Axis Of Needles

A few months after the Iranians claimed that they found a cure for AIDS, a Lebanese doctor declared that he discovered a cure for Cancer.

You hear this stuff in the news all the time, but somehow it ends up fizzling.. Could these cases be any different? Could it be that all that is left is some testing time before an Iranian doctor and a Lebanese doctor share a podium for the Nobel prize for medicine?

I can Imagine Ahmadinajad telling the security council in New York next week:

"Look, our medical breaktrhough will save millions of people while our nuclear weapon can only kill tens of thousands. On the balance of it, we can have our nuclear cake, eat it, and still get both the Nobel prizes for medicine and for peace.."

Now that's a deal you can't refuse.

Bkirki's Snub

Bkirki is once more giving March 14 the red eye. Here's why.

this time, ignore me at your peril

Most people in the March 14 movement were surprised when the council of Maronite bishops announced on Tuesday that a Chapter 7 resolution to the Hariri tribunal would be damaging to Lebanon.

Hariri immediately rushed to Bkirki to find out why they said that. Naharnet totally ignored the part about chapter 7 in their story, March 14 bloggers fumed and Hariri-owned Almustaqbal media was defensive in tone and said that the Lebanese people have the right to a chapter 7 resolution if everything else fails.

The reason the Maronites are cautious is simple though. With all the talk about the Saudis mending the fence between the Sunnis and the Shias, the Patriarch was sensing another 7ilf ruba3i in the making(in reference to when Hariri, Jumblatt, Nassrallah and Berri had an electoral alliance that left the Christians behind).

Bkirki wanted to remind everyone that the Christians also have sacrosanct issues. Sfeir is now making it a point that the number one priority for the Christians is NOT the international tribunal but a fair electoral law. Which to this blogger, makes perfect sense.

However, the burden is on Aoun to persuade his allies to accept a new electoral law based on small districts. After all, it is Berri and Nassrallah that have always been the most resistant to such a law.

Sitting Together

The USA will sit on the same table with Syria and Iran.

Can he be a friend?

Every time someone starts denying something aggressively, I take a hint that that something might happen. For example, I only knew that Washington was serious about attacking Iran when they started strongly denying such plans.

This is why Condy Rice's affirmation to Jumblat that the US won't abandon Lebanon, or Hisham Melhem's reporting from Washington that there is no change in policy towards Damascus and Tehran are not exactly comforting.

I don't know why The Washington Post is happy. After all, we are talking about Iran and Syria. Countries who are already busy celebrating a victory: The US has gone down to its knees. They will talk with us. Hoorraay, we can kill more people now.

But then again, the US is saving face with us. You see, America is not "talking" with Iran and Syria. It just happens to be present in the same regional conference with them. A conference which was organized by the government in Baghdad and has nothing to do with Washington, yeah right...

Let's hope rice doesn't "find herself" sitting next to Larigani and Moallem in a cheeky placing by a "well-intentioned" Iraqi government.

(Pssst, on a totally unrelated note, pro-engagement heavyweights -Kissinger, Baker, Negroponte- have all gathered on Tuesday night at the Library of Congress. Of course, it's just a coincidence that James baker told the audience, “America must be prepared to talk to our enemies.” this definitely has nothing to do with the coming "sitting" with Syria and Iran)

Seymour Facts?

If the "facts" mentioned in Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article are true, Saad Hariri has a moral obligation to come out clean.

The media in Lebanon has been focusing on the Hersh report in The New Yorker for good reasons. The central premise of the report is that the Americans, Saudis and Israelis are engaged in a clandestine operation (Hersh likens it to the Iran-contra affair) to undermine Iranian influence in the region, by actively working on a Sunni-Shiite confrontation and empowering extremist Sunni elements.

Hersh believes that the Saudis and Americans are backing fundamentalist Sunnis in Lebanon:

according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant. “We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can,” the former senior intelligence official said.
[..]American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.

Hersh spoke with Alastair Crook "who spent nearly thirty years in MI6, the British intelligence service, and now works for Conflicts Forum, a think tank in Beirut", who told him:

The Lebanese government is opening space for these people to come in. It could be very dangerous.” Crooke said that one Sunni extremist group, Fatah al-Islam, had splintered from its pro-Syrian parent group, Fatah al-Intifada, in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, in northern Lebanon. Its membership at the time was less than two hundred. “I was told that within twenty-four hours they were being offered weapons and money by people presenting themselves as representatives of the Lebanese government’s interests—presumably to take on Hezbollah

Hersh sees Saad Hariri's role in providing amnesty to the Dinnieh insurgents as part of that plan:

In 2005, according to a report by the U.S.-based International Crisis Group, Saad Hariri, the Sunni majority leader of the Lebanese parliament and the son of the slain former Prime Minister [..] paid forty-eight thousand dollars in bail for four members of an Islamic militant group from Dinniyeh. The men had been arrested while trying to establish an Islamic mini-state in northern Lebanon. The Crisis Group noted that many of the militants “had trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.”
According to the Crisis Group report, Saad Hariri later used his parliamentary majority to obtain amnesty for twenty-two of the Dinniyeh Islamists, as well as for seven militants suspected of plotting to bomb the Italian and Ukrainian embassies in Beirut, the previous year.

Hersh elaborates on the bigger picture, and explains Jumblat's role:

Walid Jumblatt, who is the leader of the Druze minority in Lebanon and a strong Siniora supporter, has attacked Nasrallah as an agent of Syria, and has repeatedly told foreign journalists that Hezbollah is under the direct control of the religious leadership in Iran. In a conversation with me last December, he depicted Bashir Assad, the Syrian President, as a “serial killer.” Nasrallah, he said, was “morally guilty” of the assassination of Rafik Hariri and the murder, last November, of Pierre Gemayel, a member of the Siniora Cabinet, because of his support for the Syrians.

Jumblatt then told me that he had met with Vice-President Cheney in Washington last fall to discuss, among other issues, the possibility of undermining Assad. He and his colleagues advised Cheney that, if the United States does try to move against Syria, members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood would be “the ones to talk to,” Jumblatt said.

Also in a twist that would please Aounist supporters, (but which I think is utterly rubbish) is this part:

Robert Baer, a former longtime C.I.A. agent in Lebanon, has been a severe critic of Hezbollah and has warned of its links to Iranian-sponsored terrorism. But now, he told me, “we’ve got Sunni Arabs preparing for cataclysmic conflict, and we will need somebody to protect the Christians in Lebanon. It used to be the French and the United States who would do it, and now it’s going to be Nasrallah and the Shiites.
“The most important story in the Middle East is the growth of Nasrallah from a street guy to a leader—from a terrorist to a statesman,” Baer added. “The dog that didn’t bark this summer”—during the war with Israel—“is Shiite terrorism.” Baer was referring to fears that Nasrallah, in addition to firing rockets into Israel and kidnapping its soldiers, might set in motion a wave of terror attacks on Israeli and American targets around the world. “He could have pulled the trigger, but he did not,” Baer said.

**Update**
Bilal Saab from the Brookings Institute disputes Hersh's findings and argues that it is in fact Hezbollah that is in control of extreme Sunni elements. Read more..

**Update 2**
More skepticism from Tony and SM.

Cold Civil War

Every once in a while someone comes along and coins a memorable term that captures the essence of a crisis. Yesterday, Amin Gemayel gave us "Cold Civil War".

A cold civil war is exactly what is happening in Lebanon today. It is mostly felt in "mixed" environments.

In offices, for example, you can't avoid the sense of "otherness" emanating from the person sitting in the next cubicle. In gatherings, family or otherwise, entire conversations change if someone in the crowd is from the other camp. A rich lexicon of euphemisms has flourished, where you say "Southerner" when what you really mean to say is "Shiaa" and by extension "Northerner" replaces "Sunni".

"Those Syrian Iranian Scumbags" change into "The Opposition" and "Those Zionist American Traitors" become "The Pro-Government loyalists". Among Christians, "Those Aounist Traitors" and "Those War mongering LF Militias" both magically transform into "Our brothers in the other camp".

The fact is: we can't stand each other. We try to hide it but we secretly wish the other never existed.We can't have a real civil war because memories of the previous one are still too vivid. But at the same time, our aspirations, goals and objectives are just too conflicting.

We won't fight each other. We won't make nice. We're stuck at the brink of "mutually assured destruction".It is indeed a cold war. A Cold Civil war.

Civil Disobedience?

Hezbollah’s latest threat of civil disobedience is just a bluff.

A few weeks before “black Tuesday” -when opposition mobs cut off important streets using burning tires- Samir Geagea, the leader of the LF and a central March 14 figure had a challenge for the opposition: If you were as popular as you claim you are, why don’t you call for a general strike? This way we’ll get to see who really supports you.

To my surprise, the opposition did end up calling for a general strike. They can’t pull it off, I told myself. Where was the catch? I couldn’t figure it out until the answer came in the form of black smoke. Apparently, to our democratic “opposition”, a general strike is top-down business. It’s something you impose on the rest of the Lebanese.

In this light, it is worth looking at the threat of civil disobedience propagated by an “opposition source” in Assafir. You see, the threat the opposition is "considering" is so hollow the “source” didn’t even bother reveal itself.

The same people who couldn’t convince shop-keepers of shutting down their shops for just one day are actually trying to convince us that they can persuade their followers to quit their bread-earning jobs until further notice.

The typical argument of a civil disobediant should sound like this:
I have decided that I no longer want to teach in this school because a politician somewhere wants a bigger share of the ruling cake.

Bang Bang

Regardless of who committed today's atrocities, it is directed at tomorrow's Christian crowd.


As soon as the news broke up, the blame game began.

The anti-government, pro-Syrian coalition (March 8) thinks it's obvious who did it:
The evil Americans and Zionists are mobilizing their agents to boost their allies in the Seniora Government. They argue that the (insert CIA or Mossad here) planted these bombs to orchestrate a large public revulsion that would increase the number of participants in tomorrow's rally.

How is it possible, they always ask, that every time March 14 finds itself in trouble, something like this comes up and boosts their popularity?

The pro-government, anti-Syria coalition (March 14) on the other hand, immediately blamed the incident on Damascus: The mischievous regime of Bashar el Assad wants to intimidate the Christians out of coming down in record numbers to commemorate Hariri's Assassination's anniversary.

To March 14, The objectives can't be more obvious: The Syrians, in such an act, would achieve two goals: First, they would diminish the Christian crowd tomorrow and boost Michel Aoun's claims of Cristian representation. Second, they would send a message to Lebanese Christians that their Sunni allies are not reliable when it comes to their security (hence the FPM's relentless criticism of the -Sunni- Interior Minister for not properly doing his job). And that they are better off allying themselves with the Syrians.

As Saad Hariri, a March 14 leader, puts it:"[the incident is meant] to terrorize people who are willing to come to mark the second anniversary"

It is symbolic, the loyalists might point out, that the explosions took place in Bekfaya, the only place in Metn that didn't vote for Michel Aoun but voted instead for Pierre Gemayyel, who was himself assassinated a few months ago. It is also telling that Amin Gemayel, Pierre's father, who had a meeting with George W. Bush just a few days ago, is on his way back to Lebanon.

Quite a welcome he's getting.