“You’re not helping me cast out sectarian bigotry”

Saudi national flag (top) and a Shiite banner 

By Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia’s authoritative political analyst, author and kingpin of the impending Al Arab TV news channel, writing in Arabic today for the mass circulation newspaper al-Hayat

If we were to map out Syrian regime supporters, we would regrettably find them mirroring the minority Shiite population’s distribution in the Muslim world.

In this, we are excepting a few voices heard here and there.

Among them, for instance, are Shiite intellectuals in Lebanon issuing a statement, or Hezbollah defectors going live on Arab TV networks, to declare the party does not represent them.

Or to express concern their community is being dragged into a sectarian conflict for which they would have to pay in a predominantly Sunni environment representing most of the Ummah.

The aforesaid exceptions prove, rather than undermine, the premise.

On the fringes of this Shiite landmass stretching from Iran to Iraq and Lebanon, there are in Arab capitals tiny and hardly discernible patches of nationalist intellectuals, Nasserite politicians, or Baathists rooting for Bashar al-Assad.

They also parrot the theory of an American-Zionist conspiracy aimed at undermining the bastion of contrariety and resistance and the ultimate Arab army.

Like the Shiite fundamentalists shepherding the Shiite general public to back Syria’s regime, they do not see the limpid, unobstructed and good-sized “banner of freedom” the Syrian people have been raising for more than two years.

But they clearly notice the Takfiris, the eaters of human organs and the suicides.

They make these out to be the Syrian Revolution, which at heart is nationalist, Islamist, moderate, broad-based and genuinely representative of all spectrums of the Syrian population.

Yes, there are Takfiris linked to al-Qaeda and to hardline Salafist currents fighting in Syria.

True, they are motivated by their hatred of Shiism, modernism and all “The Other.”

They don’t strive for democracy or a modern civil state in which all Syrians are equal.

They can’t be part of a Syrian national body politic, whether headed by a turbaned sheikh or its current leader George Sabra.

They are the same underground movements Syrian Intelligence used to send to Iraq, prompting Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (in 2009) to press for the trial of Syria-based terrorists by a UN tribunal.

That was two or three years before the outbreak of Syria’s uprising.

The uprising saw Maliki bury old differences, switch sides, and become Bashar’s partner – a bizarre turnaround that can only be explained by sectarian motives.

Thieves, highway bandits and opportunists joined the mavericks infiltrating the Syrian revolution since revolutions don’t attract honorable people only.

But to put those in the spotlight is sheer escapism, which Bashar cheerleaders use in order to justify turning their back on a bona fide revolution against a tyrant and a repressive regime that people have been itching to bring down for decades.

Bashar’s non-Shiite disciples, on the other hand, can find an excuse for their evildoing.

For example, Lebanon’s Maronite Marada Movement thrived on the Syrian regime’s protection and was able to challenge Lebanese Maronite parties hostile to Bashar. The Marada in other words has a political, albeit contemptible, motive.

That is also the case of Lebanese Gen. Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, except that Aoun will be the first to jump ship when Hezbollah and Bashar lose out.

There are also politicians and journalists endorsing Bashar simply for cash.

In South Lebanon’s port city of Sidon, there is the Popular Nasserite Organization, which suffices with its Nasserite credentials to account for its stance.

The organization’s icon in Cairo is former presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahi who doesn’t hide his affinity for Bashar.

Other than those, you hardly find in Arab capitals any Bashar partisans, except perhaps the habitués of state-run Syrian TV.

They are what I would call “Speakers’ Corner forces” or “political megaphones” with no presence on the streets or in national assemblies.

One exception perhaps is in Jordan, specifically in its al-Karak city, which is home to some members of the pan-Arab Command of the Syrian Baath Party who are now lying low in view of the circumstances.

All the tiny pockets cited above are swamped by an Arab torrent sympathetic to the Syrian people.

Taking a second look at the Shiite landmass in our midst, we come up against a cohesive bloc ready to fight and die on Bashar’s side.

That’s what Hassan Nasrallah did in Qusayr and is still doing elsewhere in Syria.

Likewise, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is propping up the Syrian regime with arms and oil and allowing Iraqi Shiite volunteers to stream into Damascus. He is very familiar with the regime they will be fighting for.

These volunteers include politicians and clerics entrusted with the task of exonerating crimes committed by Shiites against their Sunni brothers.

A Kuwaiti parliamentarian has also openly defended and backed the interventions.

The sectarian commitment we are seeing is both unparalleled and alarming.

Even the Marjas (or highest authority on religious laws in Shiite Islam) who regularly issue fatwas and opinions have fallen silent.

They neither spoke in the revolution’s favor nor denounced the Shiites’ intervention in favor of the offender.

In my country, Saudi Arabia, the Shiite religious scholars and dignitaries kept mum on happenings in Syria.

They seem perturbed when asked, “What’s your position on the affront of the century that has seen the death so far of 100,000 Syrian Muslims?”

One cleric mouthed off: “Are we supposed to issue a statement on each occurrence? It’s a sedition and we’re distancing ourselves from it.”

My Shiite friend wanted to be amiable. He wrote to me saying, “I sympathize with the Syrian people. They deserve better than the regime killing them. But they also merit other than the Free Syrian Army.”

He probably believes he made me a big concession by saying what he did.

My answer is this: “My friend, I don’t want to be sectarian. I hate my growing sectarian penchant. But you’re not helping me.”

The Middle East is falling apart at the seams

Painting by Syrian artist Wissam Al Jazairy

Ghassan Charbel, editor-in-chief of al-Hayat newspaper, penned this think piece in Arabic for today’s edition

Times are hard for the Middle East. It has to find a recipe for coexistence, drawing in the Muslims, Jews and Christians, which is not easy.

It has to search for a coexistence formula binding the Turks, Persians, Kurds, Arabs and others and a coexistence blueprint joining ethnicities, nationalities, religions and sects. This is not simple either.

Long lulls are deceptive. They feign that old conflicts have been assigned to the history books. This is not true -- any sudden twist is liable to rekindle old feuds streaming with blood.

Nation-states that were configured in the aftermath of World War One either curbed these conflicts or gave them other names. Once these nation-states’ repressive machines crack, the old demons resurface.

We’re clearly on the way to a ghastly, rather than a new, Middle East – one where the coexistence chapter drawing together its various components ends, heralding the reconfiguration of nation-states and maps.

We are unmistakably facing something more cataclysmic than the fall of the Berlin Wall or the breakup of Yugoslavia.

We are facing a Nakba worse than the 1948 Nakba of the Palestinian people, one marking the demise of coexistence.

We are into violent cross-border designs and aspirations tackling maps like an inmate treats his prison walls.

Don’t accuse me of being a prophet of doom. The pointers are everywhere in the print and audiovisual media, supported by rivers of corpses and declarations promising endless wars.

A suicide attacked a Husseiniya (Shiite house of worship) in Kirkuk, and the response was a spectacular offensive against Sunni mosques in or near Baghdad.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blamed remnants of the “Baath” and “sectarian hatred.” His adversaries accused him of being a “sectarian bigot.”

Protesters in al-Anbar province treat the Iraqi army as a “Shiite militia” or the cover for one.

The Sunnite Iraqi says he won’t accept to be a second-class citizen, which is what the Shiite Iraqi was saying in decades past.

We’ve moved from the Arab-Kurd crisis to a Sunni-Shiite-Arab-Kurd predicament. It’s as if the whole Middle East has turned into the knotty problem of the disputed Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

Both sides in the Syria war are keen to deny its sectarian character. One side paints it as a war on inflowing terrorists and the opposite side depicts it as a revolt against a dictatorship.

So how do we explain the presence of Chechen fighters in Idlib, the arrival of Libyans to support their Sunni brethren or a funeral for a young Iraqi in Basra killed defending the Shiite shrine of Sayyeda Zeinab in Damascus?

Also, how do we explain the funeral for a young Sunni in the North Lebanese port city of Tripoli killed trying to infiltrate into Syria and the funeral for a Hezbollah member felled while on “jihadist duties” there?

Why does the Sunni Lebanese support the Syrian revolution and the Shiite Lebanese hinder it?

Why didn’t Alawites flee before rebels entered their villages or Sunnis take to their heels before government and allied forces stormed their townships?

Do the slogans of “objection” and “resistance” justify the military involvement of Iran and its allies in the Syria war? The counter-meddlers could be asked the same question.

What you hear in Lebanon, which used to be a model of and a proving ground for coexistence, is worrisome and unnerving.

Yesterday, I heard a prominent member of Gen. Michel Aoun’s “Free Patriotic Movement” accuse other Christians of treason. His charge sheet says the other Christians agreed to an electoral law allowing Muslims to have a weighty say in the election of 10 Christian legislators out of the 64 allotted to Christians in parliament.

A retreat to self-made islands won’t solve either Lebanon’s problems or the problem of its minorities. The biggest danger for Lebanon now is the growing number of risk-takers walking on thin ice.

Clearly, we are toughing out the eclipse of coexistence.

Our nation-states, our societies and our armies are breaking up.

The inviolability of international borders has evaporated. We’re in the midst of a regional civil war caused by a stream of cross-border projects. I am afraid we’re on the way to a period awash with statelets, militias, cemeteries and “cleansed regions.”

Assad on Black Sunday: “U.S. remains pragmatic”

Syrian president tells visiting Lebanese group:

• Americans have been pragmatic throughout the crisis
• Europe is confused
• For Russia, defending Damascus is defending Moscow’s status
• The Arab League is blind as a bat
• Lebanon is not in Africa to dissociate itself from Syria
• The Aoun-Franjieh-Ra’i triplet is Lebanon’s godsend
• The FSA is undone and we’re fighting al-Qaeda
• The battle will be long and our sole choice is to win it

The Local Coordination Committees of Syria say government forces and militiamen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad killed a record 566 people, many of them women and children, across the country on Black Sunday.

At least 85 of the fatalities were in the town of Jdaidet al-Fadl near Damascus, which the army retook from opposition forces (see my April 16 post “Syrian army secures Damascus with ‘four walls’”).

At the same time, Assad was talking his fill on the Syria war to a deputation of supporters from Lebanon.

According to Beirut’s pro-regime daily al-Safir today, the Syrian president told his Lebanese loyalists at al-Muhajereen palace in Damascus the following:

Lebanon is not in Africa to dissociate itself from Syria

“Lebanon’s official policy of dissociation from the Syria war is misplaced. One cannot dissociate himself when he is in the line of fire and when the flames are approaching. I don’t understand! What does this policy mean exactly? Does it mean transposing Lebanon into Africa pending an end of the Syria crisis, when Lebanon would revert to its natural spot?”

The Aoun-Franjieh-Ra’i triplet is Lebanon’s godsend

Three Assad apologists -- Hezbollah ally Michel Aoun, the one-time Lebanese Army Commander who now leads the Free Patriotic Movement, MP and Marada Movement leader Suleiman Franjieh, and Maronite Cardinal Bechara Boutros al-Ra’i – are “farsighted, nationalist and insightful leaders…

“To Aoun’s credit, he tussled then made peace with us honorably. His position on the Syria crisis is so much more credible because he was not our friend in the past -- on the contrary, he was a vicious adversary. That’s why we recognize the value of his stance.

“As for MP Suleiman Franjieh, I can’t say more than he is my friend and my brother.

“Cardinal Ra’i is a guiding light.

“Aoun and Franjieh consolidate the Christians’ Eastern dimension and consecrate the Christians’ enrichment of the region’s social fabric.

“The same can be said of the Armenians who did not turn their back on Lebanon during its ordeal or on Syria now.

“While Islam blends us with the Kurds and the Arab identity binds us to the Christians, the Armenians succeeded in integrating our societies.”

The FSA is undone and we’re fighting al-Qaeda

“Developments on the ground are going well.

“Our strategy is to keep Damascus and the other cities under army control. As concerns the countryside, we deliberately choose to clear some areas for tactical reasons at times.

“Better we sap (their strength) than having them sap ours.

“The so-called Free (Syrian) Army is effectively undone. We’re now fighting al-Qaeda. Some 23 foreign nationalities are currently fighting on Syrian soil.

“Many advised us at the onset of the crisis to respond decisively. But you can’t do that to your own people on your home turf.

“Had we followed the counsel, the picture for some people would have looked blurred and we would have lost a few friends. Today, however, we are winning (the hearts and minds) of some of our adversaries.

“For example, we responded wisely when armed rebels broke into the Yarmouk Camp (for Palestinian refugees). We were urged to force them out.

“Instead, we reinforced our positions around the camp and fenced in the armed insurgents. In no time, we heard residents clamoring for the terrorists’ evictions from the camp…”

Generally, “the battle will be very long, but our sole choice is to win it.”

The Arab League is blind as a bat

“The Arab League is blind as a bat. It was originally set up to serve British interests. It never played a pan-Arab role, except in the days of Egypt’s late Gamal Abdel-Nasser.

For Russia, defending Damascus is defending Moscow’s status

“Moscow’s strategic decision to stand by the Syrian state is not for the love of our people and us. It is because Russia considers the battle to defend Damascus as a battle to defend the status and interests of Moscow.”

Today’s Russia is stronger than the former Soviet Union. Some people link the outcome of the Syria crisis to the meeting between Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Northern Ireland in June.

“From our side, we say Syria’s steadfastness and strength will impact on the summit and not the other way around.  We need to impose our rhythm on the summit instead of vice versa. Each of the two presidents will be looking at the facts on the ground in Syria to determine what he does.”

Americans have been pragmatic throughout the crisis

“The Americans have been pragmatic since the onset of the crisis. They don’t go to the limit. In the end, they go along with the winner.

“Europe is confused.”

Wither Syria

Syria's death toll stands at 26,728 (syrianshuhada.com)

Ghassan Charbel, editor-in-chief of pan-Arab daily al-Hayat, penned this op-ed in Arabic

What remains of Syria

• when her seat at the Arab League stays vacant and Arabs get used to her absence?
• when her membership in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is suspended (at the Mecca summit) in the presence of Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad?
• when 133 member states of the UN General Assembly vote in favor of a resolution urging her government to begin a political transition to end her ordeal?

What remains of Syria

• when a despairing Khaled Meshaal walks out on her after failing to convince her political leadership that politics, not violence, is the way forward to a solution and that a revolution is taking place and not excesses by armed gangs?
• when the “Axis of Resistance” loses its sole Sunnite limb that gave it access to Gaza and the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict?

What remains of Syria

• when a Lebanese security branch dares arresting former government minister Michel Samaha after catching him red-handed smuggling explosives?
• when Lebanese mass media say Samaha was given the haul of explosives by the topmost Syrian security officer?
• when Michel Aoun falls remorsefully silent because Samaha was his road guide to Damascus, the roots of St. Maroun and the coalition of minorities?

What remains of Syria

• when her army tanks blitz neighborhoods of Damascus, which was renowned as the region’s most secure and stable capital city?
• when her warplanes pound Aleppo or obliterate a village here and another there?

What remains of Syria

• when her citizens cram refugee camps in Jordan, queue for food rations in refugee camps in Turkey, or huddle in fear or grief in Lebanon’s north, Bekaa Valley and capital?

What remains of Syria

• when her humanitarian crisis is one of the worst worldwide?
• when 2.5 million of her citizens need urgent humanitarian assistance?
• when another 1.5 million Syrians have been forcibly displaced from their homes?
• when horrific killings become a daily sight and when decapitated bodies don’t make news headlines anymore?

What remains of Syria

• when Baathists flee rural areas for fear of workers and peasants they previously claimed to represent ?
• when thousands of officers and soldiers announce their defections from their army on TV screens?
• when eyes refuse to even catch sight of shabbeeha wrongdoings?

What remains of Syria

• when an explosion decapitates her security chiefs at their nerve center?
• when a committed Baathist (Riad Hijab) accepts his designation as prime minister only to start planning his defection?
• when the world is busy finding out who got killed, who defected and who is preparing to jump ship?

What remains of Syria

• when her future becomes subject to a decision by Vladimir Putin, Iran’s supreme leader and (Hezbollah chief) Hassan Nasrallah with the acquiescence of the Iraqi prime minister after being their trump card and representing their strategic depth?
• when all you hear after opening a map of the country is talk of mini-states and sectarian islets?
• when roving fighters breach her borders, causing a problem for her insurgents and a future tragedy for the country?

It is an open secret the Syria we know is no more. The Syria of extortionate security and absolute solidity, Syria the juggler of cards outside her borders, Syria who had veto power on Palestinian and Lebanese matters and could manipulate Iraq, Jordan and Turkey’s stability has vanished.

Syria will most probably sink into a merciless civil war and her social fabric will be ripped apart. She will emerge from the long, nightmarish cycle of violence bloodied, frail and jerked around in a deadly struggle between Syrians and regional and international players vying to shape her future.

We’re sort of bidding farewell to the Syria we know. And whether healthful or ailing, Syria is in the habit of leaving her mark on the region.

Is Lebanon going Iraq’s way?

Aftermath of Beirut clashes earlier this week (Photos from BBC News)

By Ghassan Charbel

The author is editor-in-chief of the Saudi-owned pan-Arab

daily al-Hayat. His leader appears today in Arabic

Booby-traps continue to be planted in Lebanon’s fragile frame. The frame’s rattled and exposed contours are exposed to internal and external storms.

What remains of the State is shaking and eroding. The “Lebanese arena” is being invited to commit suicide. And some want this to happen without delay.

I don’t claim the Lebanese to be innocent, or simply victims. Divisions are profound. The number of adventurers is high and relations between the component elements are at their rock bottom.

The beleaguered country’s president received a letter from King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz urging him to act quickly to prevent the fire breaking out and to beware of its likely triggers.

Lebanese leaders need to diligently scrutinize the lines in the letter and read what is between them.

The author of the letter had previously sponsored the sole attempt to prevent Lebanon from falling into the abyss. His efforts at the time were code-named “S-S” (for Saudi-Syrian mediation).

Shooting down that initiative battered Lebanon as well as Syria’s Arab and international relations. Had those efforts succeeded, Beirut would not have been twisting and turning today to the tune of sectarian sensitivities. Perhaps Damascus too would have been less agitated.

It is an open secret that happenings in Syria are beyond Lebanon’s staying power. Damages were expected. But the shock was the speed of Lebanon’s loss of cohesion and its total lack of immunity.

Decadence of the State augurs dire consequences. A serious incident, such as the killing of two Sunnite sheikhs in Akkar, nearly ignited an inferno. A serious incident, such as the abduction of Lebanese Shiite men in Aleppo, all but sparked a fire as well. Luckily, ex-premier Saad Hariri reacted prudently and responsibly to the first incident. And (Hezbollah leader) Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was quick to contain reactions to the latter.

The initiative to prevent the conflagration is not enough. The country is falling apart and so is the region. You only need to look at Iraq. The example there is vivid and blatant. Some people believe Syria’s own components are also sliding into a bloody and long crisis that can only end à la Iraq.

Without necessarily using official parlance about federalism and provinces, this would have a traumatic impact on Lebanon, the quasi-makeup of which translates into civil war each time the balance of power between its provinces swings one way or the other.

After the infamous Akkar incident, and irrespective of its circumstances, the military institution got embroiled in the Lebanese dispersal.

Voices were heard accusing the army of establishing a symbolic presence in one province and of seeking to impose its clout in another. It was accused of coexisting with armed citizens in the first and trying to disarm citizens in another.

That’s a sequel of the Sunnite-Shiite split over the “Resistance’s weapons,” which to most Sunnites are Hezbollah’s weapons. It involved thinning out Lebanese military forces in one province and redeploying them in a weaker province, where power is divided between Michel Aoun and Samir Geagea.

Tragedy does not lie in countries being weak, governments being ineffectual, or parliaments being impotent. Tragedy rather lies in discovering the maps are ailing and the provinces therein are demanding new labels and recognitions. The reasons are the setback to co-existence resulting from tyranny and the lack of a culture of recognizing the other side and its right to disagree.

Experience shows manipulating maps is costly and delineating provinces in them is fraught with funerals, displacements and abuses.

Lebanon’s map is also ailing and the national fabric is worn out. Careful appraisal shows a solemn Lebanese State would spare the Shiites a horrific crash, the Sunnites a costly gamble and the Christians further exodus.

The choice is evident: either a return from the mentality of provinces to the mindset of a State or drowning in sectarian flare-ups and protracted wars.

Abductions in Syria raise Lebanon suspense

The Lebanese women were flown back to Beirut

overnight (Photo by Haitham Mousawi for al-Akhbar)

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.”