With house in order, Hariri seeks to build on talks

[Originally posted at NOW]

Future leader has reasserted control over the Sunni community, but it’s unclear how much more can be achieved for now.

When Future Movement leader MP Saad Hariri made a surprise return to Lebanon on Friday after a more than three-year absence, one of his close allies, Interior Minister Ashraf Rifi, declared that Lebanon thereafter would be markedly different from Lebanon thitherto.

Five days later, Future officials claim that transformation is already well underway, telling NOW the former prime minister has rapidly and tangibly reasserted his grip on both his party and his broader Sunni Muslim support base, fringes of which had, in his absence, drifted away from Future’s brand of religious moderation toward hardline Islamist and even jihadist rivals.

“I think he did a lot of things in a very brief period of time,” said Future MP Bassem al-Shab. “First of which was putting the house in order. What happened in Arsal threatened to create a Sunni-Sunni rift […] and he wanted to take care of this and I think he did to a large extent.”

Referring to Future hardliners such as MP Muhammad Kabbara, who were initially critical of the Lebanese Army’s conduct in fighting jihadist militants in the border town of Arsal last week, but later expressed support for the military, Shab told NOW, “The dissonant voices […] who criticized the army were quickly silenced, and in the [internal] meeting when [Hariri] said we should support the army unconditionally, there were no [objections].”

In tandem with this political move, said Shab, was a shakeup within the Sunni religious establishment, effected by the election Sunday of a new grand mufti – the community’s top cleric – in place of a predecessor who for years had been at odds with allies of the Future Movement.

“The election of the new mufti,” Shab told NOW, and the presence of both his predecessor and leading non-Future Sunni figures such as former Prime Minister Najib Miqati, furthered “Sunni harmony,” attaining a degree of “reconciliation with the people who opposed him while he was away.”

This double victory, on both the political and religious fronts, puts Hariri in a stronger position within the Sunni community than had been the case just a week ago, analysts told NOW. “Hariri proved that he is the only zaeem [chief] of the Sunnis,” said commentator Mustafa Fahs.

In terms of practical steps going forward, sources told NOW that in addition to overseeing the Saudi Arabian donation of $1bn to the Lebanese Army – his officially-stated reason for returning – Hariri will also implement an economic regeneration program for underdeveloped and marginalized regions that have in the past been susceptible to extremist currents.

“He will provide political and financial support to regions in need, as has already happened in Arsal,” said Future MP Ahmad Fatfat, referring to Hariri’s $15m donation Monday to the war-damaged town.

Hariri himself also pledged Tuesday to “spare no effort to rehabilitate prisons,” in a presumed reference to the notorious Roumieh prison, where dozens of Islamist militants are held, and which has seen numerous inmate escapes in recent years. In June, members of the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) faction reportedly called for the release of Islamist prisoners from Roumieh.

Beyond these initiatives, Hariri’s principal next move will be to “continue negotiations with all Lebanese parties” on resolving key domestic issues ranging from presidential and parliamentary elections to the public sector wage increase debate, according to Fatfat and Shab.

Indeed, Hariri’s return is aimed more at creating a conciliatory and functional political environment in the country than implementing any specific, point-by-point action plan, according to a ministerial source who has met Hariri since his arrival and requested anonymity as he is not authorized to speak to the press.

“I didn’t hear of a specific action plan,” said the source. “For the time being it’s more ‘macro’ politics than ‘micro’ politics.”

Either way, for his part, the ministerial source told NOW he expected little of much significance to result from Hariri’s efforts, owing to obstinacy from Future’s rivals in the ‘March 8’ bloc.

“From what I’m seeing and hearing, I don’t think much will happen,” he told NOW. “The status quo is still the same […] The question is, did the comeback generate enough momentum for other parties to move on, to meet Hariri in the middle? Until now, I don’t see this.”

“And prolonging the mandate of parliament is a bad sign that nothing is expected in the near future,” he added, referring to proposals earlier this week – now effectively backed by Hariri – to once again extend parliamentarians’ terms beyond their constitutional expiry dates.

However, Shab, by contrast, told NOW he saw room for progress in a subtle but substantial shift in Iran’s stance vis-à-vis Lebanon.

“Hariri’s return comes also in [a time] of Iranian flexibility,” said Shab, claiming Tehran has lately sought to defuse sectarian tensions inside the country. “Everybody made sure that [Hariri’s] return was welcome.”

“There is something that has changed not only on this side [i.e. March 14] but also on the other side.”

Myra Abdallah contributed reporting.

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.

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.

Aoun rumors costing Future support on ground

[Originally posted at NOW]

Speculation that the Future Movement might back Hezbollah ally Michel Aoun for president is angering supporters across Lebanon.

TARIQ AL-JADIDEH, Lebanon – On the restless streets of this crowded south Beirut neighborhood, where posters of former Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri vie with Sunni Islamist graffiti for dominance on the walls, the most common reaction NOW got from residents Tuesday to the rumors of Hariri’s possible support for arch-rival Michel Aoun’s presidential candidacy was one of simple disbelief.

“It just can’t happen,” said an incredulous shop-owner. “For ten years, their policies have been opposed, how can they support each other now?”

Others went further, clearly angered by the idea. “[Hariri] will be a traitor if he does it,” said a woman pedestrian in a colorful hijab. Asked which candidate she would rather see the Future Movement leader support, her young friend instantly replied, “[Lebanese Forces head Samir] Geagea.”

Geagea is still Future’s official nominee, as the bloc reiterated in a statement Tuesday. But speculation remains that Hariri might make a surprise switch to backing the Hezbollah-allied Aoun, whose son-in-law, Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, lunched with Hariri in Paris Tuesday in a meeting he described as “positive.” One report Wednesday claimed Hariri had in fact already accepted Aoun’s candidacy, on the condition that the Free Patriotic Movement leader agreed to align himself politically with his current foes in the March 14 coalition.

Even a concession on that historic scale, however, would be unlikely to appease most Tariq al-Jadideh residents, many of whom recall the war days when they were on the receiving end of Aoun’s – and Geagea’s – military attacks.

“Neither Geagea nor Aoun [for president],” was a response NOW heard several times. “It has to be someone independent, with no blood on his hands,” said an elderly man sitting outside a sandwich shop. Asked who might meet those criteria, he thought for some time before offering Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh.

Others said they simply didn’t care who became president. “We’re not going to benefit from any of them,” said a telephone accessories shop owner. Despite his apparent apathy, however, he was convinced of one thing: “No one here will accept Hariri backing Aoun.”

Such hostility to the idea is even sharper in pro-Future areas that have felt a more direct impact from the neighboring Syrian war, in which Aoun’s ally Hezbollah is a key participant. In the view of Ahmad Fleeti, deputy mayor of the border town of Arsal, Hariri would be “covering up [for] Hezbollah” if he backed the FPM leader.

“If Hariri supported Aoun, he would be giving away [March 14’s] principles, especially [that of defending Lebanon’s] sovereignty,” Fleeti told NOW. “Whenever one of March 14’s members gives away its principles, they will not get the support of their followers.”

Like the woman in Tariq al-Jadideh, Fleeti said “the only” acceptable candidate was Geagea, on account of his refusal to join the current cabinet due to Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria.

Indeed, Geagea also received endorsement from another perhaps unlikely source in the southern city of Sidon. A sympathizer of the fugitive Islamist cleric and militant Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir, who declined to give his name, told NOW by telephone that the LF leader was the only “non-hypocrite” among all Lebanese politicians. Hariri, by contrast, would be “betraying the Cedar Revolution and the blood of the martyrs” by backing Aoun’s candidacy.

Similarly, in Tripoli, where another Aoun ally – the Syrian regime – has been implicated in the bombing of mosques, many also staunchly oppose any Hariri-Aoun reconciliation. Sheikh Bilal Baroudi, an imam who narrowly escaped death when his Al-Salam mosque was car-bombed in August 2013, told NOW, “We would consider that Hariri gave away all his previous [stances] and principles, and ours as well,” if he backed Aoun.

“Future is losing a lot of supporters because of [the Aoun rumors],” said Tripoli-based civil society activist Shadi Nashabi. At the same time, Nashabi told NOW, the presidential question ranks relatively low on many residents’ list of priorities, given the more immediate concerns of ongoing armed violence and instability in the northern city.

In the face of such widespread objections, Hariri would clearly find it tough to sell Aoun’s candidacy to his supporters, and vice versa, according to Hussam Itani, an analyst at the al-Hayat newspaper.

“It is not only a problem for Hariri’s supporters, but also for Aoun’s, especially after all the campaigns he led against the Future Movement and Hariri,” Itani told NOW.

Nonetheless, Itani believes that if the decision were made, both groups of partisans would ultimately have little choice but to fall in line.

“In Lebanon, politicians take decisions regardless of the opinions of their supporters, [and those] supporters end up accepting the decisions,” he told NOW.

Indeed, as an elderly woman in Tariq al-Jadideh told NOW with an amused grin: “We Lebanese are always ready for surprises.”

Myra Abdallah contributed reporting.

Assir's media return buoys supporters, frightens others

[Originally posted at NOW]

ABRA, Lebanon – A first-time visitor to the Bilal bin Rabah mosque complex today in Abra, east of Sidon, might never guess there were several days of intense rocket and machine gun clashes here just over seven months ago, killing 18 Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) soldiers and around 40 gunmen loyal to the mosque’s imam, Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir.

The once-devastated apartment block housing the mosque, which had entire wall panels blown out when NOW saw it after the June 2013 fighting, has now been immaculately repaired and restored, a “For Rent” banner hanging from one balcony indicating that it is inhabitable once again. Long gone, of course, are the young men standing guard outside with AK-47s hanging by their sides. (Those who weren’t killed or arrested have, like Assir himself, gone into hiding.) Gone too are the heavy-duty barriers installed by the sheikh on the side-streets leading up to the mosque complex, as well as a protective metal roof constructed above the mosque’s entrance. Some new shops have opened up in the adjacent small square; others have closed down. The whole block has the eerie air of the scene of an historic and infamous crime, mopped up and painted over but still evidently raw in the memories of those who witnessed it.

Thus when NOW asked local residents Friday about their thoughts on Assir’s recent reappearance in the media, many who still supported him would only say so in lowered voices. “Inshallah (God willing) he’ll return,” murmured one adolescent worker in a bakery before returning to the oven. Others would reveal their sympathies only in roundabout or implicit ways. A few, however, remained as outspoken as ever – seeing perhaps that NOW were journalists, the driver of one passing car raised his fist out the window and shouted, “Sheikh al-Assir, God protect you!”

For such people, the reemergence of the sheikh on social media networks has evidently been a great boon. Having not used his Twitter account since August 2013, Assir surprised followers with a new message on 14 January, and has since posted over 25 times. The messages generally address current events in Lebanon and Syria, peppered with Qur’anic citations and the derogatory references to “Safavids” (Shiites and/or Persians) and “Hizb al-Lat” (a pun on “Hezbollah” implying idolatry) that are the hallmark of hardline Sunni Islamism. On Syria, he sarcastically says the siege of the Yarmouk camp is the “true picture of the support of Iran and [Hezbollah] and Assad for the Palestinians and their cause,” and laments that “the world” cares more about “the mujahideen” in Syria than the regime’s “planes dropping barrel bombs, and chemical weapons, and slaughter with knives.” He also calls for the release of kidnapped Christian priests and nuns, “[even though] many Christian clergymen and politicians stood with Assad and justified his criminality against our people.” On Lebanon, he says the “main reason” for the recent wave of explosions is “[Hezbollah’s] criminality in Syria,” defending March 14, the Future Movement, and President Michel Suleiman from accusations of responsibility. At the same time, he accuses Future leader MP Saad Hariri of providing “cover” for the continuing presence of the army (labeled a “tool” of Hezbollah) in Abra, and mocks March 14’s recently-launched “civil resistance” campaign, the “first result” of which was “the approval of a unity cabinet with [Hezbollah] covering their criminality in Lebanon and Syria.”

As before, it is this posture as an uncompromising defender of “the Sunni people” (Ahl al-Sunna) that appeals to Assir’s supporters. “[Some] still say they don’t feel secure anymore [after his disappearance],” a butcher near the mosque told NOW. “They say he used to protect this area.”

Yet the violent legacy of his movement has also left many in the neighborhood fearful of his reemergence, particularly in the wake of rumors tying him to extremist groups. A Twitter account said to belong to one of his wives wrote on 16 January that efforts were underway to make Assir the head of the Lebanese branch of Jabhat al-Nusra, the Al-Qaeda offshoot that has claimed two deadly suicide bombings in Lebanon* since the announcement of its formation in December 2013 and is believed to have around 170 fighters based in Sidon’s Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp. Also in December, one LAF soldier was killed and three wounded in dual attacks on army checkpoints in Sidon, including one close to Assir’s mosque. And on Friday, concerns of possible further attacks in Sidon, including car bombings, prompted authorities to implement new security measures in the city.

“He could be affiliated with any extremist group, in my opinion, because the people who don’t know God tend to bond together. […] May God take his soul,” said a baker near the mosque (at which point his younger apprentice indignantly retorted, “May God protect him!”).

“Most of us were relieved when Assir left, as though a rock were lifted off our chests,” said the manager of a nearby money transfer outlet. “I can’t tell what his possible affiliations are, but I fear he’s affiliated to a group that is worse than Jabhat al-Nusra or the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, like Al-Qaeda itself.”

“His return to the media spotlight definitely caused tension, because we here still have a feeling that things aren’t okay and something is being prepared,” the manager told NOW. “His supporters still show up at the mosque, which is why I have a feeling something might happen, especially after his latest statements.”

All interviewees requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject.

* Since the time of publication, Jabhat al-Nusra has claimed a third suicide bombing, killing 4 in Hermel.

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.

Tammam Salam: between Future and Miqati

[Originally posted at NOW]

Having reportedly secured the nominations of Future Movement leader Saad Hariri and, crucially, Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) head Walid Jumblatt, Beirut MP Tammam Salam appears to have sufficient backing to become the next prime minister of Lebanon when President Suleiman polls parliamentarians on the matter this weekend. NOW profiles Salam’s historical, political, and personal record.

Born in 1945, the son of six-time Prime Minister Saeb Salam, Tammam hails from a family whose wealth and prestige in the Sunni community date back to Ottoman times. An Arab nationalist who in the 1958 war allied with then-PSP leader Kamal Jumblatt against the pro-Western policies of President Camille Chamoun, Saeb Salam was resentful of his displacement as de facto Sunni chieftain by Rafiq Hariri in the 1990s. Though a reconciliation of sorts later occurred, when Tammam was first elected MP in 1996 his relations with Hariri remained lukewarm, and indeed he ran against him in Beirut in 2000, the same year his father Saeb died.

It was not until Hariri’s 2005 assassination that Salam (who had opposed the emerging campaign against the Syrian occupation) grew closer to the Future Movement, and though he never joined the party, he began thereafter to run on Hariri’s electoral lists; he eventually was appointed minister of culture in Fouad Siniora’s cabinet following the 2008 Doha Agreement. Following that cabinet’s dissolution in 2009, Salam became MP for the Beirut III district, running as an independent on March 14’s list.

Analysts thus summarized him to NOW as a March 14 dove – “between Future and [Caretaker PM Najib] Miqati” – a label further borne out in his somewhat conciliatory attitude toward March 8 magnate Hezbollah. In a leaked US embassy cable from late 2006, then-US ambassador Jeffrey Feltman recalls a meeting with Salam in which he “both defended and criticized” the Party of God, reproaching the US for labeling them “terrorists” and praising their alliance with Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement. Another cable quotes him implying that the party’s arms are legitimate as long as Israel occupies Shebaa Farms.

At the same time, since 2005 he has firmly (if quietly) opposed the Syrian regime, whom he accuses in the same cable of waging a “vendetta” against Lebanon and of posing the greatest risk to the country in general. “He never joined the bandwagon of insulting [Syrian President] Assad,” said one analyst who preferred to remain anonymous. “But he doesn’t hide his March 14 credentials.” More recently, Salam condemned Miqati’s cabinet for politicizing the Syrian refugee issue and failing to “fulfill its humanitarian mission.”

As a person, too, Salam is said to be of moderate temperament – a trait that may prove useful if and when the complex business of forming a cabinet gets underway. “Anyone who knows Tammam either as a public figure or in private knows that he’s a quiet person who approaches problems in a positive manner with a firm will to get a solution rather than complicating the issue,” said Antoine Haddad, secretary-general of the Democratic Renewal (Tajaddod) Movement, an independent party that has previously run on March 14 tickets. “He’s not confrontational, but he also does not surrender on basic principles. So if he is accepted by March 8, he could be a good prime minister for the coming period.”

However, another analyst told NOW he “doubts Hezbollah would endorse” Salam. Were that the case, Salam would secure the nomination only by a slim majority, and face serious difficulties appointing Shiite cabinet ministers. “I don’t see him as someone who is ready to appoint anti-Hezbollah Shiite ministers, it’s not part of his character; he has a moderate, dialogue-prone character.”

Haddad agrees, telling NOW that Salam may try to tailor his cabinet in such a way as to bring Hezbollah on board. “My guess is that he will try to form a government acceptable by more than the majority that has nominated him [i.e. Future and Jumblatt]. I think this is the purpose behind nominating someone like Tammam and not, for example, Saad Hariri. It’s a clever approach to try to rebalance the government without excluding the other parties.”

By the same token, however, should Hezbollah reject him out of hand, his viability as a prime minister would likely prove short-lived.

Jumblatt's jockeying

[Originally posted at NOW]

As the April 5 deadline approaches for President Suleiman’s meeting with parliamentarians to decide the next prime minister, few politicians’ moves are being scrutinized as closely as those of Walid Jumblatt, leader of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) and de facto chieftain of the Druze community. Just as Jumblatt’s MPs determine which of the two March 14 and March 8 minorities becomes the majority in parliament, so too will their votes prove decisive on Friday, when a simple poll will grant the premiership to whichever candidate receives the most nominations.

Thus far, neither of the major coalitions has announced a candidate, and in the meantime they are placing fundamentally irreconcilable conditions on the nature of the cabinet overall. March 8 powerhouse Hezbollah has called for a “political” (i.e. partisan) cabinet that affirms the party’s right to bear arms – a demand roundly rejected by March 14, which calls instead for a “neutral” (i.e. non-partisan) cabinet that upholds the Baabda Declaration to “dissociate” Lebanon from Syria; an implicit jab at Hezbollah’s use of its arsenal against the rebels next door.

Nor has Jumblatt named a candidate, though in an intriguing move following a trip by a deputy to Riyadh, he reportedly cut a deal with March 14’s Future Movement leader Saad Hariri to agree to whomever he nominates. Given that Future is expected to coordinate its nomination with March 14 overall, this ostensibly suggests victory for March 14. However, informed PSP sources who spoke to NOW on condition of anonymity interpreted the deal somewhat differently.

“What actually happened was Hariri mentioned four or five names he would support, and Jumblatt will now take those to the other side [i.e. March 8] to see which one is acceptable to them,” said one source. “The candidate which has the best chance at the moment is Tammam Salam,” a former minister of culture under the cabinet of Fuad Siniora.

Conversely, another source told NOW Jumblatt’s offer to Hariri was designed to coerce him into nominating Najib Miqati, the recently resigned PM who, according to some reports, is March 8’s preferred candidate.

“The only person not on board to name Miqati is Hariri,” the source told NOW. “So Jumblatt is trying to pressure Hariri into accepting his nomination.”

“But this puts Hariri in a tough position, because he was ousted from government using Miqati last time,” the source added. “So he’s going to play hard-to-get in order to appeal to the so-called Sunni ‘street’.”

A PSP minister’s spokesperson told NOW that senior party officials were refraining from talking to the press until after Jumblatt’s interview Thursday evening on LBCI’s Kalam Ennas.

Jumblatt has, however, been quite explicit about his preferences for the overall nature of the next cabinet. In a wide-ranging interview Friday, he called for a “national unity” cabinet that would include ministers from all parties across the political spectrum.

He also specifically opposed the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) retaining control of the energy and telecom ministries, referring to the March 8 heavyweight as a “destructive political force”. “[The] FPM will not be handed over the energy and [telecom] ministries […] It’s impossible and will not happen again,” he later told as-Safir. Relations between Jumblatt and FPM leader Michel Aoun have soured after disagreements over electoral law and the extension of security officials’ tenures, reaching new lows over the weekend with mutual accusations of Zionist sympathies.

Other reports suggest Jumblatt also opposes Caretaker Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour taking up any position in the next cabinet.

NOW’S PSP sources ascribed various motives to Jumblatt’s stance on the FPM ministers. “Jumblatt always likes to empower his traditional ally, which is [Parliament Speaker] Nabih Berri. These are lucrative ministries, which neither Jumblatt nor Berri want to go to Aoun,” said one.

“Aoun is too politically contentious,” said another. “Berri, Jumblatt and of course all March 14 parties are against Aoun. So you can’t give these important ministries to Aoun and then say this cabinet is ‘non-political’.”

Dr. Imad Salamey, professor of political science at Lebanese American University, added that with potentially substantial natural gas extraction in the near future, the energy ministry in particular will take on singular importance.

“Big companies are bidding for these gas reserves, this is no joke,” he told NOW. “There’s going to be a lot of money there. So whoever controls the ministry of energy is going to be invested with a lot of political and financial gain. This ministry is going to become very powerful, and obviously Jumblatt is not in favor of Aoun having that power.”

As for Jumblatt’s rejection of Mansour, “even Berri doesn’t want this guy again,” said the PSP source. “He is the puppy of [Syrian ambassador] Ali Abdul Karim Ali.”

Jumblatt’s most important precondition, however, may be one he hasn’t explicitly stated, believes the other PSP source.

“The key ‘red line’ for Jumblatt is what the next electoral law will look like,” he told NOW. “If this law doesn’t give him enough parliamentary seats, he will not go ahead.” Ultimately, continued the source, Jumblatt’s ideal law – “what would really seal the deal” – is the 1960 law, subject to minor amendments.

If Jumblatt can indeed secure a commitment to that law – shunned by March 8 and March 14 parties alike – it will be a testament to the power his “kingmaker” status grants him. In the meantime, March 14 will apparently announce their candidate Thursday evening. Should that name differ from March 8’s nominee, it will fall – once more – on Jumblatt to decide the outcome

Yara Chehayed contributed to this report.

A new (sort of) twist in Saqrgate

[Originally posted at NOW]

In a new development that isn’t quite as interesting as it might at first sound, former General Security chief Jamil as-Sayyid has given Lebanon’s general prosecutor a CD purporting to contain four audio recordings of phone calls between MP Oqab Saqr and an “armed group in Syria”.

Saqr, you will recall, was in December the subject of a high-profile ‘exposé’ by OTV and Al Akhbar, who published calls between him and the Free Syrian Army in which he appeared to be negotiating the provision of arms at the behest of former PM Saad Hariri. In a somewhat grandiose press conference, Saqr retorted that the media outlets had tampered with the tapes, revealing what he said were the complete recordings, showing he had in fact been negotiating humanitarian aid.

OTV replied that he in turn had doctored the evidence, by which point few people knew who to believe – though in an oddly underreported development, an independent British company called Audio Forensic Services commissioned by al-Jadeed TV (not exactly known for pro-Hariri leanings) to investigate the tapes played by Saqr at his Istanbul press conference found them to be authentic, i.e., not edited. Saqr and Hariri subsequently launched a lawsuit against OTV and Al Akhbar for defamation and inciting sectarianism.

That was as much as was known yesterday. Do Sayyid’s new recordings change anything? Not really. Even assuming they’re genuine, they implicate Saqr only in negotiations to transfer funds and communication equipment to the rebels – not weapons. And that Sayyid freely admits their source is Syrian state television does not exactly recommend their credibility. Whether or not Saqr is in fact arming the rebels (and whether or not it would be such a bad thing if he were), as far as hard evidence is concerned, there remains considerable room for reasonable doubt.

Previous posts on this topic: ‘The Saqrpunch’

The baby and the bathwater [deleted NOW editorial]

[This editorial - not written by me - was removed from the NOW Lebanon website on the evening of 6 November, about 24 hours after its initial publication. Following complaints from staff, as well as a campaign of (perfectly justified) ridicule on social media, it has been (sort of) replaced, hidden behind an older editorial with a bizarre disclaimer. I re-post it here not merely out of principle, but because I believe it's an excellent piece of writing.]

If we are to believe a report in al-Joumhouria newspaper on Monday, French President François Hollande and Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, in a meeting also attended by former Lebanese PM and Future Movement leader Saad Hariri, will not back current Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Miqati if a new government is formed.

Do the Lebanese not have a say in any of this? We should worry at the carefree way in which Lebanon’s future is always being decided by outside actors, no matter who they are. The region is already polarized between the Sunni and Shiite communities in a dangerous standoff between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Such horse-trading will only serve to entrench further the sense that foreign powers control Lebanon’s destiny and that each side of the political divide is justified in having its regional backer.

Another worrying aspect was the presence of Hariri, a man who must surely concede that his role in Lebanese political life must now be confined to the margins of Sunni politics. He is living in LaLa Land if he still feels that the Lebanese public would welcome him back with open arms and see him as their salvation. In fact, it would be scandalous if he stood for parliament in the next general elections, let alone offer himself as a candidate for the premiership. (Ditto Nayla Tueni and the rest of the absentee MPs who, by their negligence, have done their best to snuff out the flame that was March 14 and insult the intelligence of the voters who sent them to Najmeh Square).

For it is not enough to simply oppose March 8’s fiendish agenda and make all the right noises about democracy, independence, sovereignty and the sanctity of the state. March 14 members must also take seriously their roles as public servants. The recent deterioration of infrastructure and the apparent collapse of law and order during August have woken up the public to the fact that if they want a functioning, safe, peaceful and prosperous country, and if they want laws enacted, it will not happen if the people they elect to achieve these ends are nowhere to be seen.

Which brings us back to the issue of Miqati and his suitability for the premiership. When he accepted to lead the Hezbollah-dominated government in the spring of 2011, many saw him as an opportunist who would trade what was left of Lebanon’s integrity for a place in the history books.

In reality and with hindsight, he has not done a terrible job. He has advanced the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (despite the Syrian dream of killing the process altogether) and spoken out against Syrian violations of Lebanese territorial integrity. Given the fact that he has had to work with a cabinet of which Hezbollah and its obstructionist allies in the FPM are a part, he has made a decent fist of holding things together.

Hollande and the rest of the international community are right to condemn the current government, which has set new standards in uselessness, but we should avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater. With the exception of former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, Miqati is arguably the best candidate we have to lead this country in troubled times. In the meantime, the Lebanese must fight to wrestle their destiny from the hands of those who see Lebanon as a strategic asset instead of a sovereign nation, and all our MPs, without exception, should show up for work.

The Arab League plan could rip Lebanon apart

The dreadful collapse of a scandalously neglected apartment block in Beirut’s Ashrafieh district last weekend that tragically took 27 lives has, not without reason, revived fears in Lebanon about the major earthquake fault-line upon which the capital city rests. But it’s with seismological concerns of quite another sort that I address my dear reader today.

On Saturday, the Qatari emir Hamad al-Thani, who has suddenly gone from being a provincial businessman and petro-monarch to a swaggering, headline-hungry regional statesman of apparently grand geopolitical ambition – and whose pearls of wisdom in recent weeks have included his advising Western nations to embrace Islamism – announced a proposal to send Arab League troops to Syria to “stop the killing” of civilians. While I am, as I’ve said before, not opposed to military intervention under certain conditions, Qatar is among the very last nations I would nominate to undertake the course of action (whether robed with an official Arab League mandate or not). This is for the very simple reason that, by taking the brazenly fascist step of sending its troops to Bahrain to help crush the protests there, Qatar has made clear that its motives in Syria may be anything except humanitarian and democratic. Indeed, that both the Bahraini regime and the majority of the Syrian opposition share a common religious denomination with al-Thani invites one to speculate about a rather different dynamic altogether. 

It’s with this in mind that one ought to consider Saad Hariri’s endorsement of the Arab League proposal on Twitter. As the son of the assassinated Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, as well as an ex-PM himself and the current head of the Future Movement, Saad is one of the preeminent zu’ama, or chieftains, of the Lebanese Sunni community. The Lebanese Shia, on the other hand, are to a large extent represented by Hizbullah, a party which has by no means been reticent on the question of Bahrain, describing it as a “special injustice” and openly accusing the regime and its allies (such as Qatar) of sectarian bigotry (as I wrote here, this accusation is by no means unfounded). Lebanon is of course a tremendously fragmented society at the best of times, and though inter-communal coexistence of a sort does persist, its frayed and ragged fabric is always threatening to tear further: the recent past has seen the Salafi cleric Ahmad Al-Assir accuse the Shia of “insulting” the Prophet’s wife Aisha, while the Hizbullah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah gave an overtly sectarian speech on Ashura, in which he compared the party’s enemies to the Umayyads who killed the Prophet’s grandson Hussein in the Battle of Karbala (the event which triggered the whole Sunni-Shia split to begin with). 

Now, of course, the root cause of sectarianism is the very existence of sects in the first place, and all attempts to evade or deny this simple truth are doomed to fail from the outset. But I think it’s equally plain that what’s behind this recent fouling of the air is the question of Syria. It’s become very unfashionable to so much as mention religion in the same breath as the ‘Arab Spring’ – before you start, yes, thank you, I know that some of the regime’s bravest critics are Shia, while some of its most craven apologists are Sunni – but I for one find a few things difficult to ignore: the burning of Assad pictures and Hizbullah flags at a rally of thousands in the Lebanese Sunni stronghold of Tripoli (the only major city in the country to have witnessed such a spectacle); the vocal presence of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood on the front lines of the uprising; the sensationalist comparison of Assad to Hitler by the Sunni Islamist Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan; the lugubrious groans in support of the uprising from other sinister characters like the Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi (who naturally had rather different things to say about the protests in Bahrain); and the withdrawal by the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood (also known as Hamas) of administrative staff from its headquarters in Damascus. The regime probably has not targeted Sunnis in particular, but Syrian demographics are such that indiscriminate killing will by definition hit the Sunnis hardest, and this has dragged some of the more scrofulous elements of the Sunni world to the Syrian opposition, of which the Qatari dictator is only one example among many. 

So what has Hariri done by signing his name to this plan? He has managed to undermine legitimate and democratic channels such as the UN while siding at the same time with the perpetrators of rabid and naked sectarianism and tribalism. He has also left Lebanon’s Sunnis at the mercy of a Hizbullah that is being squeezed as never before. History tells us that Hizbullah doesn’t much like being squeezed: recall, for example, their storming of Beirut in 2008 with guns and grenade launchers blazing – a bloody tremor that had many Lebanese fearing a return to the darkest of days. That time, the provocation was comparatively minor: an attempt by the Hariri government to shut down part of Hizbullah’s private telecommunication network. This time, with the party’s chief arms supplier at stake, the threat is almost existential (don’t forget that Burhan Ghalioun, the leader of the Syrian National Council, said explicitly last month that if he replaced Bashar al-Assad he would end the relationship with Hizbullah). Combine these unprecedented political stakes with the sectarian metastasis outlined above, and the meeting of Qatari boots with Syrian soil could rip Lebanon apart. If this is to be averted, serious re-thinks of priorities and friendships will be required of both Hariri and Nasrallah.