassan’s killing, which groups including the March 14 coalition and Walid Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) blamed on Syria, March 14 announced a complete boycott of all government and parliamentary activity until the current cabinet, led by Prime Minister Najib Miqati, was dissolved.

One month later, however, the cabinet remains intact and even appears to have a degree of support from March 14’s international allies, including the United States and the European Union, who have expressed fears of a power vacuum.

Accordingly, March 14’s boycott tactic has faced criticism even from those sympathetic to its broader vision. A leading independent politician with close ties to March 14 told NOW Lebanon that he preferred not to comment on the boycott, “because I would be forced to criticize it, and now is not the time to do that.”

Recently, both President Michel Suleiman and the PSP have been trying to coax March 14 back into all-party talks.

How exactly March 14 could be induced to embrace dialogue, however, is unclear. One option, proposed by former MP Mosbah al-Ahdab of the independent Tajaddod Movement, is for the coalition to launch a separate initiative on its own terms. “A solution would be for them to set the points that should be taken into consideration and agreed by the other side in order to launch a new dialogue,” he told NOW. “We’re back to square zero, we need to start all over again, and I think they should be setting a priority list, or let’s say starting points, for a new discussion.”

However, Dr Imad Salameh, political science professor at the Lebanese American University, believes nothing short of the cabinet’s collapse will bring March 14 to a dialogue table. “March 14 has no way out other than confronting the current government,” he told NOW. “For years, March 14 has been trapped over and over into senseless dialogue in which it always ends up making concessions. That’s why the resignation of this government is a pre-requisite for further dialogue.”

Certainly that was the view of March 14 partisans interviewed by NOW at the sit-in opposite Beirut’s Grand Serail on Tuesday evening. Since October 20 – the day after Hassan’s assassination – around half a dozen tents have been erected outside the Prime Minister’s office, and the activists who have spent their days and nights there told NOW they aren’t budging.

“The only compromise we will accept is that the government goes. Nothing less,” said Jihad Naamani of the Future Movement. When asked if he felt the sit-in was achieving its goals, Naamani said, “Yes, just by keeping our camp alive and having lots of people coming down every night for meetings and seminars, we are accomplishing our part of the goal.” While admitting that the government had succeeded in fending off March 14’s demands thus far, Naamani asserted that the cabinet would fall “within two or three months” at the most.

Contra Ahdab, Salameh argues the onus is in fact on March 8, not March 14, to break the deadlock. “The way out is not March 14’s responsibility as far as I’m concerned, it’s the responsibility of the current government and those who control it, particularly Hezbollah. If [the latter] want to yield a fair share of power and control of security apparatuses, which seem to have totally slipped into the hands of [March 8], then March 14 will have reason to negotiate.”

PSP secretary-general Zafer Nasser, however, questions how such an agreement could be reached without March 14 agreeing to talk in the first place. “One cannot offer anything to them if they don’t participate in dialogue,” he told NOW. “One has to sit with them and talk so they offer something and the other party offers something. You cannot tell them, ‘Here you go, this is a settlement’ and then ask them to attend dialogue. They would say, ‘Why attend dialogue if a settlement has already been reached?’”

To this, Salameh retorts that March 8 shares the blame for the lack of talks. “The media says [that March 14 is the one blocking dialogue], but in actuality one should ask what are the issues being discussed? Are we going to negotiate whether Hezbollah’s arms will become subject to government control? Are we going to negotiate a new government? Are we going to negotiate the restructuring of the security apparatuses?” Without these items on the table, says Salameh, dialogue “will only lead to additional concessions on March 14’s behalf and will strengthen the position of the government and Hezbollah.”

Amani Hamad contributed reporting.