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The Lebanese women were flown back to Beirut
overnight (Photo by Haitham Mousawi for al-Akhbar)
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What’s wrong in Lebanon?
Someone apparently asked Siri the same
question on her iPhone 4S.
She later tweeted:
I don’t own an iPhone and I don’t plan asking Siri.
My short answer to “wassup in Lebanon” is: “Here are
the pointers, so draw your own conclusions.”
The pointers:
=== The
bad news is that Syrian rebels Tuesday abducted 11 Lebanese Shiite men and
their Syrian bus driver in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo on their way
back from a religious trip to Iran. Women traveling in the group were allowed
to go free and flown back to Beirut overnight.
=== The
good news is that Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour, who usually speaks
for Syria, expects the men to be released “within hours, according to
information provided by an Arab country.” Earlier, Hezbollah leader Hassan
Nasrallah, who strongly backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, appealed for
calm. At the same time, former Sunnite premier Saad Hariri, who leads the
anti-Assad opposition in Lebanon, strongly denounced the abduction “of our
Lebanese brothers in Syria” and called for the men’s “immediate release.”
=== The
bad news is that Michel Aoun, head of the Change and Reform parliamentary bloc and
who Assad crowned leader of the Orient’s Christians, Tuesday came out in
support of the May 17 letter by Syria’s UN ambassador Bashar Ja’afari to UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The letter depicts Lebanon as a Taliban-infested
Afghanistan, its eastern and northern regions as the hills and caves of Tora
Bora and its seaport city of Tripoli as Kandahar (see my May
19 post). Aoun told reporters Ja’afari “has data and does not lie.”
=== The
good news is that Lebanon’s pro- and anti-Assad political factions Wednesday
welcomed Saudi King Abdullah’s call for national dialogue to help steer Lebanon
clear of regional turmoil, chiefly in Syria. The monarch said in a letter to
President Michel Suleiman: “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia follows with great
concern developments in Tripoli, mainly the targeting of one of the main sects
in the Lebanese communal fabric…
“Considering
the gravity of the crisis and the possibility of its relapse into sectarian
sedition – reviving, God forbid, the specter of civil war -- we look forward to
Your Excellency’s wisdom, hoping you would intervene to end the crisis by
initiating a national dialogue in keeping with your eagerness to dissociate Lebanon
from external conflicts, particularly from the Syrian crisis next door.”
=== The
bad news is that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov today told a televised
news conference in Moscow the Syrian conflict might spread to Lebanon.
"Now, there is a real risk that the conflict may start spilling over into
Lebanon where, given the historical context, the ethnic and religious make-up
of the population, as well as the principles that Lebanon rests on, things may
end badly indeed.”
Editorially, Lebanese political analyst Abdelwahhab Badrakhan
says Lebanon’s current predicament was expected.
Detachment from events in Syria, he writes
today for Beirut’s an-Nahar, was “neither
Lebanon’s choice nor decision.”
The Lebanese government’s avowed policy of
“self-distancing” itself from the Syria crisis was the upshot of Damascus’
quest “for breathing space from international sanctions.” It was also the
upshot of Iran’s need to ease Hezbollah’s burden in running the country. The result
was a period of quasi-stability that earned the Beirut government cautious, but
uncertified, praise.
Badrakhan says, “Only a strong and independent
government can self-distance itself from whatever is prejudicial to Lebanese
interests – but not a government submissive to the Syrian regime and fearful of
the regime’s Lebanese tentacles inside and outside state institutions.”
Badrakhan recalls that within days of Foreign
Minister Mansour confiding the government had “disappointed” Damascus, Ja’afari
was accusing Lebanon of harboring terrorists and arms smugglers and “a Lebanese
army checkpoint sought to ‘assuage’ Syria’s disappointment.”
He says the killing of two sheikhs at an army
checkpoint in Akkar and the way anti-Assad activist Shadi Mawlawi was arrested in
Tripoli were probably the beginning of something more sinister.
According to Badrakhan, “Renewed talk of
insubordinate (security) elements brings to mind similar 1975 (civil war) scenarios…
In the 37 years since, it does not seem like the army has fortified the state.
Nor has the army build up muscle to protect the state. What took place in
Tripoli and Akkar, then Beirut, is not as alarming as making the Lebanese deem
a return to civil war likely because the state and the army are threatened.”
Why then this frenetic drive to inflame and detonate?
Simply because the Syrian regime is dispirited by its
treatment at the hands of international players, “save for Russia and China.” Damascus
feels accepting Annan’s plan, and proving it remained in control of the
situation, went unrewarded… Still, the players are not relenting. In view of
that, says Badrakhan, Damascus decided to poke around in Lebanon while telling
the international players, “Talk to me. Otherwise, I will destabilize and
destroy Lebanon.”
