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Al Qaeda’s Play for Lebanon: Jamie Dettmer, The Daily Beast, July 29, 2013—Jihadists affiliated with Al Qaeda are forming alliances with radical Sunni groups in Lebanon, infiltrating the country in a bid to use it as a base for global jihad and to recruit for the civil war in neighboring Syria.
Lebanon's Army Is Balanced Between State and Hizbollah: Michael Young, The National (UAE), June 27, 2013—On Sunday and Monday, the Lebanese army fought against followers of the Salafist sheikh Ahmad Al Assir near the city of Sidon. This combat, the most serious challenge to civil peace in Lebanon since the war in Syria began, shone a light on some of the problems Lebanon faces as it seeks to avoid collapsing into civil war.
Lebanon Inches Toward Disaster: Rajan Menon, The National Interest, June 4, 2013—It has been Lebanon’s unenviable fate to be the playground for the deadly games of its more powerful and rivalrous neighbors. What has made Lebanon particularly vulnerable to the fears and ambitions of adjacent states—or in the case of Iran, those aligned with them—is the effect outsiders’ machinations have had on the delicate balance among Lebanese ethno-religious groups.
Why Hezbollah Is a Terrorist Organization: Irwin Cotler, Jerusalem Post, July 18, 2013
Dreaming of a Lebanon at Peace with its Neighbors: Michael J. Totten, The Tower Magazine, July 2013
Does Hezbollah Seek Cold Peace with EU?: Ali Hashem, Al-Monitor Lebanon, July 25 2013
The Message Behind the Bomb in South Beirut: Al-Monitor Lebanon, July 9 2013
Jamie Dettmer
The Daily Beast, July 29, 2013
Jihadists affiliated with Al Qaeda are forming alliances with radical Sunni groups in Lebanon, infiltrating the country in a bid to use it as a base for global jihad and to recruit for the civil war in neighboring Syria. Lebanese army sources say containing the danger is stretching their resources and they are becoming increasingly alarmed at the high levels of jihadist activity, from recruitment to agitation, around the country. Diplomats fear the al‐Qaeda infiltration will feed off—and add to—destabilizing sectarianism sparked by the conflict in Syria.
Retired Lebanese general Hisham Jaber, who still advises the army, says jihadist numbers in Lebanon are growing and now include fighters from the al Qaeda–affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. “We have many cells, you know, Fatah al-Islam, Jund al-Sham, and Al Nusra and similar.”
With the militant Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah controlling much of the south of Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, there are few remote areas where jihadists groups can operate freely. The exceptions are the dozen refugee camps housing more than 400,000 Palestinians around the country as well as the countryside around the northern city of Tripoli, which, during this past year, has seen fierce fighting between Lebanese factions on different sides in the Syrian civil war.
The biggest of the camps that were set up for Palestinian refugees fleeing the 1948 Arab-Israeli war is Ain Helweh south of Beirut. Ain Helweh’s population before the Syrian civil war numbered about 80,000 but it now reportedly accommodates 27,000 more people, primarily Palestinian Syrians, adding to the overcrowding and compounding tensions in the camp.
The influx includes hardcore Islamists, Jaber believes, adding to radical elements that were already in the camp before. “Nobody knows when the jihadists will fully wake up. There are thousands of fighters in the camps,” says Jaber, a former top strategist for the army and onetime military governor of Beirut.
What would be in store for Lebanon if—or when—the cells activate was suggested by recent events. Foreign jihadists were involved in fighting in the area near Ain Helweh last month when armed followers of a fiery Sunni preacher, Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir, fired on an army checkpoint, triggering two days of clashes that left 46 dead, including 18 soldiers.
Politician Osama Saad, head of the Popular Nasserist Front, a group aligned with Hezbollah, which is backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, says foreign jihadists and Palestinians joined the gun battle. “Some other groups tried to join the fighting against the Lebanese army in order to lift up the morale of al-Assir’s group.” Jihadists from Syria and Yemen were among the gunmen killed in the fighting, say Lebanese army sources.
Jihadists have been present in Lebanon—and especially in the Palestinian camps—stretching back two decades. There was a rapid growth of Salafi jihadist groups in Lebanon following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and with the tactical cooperation of Syrian military intelligence, hundreds of volunteers from the camps joined the Iraqi insurgency, gaining combat experience and forming ties to al Qaeda.
One of the reasons for the Lebanese army's fears over Ain Helweh and the other Palestinian camps is that they have played prominent roles in the history of violence in Lebanon, having been used in the past by extremist groups. In 2007 the camp at Nahr al-Bared was taken over by the Islamist Fatah al-Islam, triggering a three-month-long siege by the Lebanese army in the most severe internal fighting in Lebanon since the country’s 1975–1990 civil war.
Ain Helweh has seen also its fair share of conflict with clashes between Palestinian groups in 1990 and between Fatah and Islamist groups in 2003 and 2007. Palestinian leaders at Ain Helweh—a square kilometer of poorly constructed two-story and three-story dwellings and confined streets—play down the presence of jihadists, and radical Sunni Islamists are arguing that most left to fight against President Assad. “There is no al Qaeda or al-Nusra in the camp,” insists Munir al-Maqdah, commander for the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Fatah faction in the camp. “The hard-line Islamists went to Syria to fight there.”
Al-Maqdah, who was born inside the camp, worries that “some people are exaggerating what is happening inside the camps, especially the media” in an effort he believes to stigmatize Palestinians or to manufacture an excuse to strike at the camp. “They say at the end of Ramadan there will be serious fighting, but this isn’t logical unless Israeli elements are conspiring to provoke something. We are doing our best to keep things calm here. We have no interest in getting involved in any fighting in Lebanon.”
But while the Fatah commander plays down the danger, he and the leaders of the other 16 armed factions present in the camp are clearly vigilant and worried and are meeting frequently to try to contain any flare-ups or to prevent the camp from being used as a base for violence elsewhere.
Al-Maqdah says divisions over the war in Syria aren’t helping. “Some are with the [Assad] regime; others are against. I tell people to keep their opinions inside of them, keep it for you, be in sympathy with whoever you want, but don’t create problems here.”
On July 22 all the camp leaders met with Hezbollah representatives in Sidon. “We may have our differences about the peace process. We may disagree over Syria. But we all agree on the importance of security and stability for the camp,” says Abu Ahmad Fadel Taha, the political representative for Hamas, Fatah’s rival. He says that many of the camp’s leaders have known each other since childhood, having been born at Ain Helweh and schooled together. “The friendships help,” he says.
He is less optimistic than his Fatah counterpart that trouble can be contained. Recently a jihadist shot dead a Fatah bodyguard in the camp, and Abu Ahmad says there are problems between the Islamists and Fatah. “Sometimes things get out of line and can’t be controlled,” he says sitting in his bare office in the heart of Ain Helweh, as a ceiling fan whirls overhead, failing to cool the heat of the mid-afternoon. Abu Ahmad also claims there isn’t a strong al-Nusra presence in the camp but admits the group has been recruiting inside. “There are guys inside in the camp who have this [jihadist] ideology in mind, as there are in Tripoli or Akkar, but always Ain Helweh gets focused on,” he says shaking his head.
General Jaber worries that the Lebanese army is ill-equipped to deal with the growing challenge. “The Lebanese government is really weak, and we only have the army which still has a little prestige and morale. But the army in Lebanon has not been given really what it needs in materiel and personnel.”
LEBANON'S ARMY IS BALANCED BETWEEN STATE AND HIZBOLLAH
Michael Young
The National (UAE), June 27, 2013
On Sunday and Monday, the Lebanese army fought against followers of the Salafist sheikh Ahmad Al Assir near the city of Sidon. This combat, the most serious challenge to civil peace in Lebanon since the war in Syria began, shone a light on some of the problems Lebanon faces as it seeks to avoid collapsing into civil war.
Mr Al Assir's decision to attack the army on Sunday – leading to the death of two officers – reflected the mistrust that many in the Sunni community feel towards the military. There is a perception among Sunnis that the army is an instrument of Hizbollah. This goes back to May 2008, when the party overran predominantly Sunni neighbourhoods in western Beirut, and the army allowed it to happen.
Sunnis in the Sidon suburb of Abra, where Mr Al Assir was based, were particularly angry that the army had taken no measures to oppose Shia militias that fired dozens of rockets into Abra during an armed confrontation early last week. When, on Sunday, two people close to Mr Al Assir were mistreated at an army checkpoint, he ordered his men to fire on the soldiers and called on Sunnis in the armed forces to desert, which the army could not let pass.
The army has indeed been close to Hizbollah, but this is not surprising. For 20 years now the senior officer corps has been made up largely of men promoted by pro-Syrian Lebanese politicians and parties including Hizbollah. Christian officers close to Michel Aoun did not fit into this category, but since he returned to Lebanon in 2005, Mr Aoun has sided with Syria and Hizbollah, so that his officers too now lean towards Hizbollah.
However, it is equally true that the army today is the prime defender of civil peace in Lebanon, and that it reflects the country's communal mosaic. The army command is careful not to take positions that might alienate its substantial Sunni rank and file. Efforts to cast doubt on the military's allegiances risk implicitly legitimising actions such as those of Mr Al Assir and his sympathisers, who regard the army as an enemy – "an Iranian army," Mr Al Assir has called it.
This points to another reality highlighted by Mr Al Assir's action: a sense that the agenda of Lebanon's Sunni community has been hijacked by its extremists. After the fighting near Sidon, mainstream Sunni politicians expressed support for the army, but avoided condemning Mr Al Assir. That was not because they agreed with him – indeed many saw him as a menace – but because they did not want to alienate the Sunni street, where Mr Al Assir's hostility to Hizbollah is popular.
The influence of Sunni Salafist groups has often been exaggerated. However, it's also true that at a time when the principal Sunni organisation, the Future Movement, is in a state of relative disarray, with its leader Saad Hariri having been absent from Lebanon since 2011, smaller, Islamist groups have gradually filled the vacuum. That is why moderate Sunni politicians must not allow the Abra incident to lead to their marginalisation among Sunnis, or permit other communities to portray them as being anti-state.
To clear up any ambiguities, Mr Hariri took to the airwaves on Monday to affirm support for the army. He remarked: "Perhaps the method [of dealing with Mr Al Assir] was harsh, but anything against the state must be dealt with in the same manner and no one is bigger than [the] country … if anyone believes the opposite, a day will come and they will ask the state for help and protection." While this may not have pleased some Sunnis, Mr Hariri was plainly referring to Hizbollah when he stated "We will continue to say that arms are the main problem in the country."
Mr Al Assir picked a fight with Hizbollah and the state that he had little chance of winning. Sidon is a strategic passageway for Hizbollah, linking the predominantly Shia southern suburbs of Beirut to the party's stronghold in southern Lebanon. Mr Al Assir's warnings that he would close the road became intolerable to Hizbollah, all the more so as the cleric might have benefitted, in the event of broader fighting, from the assistance of Salafist groups in the Ain Al Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in Sidon.
Ultimately, the army defeated Mr Al Assir, who fled to an unknown location. Hizbollah can be happy with this, but so can the Lebanese in general. While Hizbollah undoubtedly is to blame for the rising tensions in Lebanon, due to its military interference in the Syrian conflict on the side of the Al Assad regime, inside Lebanon the party is keen to preserve civil peace, to protect its rear.
Mr Al Assir's abrupt departure may momentarily calm what had been a dangerous sectarian flashpoint in Sidon. While Salafist groups took to the streets in several places in support of the sheikh, they did so in a disorganized way that by one day later seemed largely to have been contained.
The best option for those Lebanese opposed to Hizbollah is to stabilize Lebanon politically, and allow the party to be drawn deeper into the Syrian quagmire. Improved arms supplies to the Syrian rebels will make them a far tougher opponent, and Syria's conflict will drag on, with Hizbollah losing more and more men.
Hizbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, recently invited those who opposed the party to fight against it in Syria, not in Lebanon. The party's foes should take him up on the offer. Most Lebanese don't want and cannot afford a devastating sectarian war. Mr Al Assir failed to grasp this, which explains why few people regret his setback.
Michael Young is opinion editor of The Daily Star newspaper in Beirut.
LEBANON INCHES TOWARD DISASTER
Rajan Menon
The National Interest, June 4, 2013
It has been Lebanon’s unenviable fate to be the playground for the deadly games of its more powerful and rivalrous neighbors. What has made Lebanon particularly vulnerable to the fears and ambitions of adjacent states—or in the case of Iran, those aligned with them—is the effect outsiders’ machinations have had on the delicate balance among Lebanese ethno-religious groups: Maronite Christians, Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, the Druze and others. The first three have been, and remain, especially important. It is no exaggeration to say that Lebanon’s future hinges on constitutional and informal bargains struck in order to disperse power in ways that provide representation to all communities and predominance to none.
That’s how Lebanon’s political pact is supposed to work in theory. In practice, such intricate arrangements can, as the Lebanese have learned at great cost, be hostage to outside forces—ones powerful, unpredictable and beyond the control of the government of a weak, multi-ethnic country. What has produced the bloody synergy between the “internal” and the “external” in Lebanon is that its most powerful factions have even more powerful patrons in the neighborhood. The Maronites have Israel; the Shia have Iran and, at times, Syria’s Alawite minority government (though it has been a fickle friend); the Sunnis ally with various shifting coalitions of Arab states.
Then there have been the wild cards, a case in point being the influx into Lebanon of armed Palestinians groups following their rout in 1970-71 at the hands of the Jordanian army acting on orders from King Hussein, who had concluded that these formations had become a threat to his rule. Of course the influx of so many Sunni Palestinians, especially given that some were determined to use Lebanon as a new theater for the fight against Israel, set off a complex chain of events that eventually plunged Lebanon into a horrific civil war between 1975 and 1990.
Maronite militias fought the Palestinians, aided by the Israelis, whose strategy at one stage, 1982, included a military move into Beirut and, for a second time, southern Lebanon. The Shia shifted from sympathy toward Palestinians to enmity once it became apparent that the armed among them were not simply seeking safe haven but had grander designs. The Shia initially welcomed Israel’s move into southern Lebanon to rout the Palestinian militias; but that changed once they realized that the Israelis wanted a protectorate in southern Lebanon, with the Maronite forces serving as their proxies. The result was a ferocious war that pitted Hezbollah against Israel. This eventually turned into Israel’s Vietnam, and enabled Hezbollah’s emergence as a force to be reckoned with.
Syria, for its part, played an intricate game, backing one group, then the other; but there was one constant: the pursuit of Syrian dominance in Lebanon, the effect on Lebanese lives be damned. Only in 2005, after nearly three decades, did Syria withdraw all of the troops it sent into Lebanon after the civil war began.
It took many years for Lebanon, once known as “the Switzerland of the Middle East,” to emerge from the hell created by a civil war that ripped its social fabric apart, demolished its urban infrastructure, and killed some 120,000 of its people. Yet Lebanon did rise from the ashes, and its delicately balanced political order has remained stable, at least in comparison to the dreadful past. Now, that achievement is threatened to a degree it has never been since the civil war ended.
The dynamics between the internal and external are different this time around. During the civil war, Syria posed a threat to Lebanon by virtue of its strength; now it does so because of its weakness. The war between Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite-dominated regime and a largely Sunni Muslim insurgency, with its strongest roots in the north and east of Syria, has been grinding on since the spring of 2011. Some 80,000 Syrians have been killed. But what has been of greater consequence to Lebanon is that (according to the UN Refugee Agency) nearly 497,000 Syrians have officially become refugees in Lebanon or are awaiting registration. (The total number in the region is 1.7 million)
This refugee wave poses two huge problems. The first is that it’s enormously expensive for Lebanon to shelter, care for, and feed so many people. Alas, the “international community,” even those of its members who most loudly denounce Assad’s killing machine, have done far less than they can to help Lebanon (and Syria’s other neighbors) manage the refugee burden. The second, and much more dangerous, consequence is that most Syria’s refugees are Sunnis, and their growing presence raises the anxiety of non-Sunnis in Lebanon, especially the Shia. Demographics and politics are more tightly intertwined in Lebanon than in most other countries, and the longer Syria’s war drags on and the longer Syrian refugees stay in Lebanon, the worse the prognosis for peace in Lebanon.
But there are even more dangerous forces at play. Iran and Hezbollah, Assad’s closest allies, are determined to save his regime. As they see it, the Syrian civil war is part of a wider Sunni-Shia struggle in which Sunni Arab states, principally Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have decided to topple Assad as part of their larger goal of weakening Iran. From Hezbollah’s standpoint, that would be a bad outcome. Iran is its main patron and Tehran relies on Syria as a conduit for supplying Hezbollah forces.
Not surprisingly, Iranian personnel are on the ground in Syria, aiding Assad’s army and paramilitaries. And now Hezbollah, in a roll-the-dice gamble, has sent its fighters in to help Assad, most immediately to establish control over Qusayr, which connects Damascus to the Syrian coast and thus to historic Alawite bastion between Latakia and Tartus. Assad and his minions have decided that they cannot vanquish the insurgency across Syria; their Plan B is to consolidate control over its central and coastal regions. Help from Iran and Hezbollah is crucial to this strategy. So too is support from Russia, which continues to arm Assad and to provide diplomatic cover in the UN Security Council.
But Iranian arms supplies to Hezbollah via Syria are something that Israel cannot abide, and it has launched attacks aimed at sending a message. The question is whether Israel will up the ante if Tehran and Hezbollah aren’t deterred by its shots across their bow. Then there’s the issue of what Israel will do if Russia in fact delivers the S-300 air-defense system to Assad. So there are some big shoes yet to drop. What’s certain is that if they do, they will land on Lebanon.
The upshot is that Lebanon is inching, or I should say being pulled, closer and closer to a precipice. What can be done to save it? Not much, it seems. The West could arm the Syrian insurgents, but Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia are in too deep and have too much at stake to withdraw in response. Besides, the Syrian opposition, though lionized by many in the West, is fractured and fractious. And European and American leaders are aware that radical Islamists man the strongest insurgent detachments. The United States and its allies could establish a no-fly zone, but not with UN authorization given that Russia, and probably China, will veto any enabling resolution. In any event, strikes by aircraft and helicopters account for only a small percentage of the total civilian deaths. Moreover, Assad’s air-defense systems will have to be knocked out before a no-fly zone is set up. But that, unlike in Libya, is not going to be a breeze, and the governments and citizenry of Western powers want immaculate humanitarian interventions, not those that could kill their soldiers and plunge their countries into multiyear morasses.
The outlook for poor Lebanon is, therefore, not good. If the country starts to unravel, the Lebanese will be thrown back into the darkness whence they emerged not long ago. And the Syrian civil war, which has long since been internationalized, will become even more so, with the most likely venue for chaos being Iraq, where violence between Shiites and Sunnis is on the upswing anyway. Iraq’s bloodletting will escalate if Lebanon starts coming apart, and even more Iraqis will appear on Syrian battlefields. The war in Syria, which even now admits of no diplomatic solution, will then become even harder to end. And its ripple effects will extend further, with unfathomable consequences.
Rajan Menon is the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of Political Science at the City College of New York/City University of New York.
Why Hezbollah Is A Terrorist Organization: Irwin Cotler, Jerusalem Post, July 18, 2013—Yesterday was the first anniversary of the terrorist bombing of a tourist bus in Bulgaria, killing five Israelis and one Belgian, and wounding dozens more. Bulgarian authorities have confirmed – yet again – Hezbollah’s responsibility for the terror attack …
Dreaming of a Lebanon at Peace with Its Neighbors: Michael J. Totten, The Tower Magazine, July 2013—If Assad falls, Hezbollah will lose its Syrian patron to the east—and its stranglehold on Lebanon. Could the Jewel of the Levant rise again? And would it make peace with Israel?
Does Hezbollah Seek Cold Peace with EU?: Ali Hashem, Al-Monitor Lebanon, July 25 2013—The "live and let live" doctrine seems to be ruling relations between Hezbollah and Europe. Less than 48 hours after listing the group's "military wing" on the EU terror list, EU Ambassador to Lebanon Angelina Eichhorst visited Hezbollah's stronghold in Beirut's southern suburb and met the group's international-relations officer, Ammar Mousawi. According to well-informed sources, the meeting was "cold" and was held mainly to discuss the EU decision.
The Message Behind the Bomb in South Beirut: Al-Monitor Lebanon, July 9 2013—This morning’s explosion that wounded more than 50 people in Beirut’s southern suburbs was a significant political and security challenge to Hezbollah. The blast occurred on July 9 in Hezbollah’s most protected area: between Bir al-Abed and Haret Hreik. Before the July 2006 war, when Israel completely destroyed the area, it formed a security perimeter for Hezbollah’s political and security leaders.
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