JUNE 2007
What is happening in Lebanon?
Laurie King-Irani
Electronic Lebanon, OPINION/EDITORIAL
22 May 2007
A survey of US television and radio news over the last 24 hours has told me the following:
- Bombings and gunfights in Lebanon. Again.
- Breathless analyses on US news programs about Al-Qaida's spread to the shores of the eastern Mediterranean.
- Analysts using the "cookie cutter" approach to this new development by citing the events of 1975-1976 and the tensions between Lebanese and Palestinian refugees.
- CNN's putative Lebanon analyst, Brent Sadler, characterized Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon as "breeding grounds for terrorism," but now, according to Mr. Sadler, it's Islamic-flavored terrorism.
This is quite ominous, anxiety-provoking and compelling "infotainment" -- and completely in line with the distorted views of US foreign policy makers and the current American reflext to hate and blame all things Islamic.
Such simplistic and knee-jerk reactions to Lebanon's current travails are too easy, and not up to the standards of responsible journalism.
I've spent much of the past 48 hours trying to get a better grasp on what is really going on in Tripoli. It's not easy to do, and it occured to me this morning that this may, in fact, be _the_ story: the difficulty of interpreting these events stems from the lack of a comprehensive understanding of the ways that dramatic changes throughout the region, and indeed, the world, are echoing through Lebanon's war-damaged sociopolitical landscape.
Yesterday, Robert Fisk, the veteran war correspondent and author of the best book on Lebanon's decades of agony, Pity the Nation, observed in The Independent that:
"Not since the war -- yes, the Lebanese civil war that we are all still trying to forget -- have I heard this many bullets cracking across the streets of a Lebanese city. ... The bloody events in Lebanon yesterday passed so swiftly -- and so dangerously for those of us on the streets -- that I am still unsure what happened."
Well, if Robert Fisk is confused, how can CNN's Brent Sadler be so sure he knows what is going on in Lebanon? It's easy to point fingers at Syria, to invoke the shadowy and amorphous threat of Al-Qaida, to blame the Palestinians, or (in fine Lebanese fashion) to see a complex and nefarious plot underlying the bloodletting in Tripoli.
Any eruption of large-scale violence in Lebanon is cause for concern, since so many related regional crises are "hot-wired" through Lebanon. The war that devastated the country during the last decades of the 20th century was in fact three wars: A local conflict, a regional battle, and an international/
The events of the last week, however, cannot be explained in relation to that earlier war, nor entirely in relation to the murky mysteries surrounding the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, or even last summer's Israeli assault on Lebanon. Nor are the disturbing developments in Tripoli rooted in Palestinian-
The only logical connection between these events and other developments in Lebanon seems to be the establishment of an tribunal to ferret out those responsible for the 2005 assassination of Rafiq Hariri. Syria has been accused of having a large, if not sole, part in that murder, but Syria also has little love for Salafi Sunni groups. It has crushed them brutally in its own territory, and seems bizarre to see the Islamists in Tripoli as Syrian plants. Indeed, many of them are said to be from countries as far away as Bangladesh.
What's now happening in Lebanon requires a much more subtle and fine-grained interpretation, one that takes on board the reverberations of political developments from Baghdad to Washington, while attending to emerging social and economic conditions in the Middle East. The situation is much more complicated, fluid, unbounded, and therefore ominous than CNN's "experts" seem to grasp. There are new aspects to the current violence, perhaps most noteworthy is the emergence of a militia in Lebanon that has no clearly delineated connection to any particular family or traditional ethno-confessional leadership in the Lebanese context. There is some new political logic or system at work here, but it is irresponsible to present simple or pat explanations.
Over the next few days, Electronic Lebanon will be providing more insights into, and analyses of, the latest outbreak of conflict in Lebanon. For now, however, I'd like to outline some issues and realities that any comprehensive and valid explanation of this week's events must include:
1. A huge demographic swell of youth is now coming into their majority, and they have no real leadership or clear focus for political action, nor do they see much hope or options in the current political and economic system.
2. Shifting global configurations are key to any explanation of what is happening in Lebanon. Although the US remains the world's leading military power, that is no longer relevant or important to the regional politial system. US influence is on the wane, its status and reputation completely sullied during the last six years of the Bush Administration'
3. Although al-Qaida makes the news a lot, I don't think it (whatever "it" is) commands the attention, respect and support in Lebanon or Palestine as does Hizbullah, the only group in the region to successfully challenge and defeat the Israeli Army.
4. Shifting regional oppositions are also key to understanding this week's events in Lebanon. The Palestinian movement as an institution, i.e., the movement-turned- establishment of the 1960s-mid-1990s, is no more, although people are still very moved and mobilized by the Palestinian tragedy. Hamas is no longer a unified organization. Leftist groups are weak. Rapidly growing gaps between rich and poor mean that there's not much chance of middle class, broad-based movements for change or reform. But then, those sorts of social movements are usually rooted in national identity and nation-state projects, and the nation state is no longer a big draw, or at least not as big a draw as religion, family, ethnicity -- or movements for justice, usually theologically defined (but not always; Egyptian secular and leftist activism is now back on the streets of Cairo).
5. The largely manufactured tensions between Shi'is and Sunnis in Iraq (or, to be more precise, the "Lebanonization" of Iraq encouraged by the United States) will ultimately reverberate elsewhere, probably to the detriment of US allies like Jordan, Saudia Arabia and Egypt. And for non-allies, or quasi-allies, like Lebanon and Syria, this poses real dangers.
6. The ability of groups like Al-Qaida (and again, I don't think that this group exists in the way that the US government or media present it as existing) to do seriously dramatic actions does not hinge upon grass-roots support. They are not a broad-based movement, but could do (or people claiming to be them could do) major attacks that could influence various players' moves in the region and beyond.
7. It's no longer an "either/or" situation, and maybe it never was. It is not as if people have a choice: pro-US or anti-US. The situation now seems fluid enough that some new groupings and ideologies could emerge, that don't look to either the West or various permutations of political Islam to design a new project.
A major political firestorm may overtake the Middle East this summer. It's hard to predict just how it might start, and harder to predict what it will devour. The time for preventing disasters, such as the one now emerging in Lebanon, is long past, though. The irresponsibility of the United States had a lot to do with this. Although it is hard to define the new forms of leadership and political projects emerging in the Middle East, one thing is certain: they won't be directed from, or funded by, Washington, DC. Nor will they be comprehensible to mainstream US news reporters and analysts who remain blinded by past events or official explanations that tie everything to "terrorism."
~~ Laurie King-Irani is a cofounder of Electronic Lebanon. She teaches social anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Her blog is <http://blogspot.
[indictsharon.net] What is Happening in Lebanon A Preliminary Assessment
THIS IS LEBANON
By the Angry Arab
Sunday, May 20, 2007
The clashes in Lebanon. This is typical. We have seen this before. The Lebanese Army is given an opportunity by the political class (and by the sectarian sects--all of them) to show muscle, but only against the refugee camps of Lebanon. I remember this from my childhood. Back in 1973, Israeli terrorists (headed by Ehud Barak) sneaked into Lebanon and killed Palestinian leaders: one of them was a poet sleeping in his bed (Kamal Nasir). The Lebanese Army did not lift a finger--it never does against Israel. And all the historical accounts of 1948 war in Lebanese history books are plain false: the token Lebanese troops that ostensibly were part of the Arab armies did not even cross the border into Palestine. The Lebanese government in 1973, engineered an attack on the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon: the handful of Lebanese fighter jets were used to bomb the refugee camps. This time around, the Lebanese Army was dragged into this by the Hariri camp. They wanted to start a fight. Elements of the conspiracy are connected: is it a coincidence that US-supported, financed, and armed Dahlan gangs were fighting Hamas in Gaza, while US-supported, financed, and armed Lebanese forces are used against the Palestinians in Nahr Al-Barid refugee camp? Now let us be clear: Fath Al-Islam should not even be seen as a legitimate Palestinian organization: it comprises mostly fanatical Saudis and other Arab nationals. Their rhetoric is comparable to that of fanatical fundamentalist groups although they deny links to Al-Qa`idah. March 14th officials in Lebanon want to connect them to the Syrian regime by insisting that Fath-Al-Islam is the same as Fath-Intifada although the two groups are clearly different, if not divergent. The March 14th camp wanted to instigate this in order to 1) blame this (like everything else) on Syria and on the Palestinians--as usual in Lebanese political culture; 2) to render services to the American patron of the Lebanese regime; 3) to claim that now it is time for the Lebanese Army to hold a monopoly over the use of force in Lebanon although we did not see any enthusiasm on the party of the Lebanese Army to exercise its monopoly over the use of fores when Israel attacked Lebanon last summer, and other Lebanese resisted the invasion and occupation of Lebanon while the Army either stood by or helped in secret--in secret. Have you ever heard an Army defending the land in secret? Abbas Nasir (the Hizbullah supporter and former correspondent for Al-Manar TV), the Beirut correspondent of AlJazeera, was besides himself yesterday and today. He was repulsively cheering the Lebanese Army, and merely reporting Lebanese Army propaganda claims. But he did report one important story that has not been reported in any other Lebanese news media: this will also be hidden from tomorrow's newspapers in Beirut. He reported that armed groups (belonging to March 14th camp) showed up on the scene and offered to help the Lebanese Army in killing Palestinians. And then you see the Sunni Mufti of Lebanon--who has no credentials and is known for his weakness vis-a-vis Hariri tri-monthly payments--came out from his hiding, to blame the Palestinians and to offer his evaluations of what is truly Islamic and what is truly Palestinian. And then mini-Hariri came out and read what they wrote for him in Arabic: he denounced the "terrorists" forgetting that the Sunni fanatical groups in Lebanon flourished since his family began its generous financial support for such groups during the last parliamentary elections, and due to the Hariri policy of intense sectarian agitations. The top Shi`ite cleric (again chosen not for his scholarship but for his loyalty to the Amal movement), `Abdul-Amir Qabalan, also came out to praise the Lebanese Army. What are they praising: the scenes of Lebanese Army tanks shelling the refugee camps of Nahr Al-Barid? But make no mistake: nothing will change. It will end like every other incident of this kind ends: in a stalemate, and in things returning back to abnormal. This is Lebanon.