Notorious Hizbullah checkpoint removed amid internal reshuffle

[Originally posted at NOW]

Residents of Arsal relieved to see end of checkpoint at which intimidation and even beatings were reported.

A controversial checkpoint manned by Hezbollah militiamen in the Beqaa Valley town of Labwe, at the only exit from the border town of Arsal, has been removed more than two months after it was first established.

The surprise move was greeted with relief in predominantly anti-Hezbollah Arsal, according to the town’s Deputy Mayor Ahmad Fleeti, who told NOW residents were “of course [more] relaxed now the checkpoint is gone.” Reports of abuse – including serious physical beatings – at the checkpoint were numerous, often discouraging locals and the town’s more than 50,000 Syrian refugees from leaving.

NOW was itself stopped and searched at the checkpoint in February, though without incident. “Please excuse us,” said the eldest of four gunmen after ruffling through bags and tapping the doors of the car to check for explosives.

Other journalists, however, had very different experiences. A television crew from the Lebanese MTV news channel reported its members had been intimidated and threatened at the checkpoint in February. “If you stop the car one more time, you will cease to exist,” one of the gunmen allegedly told them, adding that one of their photographers’ names was “on our list now.”

And, as NOW first reported in February, five humanitarian NGO workers were once reportedly detained for six hours at the checkpoint, during which time some were beaten and left with “serious injuries.” The NGO subsequently ceased its activities in Arsal.

But perhaps most notorious were the reports of assaults of wounded people leaving Arsal in need of urgent medical care. In what local doctors said was not an isolated case, a Syrian youth with a bullet wound in his leg was allegedly beaten while comatose in an ambulance by Hezbollah’s gunmen at the checkpoint in March.

The official reason for the removal of the checkpoint over the weekend is the implementation of the Lebanese authorities’ new plan to bolster national security. “There will no longer be any unofficial checkpoints or armed forces along the roads in the region of Baalbek-Hermel,” said Interior Minister Nuhad al-Mashnouq Saturday, declaring that the measures taken against gunmen in Tripoli in recent days would be replicated in the Beqaa. Perhaps by way of reassuring supporters in the area – which has for weeks been targeted by both car bombings and Syrian rebel rocket fire, resulting in over a dozen civilian deaths – Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said in an interview published Monday that the risk of car bombings has significantly decreased since the defeat of rebel forces in the adjacent Syrian Qalamoun region.

Yet the move also comes at a time when Hezbollah is said to be trying to tackle a breakdown in its once-renowned internal discipline. Recent reports claim senior Iranian military officials are assisting the party in restructuring its security apparatus, following damaging leaks to Israeli intelligence and “missteps in dealing with the sensitive security situation in Lebanon.” If the latter was part of the reason Hezbollah agreed to dismantle its Labwe checkpoint, this would be consistent with the precedent of its previous checkpoints in Beirut’s southern suburbs, abandoned in September 2013 following the killing by party gunmen of a Palestinian refugee at an entrance to the Burj al-Barajneh camp.

Phillip Smyth, a researcher at the University of Maryland specializing in Hezbollah, says it’s unsurprising that discipline is slipping when the posting of more experienced fighters to a brutal and costly war in Syria has left more junior forces manning the party’s checkpoints.

“On the ground, the fact that [Hezbollah’s] forces are heavily committed to the front, there have been bombings, and that this is a very polarizing conflict – particularly internally” mean that “issues like the black shirts causing problems are bound to happen,” Smyth told NOW.

Accordingly, with no end to the Syrian war in sight, Arsal’s more than 80,000 inhabitants are hoping the checkpoints don’t return, says Fleeti. Similarly, they’re concerned that state security forces might not necessarily make for much of an improvement. Fleeti points to the example of the Syrian woman and child shot dead by soldiers last weekend when their driver failed to stop at an Arsal checkpoint.

“These officers, who are representative of the Lebanese army and the state, should calm down before they start shooting at people, refugees, who don’t have their papers and are avoiding checkpoints,” Fleeti told NOW. “The rumors that are coming out on media say the people getting stopped are all [Jabhat al-]Nusra, and then it ends up being they just didn’t have their papers. So the refugees are afraid to go by the checkpoints, so they’re trying to circumvent them and then they get shot at.”

Maya Gebeily contributed reporting.

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

[Originally posted at NOW]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Luna Safwan and Maya Gebeily contributed reporting.