Love of the Land: As if they’d never left

As if they’d never left

NOW Lebanon
New Opinion
26 April '10

(Another insightful article from NOW Lebanon.)

Five years ago today, after a brief ceremony in the border town of Aanjar that tried to paint a patina of respect on a total of 29 years of military and security “presence”, the last Syrian soldier left Lebanese soil. Until that moment, and for more than a decade after the Lebanese civil war ended, it was hard for first-time visitors to Lebanon to determine who actually ran the country.

From the moment they landed at Beirut Airport to when they reached their hotels, tourists would see that the walls and roads of Beirut were dotted with portraits of former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, sometimes alongside those of his then-Lebanese counterpart, Elias Hrawi, but in many instances alone.

Even more mystifying to the neophyte would have been the three days of mourning for Assad’s son and heir, Basil, who was killed in a car accident in Damascus in January 1994. Soon after, a statue of Basil in uniform on one of his beloved horses was erected at the entrance to the Bekaa town of Chtoura.

And all the while the Syrian army lived in abandoned buildings and controlled the strategic intersections around Beirut and the rest of Lebanon. There was very little respect or courtesy from the occupying army. Shopkeepers would be careful not to fall foul of their neighbors, while at the checkpoints, petty extortion was practiced on commercial vehicles. Elsewhere anxiety was added to humiliation as drivers would be “asked” to give lifts to Syrian soldiers. Then there were the summons for those who dared speak out against the presence. They could range from a verbal reprimand to abuse and intimidation that could last for days.

The events leading up to the withdrawal have been well documented. Rafik Hariri, the man who had come to represent post-war Lebanon, had been murdered in an outrageous assassination that took the lives of 21 others, and this time the Lebanese were not going to take it like they had with previous killings. They took to the streets, blaming Syria for the murder. This time, with the US army camped in Iraq and a US administration that would not brook any insolence from the region’s despots, there was no crackdown on the huge and unprecedented demonstration of people power, arguably the biggest in modern Arab history.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: As if they’d never left

Love of the Land: A Weather Vane Shifts in Lebanon

A Weather Vane Shifts in Lebanon

Max Boot
Contentions/Commentary
15 March '10

Walid Jumblatt is one of the wiliest and least predictable politicians in the Middle East. A canny survivor, he has led the tiny Druze community in Lebanon since the late 1970s. He is usually described as a warlord, but he is also the leader of his own political party, the Progressive Socialists. Over the years, he has been aligned both with and against Syria and has taken aid from both the Soviet Union and the United States. He is a charming host and raconteur who, as I discovered during a visit to his Beirut home last year with a group of American journalists, is not afraid of offering outspoken opinions on most subjects under the sun.

In 2007, for example, he publicly referred to Bashar al-Assad — the Syrian dictator and son of the previous Syrian dictator, Hafez al-Assad, who was most likely responsible for the assassination of Walid’s father, Kamal, in 1977 — as a “monkey, snake and a butcher.” Now Jumblatt is saying, in effect, oops, I didn’t mean it:

“In a moment of anger I said inappropriate and illogical comments against him (Assad). Can Syria overcome this page and open a new page? I don’t know,” he told al-Jazeera television.

This is one of the more notable attempts at a retraction in recent history, but, aside from its comic value, it does have some geopolitical significance.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: A Weather Vane Shifts in Lebanon

Love of the Land: Back in the saddle

Back in the saddle

NOW Lebanon
New Opinion
08 February '10

(Once again, good insights from NOW Lebanon)

Syria is back in the Lebanese saddle. The feeling must be good after all these years, because already its politicians are talking about Lebanon as if it were a local province, and using all tools at their disposal, including a high-profile American journalist, to position their country as the voice of moderation in the region.

Damascus has also been indulging in a bit of saber rattling with its old enemy in Tel Aviv. This would be of less concern to the Lebanese if the threat to open a new front in South Lebanon had not been part of the message, and if Walid Jumblatt, for so long a stalwart supporter of Lebanese self-determination, had not pledged unstinting support for the Syrian regime in such an event.

It was Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem who fired the opening broadside late last week by announcing that Syria was ready for either war or peace. “Do not test the resolve of Syria,” he warned. “You Israelis, you know that war at this time will reach your cities. If such a war breaks out... it will indeed be total war, whether it begins in South Lebanon or Syria.”

It is clear that Damascus is tightening the screws in trying to get Tel Aviv to the negotiation table, but the inclusion of Lebanon in the threat is as galling as it is shameless. We wonder what Lebanese Foreign Minister Ali Shami (the irony of his name should not be lost on us) might have to say about the fact that it was his opposite number in Damascus and not he who is briefing the world on matters of Lebanese foreign policy. Indeed one wonders what the Lebanese people might have to say about a Syrian minister threatening to take their country into a war with Israel.

President Bashar al-Assad sought to clarify Mouallem’s statement over the weekend by telling Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who at long last received his invitation to Damascus, that Syria is committed to “stand by Lebanon’s government and people against any Israeli aggression.” It was too little too late. The damage has been done. It is clear from the Israeli response to the heightening of tensions which country it sees calling the shots; and it was not because of what it said, but what it failed to mention that should worry us most.

“Israel aspires to reach peace with all its neighbors,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday. “We did so with Egypt and Jordan, and we aspire to do so with Syria and the Palestinians.” Hang on, Bibi. What about Lebanon? Is it that you do not want peace with your northern neighbor or is it simply that you already see Lebanon as back in the Baathist fold?

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Back in the saddle

Love of the Land: Why is the Other Side Winning? Lebanon's New Government As a Case Study

Why is the Other Side Winning? Lebanon's New Government As a Case Study

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
11 November 09

The moderate March 14 movement, in the words of the New York Times, won “a clear victory” in Lebanon’s June elections, while the Hizballah-led alliance suffered a “loss.”

Why, then will the forces that won a majority, again in the phrasing of the Times, “have little chance to dictate the agenda?”

On the surface, things are bad enough. The March 14 movement will have fifteen cabinet seats, Hizballah and its friends (all of whom are allied because they are clients of Iran and Syria) get ten, and the other five will be controlled by President Michel Suleiman “who has struggled to maintain neutrality,” says theTimes.

Now to the fine print which makes things look far worse.

Suleiman is Syria’s man. That’s why he got the job. Almost all the time, and perhaps all the time, he will back the Tehran-Damascus-Hizballah line.

Then there’s Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader, who up until recently was the toughest, bravest March 14 leader. Reading the writing on the wall, he has jumped ship and tried to switch sides, at least to some extent. So that tilts the situation even more in favor of Hizballah-Iran-Syria.

But why is this happening, why do those who won the elections have to give veto power to those who lost? Why will this government be unable to disarm Hizballah, stop arms’ smuggling across its borders, prosecute those responsible for terrorist attacks within Islam, prevent Hizballah from attacking Israel and thus dragging Lebanon into war whenever it wants, and be too friendly to the West?

On the surface, of course, this passivity is necessary to maintain the peace. Lebanon has always had a weak government, and the specter of civil war hangs over the country based on past experience.

The full answer, however, is two-fold and these factors interlock.

The first point is that Iran and Syria give lavish support to their side. They provide lots of money, weapons, and political support. They virtually never betray their friends. They are strong and ready to intimidate their enemies.

And the second point regards the opposite side: The United States and Europe don’t subsidize their “clients.” U.S. aid money goes to the Lebanese army which is arguably now under Iranian-Syrian control if it came to a crisis. Their political support is unreliable, either because they don’t do anything or they actually make concessions to Hizballah, Iran, and Syria. They usually do betray their friends, are apologetic, and prone to engage in appeasement.

Quick, who would you depend on to keep you alive politically and personally if you were a Lebanese politician?

If the March 14 coalition tried to disarm Hizballah’s militia, stop it from controlling the south, block it from attacking Israel, interdict all the arms’ smuggling from Syria, or do lots of other things, Iran, Syria, and Hizballah along with their other local allies would smite them with a mighty blow.

But if Hizballah took over neighborhoods, ignored the government, made fools out of the UN forces which are supposedly policing them (or even attack them in a deniable way), the United States and Europe would do nothing.

Is it really so hard to understand, then, why things are going the way they are in Lebanon, or in the Middle East generally for that matter?

Love of the Land: Why is the Other Side Winning? Lebanon's New Government As a Case Study

Love of the Land: The Warlord in His Castle

The Warlord in His Castle

Michael J. Totten

08 September 09

"This country is like a cake. On the top it is cream. Underneath it is fire." – Hezbollah spokesman

"We don't want the great Syrian prison." – Kamal Jumblatt

The Middle East is a rough part of the world, especially for its ethnic and religious minorities. In the late 1980s, Saddam Hussein's Arab Nationalist Baath Party regime waged a war of extermination against ethnic Kurds in the north. Iran's Bahai community has been mercilessly persecuted by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his fellow Khomeinists for decades. The vast majority of Jews living in Arab countries were expelled to Israel, and many in the Arab world still hope to expunge them from the region entirely by destroying the country they fled to as refugees. Egypt's Coptic Christians are second class citizens, and many Christian women in Iraq feel compelled by Islamist extremists to wear Islamic headscarves on their heads even though the state doesn't require it. Libya's Moammar Qaddafi represses the indigenous ethnic Berber minority, and the Shias of Saudi Arabia live under the boot heel of fanatical Sunni Wahhabis.

I could go on, but you get the drift.

The Druze minority communities in Lebanon, Israel, and Syria have worked out a survival formula that works better than most. They're weathervanes. They calculate. They, more than other Arabs, side with the strong horse.

In Syria, the Druze support the Baathist regime of Bashar Assad. Israeli Druze are fiercely loyal to the state and fight harder than most against the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah in elite IDF units. Many Palestinians consider them traitors.

It's trickier for Lebanon's Druze. Politics there are vastly more complicated – as complicated as politics in Iraq, if not even more so. The country is, in many ways, a microcosm of Middle East politics generally. You can usually tell which faction in Lebanon has the upper hand both locally and regionally because the Druze tend to belong to that faction. But what happens when the region is stuck in stalemate and deadlock?

Lebanon's Druze leader Walid Jumblatt recently abandoned the anti-Syrian and anti-Hezbollah "March 14" coalition and declared himself politically neutral. Most seem to believe he did so because he thought Syrian power was on the rise again in Lebanon and didn't want to stay on the wrong side of the boss. A few say he fears a looming internal war between Sunnis and Shias and wants to step back and out of the way. He himself says compromise with Hezbollah, though it isn't desirable, is necessary because the Lebanese state is too weak to disarm a proxy militia backed by the powerful regimes in Syria and Iran. He believes, correctly, that Lebanon can't effectively take a hard line while the international community invites the rogue regimes in from the cold.

(Full article)

Love of the Land: The Warlord in His Castle