Syria’s Assassination Goal: Target March 14th Christians To Divide & Conquer: Article Published

Happy New Year everyone! I had another article published, this time by the Counterterrorism Blog. It was the first one posted for 2008. Enjoy:

http://counterterrorismblog.org/2008/01/syrias_assassination_goal_targ.php



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Addendum To My Last Post

Saw this in the Times:

From The Times

November 23, 2007

Rival factions return to arms as Lebanon stares into the abyss

Nicholas Blanford in Beirut

The centre of Beirut will be a sealed-off military zone today as MPs gather to elect a new president in a last-ditch attempt to prevent Lebanon from plunging into chaos and violence.

Émile Lahoud, the pro-Syrian head of state, leaves office at midnight today, but despite intense international mediation, no agreement appears to have been reached on a new president acceptable to the bitterly divided political camps.

The US-backed March 14 block, which holds a slim majority, has said that it will attend today’s session of parliament and threatened to elect a president from their own ranks if a consensus candidate is not found.

But the pro-Syrian Opposition, led by the powerful Shia Hezbollah party, says that it will boycott the election and has hinted it will respond by forming a rival government, a move that many Lebanese fear will lead to violence between heavily armed rival factions and tear the country apart.

That grim outlook appeared to draw closer last night with political sources saying that the continued lack of agreement could lead to the election being postponed, plunging Lebanon into constitutional limbo.

“Last day before zero hour: either a miracle or vacuum,” the An-Nahar daily headline said yesterday.

The foreign ministers of France, Spain and Italy are in Beirut shuttling between political leaders to push for agreement over the choice of president. In a further sign of international concern, President Sarkozy of France spoke by phone on Wednesday to Saad Hariri, head of the antiSyrian block, and Michel Aoun, the opposition candidate for president.

All three European countries contribute to a 13,300-strong United Nations peacekeeping force in south Lebanon and are aware that their soldiers would be at even greater risk if Lebanon fell apart.

Also at risk are MPs belonging to the March 14 block, more than 40 of whom have spent the past two months holed up in an annex of the five-star Phoenicia hotel in central Beirut. Four of their colleagues have been murdered since the June 2005 general election. Visitors pass through metal detectors and are escorted by bodyguards to meeting rooms.

The curtains are kept closed to avoid sniper fire. On the rare occasions MPs travel, they go in small unmarked cars and remove the chips from their mobile phones so that they cannot be tracked.

“The guys are all depressed staying here. It’s like a prison,” said Mosbah Ahdab, an MP from Tripoli, who moved into the hotel on Monday.

In an attempt to break the impasse last week, France persuaded Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, the patriarch of the Maronite church, to submit a list of candidates from which the rival factions could select a president. Lebanon’s sectarian power-sharing system decrees that the president must be a Maronite. But neither camp is showing any sign of flexibility.

With Lebanon’s political woes inextricably linked to broader tensions in the Middle East, few expect an imminent solution, further complicating international efforts to secure a peace agreement at a summit in Annapolis next week.

The Lebanese Government is supported by the United States, France and Saudi Arabia, which seek to disarm Hezbollah and keep Lebanon within a pro-Western orbit – free from Syrian influence and an obstacle to Iran’s regional ambitions.

The Lebanese Opposition prefers to keep Lebanon aligned with Iran and Syria, distrusting Washington’s interest in Lebanon, which it believes seeks only to weaken Hezbollah and protect Israel.

“Everyone in Lebanon is waiting for the balance of power in the region to clarify itself,” Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Endowment’s Middle East Centre in Beirut, said.

The worsening crisis has resulted in a surge in black market arms sales as worried Lebanese protect themselves from an uncertain future. The weapon of choice is the AK47 assault rifle. A year ago the most popular version of this classic weapon, the 1977-vintage “circle 11” (named after the markings stamped into the rifle’s metal work), cost £250. Today it is worth about £450. “People are buying guns more than ever. They are expecting a war,” said Abu Jamil, an arms dealer.

The rise in arms sales has led to an increase in shooting practice in the Lebanese mountains, where the distant crackle of rifle fire is becoming common at weekends. The unrelenting political crisis and speculation that militias are being formed has left many Lebanese aghast at the thought that the country could be sliding into civil war once more.

“How can we even be thinking of war again? Have we learnt nothing?” Hadi Sfeir, 42, a shopkeeper, asked.

A civil rights group called Khalass – Arabic for Enough! - began a series of actions this week to highlight the disgust it feels toward the political class. “We are extremely frustrated. I don’t think the politicians care about what ordinary Lebanese care about like the economy and being able to live in peace with each other,” Carmen Jeha, an activist with Khalass, said.

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History of conflict

1975 Bus attack by Christian gunmen kills 27 and precipitates a civil war among Sunni, Shia and Christian communities

1976-78 Syrian troops enter to restore order; Israel controls south

1982 US, French and Italian peacekeepers arrive, but withdraw after a suicide attack kills 296 of their troops

1988 Beirut splits between Muslim control in west and Christian in east; the latter declares war against Syrian troops

1990 Syrian air strike against Christian government leader, who flees to the French Embassy effectively ending the civil war

2000 Israeli forces withdraw from Southern Lebanon

2005 Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s murder blamed on Syria. Street protests force Syrian withdrawal

2006 Israel attacks Beirut and south Lebanon after Hezbollah forces in Lebanon seize Israeli troops.

January 2007 Hezbollah calls general strike to force Government to resign

Source: Times archive

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My Bit:

Rival governments? Will Lebanon look like it did when President Amine Gemayel left in the late 1980s? Oddly enough it may, especially considering the man Amine left in charge (in the 80s-1990), General Aoun, is a key player in this mess. Only now, Aoun isn't fighting the Syrians, he's in league with them and their Hezbollah proxies.

With rival governments, internal conflict will come. Interestingly, if the pro-US parties of March 14th are put up against the wall, this could look like 1982 all over again. In the Middle East, the enemy (Israel) of my enemy (Hezbollah/Syria) is my friend. This is especially true when your super/large power backers (US and France) aren't offering you even an ounce as much support (militarily, economically, and diplomatically) as Iran and Syria offer to their proxies.

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My Article Published About Hezbollah

The headquarters of the International Lebanese Committee for 1559 had their walls decorated with posters reading, “Syria, Shove Your Civil War” and “Life Liberty and Lebanon.” The group works for the disarmament of Lebanese militias in accordance with UN resolution 1559, Hezbollah is of primary concern. I talked with the leader of the Committee, Toni Nissi. Nissi believes Hezbollah is still an armed force because of the weakness of the Lebanese government, military, and its strong support from Syria and Iran, telling me, “the Bush administration tried last year to send 40,000 NATO troops in Lebanon to clean out Hezbollah and the militias. The problem is we never help anyone who tried to help us, all the time the leaders of the Lebanese were loyal to themselves, to Saudi Arabia, or some other country. We need leadership that thinks about the people, less about themselves.” Nissi is a strong supporter of enforcing chapter 7 of 1559, an article calling for foreign troops to dislodge the militias. He believes that only outside intervention could really topple Hezbollah’s military power. Because of his anti-Hezbollah stance Nissi has been characterized by Hasan Nasrallah himself as “the Beirut branch of the Mossad.” Lebanese media that wants to air his views are often violently threatened by Hezbollah. Even his fellow employees have admitted that he was a prime target for Syrian or Hezbollah retaliation, as a result, he and his family live in hiding.

While mostly catering to the Shi’ite population, Hezbollah has permeated every inch of Lebanese society. On television there is al Manar, Hezbollah’s propaganda/news outlet, also including music videos by famous pop-stars such as Julia Boutros glorifying Hezbollah and Nasrallah. Hezbollah has even launched a video game, which is currently on display in their 2006 war museum. During the summer, in Shi’ite southern Beirut, I heard the daily Hezbollah sponsored celebrations for their “divine victory” in 2006. Usually there was just sporadic gunfire in the air, but, in one instance, they reenacted a missile strike they carried out against an Israeli warship, attacked during last summer’s the war. The subsequent shock from the blast shook the windows of my university all the way in central Beirut.

Hezbollah controlled areas extend from southern Beirut, through southern Lebanon bordering, Israel and in the northern portion of the Bekka Valley bordering Syria. Even in the posh downtown of Beirut, Hezbollah protesters, and their pro-Syrian allies have encamped themselves to protest the anti-Syrian majority government. As I drove down the streets of southern Beirut, in the area called Dahiya, the streets were quiet, but Hezbollah was out in full force. Hezbollah is based in the area, posters of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah covered buildings, rubble from Israeli air strikes was piled where apartment blocks once stood, locals and Hezbollah militiamen watched as my car drove through the area. With thousands of armed militiamen, long and short range rockets, direct control over wide swaths of Lebanon, the largest parliamentary bloc in Lebanese parliament, an alliance with Michel Aoun’s Tayyar (a mostly Christian party), and the support of most Shi’ite Muslims in Lebanon, Hezbollah is a force to reckoned with. After last summer’s war, Hezbollah’s power was more than evident.

Weapons still pour across the Lebanese-Syrian border, most of the arms go to and are smuggled by pro-Syrian Palestinian terror groups, such as the PFLP-GC, Fatah al Islam, in addition to getting delivered by and to Hezbollah. When I was waiting at the Lebanese border to cross into Syria it was a common site to see Syrian army personnel inside Lebanese territory. In my talks with Toni Nissi, he told me about a fact finding mission he led to the Bekaa Valley, where the Syrian Army still physically occupies much of eastern Lebanon. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Syria occupies at least 177 square miles of Lebanese soil.” The maps and charts show the Syrian objective. Damascus is systematically occupying the high ground of the Bekaa and Akkar districts. Nissi showed me photographs along with GPS points showing Syrian Army positions, Syrian T-62/T-72 tanks, and even a Syrian surface to air missile site, all within Lebanese territory. On the fact finding mission Nissi was fired upon by the Syrian army. Later he showed me a shell casing, he explained that he, “ran to the Syrian positions to pick up the bullets.” When he attempted to lead other fact finding missions the Lebanese government often wouldn’t allow him to pursue the issue. With a porous border and lack of strong government support, Hezbollah and other terror organizations find the smuggling of arms into Lebanon to be an easy task.

Baalbek, famous for its Roman ruins, lies in the heart of the Hezbollah controlled Bekka Valley. On the road to Baalbek, posters of the assassinated anti-Syrian politician Walid Eido, pictured together with his slain son, were coated with excrement, most likely thrown by pro-Syria Hezbollah supporters. Trash cans in the area have American flags or USA painted on them and the Ayatollah Khomeni’s smiling face graces many billboards. Everywhere one turned, there was another Nasrallah poster. Near the Roman ruins, there were gift stores. These weren’t the normal gift stores one might find near a major tourist site, there were no trinkets made of cedar wood, or T-shirts with pictures of the Temple to Baccus on them. Instead, these stores sold Hezbollah’s yellow flags, T-shirts featuring Nasrallah, DVDs showing Hezbollah operations, all the while playing Hezbollah songs on loud speakers.

At my Arabic program for foreigners in Beirut, the chief assistant to the director of the program was the former head of the Hezbollah student union at a university in Jbeil. I speculated, Hezbollah could know the location and most of the movements of a large body of Western students inside Lebanon. If hostilities broke out between the United States and Iran, Hezbollah, or Syria, the group, through its intelligence apparatus, could, in respect to programs catering to Westerners, easily carry out operations against Western students.

Even though the “Party of God” exerts enormous influence, there is a strong opposition to the group in Lebanon. First, there is the March 14th coalition, the leading anti-Syrian grouping that consists of Sunni (Mustaqbal), Christian (Kataeb, Lebanese Forces), and Druze parties (notably Walid Jumblatt’s PSP). One of my friends at a Lebanese university said hostility was so high between Hezbollah and the majority Christian students, that Hezbollah supporters were not allowed in the cafeteria of his school. Recently, violent riots (involving stones and fists) broke out between the two sides (primarily Mustaqbal and Hezbollah), following a Nasrallah speech.

Nevertheless, Hezbollah continues to ship in more arms, receive more money, exert more control over of the Shi’ite and portions of Lebanon. Calling Hezbollah’s control of certain areas as a “state within a state” is now cliche, especially considering how feudal and sectarian Lebanon is. The problem exists with Hezbollah’s possession of heavy weapons, its tendency to execute operations against sovereign states, often against the interests of the Lebanese state, and also its allegiance, and its support of the interests of outside states such as Iran and Syria. In Lebanon many Christians and Sunni Muslims fear that broader Shi’ite influence (under the auspices of

Hezbollah) will result in Lebanon being under a Khomenist-Islamist governance. In the words of one Lebanese Christian friend, “they want to turn us into Iran,” to a Sunni friend, “Hezbollah is crazy, they live in the 1100s.” With much of Hezbollah’s allegiance going to the ideals of Ayatollah Khomeni, it is easy to see why many would feel that way The Shi’ite students I shared the university with, while thoroughly anti-Western, enjoy the benefits of Western life, and may not support the effort at extreme Islamisation. Regardless of that, the hardliners of Hezbollah have foreign backing and are armed to the teeth. In poorer rural areas Hezbollah pays women to wear the chador and for men to grow a beard. With the increased radicalization and feeling of power generated by the 2006 war, Shi’ite relations with other sectarian groups is extremely strained, according to one professor at Lebanese American University, “the Lebanese [sectarian] groups don’t know how to share power, and now Hezbollah wants all the power.” Only time can tell what’s in store for Lebanon.

http://www.cedarsrevolution.net/jtphp/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=632&Itemid=2


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