LebaneseConundrum

Jumblat Fears Another Murder

2006-02-22T03:55:00.000-08:00

Says Hizbullah Capable of Security Breaches

Naharnet.com
Beirut, Updated 22 Feb 06, 10:00

Druze leader Walid Jumblat has said he fears that Syria is planning another political assassination in Lebanon soon and that although he is taking all necessary precautions, Damascus ally Hizbullah is in total control of the security situation in the country.
Jumblat, whose comments were published in An Nahar Wednesday, said he and Future Movement leader Saad Hariri are taking all safety measures in their power to protect themselves.

"We made some arrangements with the security forces around the palace. In spite of that, I repeat that Hizbullah is capable of breaching any such measures," said Jumblat in the most serious accusation he has made against the group so far.

Since former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated Feb. 14 2005, his son and political heir Saad and Jumblat have been at the top of a hit list of anti-Syria politicians targeted for assassination.

The Druze chieftain has restricted his movement and rarely leaves his ancestral palace in the town of Mukhtara in the Chouf mountains southeast of Beirut. Hariri just returned to Lebanon this month after spending six months in self-exile out of fear for his life. He rarely ventures out of his heavily-guarded palace in the hilltop Beirut district of Koreitem.

"Hizbullah is in control of the security situation in all of Lebanon, not only the south. Anyway I do what I can. I do not leave Mukhtara and Saad Hariri who came back to Lebanon to stay in Koreitem, never leaves it," said Jumblat.

The Druze chieftain commented on rockets that were found near the house of Bahia Hariri, the slain leader's sister, in Majdelyoun near the southern port city of Sidon. He said he saw this as a warning that an assassination would take place soon. Gebran Tueni, An Nahar's General Manager, was killed after a similar incident in the Chouf where ammunition was found by the side of the road.

Jumblat said he wondered if Syria and its allies in Lebanon are setting the stage for another murder that would take place before March 2, the beginning of a national dialogue meeting that Speaker Nabih Berri is preparing for.

"Are Bashar and his agents preparing for a big assassination before Speaker Berri's initiative?" Jumblat wondered.

Electricity Prices in Lebanon

2006-02-13T12:25:00.001-08:00

I live in a piece of shit apartment that has no central heating butI just got my latest light bill- it went from 40,000 Lebanese Lira ($26.67) to 222,000 Lira($148). That is an increase by five and a half times!

And what do I get for paying so much? Constant power outages- most ‘good’ buildings in Beirut have their own generators; once the power goes out, the generators kick in within seconds and the tenants get two light bills: One from the generator owners- who will bill their clients a flat fee of around $40 whether or not the power goes off, and of course another bill from Electricite du Liban (EDL).

I am lucky- I happen to live just a block away from the Prime Minister of Lebanon and all of downtime Beirut is guaranteed, at least in theory, 24 hour of electricity because the Lebanese government has made the reconstruction of downtown Beirut an absolute priority.

In areas outside Beirut, power is so scarce it is not uncommon to have power for 4 hours a day, maximum! There are high school kids who have to study for their important exams by candlelight. The contrasts in this country are stunning; from million dollar condos along the Mediteranean to the ubiquitous Porsche Cayennes (I swear, there are more Porsches in Beirut than in almost any American city save LA) and just a few miles away, people are freezing their nuts off because the power went out!

My language teacher lives in the Hizb’Allah loyalist Shiite suburb of Daahye. Of course she does not need to worry about such trivial matters like the price of electricity because where she lives, no one pays for electricity. If you wanna know why, read below. The article is from the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin and was originally published in 2003, but it is just as relevant today because in Lebanon, the more things change (the Syrian withdrawal and all that……) the more things stay the same (corruption has replaced hashish as Lebanon’s number one cash crop).

The Corruption Behind Lebanon's Electricity Crisis
by Ziad K. Abdelnour
Middle East Economic Bulletin
August-September 2003
While the recent power outage in the United States was an abrupt shock to a nation that has come to take electricity for granted, blackouts are a way of life in Lebanon, where most of the well-to-do own personal generators. The month of August was worse than most, however, with daily rolling power outages ranging from eight hours in Beirut to 20 hours in parts of north Lebanon.
While Americans are still searching for answers, the cause of Lebanon's electricity crisis is not a mystery. Electricite du Liban (EDL), the state-owned company that provides power to most of the country, is $3 billion in debt and cannot afford to purchase enough fuel to keep the lights on 24 hours a day. With yearly losses totaling a third of annual government expenditures, EDL would seem to be an attractive candidate for fast-track privatization. On August 22, however, Minister of Electricity and Water Resources Ayoub Humayed announced that plans to privatize EDL have been postponed indefinitely.
That Lebanon's political elites are so protective of a state enterprise that ranks as one of the world's least profitable companies may seem puzzling to outsiders, but the reason is not difficult to discern. In addition to being the country's primary conduit for electricity, EDL has been a conduit for distributing billions of dollars in kickbacks to pro-Syrian political figures in Lebanon over the last decade. As public uproar over the blackouts intensified in August, some of those involved in this embezzlement have leaked new details of the scandal to local media. What emerges is a tale of corruption and brazen disregard for the public good that is astonishing even by Lebanese standards.
Lebanon's power problems date back to the 1975-1990 civil war, which devastated the country's electricity network. After the end of the war, a succession of Syrian-installed governments spent over $2 billion on the rehabilitation or construction of ten power plants and their accompanying grid. In the early 1990s, government officials boasted that the rehabilitation would boost EDL's capacity from 800-1,000 megawatts to over 2000 megawatts by the year 2000. A decade later, its capacity stands at around 1,400 megawatts, well short of the country's needs, estimated by experts to be around 1,800 megawatts.
One reason for the short return on this investment is that much of the money was siphoned off by corrupt politicians. "More than $500 million ended up in the pockets of leaders, ministers, and entrepreneurs," one minister recently told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.[1] Druze leader Walid Jumblatt broke a long-standing taboo on this topic on August 14, telling a reporter that responsibility for the crisis belongs to "the Baroudis" in the Ministry of Electricity and Water Resources.[2] Although he did elaborate, Jumblatt was referring to Rudy Baroudi, a senior advisor to the ministry since the early 1990s, and Ahd Baroudi, an entrepreneur whose company is contracted to carry out maintenance of power-generating equipment. Three days after Jumblatt's comment, a local newspaper quoted sources close to Ahd Baroudi as saying that he has been "paying millions of dollars in kickbacks to influential Lebanese politicians" to keep its maintenance contract. In addition, the sources said that Baroudi acted as a go-between in a $750 million contract for the purchase of power-generating equipment in the early 1990s that was "not commensurate with the price paid by the state."[3]
Not only were enormous sums of money siphoned from EDL through illegal kickbacks from such deals, but the profiteering motives of Lebanon's political elites led them to approve purchases of equipment that were redundant or otherwise ill-conceived. For example, two natural gas-based power plants were built in the north and south of the country, but the government failed to build a network connecting them to the rest of the country.
The tale of corruption in the energy sector does not stop with the rehabilitation of Lebanon's electricity infrastructure. One of the reasons why EDL has run such massive deficits is that the company has a bloated staff of administrators who earn astronomically high salaries and obtained their jobs through connections to senior politicians. They did not get these handouts for free. The aforementioned cabinet minister who spoke on condition of anonymity charged that EDL funds have long been "diverted by employees to the accounts of their political mentors."[4]
An even bigger problem is that EDL has been used by political elites to distribute free electricity to their constituents. According to official sources, around 55% of EDL bills are not collected. Moreover, around 45% of electricity generated by EDL is not even billed - it is estimated that tens of thousands of people get electricity free by illegally tapping into power lines. As Beirut MP Muhammad Qabbani, who heads the parliamentary Energy and Water Committee, recently observed, many of those who get electricity free enjoy "political protection."[5] In the southern suburbs of Beirut - the stronghold of the militant Shiite group Hezbollah - and in certain areas of the eastern Beqaa Valley controlled by Syrian forces, 80% of electricity users do not pay for it. Those who do not enjoy political protection, on the other hand, are obliged to either pay the highest price for electricity in the Middle East or bribe EDL bill collectors (who are easily corrupted, since they are expected to pay back their political patrons for giving them jobs).
Since all of the above dimensions of corruption at EDL (if not the precise details) are public knowledge in Lebanon, the government has occasionally sought to deflect criticism by launching investigations and anti-corruption campaigns. In early 2002, for example, Lebanese Prosecutor-General Adnan Addoum opened an investigation into corruption at the Ministry of Electricity and Water Resources and media reports indicated that Rudy Baroudi and Fadi Saroufim would be called in for questioning. Nothing ever came of it. In April 2002, the Lebanese cabinet approved a plan to eradicate electricity piracy by assigning police units to escort EDL bill collectors and technicians on visits to residences, but it was not implemented.
In the face of pressure by the International Monetary Fund and other international donors to pull the plug on EDL, in August 2002 the government approved a draft law to privatize the production and distribution of electricity within two years. The $4.4 billion in low interest loans that Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri received at the Paris II conference two months later was conditioned in part on implementation of this plan.
However, bickering among political elites over the privatization process has caused it to stall. As with plans to privatize the mobile phone sector, the fundamental issue of contention is who benefits. Due to the lack of government transparency and reliable contract enforcement in Syrian-occupied Lebanon, private sector investors (whether Lebanese or foreign) only enter the market if they have cut deals with influential politicians. Since Hariri, a billionaire construction magnate with strong connections to Saudi and European investors, would stand to gain more from privatization (both politically and financially) than President Emile Lahoud and Lebanon's military-intelligence elite, the latter have sought to obstruct privatization at every turn.
With public uproar over the electricity crisis mounting, Lahoud recently began allowing police escorts to assist EDL in bill collection (which, according to local media reports, resulted in thousands of subscribers paying off arrears), but this appears to have been a stopgap measure to deflect criticism for obstructing privatization of the electricity sector. The indefinite postponement of plans to privatize EDL was not well received by international agencies that rate emerging market credit risk. "The main thing we have been looking for in Lebanon is privatization, and it continues to disappoint," said James McCormack, a senior official at Fitch.[6]
Notes

[1] Agence France Presse, 15 August 2003.
[2] The Daily Star (Beirut), 16 August 2003.
[3] Al-Diyar (Beirut), 17 August 2003.
[4] Agence France Presse, 15 August 2003.
[5] The Daily Star (Beirut), 7 August 2003.
[6] Reuters (Beirut), 29 August 2003.

© 2003 Middle East Intelligence Bulletin. All rights reserved.

Jumblatt warns about Hizb'Allah

2006-02-13T12:25:00.000-08:00

Jumblatt accuses Hizbullah of serving Iran

By Leila Hatoum and Maher Zeineddine
Daily Star staff
Monday, February 13, 2006

BEIRUT: Druze MP Walid Jumblatt attacked Hizbullah Sunday, saying it is "an armed force which controls the lawless South and which serves the best interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran." Speaking before visitors in his mountain refuge of Mukhtara Sunday, Jumblatt, who had said late last week that Hizbullah is a militia, said "the loyalty in this country is divided," and that Lebanon is "facing a great conflict."
He added that Hizbullah's power, which is drawn from the $300 to $400 million in aid from Iran, "can create a state within a state. Let them give us the same capabilities and aid and see what we can do. But our plan is to build one country."
Jumblatt again stressed that the Shebaa Farms is not Lebanese but in fact Syrian and that Syria had altered the maps pushing the borderline to show that Shebaa Farms is Lebanese and this way Hizbullah's resistance to the Israeli occupation of a supposedly Lebanese territory would be justified.
Jumblatt displayed a Lebanese Army map dating back to 1962, which he said clearly shows the Shebaa Farms outside Lebanese borders, Jumblatt added that the imprisoned former chief of Lebanese General Security, Jamil Sayyed, had given him a map in 2001 on which changes had been made to the original map, putting Shebaa Farms in Lebanon.
Sayyed is charged, with three other former security chiefs, with planning, and taking part in the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri. They are currently awaiting trial.
The Druze leader explained that in this way, "Syria and Iran could extend their influence in Lebanon through the continuation of Hizbullah's role."
http://www.dailystar.com.lb
Jumblatt continued that Hariri "was not convinced of the 2001 forged map and that is one of the reasons why he was assassinated."
Sources close to Premier Fouad Siniora told The Daily Star Sunday that "Premier Siniora has not seen the maps that Jumblatt is talking about, and the maps should be examined first."
Siniora has stated on numerous occasions that the Shebaa Farms are Lebanese.
Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh, who is pro-Hizbullah and the Amal Movement, echoed Siniora's statements saying that the Shebaa Farms "are in fact Lebanese territories occupied by Israel."
Jumblatt added that Lebanon "continues to be a hostage of Syrian and Iranian greed."
As an example of the aid extended to Hizbullah, and which shows the extension of Syria and Iran's role in Lebanon,
Jumblatt said a truck loaded with arms "crossed the Lebanese-Syrian border into Lebanon late Friday to one of the armed forces in Lebanon. The army stopped it for some time before allowing it to continue on its way."
Jumblatt also replied to Hizbullah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's comment about Lebanon's political majority-minority combination, in which the Hizbullah chief stated the majority was an "imaginary" one.
"We are not an imaginary majority as someone said recently at an event," Jumblatt said.

Hizbullah: We Won't Disarm Even If Shabaa Is Liberated

Beirut, Updated 01 Feb 06, 13:46
www.naharnet.com

Hizbullah legislator Mohammed Raad said that the Party of God would not give up its arms and withdraw its fighters from the borderline with Israel even if the Jewish state withdrew from the Shabaa farms.
"The resistance will stay on alert as long as our people's security is threatened. Even if Israel withdraws, the resistance is an element of strength in Lebanon's hand. Why then give it up and to whom?" Raad was quoted as saying Tuesday.

The legislator denied the party's weapons were solely for the liberation of the farms. "The arms of the resistance are not exclusively linked to an Israeli withdrawal from Shabaa," he said.

"They are part of an equation to protect Lebanon as long as it needs such a protection because neither a truce with the Israelis would reassure the Lebanese, nor would international resolutions shield us," he added.

Raad said it is an illusion to believe that Hizbullah would disarm when the border at Shabaa is demarcated.

"The resistance is aware of the Zionist danger to Lebanon and can't relinquish its duty to defend Lebanon if it is attacked by Israel," he said.

When Israel ended its 22-year occupation of south Lebanon in 2000, the U.N. said the Shabaa farms are located in Syrian territory and linked their fate to other Arab territory occupied by Israel since the 1967 war. However, Lebanon and Syrian argue that the farms are Lebanese.

The Lebanese government is seeking to delineate the border with Syria that withdrew its troops from the neighboring country in April, after a 20-year military presence. Syria has said that demarcating the border at Shabaa was an Israeli demand that would harm the resistance.

The government is also under international pressure to disarm Hizbullah, Syria's main ally in Lebanon, in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 that is calls for the disarmament of all militias in Lebanon.

Hizbullah says it is not a militia and wants the government to adopt its position in order to end a cabinet boycott by Shiite ministers that started Dec. 12.

Raad reiterated his party's demand saying the government crisis can only be solved when the cabinet clearly labels Hizbullah as a resistance movement.

Pro-Syrian Provocateurs Burned Danish Embassy in Beirut

2006-02-04T14:09:00.002-08:00

The riots that culminated in the destruction of the Danish embassy in the upscale christian district of Ashrafiyeh yesterday is now being blamed on provocateurs with strong ties to Syria.

Of the 192 rioters arrested, 77 are Syrian nationals, 48 Lebanese, 44 Lebanese and 25 Bedouins.

Most of the arrested Palestinians belong to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestin-General Command (PFLP-GC), a radical Palestinian group based in Damascus whose leader, Ahmed Gibril, once served as a captain in the Syrian Army.

The PFLP-GC has a network of tunnels and arms caches in Palestinian refugee camp in Naameh, an area south of Beirut.

The PFLP-GC has been linked, albeit tangentially, to the assassination of Rafik Hariri and the Lebanese authorities blame it for an upsurge of arms smuggling (from Syria) after the withdrawal of Syrian troops last year.
In addition to the Danish embassy, the crowds broke the windows of the St. Maroun church in Gemayyzeh. The St. Maroun church belongs to the Maronite denomination and the Maronites form the largest christian denomination in Lebanon.

Relation between the Palestinians and the christians have historically been very bad and the Lebanese civil war was sparked by clashes between christian militias and the Palestinians.

An especially poignant in the riots was images of Sunni clerics trying to stop the crowd from destroying property. The religious leaders who called for the demonstration has called for a peaceful protest against the Danish government and they were as surprised as anyone when the demonstration descended into an orgy of violence.

The most vocal Lebanese critic of the Danish cartoons that sparked the demonstrations was the decidedly pro-Syrian Hizb'Allah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Surprisingly,from pictures of the demonstration it did not appear that any Shiites were involved, certainly no Shiite clerics were and all the slogans in the demonstration were Sunni- including many that looked like the flag of Saudi Arabia.

Danish and Norwegian Embassies burned in Syria

2006-02-04T14:09:00.000-08:00

MSN Encarta definition of terrorism:
Political violence; violence or the threat of violence, especially bombing, kidnapping, and assassination, carried out for political purposes.
I decided to look up the definition of terrorism because many people believe- erroneously, that terrorism is limited to organisations like al-Qaeda and the like. The events below indicate, indubitably, that terrorism has become institutionalised in the muslim faith.

Angry Crowds Torch Danish, Norwegian Embassies in Syria
Angry crowds stormed the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus on Saturday, setting fire to both of them in protest over the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, an AFP correspondent said.
In Copenhagen, the government reacted by calling on its nationals to leave Syria immediately.

"All Danes are asked to leave the country," the foreign ministry said in a statement. "The situation for Danes in Syria has worsened recently."

Several dozen people scaled the facade of the three-storey building housing the Danish embassy, which is located on the first floor. They broke in and sacked the offices, throwing some of the furniture out of the windows before setting the fire.

The demonstrators, numbering in the thousands, also threw rocks at riot police who had set up a security cordon, and they tried to block fire trucks from reaching the scene.

A number of them then headed for the Norwegian embassy, only one kilometer (six-tenths of a mile) away. Riot police had set up a security cordon there and initially beat back the crowd, using tear gas as well.

Eventually, the demonstrators broke through and entered the embassy, which they pillaged and set on fire.

At least 11 demonstrators were injured in clashes with police and had to be hospitalized.

After the attack on the Danish mission, and as the crowd moved on to its next target, a street demonstration denounced the publication of the cartoons.
Several hundred people marched to shouts of "with our souls and with our blood, we will sacrifice ourselves for the prophet.

"We will not keep quiet" and "there is but one God," they also shouted.

Telephone text messages had been circulating in Damascus claiming that Danes were going to be gathering in one of Copenhagen's main squares Saturday to burn copies of the Koran. People were urged to gather at the embassy to protest.

Twelve cartoons, first published last September by the conservative Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, have caused an uproar in the Muslim world and set off a new cultural battle over freedom of speech and religious tolerance.(AFP)

Beirut, Updated 04 Feb 06, 19:11

Dead Man Talking

2006-01-09T12:53:00.000-08:00

Walid Jumblatt is a Marked Man
Lebanon is entering a dangerous new phase after Druze warlord Walid Jumblatt accused Hizb’Allah of complicity in a wave of political crimes and assassinations that followed the Valentine’s Day of 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Jumblatt’s statement is surprising, because criticism of Hizb’Allah has become verboten in Lebanon and politicians of all political stripes tread very carefully (or tread not at all) in any discussions that would put ‘the resistance’- as Hizb’Allah is referred to colloquially, in an unfavorable light.

As far as many Americans are concerned, Hizb’Allah is the same terrorist group, using the codename ‘Islamic Jihad’ that was responsible for hundreds of American deaths during Lebanon’s civil war. The U.S. government has officially branded the party a terrorist group, and an Iranian sponsored one at that. Hizb’Allah is widely blamed (or praised, depending on which angle you are looking at the issue) for two deadly suicide bombings in 1983; against the U.S. embassy in April that killed 17 Americans and against the Marine Corps barracks that killed 241 Americans in October of the same year.

In Lebanon, however, el muqawami (i.e. the resistance) is regarded by all sides on the political spectrum as a redoubtable fighting force and the only Arab army to have defeated Israel. The ‘defeat’ that Hizb’Allah alludes to is the Israeli withdrawal in 2000 from southern Lebanon after years of incessant and costly attacks by Hizb’Allah guerillas on Israeli positions.

Hizb’Allah considers itself unassailable in Lebanon, and has chosen to deal with the Lebanese political establishment through a series of fait accomplis. An example of this is Lebanon’s border with Israel. Once the Israelis retreated, it was Hizb’Allah, and not the Lebanese Army that occupied the area that was previously occupied by the Israelis. Lebanon’s border with Israel is strictly off limits to the Lebanese Army, which makes Lebanon the only country in the world whose army is not permitted to defend its borders against a sworn enemy.

Observers who decry Hizb’Allah’s intransigence point to this as an example that Hizb’Allah is a ‘state within a state’. Jumblatt’s assertion seems to be that the campaign of terror that followed Hariri’s assassination (which he implies Hizb’Allah is complicit with) means that Hizb’Allah has made the strategic decision to move beyond a cohabitation with the state (‘the state within’ hypothesis, which worked well for them under the Syrian occupation) to supplanting the state altogether (the ‘Iran-Syria-Lebanese axis’ hypothesis). With the Syrian withdrawal in 2005, have the Syrians delegated to Hizb'Allah the task of supplanting the state altogether as opposed to symbiotically living within a state. Is Lebanon in a new civil war, which no one recognises as such because it is, at least at this juncture, a low intensity conflict?

Jumblatt is now widely rumored to have moved into the top position of the ‘death list’, an unenviable position that had previously been occupied for several months by An-Nahar newspaper publisher Gebran Tueni (Tueni was assassinated on December 12, 2005 one day after he returned from self-imposed exile in France). Jumblatt's father Kamal was assassinated in 1977(reportedly on the orders of the late Syrian president Hafez Assad) and Jumblatt is now so fearful for his life he rarely ventures out of his family seat; an imposing medievel palace in the Chouf mountains.

Jumblatt questions Hizbullah's allegiance

By Majdoline Hatoum
Daily Star staff
Monday, January 09, 2006
BEIRUT: As progress was being made in ending Lebanon's Cabinet crisis, MP Walid Jumblatt launched a fiery attack against Hizbullah Sunday, questioning the party's determination to maintain its arms indefinitely. Jumblatt indirectly addressed the resistance, saying: "To those who hold the rifle today we say, 'thank you, the South is free'; to whom is your allegiance now, Lebanon or other countries?"
"We don't want to be in the middle of an axis that starts in the Mediterranean and ends in Tehran," Jumblatt added, in reference to the Shiite party's relations with Syria and Iran.
Jumblatt demanded that Lebanon's Shiite ministers - who walked out of a Cabinet meeting in early December and subsequently suspended their participation in the government in protest against a decision to request an international investigation into the series of assassinations targeting the country over the past year-and-a-half - should explain their recent positions.
"We tell them you left the meeting maybe to escape, because the Syrian regime does not want an international tribunal," he said. "We knew when we asked for an international tribunal the ruler of Damascus will not accept it. If they want the truth, why are they dodging the call for an international tribunal?"
The Druze leader further implied a possible link between the series of killings and Hizbullah.
"There are 'security islands' that harbor a load of wired cars ... and as we all know, the state cannot investigate or interrogate people in some of the areas inside these security islands," he said.
Telecommunication Minister Marwan Hamade, a member of Jumblatt's parliamentary bloc, said recently he had information proving the car used in his assassination attempt was wired in Beirut's Southern Suburbs - Hizbullah's heartland.
"We tell them a party that was able to defeat Israel can help the Lebanese investigation in uncovering the truth ... Unless they have something to hide," he said. "We say if your conscience was clear, you would facilitate [the request for an] international tribunal."
The Druze leader also said the Shebaa Farms are not Lebanese, and condemned the recent use of the term "Shebaa area" instead of Shebaa Farms by Hizbullah in a draft agreement with the Cabinet majority.
"We used to talk about the Farms, and then these farms expanded and turned into an area ... those who know the area know that the Shebaa area is a region that starts in Shebaa and ends in (the Syrian) Golan Heights, which means that there is an attempt to stretch the struggle forever under the slogan of freeing Shebaa Farms, which is not Lebanese, not Lebanese, not Lebanese," Jumblatt asserted.
The Shebaa Farms is a strip of land between Lebanon, Syria and Israel. Israel and the United Nations say the territory belongs to Syria, while Lebanon claims it is Lebanese with verbal support from Syria, but no official documentation.
Since the liberation of South Lebanon in 2000, Hizbullah has maintained its weapons under the pretext of liberating the Farms. However, more than five years after the Israeli withdrawal, the Syrian government has not acknowledged the area is Lebanese, thus triggering the Lebanese anti-Syrian movement to ask for a demarcation of the borders between the two countries. Hizbullah has refused the delineation demands under the pretext the current regional situation does not allow for such a move.
"Shebaa Farms is not Lebanese and the Syrian regime is not going to give us a property deed to the area," Jumblatt said. "Telling us we cannot demarcate the borders in light of the current tensions is something stupid."
He added: "South Lebanon is liberated, UN Resolution 425 is implemented, and we should stop dodging this fact."
A source within the resistance said Hizbullah refused to comment on Jumblatt's statements as part of the party's decision not to get into a "war of words" with the Druze leader.
However, Hizbullah MP Hassan Fadlallah called for "preserving the rules of political conduct in dealing with each other, through adopting a calm tone ... and refraining from insulting institutions that enjoy respect and admiration within a vast majority of the Lebanese."
He added: "No matter how stiff and tense the political situation gets, we will maintain our national identity. No matter what happens, the weapon of the resistance has one direction, and that is the Israeli enemy."
Fadlallah also commented on the ongoing dialogue with the Cabinet majority to solve
the government crisis, saying talks were "steadily going in the right direction."
"What we want right now is a clear and concise text that determines the government's stance regarding the resistance," Fadlallah said.
The latest domestic developments unfolded as Premier Fouad Siniora met with Parliament majority leader MP Saad Hariri in Jeddah Saturday, and was expected to meet with Speaker Nabih Berri soon to discuss the Shiite ministers' return to Cabinet. Media outlets had reported Sunday that a six-point agreement had been reached in Saudi Arabia between Siniora, Hariri and Berri to facilitate the return of the Shiite ministers.
The points include an acknowledgement that Hizbullah is a legitimate resistance group and not a militia, an agreement to downplay UN Resolution 1559, adopting consensus in Cabinet rather than a majority vote, referring to Shiite representatives in Cabinet before the appointment of any Shiite in any top public posts, postponing the discussion over Palestinian weapons currently, and considering the call for an international tribunal effective.
However, a spokesman in Siniora's office told The Daily Star that no agreement had been reached.
"No decision will be taken before the premier returns from Saudi Arabia. All we can say at this stage is that there is positive development on the level of dialogue, but this dialogue will keep rolling until Siniora and Berri are back," the spokesman said.

Jumblat Considers Ministerial Statement a Red Line
An-Nahar, naharnet.com
09 Jan 2006

Druze leader Walid Jumblat stepped up pressure on the Shiite ministers boycotting Cabinet sessions, saying they should only rejoin the government when they agree to an international tribunal.
"We will not accept their return (to Cabinet) unless if they approve the creation of an international tribunal (into ex-premier Rafik Hariri's assassination) and the expansion of international investigations" to include the series of bombings targeting politicians and journalists, he said.

Jumblat also said that the Shiite ministers had no right to make changes to the ministerial statement.

The ministerial statement says the government protects the resistance and respects international resolutions.

"We will not accept words to be added to this statement," said Jumblat, who was speaking to visitors in his hometown of Mukhtara.

The five Shiite ministers suspended their participation in the cabinet, demanding that major decisions be reached through a consensus, not majority voting.

Jumblat criticized Hizbullah for their recent use of the term "Shebaa area" when referring to the Shebaa Farms, cautioning against misleading the public.

The term, "Shebaa area" could include villages of the Syrian Golan Heights like Majdal Shams, said Jumblat. And therefore, it could allow Hizbullah to carry out attacks against Israeli outposts in Syrian occupied territories.

The Progressive Socialist Party leader thanked Iran for backing Hizbullah in its military campaign that ousted Israeli occupation forces out of Lebanon in May 2000.

But he said that Hizbullah should not become a barricade in defense of Iran's nuclear facilities.

He also implied a possible link between the series of bombings hitting the country and Hizbullah, saying that "security islands contain loads of booby-trapped cars."

Jumblat has been fiercely criticizing Hizbullah since late last year, but Hizbullah has refrained so far from replying.
Beirut, Updated 09 Jan 06, 10:09

2006: More Troubles for Syria

2006-01-01T08:05:00.000-08:00

Syrian Spook Hussam Framed in Pictures at Hawi's Murder Scene
Naharnet.com

Hussam Hussam (image left), a self-confessed Syrian intelligence operative with many believable and unbelievable tales to tell, was at the site of the car bombing that killed prominent politician George Hawi, cuddling up to his family and monitoring developments around him.
The new clue to one of the assassinations and attempts that plagued Lebanon in 2005 was unveiled by a photographer, who was putting his picture archive in order on his laptop when he came across a familiar face: Hussam Taher Hussam, according to An Nahar and other newspapers.

Zooming in, zooming out; then comparing what's on the screen with pictures of the Syrian spook at a recent news conference, Wael Ladki realized he had hit some important evidence.

After consulting colleagues and publishers he decided to hand over his findings to the judicial authorities, and also post them on the Elaph website, hoping to help the investigation into the political assassinations that have plagued Lebanon for more than a year.

In the pictures, Hussam Hussam, who says he is of Kurdish extraction, appears wearing a red shirt and shaded sunglasses. There is little doubt about the identity of the man when compared to other pictures of him at a news conference last month in Damascus, where he claimed he had been coerced into fingering Syria in the murder of ex-Prime Minister Rafik.

The still photographs of Hussam and the bombshell revelations of former Syrian Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam regarding Hariri's assassination have fueled hopes that 2006 would reveal the identity of the perpetrators of the covert war on Lebanon that has dragged since Oct. 1, 2004.
Beirut, Updated 01 Jan 06, 09:19

Assad's Cousin Arrested in Beirut
Naharnet.com

Syrian President Bashar Assad's paternal cousin, Monzer (image top right), has been arrested by Lebanon's General Security Department at Rafik Hariri International Airport , al-Balad daily reported Friday.
Sources told the newspaper that Monzer's arrest Thursday night came in accordance with a warrant issued against him by the Lebanese judiciary.

The reasons of his arrest were not disclosed.

Monzer is the son of Jamil Assad, the late President Hafez Assad's younger brother who died last year.

According to the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, Jamil Assad had no significant military background.

During the early 1980's, he accumulated considerable wealth and headed an Alawite religious association in Latakia called Al-Murtada. According to one account, the Murtada Association had a militia wing armed by another brother of the late president, Rifaat.

The militia sought to convert Syrian Bedouins in the Jazira, Homs and Hama regions to the ruling Alawite religion, which conflicted greatly with the supposedly secular ideology of the Baath party.

Assad forced the group to disband in 1983 and many of Jamil's assets were confiscated in 1984 because of his close association with Rifaat.

But unlike Rifaat, he had been permitted to return occasionally to Syria and was present at the late president's funeral. He openly supported Bashar as the successor to his father.

Beirut, Updated 01 Jan 06, 09:17

Syria's Former VP Breaks With Assad

2005-12-31T08:08:00.000-08:00

Syria's former vice-president Adbdel Khaddam, who served in that capacity until his retirement in June, 2005, gave an interview to Al-Arabiya TV in which he called Syrian President Bashar Assad an 'absolute authoritarian' and accuses the Syrian regime of being complicit in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The two articles below are from Naharnet, the internet magazine published by the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar (An-Nahar's publisher Gebran Tueni was assassinated earlier this month).

Khaddam's Bombshell: Assad Wanted to 'Crush' Hariri

Abdel-Halim Khaddam, Syria's former vice-president and long-time point man in Lebanon, has defected big time, accusing President Bashar Assad of personally threatening "in the harshest possible terms to crush" Rafik Hariri before the latter's assassination Feb. 14.
In a rare interview Friday, Khaddam strongly hinted at collusion between Assad's regime in Damascus and President Emile Lahoud in the bombing that killed Hariri and 22 other people.

He said Syria turned a blind eye, but Lahoud's "inner circle" was the possible perpetrator of the crime against the architect of Lebanon's recovery from civil war.

The revelations galvanized the Lebanese public opinion and media. One senior official in Beirut exclaimed: "That was a resonating earthquake," according to An Nahar.
"Khaddam unveils the secrets behind the calamity of Hariri's assassination: Will he become the investigation's prime witness?" shouted An Nahar's banner headline Saturday.

In the clearly pre-recorded interview on the Al Arabiya television channel, the half-century veteran of Damascus' ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party showered Assad with scathing criticism. He called him a "one-man show" and an "absolute authoritarian," but insisted that their meetings, since the first in 1998, always were "courteous."

He accused the Syrian regime of committing "recurring blunders" after Assad succeeded his father, the late Hafez Assad, in 2000. Performance in Lebanon was one such a mistake.

Assad was not the only Syrian official to humiliate Hariri, according to Khaddam.

Syria's military intelligence chief in Lebanon, the once dreaded Maj. Gen. Rustom Ghazaleh, enjoyed his share in heaping threats and insults on the slain ex-prime minister. On one occasion, Ghazaleh, a gun in his hand, threatened Hariri with his life, said Khaddam.

Lahoud and his top aide, the now imprisoned former director-general of the Surete Generale Maj. Gen. Jamil Sayyed, poisoned Assad's thinking of Hariri with a relentless barrage of disinformation.

In an uncustomary insight into the machinations and intrigues of the Damascus regime, Khaddam confessed that he quit as vice president in June, because he felt Assad was being manipulated by his inner circle, which includes the president's younger brother, Maher, brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat, and Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa.

He disclosed that he advised Hariri in August 2004, days before the extension of Lahoud's presidential term, that the mood in Damascus was unfavorable. Khaddam suggested to Hariri that he quit as premier and leave Lebanon.

"But it never occurred to me that Syria would assassinate Premier Hariri," he remarked – the closest he came to fingering Damascus.

"Yes, many threats were directed face-to-face to the late Premier Hariri," said Khaddam. During one encounter, he recalled, Assad told Hariri "I will crush you, and anyone who defies our wishes."

The late Gen. Maj. Ghazi Kenaan, then Syrian interior minister, and Ghazaleh, who had succeeded Kenaan as Syria's military intelligence in Lebanon, attended the meeting, and Khaddam said he heard the same version of the threat from "three sources," including Assad himself.

After that particular confrontation, Hariri developed hypertension and began to bleed from the nose. Kenaan took him to his office to calm him down.

Asked if he thought a Syrian security unit could have been behind the assassination without Assad's knowledge, Khaddam said this was not possible in Syria, because the Syrian president is an "absolute authoritarian."

Khaddam dismissed as "imbeciles" the authors of the tale that a Muslim extremist named Ahmad Abu Adas had killed Hariri in a suicide bombing.

He questioned how Abu Adas, who never was heard of on any political or security scene, could possess 1,000 kilograms of sophisticated explosives and jamming equipment and not be detected by Syrian and Lebanese intelligence operatives, who effectively ruled the country

Beirut, Updated 31 Dec 05, 09:38

Khaddam: Assad Felt Washington Could Not Care Less About Lebanon

Syrian President Bashar Assad was duped by his advisors into believing the United States was indifferent about his grip on Lebanon and would "come crawling on its knees" to win Damascus' support for its invasion of Iraq.

According to Syrian ex-Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam, Lebanon was one of the "recurrent blunders" committed by the Assad regime.

Khaddam, who had shunned the media for most of his 30-odd years in politics, spoke in a marathon interview Friday on Al Arabiya that unveiled a decision to defect after repeated attempts to counsel Assad had failed.

He said he had cautioned Assad against supporting a renewal of President Lahoud's mandate to avert the wrath of Washington and the international community. But the young leader would not heed the warning.

U.S. Congressman Darrel Issa and Martin Indyk, Washington's ex-ambassador to Israel, had visited Damascus separately to discuss with Assad regional issues. But he had read their messages incorrectly.

On Sept. 6, 2004, Khaddam met with Assad, days after Syria forced a three-year extension of President Lahoud's mandate, defying U.N. Security Council endorsed Resolution 1559, which had warned Damascus to back off.

Assad, Khaddam disclosed, "still maintained that the Americans did not care about Lebanon, and that all they cared about is Iraq."

Khaddam insinuated that the "incorrect political reading" was partly the fault of Farouk al-Sharaa, the fiery Syrian foreign minister who has emerged in recent months as Assad's right arm

Beirut, Updated 31 Dec 05, 00:23

The Arab Mind

2005-12-30T03:01:00.000-08:00

An Arab intellectual's trenchant observations of the failings in his culture . Most people who have lived in the Middle East will have a hard time disagreeing with him.

The Arab Mind
By Tarek Heggy, Heggy.org

I have written many books and articles over the last ten years about the defects in the Arab mind-set, all of which are cultural defects stemming from three main sources. The first is the repressive climate that prevails throughout Arab societies, the second a backward educational system that lags far behind modern educational systems and the third a mass-media apparatus operated by those responsible for the climate of political repression to serve their interests. The following are the most obvious defects from which the contemporary Arab mind-set suffers:
1. A lack of intellectual hospitality;
2. It is steeped in a culture that encourages conformity and discourages diversity;
3. Limited tolerance for the Other;
4. Limited tolerance for criticism and the virtual absence of self-criticism;
5. The adoption of stands not on the basis of their coherence, validity or intrinsic value but on the basis of tribal or religious affiliations;
6. Deep feelings of inequality with others in terms of results and achievements makes for a sense of inadequacy that is sublimated into an exaggerated and unfounded pride;
7. A tendency to indulge in excessive self-praise and to glorify past achievements as a way of escaping our dismal reality;
8. The prevalence of what I call the 'big-talk culture', in which overblown rhetoric is used to compensate for the appalling lack of concrete achievements;
9. A lack of objectivity and the growth of individualism;
10. An unhealthy nostalgia for and escape into the past;
11. An aversion to the notion of compromise, which is deemed to be a form of capitulation and defeat;
12. Lack of respect for women;
13. A tendency to unquestioningly accept stereotypes at face value;
14. Setting great store by the conspiracy theory and believing that the Arabs are always the victims of heinous plots hatched against them by their enemies;
15. An ill-defined sense of national identity: is it Arab, Muslim, Asian, African or Mediterranean?
16. The spread of the personality cult phenomenon in Arab societies, where the relationship with the ruler is based not on mutual respect and accountability but on the excessive adulation, not to say deification, of the ruler;
17. The prevalence of an insular culture that knows next to nothing about the outside world and the real balance of power by which it is governed, let alone the science or culture of others;
18. A lack of appreciation for the value of the bond that links the human species together, which is their common humanity. For most people in the region, the only bonds that count are either tribal, sectarian or nationalistic, although humanity is the most exalted common denominator of all;
19. The spread of a mentality of fanaticism due to a number of factors, the most important being the tribalism that dominates the Arab mind-set to varying degrees;
20. Finally, the Arab mind-set is not overly concerned with the notion of freedom for the simple reason that the Arabs have enjoyed only limited doses of political rights and civil liberties.
The twenty defects listed above are by no means exhaustive; I have no doubt that any Middle East expert can come up with many more. However, all these defects are acquired, which means they are amenable to reform. Moreover, they can all be found, albeit to different degrees, in other societies. As I mentioned, they stem from the prevailing climate of political despotism and outdated educational and information systems designed and operated to serve the interests of a power structure intent on maintaining its iron grip. These defects will continue to grow unless radical changes are introduced to all three areas. The political system must be overhauled with a view to providing a wider margin of freedom and allowing people a greater say in determining the shape of their present and future. The educational systems in force must be reorganized from the ground up, their philosophy, curricula and methods brought into line with the requirements of the age. Last but not least, the media must be removed from under the thumb of government and allowed to function in complete political and economic freedom as a credible forum for the dissemination of culture, ideas and information.

Source:Ocnus.net 2004

Muslim Men and Sexual Violence

2005-12-28T11:39:00.000-08:00

Many in the West who are part of the politically correct morally relativistic see-no-evil crowd will refuse to share with you the facts about the real state of affairs among Muslim immigrant populations in the West and their steadfast refusal to assimilate themselves into the cultures of their host nations. Read on........

Western Muslims' Racist Rape Spree
By Sharon Lapkin, Front Page 27/12/05
Dec 28, 2005, 08:07

In Australia, Norway, Sweden and other Western nations, there is a distinct race-based crime in motion being ignored by the diversity police: Islamic men are raping Western women for ethnic reasons. We know this because the rapists have openly declared their sectarian motivations.

When a number of teenage Australian girls were subjected to hours of sexual degradation during a spate of gang rapes in Sydney that occurred between 1998 and 2002, the perpetrators of these assaults framed their rationale in ethnic terms. The young victims were informed that they were “sluts” and “Aussie pigs” while they were being hunted down and abused.

In Australia's New South Wales Supreme Court in December 2005, a visiting Pakistani rapist testified that his victims had no right to say no, because they were not wearing a headscarf.

And earlier this year Australians were outraged when Lebanese Sheik Faiz Mohammed gave a lecture in Sydney where he informed his audience that rape victims had no one to blame but themselves. Women, he said, who wore skimpy clothing, invited men to rape them.

A few months earlier, in Copenhagen, Islamic mufti and scholar, Shahid Mehdi created uproar when – like his peer in Australia – he stated that women who did not wear a headscarf were asking to be raped.

And with haunting synchronicity in 2004, the London Telegraph reported that visiting Egyptian scholar Sheik Yusaf al-Qaradawi claimed female rape victims should be punished if they were dressed immodestly when they were raped. He added, “For her to be absolved from guilt, a raped woman must have shown good conduct.”

In Norway and Sweden, journalist Fjordman warns of a rape epidemic. Police Inspector Gunnar Larsen stated that the steady increase of rape-cases and the link to ethnicity are clear, unmistakable trends. Two out of three persecutions for rape in Oslo are immigrants with a non-Western background and 80 percent of the victims are Norwegian women.

In Sweden, according to translator for Jihad Watch, Ali Dashti, “Gang rapes, usually involving Muslim immigrant males and native Swedish girls, have become commonplace.” A few weeks ago she said, “Five Kurds brutally raped a 13-year-old Swedish girl.”

In France, Samira Bellil broke her silence – after enduring years of repeated gang rapes in one of the Muslim populated public housing projects – and wrote a book, In the hell of the tournantes, that shocked France. Describing how gang rape is rampant in the banlieues, she explained to Time that, “any neighborhood girl who smokes, uses makeup or wears attractive clothes is a whore.”

Unfortunately, Western women are not the only victims in this epidemic. In Indonesia, in 1998, human rights groups documented the testimony of over 100 Chinese women who were gang raped during the riots that preceded the fall of President Suharto. Many of them were told: “You must be raped, because you are Chinese and non-Muslim.”

Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported that in April 2005, a 9-year-old Pakistani girl was raped, beaten with a cricket bat, hanged upside down from the ceiling, had spoonfuls of chillies poured into her mouth, and repeatedly bashed while handcuffed. Her Muslim neighbours told her they were taking revenge for the American bombing of Iraqi children and informed her they were doing it because she was an “infidel and a Christian.”

In Sudan – where Arab Muslims slaughter black Muslim and Christian Sudanese in an ongoing genocide – former Sudanese slave and now a human rights’ activist Simon Deng says he witnessed girls and women being raped and that the Arab regime of Khartoum sends its soldiers to the field to rape and murder. In other reports, women who are captured by government forces are asked; “Are you Christian or Muslim?” and those who answer Christian, are gang raped before having their breasts cut off.

This phenomenon of Islamic sexual violence against women should be treated as the urgent, violent, repressive epidemic it is. Instead, journalists, academics, and politicians ignore it, rationalize it, or ostracize those who dare discuss it.

In Australia, when journalist Paul Sheehan reported honestly on the Sydney gang rapes, he was called a racist and accused of stirring up anti-Muslim hatred. And when he reported in his Sydney Morning Herald column that there was a high incidence of crime amongst Sydney’s Lebanese community, fellow journalist, David Marr sent him an e-mail stating, “That is a disgraceful column that reflects poorly on us all at the Herald.”

Keysar Trad, vice-president of the Australian Lebanese Muslim Association said the gang rapes were a “heinous” crime but complained it was “rather unfair” that the ethnicity of the rapists had been reported.

Journalist Miranda Devine reported during the same rape trials that all reference to ethnicity had been deleted from the victim impact statement because the prosecutors wanted to negotiate a plea bargain.

So when Judge Megan Latham declared, “There is no evidence before me of any racial element in the commission of these offences,” everyone believed her. And the court, the politicians and most of the press may as well have raped the girls again.

Retired Australian detective Tim Priest warned in 2004 that the Lebanese gangs, which emerged in Sydney in the 1990s – when the police were asleep – had morphed out of control. “The Lebanese groups,” he said, “ were ruthless, extremely violent, and they intimidated not only innocent witnesses, but even the police that attempted to arrest them.”

Priest describes how in 2001, in a Muslim dominated area of Sydney two policemen stopped a car containing three well-known Middle Eastern men to search for stolen property. As the police carried out their search they were physically threatened and the three men claimed they were going to track them down, kill them and then rape their girlfriends.

According to Priest, it didn’t end there. As the Sydney police called for backup the three men used their mobile phones to call their associates, and within minutes, 20 Middle Eastern men arrived on the scene. They punched and pushed the police and damaged state vehicles. The police retreated and the gang followed them to the police station where they intimidated staff, damaged property and held the police station hostage.

Eventually the gang left, the police licked their wounds, and not one of them took action against the Middle Eastern men. Priest claims, “In the minds of the local population, the police are cowards and the message was, 'Lebanese [Muslim gangs] rule the streets.'”

In France, in the banlieues, where gang rape is now known simply as tournantes or ‘pass-around,’ victims know the police will not protect them. If they complain, Samir Bellil said, they know that they and their families will be threatened.

However, Muslim women in the French ghettos are finally fighting back against gang rape and police non-action. They have begun a movement called, “We’re neither whores nor doormats.” They are struggling against the intrinsic violence that plagues their neighbourhoods and the culture that condones it.

In most French prosecutions, the Muslim rapists state that they do not believe they have committed a crime. And in a frightening parallel with the gang rapists in Australia, they claim the victim herself is to blame and accuse her of being a “slut” or a “whore.”

According to The Guardian, during the recent French riots, a Saudi Prince with shares in News Corporation boasted to a conference in Dubai that he had phoned Rupert Murdoch and complained about Fox News describing the disturbances as “Muslim riots.” Within half an hour he said, it was changed to “civil riots.”

Swedish translator, Ali Dashti, stated that in Sweden when three men raped a 22-year-old woman recently, they said one word to her. “Whore.” Such stories, according to Dashti, are in the Swedish newspapers every week. And, the politically correct “take great care not to mention the ethnic background of the perpetrators.”

Sweden’s English newspaper The Local reported in July that Malmo police commander Bengt Lindström had been charged with inciting racial hatred. He sent e-mails from his home computer to two city officials. To the head of healthcare, he wrote: “You...treat old Swedes who have worked hard building up the fatherland like parasites and would rather give my taxes to criminals called Mohammed from Rosengärd.”

In Malmo, the third largest city in Sweden, the police have admitted, Dashti says, that they no longer control the city. “It is effectively ruled by violent gangs of Muslim immigrants.” Ambulance personnel are regularly attacked and spat upon and are now refusing to help until a police escort arrives. The police are too afraid to enter parts of the city without backup.

In early 2005, Norwegian newspapers reported that Oslo had recorded the highest ever number of rape cases in the previous twelve months. However, Fjordman explained, the official statistics contained no data regarding “how immigrants were grossly over represented in rape cases”, and the media remain so strangely silent.

Oslo Professor of Anthropology, Unni Wikan, said Norwegian women must take responsibility for the fact that Muslim men find their manner of dress provocative. And since these men believe women are responsible for rape, she stated, the women must adapt to the multicultural society around them.

The BBC pulled a documentary scheduled for screening in 2004, after police in Britain warned it could increase racial tension. “In these exceptional circumstances... Channel 4 as a responsible broadcaster has agreed to the police’s request...” The documentary was to show how Pakistani and other Muslim men sexually abused young, white English girls as young as 11.

The number of rapes committed by Muslim men against women in the last decade is so incredibly high that it cannot be viewed as anything other than culturally implicit behaviour. It is overtly reinforced and sanctioned by Islamic religious leaders who blame the victims and excuse the rapists.

In three decades of immigration into Western countries, Islam has caused social upheaval and havoc in every one of its host countries. No other immigration program has encountered the problems of non-assimilation and religious ambiguity.

Everywhere in the world, Muslims are in conflict with their neighbours. And as Mark Steyn recently said, every conflict appears to have originated by someone with the name of Mohammed.

In July 2005, Melbourne Sheik Mohammad Omran told Sixty Minutes that “...we believe we have more rights than you because we choose Australia to be our home and you didn’t. “

In the same interview visiting Sheik Khalid Yasin warned “There’s no such thing as a Muslim having a non-Muslim friend, so a non-Muslim could be your associate but they can't be a friend. They're not your friend because they don't understand your religious principles and they cannot because they don't understand your faith.”

Despite being told over and over by Islamic scholars, and witnessing massive influxes of Islamic crime, Western countries continue to believe in the reality of assimilation and moral relativism.

In Australia, Lebanese Christians have assimilated and become a respected part of our community. The Premier of Victoria is a Lebanese Christian as is the Governor Of New South Wales. However, Lebanese Muslims have encountered serious problems because of their refusal to accept our right to live our way of life. Nothing so clearly demonstrates that it is not an issue of race — but of culture.

Source:Ocnus.net 2005

Predictions, Predictions, Predictions.

2005-12-20T03:56:00.000-08:00

The Lebanese psychic who gained notoriety for predicting the death of the late Princess Diana was asked on Lebanon's LBC TV to make predictions for 2005 on New Year's day of 2005. He made sixteen predictions, fourteen of which came true.

1. Assassination of Rakik Hariri
2. Return of Michel Aoun from exile
3. Assassination of Gebran Tueni
4. Assassination attempt against a government minister ( Defense Minister Michel Murr)
5. Assassination attempt against LBC anchorwoman May Chidiac
6. Bombing of the Voice of Charity radio station
7. Bombing of the St. church in Jounieh

New ‘Death List’ Published.

2005-12-16T03:24:00.000-08:00

Newspaper publisher Gebran Tueni was assassinated on the same narrow mountain road that the Mehlis commission investigating the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri uses to its mountain redoubt in Monteverde. By killing Tueni on that road, were they sending a message to the investigators that they were not invincible?

Perhaps they didn’t need to. Chief investigator Detlev Mehlis has resigned from the commission and is headed back to his old job as a prosecutor in Berlin. The Syrians, who have perfected obfuscation and intransigence to a fine art, are triumphant. A few weeks ago, all the talk was how much longer the Assad regime would survive. But then Bashar Al-Assad decided to play hardball and the U.N. is folding in response. Sure, the investigation is now slated to take, according to Mehlis, up to two years.

Syria is on a roll and her allies in Lebanon are cheering with her. Yesterday, while a largely Christian crowd of mourners laid Gebran Tueni to rest, Shiites from the Beirut suburb of Dahiye were celebrating by firing guns in the air and feasting. My roommate, who is a Druze and a medical resident at the American University Hospital, told me that all the Shiite doctors at the hospital refused an invitation to attend the funeral.

Al-Balad newspaper reports today that a new ‘death list’ is out ( the late Tueni was number one on the old death list and the departing Mehlis was made aware of this a few months ago). This link (http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/0/76CCEE07098A3616C225706C0058543E?OpenDocument) leads you to an article where the late Tueni talks about the death list. Interestingly, the only people missing from the new list are the late Tueni and Rafik Hariri’s son and political heir Saad.

The list is composed of six anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians:

1. Druze leader Walid Jumblatt- head of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP). His father Kamal founded the PSP. Kamal Jumblatt was assassinated in 1977.
2. Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh – Druze, PSP representative in the Saniora government. He was the first politician to be targeted for assassination on October 01, 2004.
3. MP Wael Abu Faour- Druze, also from the PSP. Note that despite the name, the PSP is almost exclusively Druze.
4. MP Samir Franjieh- Maronite Christian, he defeated his relative (and enemy) Sleiman Franjieh in the last elections. Sleiman was Interior Minister when Hariri was assassinated.
5. MP Elias Atallah – Maronite Christian, head of the Democratic Left Movement. Fellow DLM party members Samir Qasir and George Hawi were assassinated in June, 2005.
6; MP Farid Makari- Greek Orthodox, formerly a vice president of Saudi Oger (Hariri’s construction company in Saudi Arabia) and presently a vice speaker of parliament.

As of today, all Shiites in the government are continuing their boycott of the government. The Shiites decided to suspend their functions in the government on Monday after the Lebanese government responded to the Tueni assassination by asking for an international inquiry into the wave of killings that have plagued Lebanon since the assassinatin of Rafik Hariri. Hizb'Allah Deputy Secretary General Naim Qassem denounced the request as 'heading towards a new international mandate' for Lebanon.

Tueni Buried Amidst General Strike in Lebanon.

2005-12-14T09:01:00.000-08:00

Lebanon was on the second day of a general strike today called to protest the assassination of anti-Syrian newspaper publisher and legislator Gebran Tueni. Tueni’s funeral was held today and most Lebanese schools and universities were closed and many businesses shuttered.

The photo on the left is Tueni’s coffin as it makes its way from St. George’s Greek Orthodox Church through the crowd gathered outside to hear eulogies in Tueni’s honor. The photo on the right is CNN correspondent Ben Wedeman reporting as I walked past him while following Tueni’s coffin.

Viewers outside Lebanon, after watching the news might get the erroneous impression that all Lebanese are mourning Tueni. This is not the case. Tueni had enemies in Syria and he had many more enemies in Lebanon. His enemies in Lebanon were pro-Syrian elements, some from his own Christian community and many more from Lebanon’s largest religious group- the Shiites.

Speaking of the Shiites; on the day of Mr. Tueni’s assassination, Prime Minister Fouad Saniora called an emergency session of government to make an urgent plea to the ‘international community’ i.e. the United Nations Security Council, to launch a probe into the wave of killings that have plagued Lebanon since October, 2004. The Shiite members of the government, two of whom are from Hizb’Allah (considered a terrorist group by many western governments but political heavyweights in Lebanon) informed Saniora they were opposed to the ‘internationalization of Lebanon’s file’ and were protesting this move by suspending their functions in the government until further notice. In other words, they were pulling a kind of ‘resignation lite’ on the already embattled Saniora.

Saniora can ill-afford to alienate the Shiites. At approximately 40% of the population, the Shiites are the largest ethnic group in Lebanon. That figure, however, is an official ‘guess’ as Lebanon has not had a census since 1932, when Lebanon was under French rule. No one in Lebanon, and certainly not the Christians, wants to open a Pandora’s Box by approving a new census and seeing their worst fears confirmed. More significantly, the entire Shiite leadership is four square behind the Syrian regime (they were opposed to the Syrian departure and they are opposed to the Mehlis investigation into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Personal anecdote:
I was in Arabic class Monday morning when news of Tueni’s assassination came in. One of the teachers, a Shiite woman, stormed in to inform my teacher, also a Shiite, that Tueni had been killed. My teacher’s reaction, completely spontaneous and reflexive was to exclaim with ‘aazeem!’ Translated into English, that word means ‘great!’ which is not the sort of reaction one would expect to hear upon hearing of someone’s demise, unless, of course, you really hated that person. I asked her later, after she had time to compose herself and was back to her typical (i.e. guarded) Lebanese self what she thought of Tueni’s killing.

‘Oh, he is Lebanese’ she explained in Arabic, although she did not sound at all convincing.
‘It is always bad when someone Lebanese is killed’, she continued, as she assiduously tried to avert her eyes away from mine.
Hmmm, yeah right, sister. Like I bought her story, NOT!

Full Circle
The wave of terror gripping Lebanon began on October 01, 2004 when Marwan Hamadeh, who is Minister of Telecommunication in the present government, miraculously escaped death in a car bombing blamed on the Syrians. Hamadeh, ironically, is the maternal uncle of the murdered Tueni and he was the first government official at the scene of Tueni’s assassination where he angrily denounced the Syrian regime for the murder.

Yet Another Assassination!

2005-12-12T09:14:00.000-08:00

The unrelenting campaign of terror against anti-Syrian Lebanese figures claimed its latest victim today, with the assassination of Gibran Tueni. Tueni was a member of Lebanon’s parliament and the publisher of Lebanon’s most influential newspaper, An-Nahar (www.naharnet.com).

The assassination occurred just one day after Tueni returned from self-imposed exile in France. Tueni was rumored to be a part of a so-called ‘death list’ targeting anti-Syrian figures. Other names prominently featured on that list are the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and Saad Hariri, the son and political heir of the assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Like Tueni, the younger Hariri has also opted to live outside Lebanon.

Jumblatt commemorated the assassination of his father yesterday (assassinated during Lebanon’s civil war, reportedly on the orders of the late Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad) and the day of the commemoration coincided with the discovery of four rocket propelled grenades on the mountain road near the Jumblatt palace in Moukhtara.

The assassination of Tueni occurred on exactly the same day that the much awaited follow-up report on the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is due to be released and the brazen nature of the crime- Tueni is the second most prominent victim of political violence after Hariri- indicates that the killers enjoy considerable resources and can operate with impunity. In other words, either the killers are state sponsored, or they can operate in Lebanon with the acquiescence of organs of the state.

The assassination occurred at approximately 9 am on a mountain road in Mkalle, a largely Christian suburb of Beirut. The location of the killing is important, because by selecting a relatively isolated and narrow mountain road as a kill site, the killers had effectively created a choke point with no escape route. Had the initial car bombing failed, the fact that Tueni’s motorcade was trapped on this narrow mountain road would have given the killers ample opportunity to repeat the operation. The timing of the killings also indicates that the killers were privy to information about Tueni’s return to Lebanon the day before and the surveillance of the Tueni house (near where the explosion took place) was extensive and continuous.

Postscript:
An-Nahar is arguably the most influential Arabic language daily in the Levant (i.e. Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine) and the assassination of Tueni has made headlines throughout the Middle East except ……… Syria.

Syria’s official news wire SANA (Syrian Arab News Agency) failed to even mention the news of Mr. Tueni’s death. The following link is the SANA page on the day of the assassination. http://www.sana.org/indexf0f033f0612730afc6219d71dd12efc3.html

Assad Slanders Lebanese PM

2005-11-10T12:44:00.000-08:00

Syria's President Bashar Al-Assad was in a combative mood when he gave a nationally televised speech at Damascus University earlier today. President Assad had a few choice words for the United States, United Nations investigator Detlev Mehlis and Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Saniora. I have copied and pasted the article below from the Lebanese daily An-Nahar.

An-Nahar
Assad Says Mehlis is 'Intransigently Biased,' Calls Saniora 'Helpless Slave'
President Assad took a defiant stance toward the United Nations in connection with the Hariri assassination probe on Thursday, labeling chief investigator Detlev Mehlis as "intransigently biased" against Syria and calling Premier Saniora a "helpless slave of an obedient slave master."
Assad's own intransigence came in an address to the nation he made from a podium of the Damascus University auditorium in which he vowed anew that his regime was innocent of the Feb. 14 assassination of Lebanon's 5-time Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

But the slanderous language he used against Saniora was seen as a rejection of U.N. chief Kofi Annan's advice to cooperate unconditionally with the Mehlis commission and to keep Syria's hands off Lebanon in order to avert U.S. military action.
"We will play their game" and cooperate -- for now -- but warned such cooperation could stop if Syria is going to be harmed.
Assad also disclosed that the U.N. investigator in the case has rejected the conditions that Syria set for cooperating with the investigation. That could set up a conflict with the United Nations and U.S., which have strongly pressured Syria to cooperate fully.
Assad said the latest events confirm that "no matter what we did and how much we cooperate, the result will be that Syria did not cooperate."
"Syria is innocent in the absolute sense," Assad said in his 90-minute speech about Syria's stance toward Hariri's murder. "Syria is not involved at the government level or at the individual level. The problem is merely a political one in the context of events."
Assad's defiance confirms media reports that he is on a collision course with Mehlis and perhaps the U.N. Security Council.

Clearly opting for confrontation with the international community, Assad Said "President Bashar will not be the president who will bow to anyone in this world. We bow only to almighty God," drawing applause from the auditorium and chant of "With our soul, blood, we redeem you oh, Bashar!" from the crowd outside.

The Mehlis Report

2005-10-21T06:39:00.000-07:00

Lebanon is in an undeclared state of emergency following the release of the Mehlis commission's report on the assassination of former premier Rafik Hariri. The image above is of an M113 Armored Personnel Carrier on Beirut's Hamra street. The Syrian press, at least so far, is reacting with insouciance and they have not even bothered to mention the report- yet. Syria’s official news agency SANA is leading with a report about ‘President Assad in Talks with Two Lebanese Party Leaders’ i.e. Pro-Syrian members of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party and the Lebanese National Conference.

The suspects.
Contrary to reports in the Lebanese media, the Mehlis report did include names of suspects in the Hariri assassination. However, the names of the suspects were redacted in the version of the report released to the public.

The main Syrian suspects are:
Maher Assad- younger brother of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Assef Shawkat- married to Bushra Assad, President Assad’s sister. In October 1999, Shawkat was shot in the stomach by Maher Assad after a family squabble.
Hassan Khalil- former head of Syrian intelligence.
Bahjat Suleyman, a personal friend of the Syrian president.

The main Lebanese suspects are:
Jamil al-Sayyed- former head of the Surete Generale.
Mustapha Hamdan- head of the Presidential Guard’s Brigade.
Raymond Azar- former head of Army intelligence.
Nasser Qandil- pro-syrian Lebanese legislator.

Peripheral suspects:
President Emile Lahoud of Lebanon- received a call on his mobile phone just minutes before the assassination (his office today denied the allegation) from Mahmoud Abdel-Al, the brother of Sheikh Ahmed Abdel-Al, of Al Ahbash group(a pro-Syrian Lebanese group). Abdel-Al also made another call to the mobile phone of Brigadier General Raymond Azar, then head of Lebanon's military intelligence. The report called Sheikh Abdel-Al "a key figure in an ongoing investigation."

President Lahoud released a statement today stating that he would remain in his post "at this delicate stage in Lebanon's history."

Nabih Berri- Speaker of Lebanon's Parliament. His name was also redacted from the report. He is being mentioned as a possible contact of Rustom Ghazaleh, the then Syrian chief of intelligence in Lebanon and listed above as a suspect.

Ahmed Jibril- head of the Syrian based Palestinian group PFLP-GC.

Of interest:
Syria’s Foreign Minister Faroukh al-Sharaa was accused in the report of "lying" in a letter he sent to the Mehlis commission.

Verbatim from the report:
The assassination "could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security officials and could not have been further organized without the collusion of their counterparts in the Lebanese security services,"

Syria has -- "has impeded the investigation and made it difficult to follow leads established by the evidence collected from a variety of sources."

"If the investigation is to be completed, it is essential that the government of Syria fully cooperate with the investigating authorities, by allowing interviews to be held outside Syria and for interviewees not to be accompanied by Syrian officials,"

Pro-Syrian legislator Nasser Kandil " stated that a decision should be taken to eliminate Mr. Hariri. Nasser Kandil was tasked to plan and implement a campaign aiming at ruining Mr. Hariri's reputation on religious and media level. The Baath Party in Lebanon decided that they should get rid of Mr. Hariri by any possible means and isolate him since President Lahoud's attempt to remove him from the political scene failed."

Kanaan: Suicide or Assassination?

2005-10-15T02:37:00.000-07:00

A macabre joke around Beirut following the death of Syria’s Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan is that Kanaan died of multiple gunshot wounds to the back and that the Syrian government declared the death a suicide. Such is the predicament facing the Syrian regime as it awaits the outcome into the investigation of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri: Even if Syria is innocent of all charges, no one would believe it.

Syria is in the unenviable position of being guilty till proven guilty. As far as the Lebanese are concerned, the report by the U.N. commission investigating Hariri’s assassination will merely be a formality.

A troubling sign of fissures in the Assad regime have been several slips of the tongue in official comments by Syrian officials about the cause of death of General Kanaan. Syria’s Foreign Minister Farouk Al-Sharaa, while eulogizing the deceased Kanaan, used the word ‘assassination’ not once, but twice. Al-Sharaa corrected himself after each, presumably inadvertent, slip.

Another Freudian slip of the same order came benefit of chief public attorney Muhammad Al-Louji , the official who supervised the investigation into the cause of Kanaan’s death. His official findings point to suicide, yet in televised remarks he made the same slip as Farouk, referring once again to assassination.

Al-Louji: “The act of killing, pardon, assassination, occurred at his office in the Interior Ministry at 9:15 a.m. Wednesday. He had left 45 minutes earlier, got into his car and drove home. He spent a little time there before returning to the office,”

Are the above slips merely inadvertent, or are some within the regime not willing to toe the official party line and are trying to drop hints to the world at large of their own ambivalence?

Syria’s Interior Minister Commits Suicide

2005-10-12T06:46:00.000-07:00

The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) is reporting that the Interior Minister of Syria, Brigadier General Ghazi Kanaan committed suicide in his office this morning soon after calling the Voice of Lebanon radio talk show.

BG Kanaan had been Syria’s intelligence chief in Lebanon until his promotion as Interior Minister in 2003. BG Kanaan was also one of the Syrian officials questioned by the U.N. investigators investigating the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The United States froze his assets earlier this year and the Central Bank of Lebanon waived Lebanon’s stringent bank secrecy laws so that the U.N. investigators could examine his assets.

Kanaan called the Voice of Lebanon radio talk show to protest a news report that ran last night on Beirut’s New TV. New TV had broadcast that Kanaan had admitted to the U.N. investigators that he was involved in extortion during his ‘reign of Lebanon’.

According to New TV, Kanaan is reported to have made the following statements to the U.N. investigators (statements that he denied making when he called the Voice of Lebanon):

(The 2000 Lebanese election law was) "Tailored to the measurements of Lebanese politicians loyal to Syria."

"Premier Hariri had at the time given me a $10 Million check and another $10 Million check to General Jamil Sayyed,"

"We were making money from Premier Hariri so how could we possibly kill him and close the flow of his riches."

In his call to the talk show, Kanaan stated that all of the above charges were false. Kanaan made the following statements:

"My testimony ... was to shed the light on an era during which we have served Lebanon. Sadly some media outlets have reported lies to mislead public opinion,"

"I want to make clear that our relation with our brothers in Lebanon was based on love and mutual respect ... We have served Lebanon's interest with honor and honesty."

Kanaan closed the interview by saying "I think this is the last statement I might give,"

Siege, Over and Out!

2005-10-11T05:24:00.000-07:00

In a move unseen since the beginning of Lebanon’s civil war in 1976, the new Lebanese government under Prime Minister Fouad Siniora ordered the Lebanese Army to go on the offensive against armed Palestinian factions, focusing especially on camps run by the PFLP-GC.

The Army placed several Palestinian camps under siege after alarms were raised that a recent surge in the smuggling of arms and fighters from Syria into Lebanon was a Syrian ploy to destabilize Lebanon through Palestinian groups based in Damascus.

The PFLP-GC has extensive connections with the Syrian regime; Ahmed Jibreel, its leader, is a former captain in the Syrian Army and all of Jibreel’s actions are closely coordinated with Syrian intelligence i.e. the Mukhabarat.

Israel took the smuggling reports seriously enough to place its troops along its border with Lebanon on ‘Red alert’ – the highest alert status, last Thursday. The move is usually a precursor of incursions into Lebanese territory by the Israeli Defense Forces.

By placing the Palestinian camps under siege, the Lebanese government effectively preempted any aggressive moves by Israel by denying it a cassus belli. With a rhetorical disingenuousness typical of the Middle East, the government claimed the siege was meant to ‘protect’ the Palestinian camps from any possible threat of Israeli incursion.

The PFLP-GC has no interest in dialogue with the Jewish state and its exclusive goal is the annihilation of Israel through combat and armed attrition. Israel takes any threat by the PFLP-GC with the utmost seriousness, and with good reason. Listed below are operations by the PFLP and its offshoot the PFLP-GC.

• February 21, 1970; blew up a Swissair plane. 47 passengers killed.
• May 21, 1970; attacked a bus in Israel. 12 Israeli children killed.
• September 1970; hijacked three passenger planes to Jordan and blew them up. King Hussein bans all Palestinian armed factions, including the PLO, from Jordanian soil.
• 1972; PFLP and Japanese Red Army gunmen attack Israel’s Lod international airport. Two dozen passengers killed.
• April 11, 1974; attacked Kiriyat Shmonah in the far north of Israel. 18 Israeli civilians killed.
• 1976; joint operation with the German Red Army Faction to hijack an Air France flight to Entebbe, Uganda. The Israelis respond with the legendary ‘Raid on Entebbe’. All hijackers killed.
• 1982; Kidnapped 3 Israeli soldiers. Captured soldiers were exchanged for 1150 Palestinian prisoners in 1985.
• November 25, 1987; “The night of the hang-gliders” 6 Israeli soldiers killed by a PFLP-GC fighter on a suicide mission. Incident shatters the myth of Israeli invincibility. First Palestinian Intifada starts in 1998.
• October, 2001; Assassinated Tourism Minster Rehavam Ze’evi. Ze’evi becomes the first Israeli minister to be assassinated.

On Saturday, PM Fouad Siniora held a meeting with representatives of Palestinian groups from Fatah and those from the ‘rejectionist’ (Syrian-based) front. Also Saturday, Ahmed Jibreel called PM Siniora from Damascus and vowed that the PFLP-GC would abide by all Lebanese laws, i.e. its smuggling operations would cease forthwith.

IED Jammers Failed to Save Hariri

2005-10-02T07:43:00.000-07:00

The assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was possible because the sophisticated equipment used in his motorcade to jam remote-controlled bombs was itself deliberately disabled by a massive surge in cell phone activity in the minutes prior to the explosion.

Hariri’s motorcade was using the same RF jamming equipment the U.S. Army is using in Iraq to disable improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The IED jammers are also credited with saving the life of Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf in two assassination attempts in December, 2003 when roadside bombs detonated by cell phones were successfully jammed (and subsequently blew up after the Musharraf motorcade was safely out of harms way) on the Rawalpindi to Islamabad highway.

The information is being made public by Marwan Hamadeh, the Telecommunications Minister who was himself the victim of an assassination attempt on October 1, 2004. Minister Hamadeh accused executives of the MTC cellular phone company of withholding this information from the Mehlis commission investigating the late premiers assassination.

The chairwoman of the technical division of MTC cellular phone company, a Ms. Roula Abu-Daher, was arrested for attempting to conceal information about cellular phone calls between high ranking security officials. Ms. Abu-Daher is also related to BG Salim Abu-Daher, the Director-General of the Presidential Palace.

An-Nahar newspaper is reporting that Ms. Abu-Daher is being charged with removing records of cell phone conversations pertinent to the crime from the company’s main computer and transferring these records to her personal computer. An-Nahar continues that some of the records indicate contact between the 'political and security authorities in and outside Lebanon.'

“Lies from A to Z”

2005-09-28T03:58:00.000-07:00

Syria is furious that Lebanon’s Minister of Defense Elias Murr called in on a talk show and accused its former intelligence chief in Lebanon, Rustom Ghazaleh, of trying to assassinate him. The Syrians have described the accusations, which Murr called in to Marcel Ghanem’s Kalam el Nass political talk show Monday night from his convalescence in Switzerland, as “Lies from A to Z.”.

Murr’s accusations have deeply embarrassed his father-in-law, the pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud(the image above shows Lahoud visiting Murr at the hospital after the attempt on Murr's life on July 12). In a statement from Baabda Palace on Tuesday, the President seemed more interested in standing by the Syrians then vouching for his son-in-law’s integrity. Attached below are the contents of the statement by President Lahoud that were released by Baabda Palace:

“The Lebanon-Syria relations were and will remain a model between two neighboring sister states brought together by plenty of common denominators,”

”If the severe conditions in Lebanon in the latest era had caused malfunctions in some of the aspects of the bilateral relations, the Lebanese and Syrian leaderships are emphatically determined to remedy these malfunctions,”

(Lebanon’s relations with Syria are based on) “Solid foundation of fraternity, mutual respect and a joint commitment to the principles that shield the bonds between the two sister countries from any other considerations,”

The U.N. investigation into Rafik Hariri’s assassination requested the transcript of the Murr interview from LBCI TV station and then went to the Defense Ministry complex in Yarze to interview acting Defense Minister Yacoub Saraf.

Pro-Syrian Minister Accuses Syria of Trying to Kill Him

2005-09-27T08:32:00.000-07:00

Elias Murr (image left), Lebanon’s Minister of Defense who is also its deputy Prime Minister, has accused Syria’s former intelligence chief in Lebanon Rustom Ghazaleh (image right) of trying to assassinate him. Murr’s confession is so stunning because he is closely linked to the Syrian regime. Murr is the son-in-law of the Pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud and his father, the parliamentarian and business tycoon Michel Murr is a longstanding advocate of Syria’s tutelage over Lebanon.

Murr is convalescing in Zurich from wounds he received from the assassination attempt on July 12. Murr decided to disclose his suspicions about Syrian involvement after the assassination attempt on journalist May Chidiac on Sunday. Murr called the LBCI TV station, where Ms. Chidiac is employed, and disclosed the following to political talk show host Marcel Ghanem on Ghanem’s Kalam el Nass show Monday night:

The events that are being described below by Mr. Murr occurred during the time of Syria’s occupation of Lebanon. BG Ghazaleh was then the intelligence chief for Lebanon. BG. Ghazaleh was recently interviewed by the U.N. investigation into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri as a witness to that crime.

"A problem had developed between me and Syria's representative in Lebanon (Ghazaleh) the day a terrorist network preparing to bomb the Italian embassy was uncovered, triggering anti-government riots in Majdal Anjar and the death of a detainee in jail,"

"A verbal quarrel flared between myself and Ghazaleh after he had called Brig. Gen. Saeed Eid, commander of Lebanon's gendarmerie, at 3 a.m. before dawn to tongue-lash me a year ago,"

"I immediately called Rustom Ghazaleh and took the necessary stance out of my conviction that a non-Lebanese officer should not be allowed under any pretext to scold a Lebanese officer,"

"General Eid, who was listening on my call to Rustom Ghazaleh, told me 'it's time for you to pack and go home,'"

"I was informed afterwards that moves were set in motion against me through Syrian workers who clashed with a Lebanese group. I later got wind about threats against me personally," Murr continued his narrative.

"In January of 2005, I left Lebanon because the security services were not interested in protecting me and stayed away until I was appointed vice premier and defense minister in Premier Mikati's government and then the current government,"

Murr stated that the assassination attempt on Ms. Chidiac's life had compelled him to break his silence. He closed by saying "I say now that we're all alike."

Syria's Destabilization Campaign Escalates

2005-09-26T03:33:00.000-07:00

Anti-Syrian journalist May Chidiac (on stretcher), a TV anchor for the Christian LBCI television station, is in critical condition from wounds she suffered from an assassination attempt on Sunday. Ms. Chidiac was in her Range Rover when a plastic explosive charge weighing half a kilogram was detonated under her seat, severing an arm and a leg. The Lebanese police have so far speculated that the bomb was detonated by a remote controlled device, very likely a cell phone. Ms. Chidiac is the second journalist that has been targeted since the assassination in June of the anti-Syrian journalist Samir Kassir.

The attempt on Ms. Chidiac's life took place one day after a demonstration by the Syrian Socialist National Party (SSNP), an avowedly pro-Syrian Lebanese political party that calls for a ‘Greater Syria’ by incorporating Lebanon into Syria. The demonstration took place on Beirut’s main shopping thoroughfare of Hamra Street and was designed as a show of force and an act of solidarity with the Assad regime.

These events are occuring under the backdrop of the infiltration of Palestinian fighters and weaponry into Lebanon from Syria. The Palestinians infiltrating into Lebanon belong to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC). The PFLP-GC is what is called a 'rejectionist' Palestinian group because it rejects any attempt at compromise with Israel and seeks to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian question by destroying the state of Israel.

The group is headed by Ahmed Jibreel(image at right), a Syrian national of Palestinian extraction who formerly served as a Captain in the Syrian Army and who is the Assad regime’s chief Palestinian proxy. The PFLP-GC's actions are closely monitored and controlled by the Syrian regime and its existence is merely an extension of Syrian foreign policy.

The arms shipments are reported to be headed to the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps in Beirut as well as the PFLP-GC’s own bases in Deir Al-Ashaer and Sultan Yacoub. The latter two camps are located in the Bekaa valley and are the transit points for weapons making their way to Sabra and Chatilla.

Run on the Syrian Pound

2005-09-21T05:58:00.000-07:00

There has been a run on the Syrian pound this week and it is increasingly looking like the Syrian economy will continue to suffer from collateral damage as a result of the Hariri assassination. Already, its economic growth rate had been halved and many Syrians who made a living in Lebanon have had to leave after the assassination because of attacks or even murders against Syrian nationals.

When I visited Damascus in July, the official exchange rate was 50 pounds to the dollar. The black market was in that range as well, with the money changers only willing to give you 51 pounds per dollar if you were changing currency in excess of 100 dollars.

The U.N. investigators are now in Syria, interviewing suspects at the mountain resort of Monte Rosa. Meanwhile in Damascus, rumors of regime change are so rife that that black market rate for the pound shot up to 55 pounds to the dollar in the past week alone. Syria’s Vice Prime Minister Abdullah Dardari just issued a decree that the new official exchange rate will now be 54 pounds to the dollar, thereby attempting to keep one step ahead of the black market rate.

Hariri Recorded Death Threat by Assad

2005-09-18T05:02:00.000-07:00

President Bashar Assad of Syria (image to the left) made a death threat against former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. However, unbeknownst to Assad, the late Mr. Hariri recorded the entire conversation using a ‘spy pen’ worthy of James Bond that had been provided to him by a western spy agency, very likely France’s DGSE.

That extraordinary claim is being made by Intelligence Online, a French website specializing in intelligence and security issues. President Assad made the threat to counter Hariri’s very vocal opposition to Assad's diktat to Lebanon’s parliament to extend the term of his puppet, President Emile Lahoud, by three years.

Excerpted below are the details of the conversation, the contents of which were allegedly provided by the late Mr. Hariri to President Bush, President Chirac and Pakistan’s dictator Pervez Musharraf.

"It is useful for you to know that Lahoud's term will be extended no matter what…I shall not allow you to replace him with anyone else,"

"You have to bear in mind that I am capable of destroying Lebanon, you included."

"If I am forced to leave Lebanon, I will leave it a pile of rubble. "

"Your ally Walid Jumblat must realize the fate awaiting him. The death of his father is the best lesson for him,"

Bombing in Beirut

2005-09-17T01:53:00.000-07:00

Another bombing rocked Beirut last night. The bombing, the 12th since the Valentine’s Day assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, was in Achrafiye, a predominantly Christian area of Beirut. One person, a coffee shop owner of Armenian descent was reported to have been killed and 22 other persons were injured by the explosion that occurred just past midnight.

Members of the Hariri-led Tayyar al-Mustaqbal movement are blaming remnants of Syrian intelligence for the explosion. The bombing comes when President Lahoud is attending the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Prime Minister Lahoud is also in New York to attend an aid conference for Lebanon and Speaker of the Parliament Berri is vacationing in Spain.

Lebanon's Unsustainable Debt Load

2005-09-16T05:26:00.000-07:00

Lebanon, a nation with a population of 5 million, has the highest debt load in the world. Its $36 billion debt, although piddling in comparison to the debts of much larger countries (the U.S. owes $7.9 trillion), is too large when measured as a proportion of its economy. Therefore, Lebanon’s debt, at a startling 165% of its GDP, is the highest debt load in the world.

It is under these conditions that Prime Minister Fouad Siniora left for New York to attend a ‘Help Lebanon’ conference. The Prime Minister is taking a 20 member delegation and they have reservations for one of the most expensive hotels in the world: The Waldorf Astoria. Mr. Siniora will be staying in a $7000 a night suite.

President Emile Lahoud, who is also in New York with an 80 member entourage, is trying to make political capital at the expense of Siniora by leaking the cost of the trip to the media. President Lahoud had to be downgraded from a five star hotel to a four star hotel because of concerns about the cost of the trip. As reported earlier, President Lahoud’s entourage had originally booked a whole floor at a New York hotel at a cost of $500,000 a week, but this was downgraded to a four star hotel at a cost of $280,000 a week.

President Lahoud’s entourage has complained that, in contrast to the Prime Minister, the President’s room costs a mere $1200 a night. In status conscious Lebanon, where conspicuous consumption counts for everything, Mr. Siniora’s one-upmanship is being construed by Lahoud’s entourage as an unacceptable affront. The Prime Minister’s delegation then responded that the cost of their trip, as well as the private jet they were using for the trip, were being covered by the Hariri fortune. Mr. Siniora was an executive and longtime protégé of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Saad Hariri, the son and political heir of the late Mr. Hariri, is also in New York to rally support for the U.N. investigation into his father’s death. While President Lahoud is being treated like an outcast at the U.N. General Assembly- only the presidents of Iran and Bosnia have agreed to meet with him, Mr. Hariri has been publicly feted by many world leaders, such as Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin of France and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

U.N. Asks Lebanon to waive Bank Secrecy Laws.

2005-09-15T08:47:00.000-07:00

The U.N. team investigating the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has asked the Central Bank of Lebanon to waive Lebanon's notorious bank secrecy laws for several Syrian and Lebanese nationals suspected of being involved in the assassination of Mr. Hariri.

That request comes after the commission learned that bank transfers of up to 500 million dollars were made around the time of the Hariri killing.

The revocation affects the following:
BG Ghazi Kanaan – (Syrian) Interior Minister and the former intelligence chief in Lebanon.

BG Rustom Ghazaleh- (Syrian) Successor to BG Kanaan as intelligence chief in Lebanon.

Nasser Kandil- (Lebanese) Pro-Syrian Member of Parliament.

Charles Ayoub- (Lebanese) Publisher and editor-in-chief of Beirut’s Ad-Diyar newspaper.

BG Mustapha Hamdan- (Lebanese) Commander of the Presidential Guards Brigade.

BGJamil Sayyed. (Lebanese) Former commander of the Sureté Générale (i.e. General Security).

BG Raymond Azar- (Lebanese) Former commander of the Lebanese Army’s Intelligence Service.

BG Ali Hajj- (Lebanese) Former commander of the Internal Security Forces.

The U.N. investigators apologized to Defense Minister Elias Murr for an ‘unfortunate mistake’ in adding his name to the above list. Murr is in Europe recovering from wounds he received on an attempt on his life on Jul 12, 2005. Murr is also President Emile Lahoud's son-in-law.

Shiite Ayatollah on Hurricane Katrina

2005-09-14T08:40:00.000-07:00

Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, the leader of Lebanon’s 1.2 million member Shiite community, parted ways with his more radical coreligionists by offering a message of compassion for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. His statement was faxed to the Associated Press.

"We refuse to look at disasters as a godly punishment or a godly wrath. It is not necessary (for disasters) to be separated from nature. They can hit oppressed regions as they hit arrogant regions,"

"Islam, which exhorted Muslims to befriend the world, to reach understanding with others and to turn their enemies into friends ... does not allow us to follow the others' pattern in injustice or even in dealing with a spirit of gloating or revenge,"

"Therefore, we support that aid be extended to all the victims of Hurricane Katrina in the United States, especially the poor who were left by their administration to face death and drowning,"

"While we declare our solidarity with the Hurricane Katrina victims, we call on Muslims in and outside America to continue efforts to help them."

Fadlallah is no fan of the U.S. government, and he closed his statement with these words:

"America, as an administration, is responsible for the biggest disasters in the world and in the region as a result of its injustice and oppression of our people and by creating dens of terrorism."

U.N. Investigators Arrive In Syria

2005-09-12T08:11:00.000-07:00

Syria this morning furiously denied reports that BG Rustom Ghazali (image to the left), had attempted suicide last Thursday after being placed under house arrest. BG Ghazali is due to be questioned by the U.N. investigators in connection with the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The Kuwait daily Al-Seyassah made the claim that BG Ghazali had tried to take his own life after running afoul of President Bashar Assad. That newspaper reports in its Sunday edition that all communications to his house had been cut off.

U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis crossed the Lebanese border into Syria under exceptionally heavy security as the Lebanese and Syrian military provided his convoy protection from the air and ground. Mehlis is now in Damascus to ‘interview’, not interrogate, several members of the Assad regime as possible witnesses in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Mehlis was originally scheduled to interview Syrian Army generals Ghazi Kanaan, Rustom Ghazali, Mohammed Khallouf and Jameh Jameh. Mehlis has now added three more names to be interviewed: President Assad, his younger brother Maher Assad and their brother-in-law and head of intelligence, MG Assef Shawkat. The latest word from Beirut is that one of the four Lebanese generals arrested in connection with the Hariri assassination has fingered the three in exchange for immunity.

MG Shawkat is married to Bushra Assad, President Assad’s sister. Like most members of the inner circle of the Assad regime, Shawkat is an Alawite, a sect of Islam that many in Syria’s majority Sunni community consider heretical. Some of the Alawites more eccentric beliefs include the belief in reincarnation, the celebration of Christmas and the incorporation of fire (from the Zoroastrian faith) in their worship.

Although Shawkat is considered to be President Assad’s closest associate, he is assiduous about keeping a low profile and has acquired a well earned reputation for being the eminence grise of the Syrian regime. Although trusted by President Assad, Shawkat has had a checkered history with some of the other members of the Assad family. The late Basil Assad, then the heir to the Assad dynasty (he was killed in a high speed crash while driving his Lamborghini) is said to have been so incensed by the relationship between Bushra Assad and Shawkat that he had Shawkat imprisoned four times.

Relations between Maher Assad, a colonel in the Syrian Army, and MG Shawkat have hardly been any better. In 1999, Maher shot Shawkat in the stomach after Shawkat had criticized the younger Assad's estranged uncle Rifaat Assad. Rifaat Assad is the younger brother of the late President Hafez Assad and has been in exile since 1998 for attempting to overthrow his brother’s regime.

President Assad, MG Assef Shawkat and Col. Maher Assad are said to form the inner most concentric circle in the plot to kill Hariri.

Lebanon’s Delegation To The U.N. Bigger Than France.

2005-09-09T04:58:00.000-07:00

The United States is expressing surprise that the Lebanese delegation to the U.N General Assembly will be larger than the French delegation. France, a member of the U.N. Security Council, is planning on taking a 15 member delegation. The Lebanese delegation, led by President Emile Lahoud, will include 80 members, half of it made up of bodyguards from the Presidential Guards Brigade. The brigade gained notoriety recently because its head, BG Mustapha Hamdan, has been charged as one of four suspects in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Lahoud’s chief of protocol, Maroun Haimari, had originally booked an entire floor of a posh hotel in New York at a cost of $500,000 for a week but that location had to be changed after complaints about cost and the new hotel will cost the delegation $280,000. Mr. Haimari has complained that the cheaper hotel does not befit the ‘prestige of the President’. The restaurant bill for the entire delegation has been budgeted at $15,000 a day and the delegation will have 50 cars at their disposal, with each vehicle renting at a cost of $70 per day.

Lahoud will be accompanied by his wife and his younger son Ralf, who he has appointed his ‘Official Advisor’. A story yesterday originating with the Syrian opposition website ELAPH mentioned that Mrs. Lahoud would be traveling with a huge trousseau because President Lahoud had secretly cut a deal with the Americans to resign from office in exchange for immunity from prosecution in L’affaire Hariri, with Los Angeles as their final destination. That story, very likely untrue, was immediately picked up by the Hariri-owned Future TV and Al-Mustaqbal newspaper.

Maronite Church Abandons Lahoud.

2005-09-08T08:43:00.000-07:00

The following are statements attributed to the Maronite church after it held a conclave Wednesday to discuss the arrest of four senior security officials in the assassination of Rafik Hariri. Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir has been one of President Lahoud’s most ardent supporters and the new tone is a significant shift in his position.

‘Fear and confusion’

‘The investigation has concluded that some of the those who were in charge of the people's security is indeed shameful and humiliating, which made the presidency vulnerable to vast criticism that detracts from the image of respect it is entitled’

‘We hope that this problem will get the hoped for solution that removes all vagueness,’

President Lahoud is still planning on attending the U.N. General Assembly next week but Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has decided not to attend. U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis will be in Damascus on September, 12 and Assad can ill afford to be away while Mehlis questions some of his closest associates. Lahoud’s trip is expected to cost the Lebanese government $500,000. The Lebanese press has been complaining that this is a poor investment because world leaders will snub Lahoud.

Lahoud: ‘Let Them Hang’.

2005-09-07T04:47:00.000-07:00

‘If they are guilty, let them hang on the gallows…..If my son had committed an offense, I won’t hesitate in letting the judiciary chop off his head’.

President Emile Lahoud (or President-General, as he prefers to be called) gave a backhanded salute to his protégés, the four generals charged with the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, by reportedly quipping ‘let them hang’. The comments were reported to have been made at an extraordinary session of the cabinet held at Baabda palace under Lahoud’s chairmanship. The session had been called by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to resolve a dispute with Lahoud.

Three of the accused generals are presently being held at a military prison in Reihanieh where they are alleged to have been receiving visits from ‘loyalist officers’. The Siniora government had demanded they be moved to the detention ward of the Sureté Générale, where such potential abuses would cease. Lahoud had become incensed after members of Siniora’s cabinet had threatened to ostracize him by refusing to hold further cabinet sessions at Baabda after the arrest of his protégés. Lahoud threw a fit by informing Siniora that he would abstain from signing the decree authorizing the Sureté Générale as a prison unless the cabinet met with him, under his chairmanship, at Baabda palace.

As a sign of Lahoud’s waning powers, the cabinet voted unanimously to approve the Sureté Générale as a prison. RUMINT (i.e. rumor intelligence) circulating this afternoon is that Lahoud dropped any objections to the use of the Sureté Générale as a prison on the condition that the government drops its veto of his trip to the U.N. General Assembly on September 14. Siniora is being quoted as saying that he will not go to the U.N. if Lahoud goes. The United States has made it clear that no government official will meet with Lahoud should he choose to attend.

Poor Planning Haunting Hariri's Assassins

2005-09-06T08:25:00.000-07:00

Leaks from the U.N. investigation led by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis (image to the right) into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri are providing yet more proof that the assassination was planned at the highest levels and was not, as Hezbollah keeps insisting, an operation by an ad hoc group. Germany’s Der Spiegel reported Monday that Hariri’s motorcade was being trailed by the dreaded Moukhabarat (i.e. intelligence) and that the trail vehicle belonged to BG Raymond Azar, the then head of intelligence. As part of the exceptionally poor planning for the mission, the killers failed to see that the kill site was adjacent to a branch of the British-owned HSBC bank. That bank had its security cameras on (hardly unusual for any bank, yet the killers failed to take note). The images from that camera were turned into the U.N. investigation, headed by Berlin prosecutor Detlev Mehlis.

A senior Syrian intelligence official who defected, or rather, was persuaded to defect by Saudi intelligence, is providing key information to the investigation that is leading the investigators directly to Syria. Col Mohammad Safi was the director of former intelligence chief Gen. Ali Khalil. Safi is reported to have fingered Slovakia as the country of origin of the explosives. The Saudis, though mentioned only tangentially in the investigation, are the Arab regime with the most at stake in the outcome of this investigation. Rafik Hariri made his billion dollar fortune in Saudi Arabia, and he had Saudi and Lebanese citizenship. Hariri was also very close to the late Saudi King Fahd and Hariri’s son and political heir Saad Hariri referred to Fahd as his ‘second father’ at Fahd’s funeral in August. He was also close friends with French president Jacques Chirac. Hariri’s skill at creating highly advantageous connections, which Arabs refer to as ‘wasta’ might explain why American, French and Saudi interests seem to be coalescing in Lebanon, as opposed to Iraq.

Showdown: Lahdoud v/s Siniora

2005-09-06T06:55:00.000-07:00

Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has convened an emergency session of cabinet to resolve a dispute between the President and the cabinet over the detention of the four security officials charged in the death of former PM Rafik Hariri. The session will be held at Baabda palace; this despite the cabinet’s insistence that all further meetings at the presidential palace would be boycotted in favor of the Grand Serail. President Lahoud then returned the favor by informing PM Siniora that he would not sign the presidential decree authorizing the Sureté Générale as a prison. The Sureté Générale is where one of the four suspects is being held.

Interior Minister Hassan Sabaa complained at the cabinet session yesterday that some of the officers charged in Hariri’s killing were being allowed visits from loyalist officers, at which point the Justice Minister (and Lahoud crony) Charles Rizk responded that everything that was happening at the prison with regards to visitation was within the law. The decree issue is expected to be resolved today at an extraordinary session of cabinet at Baabda palace, where President Lahoud customarily chairs the session, as opposed to the Grand Serail, where the session is chaired by the Prime Minister. Lahoud will need one third of the cabinet to vote no on the decree for him to triumph. Of the 24 members of the cabinet, only two are protégés of Lahoud. The two are Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Elias Murr (Murr is also Lahoud’s son-in-law) and Justice Minister Charles Rizk. Murr is receiving medical treatment in Europe from wounds he suffered from an assassination attempt last July. Bottom line: Lahoud doesn’t have the numbers needed to override Siniora.

Hezb' Allah saves Lahoud's Presidency.....For Now.

2005-09-05T10:57:00.000-07:00

Hezb’Allah leader Hassan Nasrallah yesterday rebuffed Druze leader Walid Jumblatt’s attempt to unseat President Lahoud. Hezb’Allah and its Shiite ally Amal control 28 of the 128 seats in Lebanon’s legislature. Michel Aoun’s controls another 21 seats and his bloc is unlikely to vote for Lahoud’s removal before the U.N. investigation into Rafik Hariri’s assassination is complete. Jumblatt was expecting to use the momentum from last week’s arrests of Lahoud’s four senior security officials to try to oust him. Hezb’Allah is not cooperating and neither is Aoun.

Other lawmakers aren’t being so circumspect. Former Prime Minister (and Lahoud protégé) Salim Hoss has joined the chorus of politicians seeking Lahoud’s ouster. Hoss issued a statement Saturday stating that Lahoud must ‘take the step that safeguards Lebanon’s national interests in the first place and the president’s dignity in the second’.

Nayla Mouawad, the Social Affairs Minister and widow of President Rene Mouawad (assassinated in 1989 after being president for just 17 days) insisted that Lahoud must resign ‘after the arrest and formal charging of his senior-most security aides tarnishes the image of the Lebanese presidency.’ Nayla Mouawad was a candidate for the presidency in 2004 (in Lebanon, being a Maronite Christian is the only qualification needed for that office) and should Lahoud step down, she, together with General Aoun, is expected to be in contention for that office.

Suspects Formally Charged

2005-09-04T10:23:00.000-07:00

As of Sunday September 4, 2005

On Saturday, the Lebanese judiciary formally filed charges against the four security officials for the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The four are BG Mustapha Hamdan of the Presidential Guard, Jamil Sayyed of the Sureté Générale (i.e. General Security), Raymond Azar of the Lebanese Army’s Intelligence Service and Ali Hajj of the Internal Security Forces. All four men have been charged with ‘willful murder, attempted willful murder, involvement in terrorist actions and possessing explosives and firearms,’ According to Lebanese law, the maximum penalty for conviction is death by firing squad.

Coincidentally, the charges come on the one year anniversary of President Lahoud’s three year extension of his presidency. That extension was a result of a diktat issued to the Lebanese parliament by the Syrian regime. As of today, President Lahoud is still planning on attending the U.N. General Assembly in New York, although Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has pulled out of the delegation in protest and the cabinet has informed Baabda palace they will no longer meet there (where Lahoud used to chair the cabinet sessions) and will instead meet solely at the Grand Serail.

Lahoud and Hamdan

2005-09-04T10:20:00.000-07:00

As of Friday, September 4, 2005

Lebanese authorities have formally charged four former senior security officials with the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The most notable detention has been that of BG Mustapha Hamdan. Hamdan is President Emile Lahoud’s aide de camp and the head of the Presidential Guard brigade. Lahoud has taken the extraordinary measure of publicly voicing his support for Hamdan by describing him as ‘one of the best officers in the Army’ and crediting him as the man who ‘saved my life……during the events of 1983’ although he did not elaborate as to what exactly those events were.

One of the salient points of these arrests that the western press has failed to cover is the discovery in August of two massive arms caches in and around Beirut. The man alleged to have been responsible for concealing those caches is Majed Hamdan, the brother of the aforementioned BG Hamdan. Majed Hamdan is also under arrest as of September 2, 2005. The military tribunal tasked with investigating the matter mysteriously closed the case after it was discovered that other highly placed sources were linked to the caches. This prompted the Interior Minister, whose job entails the internal security of Lebanon, to publicly lambaste the Government Commissioner at the Military Tribunal, a Judge Jean Fahd, for prematurely closing the investigation.

The significance of the actions at the military tribunal expose the fault lines in the Lebanese government, which is now, for all intents and purposes, two separate governments. Constitutionally, the President of Lebanon is supposed to remain neutral in matters pertaining to governance. Lahoud has flouted this rule repeatedly and his actions, or rather, his obscurantism, have led to constant strife between the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and the presidency of Emile Lahoud. The end result of that strife has been the virtual paralysis of the Lebanese state.

President Lahoud has remained defiant in the light of the arrests, even going as far as to try to influence the U.N. investigation. Lahoud was said to be livid with State Prosecutor Saaed Mirza when Mirza allowed the names of the accused to be reported on Lebanese national television. Mirza was immediately summoned to Baabda Palace, the Lebanese White House, and then instructed, in the presence of Justice Minister (and Lahoud crony) Charles Rizk, to ascertain that the testimony of the U.N. investigation conformed to ‘the gist of the Lebanese investigation’. The summons was, obviously, a clear violation of the principle of the independence of the judiciary.

The Death List
The arrests have led to the revelation that a number of politicians that are on a much talked about ‘death list’ have fled Lebanon. These include Gebran Tueni, target # 1 on the list and the publisher of An-Nahar, the same newspaper that published the column of the assassinated journalist Samir Kassir. Another name said to figure prominently on the list is that of Walid Jumblatt, the Druze chieftain who is also the head of the Progressive Socialist Party, although he has since returned to Lebanon.

Saad Hariri, the son of the assassinated former Prime Minister, is also there with them. They are joined there by Marwan Hamoudeh, an especially courageous minister who miraculously survived an assassination attempt on October 1, 2004 and who also recently disclosed to the public that Syrian security officials were provided with Lebanese cell phones, at the expense of the Lebanese taxpayer, to conduct their nefarious business.

Hezb’ Allah & Amal
Hezb’ Allah and Amal, the two Shiite parties, have been leading the charge to cast doubt on the U.N. investigation, with a senior cleric allied to Amal claiming that Detlev Mehlis, the Berlin prosecutor in charge of the investigation, is an agent of Israel. For the record, Hezb’ Allah blames Israel for everything, including Lebanon’s daily water and power outages. This follows leaks from the investigation that point to the car bomb being prepared in a Shiite suburb. Lahoud’s hold on power, tenuous as it may be, rests largely on support from Hezb’Allah, Amal, and from Michel Aoun, the anti-Syrian Maronite general who recently returned from 15 years of exile in France and has now allied himself with pro-Syrian Christian business elite and is now, to nearly everyone’s amazement, Lahoud’s most strident supporter.
Perhaps the most bizarre tangential event to emerge from all this has been the peripheral role that Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has played. Zarqawi, who is fully engaged against Iraqi and American forces, apparently found the time from his operations to publish his own death list, this one targeting all the major Shiite leaders in Lebanon. This report, whether true or not (Hezbollah attributes it to the United States), has been followed with worse case scenario speculation in the Lebanese press that Hezb’ Allah’s participation would lead to a new civil war in Lebanon.

Omar Bakri

2005-09-04T10:18:00.000-07:00

As of Thursday September 1, 2005

Omar Bakri, the Lebanese born cleric who gained notoriety in Britain for preaching jihad while collecting welfare benefits that are reported to have been in excess of $500,000 is now a resident of Lebanon after being informed by the British that he is no longer welcome there.

Bakri has told the Lebanese press that he is planning on buying a horse drawn carriage, also known locally as a Hantour, so that he can start making a living selling gasoline. The cleric’s life has come full circle, from peddling combustible rhetoric in Britain (at the public’s expense) to peddling a tangibly combustible product.

Bakri has confessed that he has been having trouble finding a place to rent in Beirut. Bakri stated that when he goes to apartment buildings looking for accommodation, the landlords are always unfailingly polite until they discover who he is and then, he has complained, they turn ‘chilly’ and immediately withdraw their offer. Perhaps he should have taken some gasoline with him to ensure a warmer reception. No word yet on whether Mr. Bakri is planning on burning any more bridges.