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| The victim, his blood-stained and bullet-riddled Range and a riot scene |
The so-called April 1975 “Ain el-Remmaneh incident”
was the spark that set off Lebanon’s 15-year civil war.
Yesterday’s unprovoked killing by Lebanese soldiers
of a Lebanese Sunnite cleric opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could mark
the date of Lebanon’s head on plunge into Syria’s “chaos.”
Sheikh
Ahmed Abdul-Wahed was shot dead, along with his travel companion Sheikh
Mohammed Hussein Merheb, in his Range Rover at an
army checkpoint at Kwaikhat in Akkar,
a district in the north Lebanon governorate.
He
was on his way to address a rally in the Akkar capital of
Halba. The event was immediately called off.
The
Lebanese army promptly said in a communiqué it deeply regretted the incident,
promising a military inquiry. The state commissioner to the military court,
judge Saqr Saqr, later ordered the arrest of the three army officers and 19 soldiers
who were manning the checkpoint at Kwaikhat.
Abdul-Wahed,
a 1969 native of al-Bireh in Akkar where he founded al-Noor Islamic school and charity,
was devoted to helping Syrian refugees in Lebanon. He was close to the
anti-Assad “March 14”
alliance led by former premier Saad Hariri’s Future Movement.
News of the
killing by the army drove angry people to the streets of Akkar villages as
protestors cut off roads with burning tires. Protesters blocked roads elsewhere
in Tripoli, the Eastern Bekaa valley and the Beirut highway to South Lebanon as
well as in the Beirut areas of Verdun, Mazraa, Tarik el-Jdideh, Beshara el-Khoury
and Qasqas.
Armed clashes overnight in Tarik el-Jdideh
between supporters of the Future Movement and their rivals in the Arab Movement
Party headed by Shaker Berjawi, an ally of the Syrian government, left three
people dead and 15 wounded overnight.
The
fighting in Beirut was the most intense since May 7, 2008, when Hezbollah
gunmen swept through Sunnite neighborhoods and torched the Future Movement’s TV
station after the government tried to dismantle the group's telecommunications
network.
Lebanon’s Grand Mufti
Sheikh Mohammed Rasheed Qabbani has declared three days of mourning over Sheikh
Abdul-Wahed’s death.
Future Movement MPs, including Khaled
Daher and Marwan Hamadeh, said the incident was a targeted hit.
"If shots were
fired at the tires, we would say there was a mistake. But we consider this a
direct targeting from the army," he told Reuters.
"Frankly,
we do not want to see the army here because it works at the service of the
Syrian regime," he said.
Hamadeh said a
number of lawmakers would seek a parliamentary probe into “the practices of
some army intelligence and General Security personnel… that join efforts by the
crumbling regime in Damascus to inflame the situation in Lebanon ahead of its
downfall.”
Future Movement leader
Saad Hariri also pointed the finger at Assad "infiltrators" in the
military for the deaths.
"There are some
infiltrators who want to use the military and its image to import the crisis of
the Syrian regime to Lebanon in a desperate attempt to save Assad's regime from
its inevitable end," he said.
Abdelqader Abdul-Wahed, the
slain cleric’s brother, echoed the sentiments in an interview with Lebanon’s
MTV. "Unfortunately, we have some infiltrated elements in the Lebanese
army, possibly officers who work for the Assad regime," he said. "I
hope the army institution cleanse itself from these elements."
After the Lebanese Army curbed the May 12-14 clashes between Tripoli's
two adjacent districts -- the predominantly Sunnite “Bab al-Tebbaneh” and the
overwhelmingly Alawite “Jabal Mohsen” – Lebanese Alawite chieftain Rifaat Eid
talked tough at his Jabal Mohsen stronghold.
He told a May 16 press
conference, “Everyone
should be aware that sliding further into the unknown would mean no one could
pacify Lebanon except through the intervention of an Arab army. And no one
would be able to do so except Syria. If you asked me my opinion, I have no
problem with (the Syrian army coming in). Better this happened today than
tomorrow…”
Speaking
in an interview broadcast the same day on Russian state news channel
Rossiya-24, Assad put the blame for the Syria violence on the Arab
Spring and said weapons bound for Syrian rebels were entering his country from
Lebanon, adding: "And as I have said, if you sow chaos in Syria you may be
infected by it yourself, and they understand this perfectly well." (See my May 17 post, “How
Syria
fire is creeping up on Lebanon”).
Syria’s
UN Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari wrote in a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon dated May 17 saying, “In
some Lebanese areas bordering Syria, several warehouses have been set up to
stockpile weapons and ammunition that are reaching Lebanon illegally…”
He
said the weapons are “moved first to Akkar, then to Wadi Khaled, ahead of their
smuggling into Syria… Premises of charities run by Salafists and the Future
Movement in Lebanese areas bordering Syria are being used to provide safe
havens to al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood terrorists to launch hit-and-run
criminal operations inside Syria. The injured among them are treated under fake
names in hospitals and clinics affiliated to those (Salafist and Future
Movement) groups and funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.” (See my May 18 post, “Syria
seen lighting the Lebanon fuse”).
Lebanese political analyst Rosanna
Boumounsef, in her column for the independent Beirut daily an-Nahar, says in light of the weekend
developments in Akkar, “the Syrian regime’s resolve to forcibly drag Lebanon
into its crisis leaves the Lebanese government in an extremely embarrassing
position.”
Disputing the allegations made by Ja’afari verbally –
as Prime Minister Najib Mikati has already done -- is not enough, she explains.
Ja’afari specifically wrote Ban
Ki-moon and the president of the Security Council saying, “It would be highly
appreciated if the annexed letter (describing Lebanon as a hotbed of terrorism)
could be circulated urgently as an official document of the Security Council.”
This, Boumounsef writes, requires Lebanon “to respond
in the same way – by writing a letter to Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council
president challenging the contents of the Syrian document. This is part of the duties
of the Lebanese government, irrespective of its makeup, since the document
presented by Syria defames the whole of Lebanon and casts aspersions on its
reputation. If the Lebanese government allowed the Syrian document to pass
without a riposte addressed to the UN and the Security Council, it would be
held accountable for document’s fallouts.”
Charles
Habbour, in his think piece for the Lebanese independent daily al-Joumhouria published by former
defense minister Elias el-Murr, sees Lebanon being forced to change direction
and become Syria’s “playing field instead of its outlet.”
The north Lebanon turmoil, he says, shows Syria to be
“in a hurry.” Within weeks of the attempt on the life of Lebanese Forces leader
Samir Geagea that was meant to destabilize the Christian community, Damascus
turned its gunsight on the Sunnites to export its crisis.
Habbour says Damascus “decided to push Lebanon to
change course. Instead of perceiving Lebanon as its political, diplomatic,
financial and economic outlet, Syria wants Lebanon to become a playing field and
a trump card primed for explosion, coercion or a tradeoff.”
Habbour gives three reasons for the U-turn by
Damascus:
1.
Lebanon can no
more serve as Syria’s “lung.” Given persistent pressure from the U.S. Treasury,
Lebanese banks are finding it increasingly difficult to launder Syrian money or
handle financial transactions with the Syrian regime and its supporters.
2. Syria wants to use
Lebanon as a bargaining chip. It is telling the Saudis that the regime’s
confrontation with its Sunnites has now spread to Lebanon. It is also inviting
the Americans to do a deal for the sake of regional stability.
3.
Seeing no end to
the uprising, Syria wants to expand the lines of confrontation in an attempt to
“escape forward.”
“As usual, Lebanon is made to foot the bill,” Egyptian
media celebrity Imad
Adeeb writes for the leading Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat. “The crisis is in Syria and Lebanon pays the price.
The killer is in Damascus and the fatality will be in Beirut. It looks as
though Syria is sending a regional and international message saying, ‘If you
pressured us further, we would wreck your summer, your interests and your
allies.’
“It is the same old game dating back almost half a
century – the mafia’s game of trading off one crisis for another, one prisoner
for a new and one hotspot for an additional.”
