A Bundel Of 15 English Analysis, Editotials & New Addressing The Unfolding Recent Lebanese Events/رزمة من التعليقات والتحاليل والأخبار باللغة الإنكليزية تغطي أهم وآخر التطورات في لبنان
A Bundel Of English Analysis, Editotials & New Addressing The Unfolding Recent Lebanese Events/ ِ21 آب/2020/August 21/2020 رزمة من التعليقات والتحاليل والأخبار باللغة الإنكليزية تغطي أهم وآخر التطورات في لبنان
*Witnessing the rise and fall of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon/Chibli Mallat/The National/August 20/2020
*Hezbollah shipped explosive chemicals to Lebanon prior to Beirut blast: Report Al Arabiya English/Thursday 20 August 2020
*Why Do ‘Non-Lethal’ Weapons Maim and Kill Protesters?/Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 20/2020
*Why Do ‘Non-Lethal’ Weapons Maim and Kill Protesters?/Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 20/2020
*Lebanese Information Centre (LIC) Statement On The Beirut Explosion/USA/August 18, 2020
*Hezbollah identified with Lebanon’s corruption, faces public anger The Arab Weekly/August 20/2020
*Pressure grows for Hariri’s return as Lebanon leader/Najia Housari/Arab News/August 20/2020
*Lebanon’s momentum for change should not be wasted/Elie Al HindyThe Arab Weekly/August 20/2020
*Lebanese surprised only one Hezbollah suspect convicted in Hariri case The Arab Weekly/August 19/2020
*Rafik Hariri verdict: Nearly $1bn later, where is the justice?/Kareem Shaheen/The National/August 19/2020
*Lebanon Needs Transformation, Not Another Corrupt Unity Government/Hanin Ghaddar/The Washington Institute-Foreign Policy/August 19/2020
*Gun boat diplomacy in Lebanon will not bring back former PM Saad Hariri Makram Rabah/Al Arabiya/Wednesday 19 August 2020
*Lebanon’s government resigned after the Beirut port blast. Here’s what needs to happen now./H.R. McMaster, former White House national security adviser/Think/August 19/2020
*On Feigned Tears Shed for Beirut and Lebanon/Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al Awsat/August 19/2020
*Hariri Tribunal and the Fate of the Probe in the Beirut Blast/Hussam Itani/Asharq Al Awsat/August 19/2020
******* Witnessing the rise and fall of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon/Chibli Mallat/The National/August 20/2020
What began as a quest for justice, 15 years later, became a perversion of it.
The idea of forming a Special Tribunal for Lebanon first emerged on October 1, 2004, when news came of a car bomb severely injuring Marwan Hamadeh, a Lebanese politician and journalist, in Beirut. Terje Rod-Larsen, at the time the UN special co-ordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, and I discussed the idea at a meeting that took place later that day in New York.
As a lawyer and activist, I had sought out Mr Rod-Larsen, who was effectively the man in charge of Lebanon issues at the UN, to ask how he intended to implement the recently passed UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which called for free and fair presidential elections in Lebanon, the surrender of weapons by the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia group Hezbollah and the withdrawal of Syrian troops stationed in the country.
It is important to remember at this point that the Lebanese state, its institutions and many of its politicians were being coerced by Syrian President Bashar Al Assad into toeing the line he was imposing on Lebanon.
It was obvious to me that the attack on Mr Hamadeh was meant to serve as a warning to his two primary allies – the Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Joumblatt and the prime minister Rafik Hariri – because of their stand against Lebanon’s President, Emile Lahoud, and his Syrian backers.
I pointed out to Mr Rod-Larsen the likely emergence of a pattern of assassination attempts with the purpose of punishing the rising anti-Syrian coalition in Lebanon, and the need to anticipate and respond to it.
Sure enough, matters got worse in Lebanon.
Hariri was forced out of office in the second week of October, despite the fact that, under pressure from the Syrian regime, he had voted for Mr Lahoud’s extension. According to a later UN investigative report, President Bashar Al Assad had told Hariri: “I will bring down the whole of Lebanon over your head if you don’t support the extension of Lahoud’s presidency.”
Meanwhile, no arrests were made following the attack on Mr Hamadeh.
After the assassination of Hariri in another car bomb in February, 2005, I suggested to Nick Rostow, the legal adviser to the US delegation to the UN, that an international tribunal be set up immediately.
It is still my view that the assassination should have been treated not as terrorism, but rather as a crime against humanity, which would have qualified it for referral to the International Criminal Court. This would have negated the need to build a tribunal from scratch. At the time, moreover, the ICC had shown more competence in dealing with crimes of this nature and magnitude. Amnesty International also agreed with that categorisation because the attack had claimed 22 lives (including Hariri’s). It did not help matters that the word “terrorism” was – and, in fact, remains – undefined in international law.
It was a missed opportunity.
Instead, an international probe was instituted by the UN a few weeks later, which in turn recommended the establishment of a tribunal. Two excellent investigators were appointed in 2005: Irish deputy police commissioner Peter Fitzgerald and German federal prosecutor Detlev Mehlis. Both proved remarkable in their efforts to push back against the Lebanese-Syrian security complex and force the arrest of four Lebanese generals suspected of covering up the assassination and deflecting the course of justice. Two prominent journalists, Samir Kassir and Gebrane Tueni, were murdered that year – I believe, by this security complex – yet there was progress being made in the investigation.
In January 2006, however, the probe screeched to a halt, with the dynamism of the Cedar Revolution – a chain of nationwide demonstrations seeking truth and justice following Hariri’s assassination – undermined by a new appointee, former Belgian prosecutor Serge Brammertz.
After his appointment in January, little serious work was done for about two years, during which time he worked as an investigator and then as a prosecutor, botching the enquiry process as well as the legal work.
The four generals arrested on the request of Mr Mehlis were imprisoned without any set court date. Meanwhile, assassinations of those who stood up to the pro-Syrian and pro-Hezbollah forces continued unabated. Mr Lahoud and his allies were adversarial towards the STL and, as corpses piled up, the tribunal became little more than a paper tiger.
The prosecution would only issue the first indictments five years later, after a courageous Lebanese investigator named Wissam Eid conducted a detailed analysis of mobile phone signals on the day of the killing to isolate certain individuals he suspected of being involved. One of the suspicious phone calls was made by Salim Ayyash, a seemingly low-level Hezbollah operative. Ayyash and four others were indicted by the STL. One of the four, Mustafa Badreddine, later died in Syria, and proceedings against him were ended. Eid, though, was assassinated in 2008. It is worth noting that the STL did not mention his name in the public statement.
Nor, since January 2006, has there been a single word mentioned about the openly brutal obstruction of justice by Mr Al Assad, Mr Lahoud and Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah. Journalists, instead, were cited for various insignificant leaks.
Apart from being toothless, the STL was also leaderless for a long time. For a while Antonio Cassese, a distinguished international criminal scholar and judge, presided over the tribunal. From my correspondence with him, I knew he wanted to take the case forward. He was of a different calibre. But luck deserted Lebanon again, as Cassese died of cancer shortly after his resignation in 2011.
I was, therefore, hardly surprised by how timid this week’s judgment turned out to be.
The only person found guilty was Ayyash, who led the assassination cell, but was the smallest fish in the conspiracy. And the STL found no grounds to condemn Nasrallah for his steadfast refusal to surrender Ayyash either, since his indictment in 2010.
The enquiry was botched in so many ways, with manifest errors in law. The most shocking among them was the tribunal’s refusal to investigate those whom it said had the strongest motives in Hariri’s killing. The legal expert in me wonders how will any teacher of criminal law explain to his or her students that motive is not a component of a crime – as it was bewildering to hear the STL president say this week. The streets of a Beirut, recently battered by explosions in its port area, seethed with disappointment and anger.
The line heard on the street aptly summarised the judgment: “The STL found that Salim Ayyash, alone, made a telephone call.”
*Chibli Mallat is an emeritus law professor, international criminal lawyer and, until September, co-ordinator of the Lebanese activist coalition TMT
Hezbollah shipped explosive chemicals to Lebanon prior to Beirut blast: Report Al Arabiya English/Thursday 20 August 2020
Iran’s elite Quds Force shipped ammonium nitrate to Hezbollah in Beirut around the same time a Moldovan-flagged tanker arrived carrying 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate – the same chemical substance that would later cause an enormous explosion and engulf Beirut’s port and surrounding area, German media outlet WELT reported Wednesday. Previous reports have found that Hezbollah had stock of the substance in northwest London and Cyprus, while other reports also indicate that stockpiles were present in Germany and Kuwait, WELT reported. WELT, citing Western security sources, reported that Iran-backed Hezbollah had received large deliveries of ammonium nitrate from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force – a US-designated terror organization. Ammonium nitrate, commonly used in fertilizer, can also be used in weapon production.
On July 16, 2013, a total of 270 tonnes of ammonium nitrate was delivered from Iran to Lebanon, costing roughly 180,000 euros ($213,200, at today’s exchange rate). Months later, on October 23, another 270 tonnes of the chemical were delivered, costing around 141,000 euros, WELT reported. The article added that a third shipment was made, but the amount delivered was uncertain. “A total of one billion Iranian rials was calculated for the delivery on April 4, 2014 (around 61,438 euros). Measured against the values of the other two deliveries, this could have been 90 to 130 tons. In total, the three deliveries are for a quantity of 630 to 670 tons of ammonium nitrate,” the WELT article conjectured. The cargo arriving in October 2013 was transported via plane, presumably on an Iranian airline, such as Mahan Air, which is sanctioned by the United States. The other deliveries were made via land or sea, the article alleged.
The explosion at the Port of Beirut has left at least 178 dead, more than 6,000 injured and destroyed vast swaths of the city. However, there is no evidence that links Hezbollah’s shipments to the ammonium nitrate stored at the port responsible for the explosion. Hezbollah has strongly denied that it was storing arms at the blast site. “We have nothing in the port: not an arms depot, nor a missile depot nor missiles nor rifles nor bombs nor bullets nor ammonium nitrate,” he added. However, it has long been assumed that Hezbollah controls at least some aspects of port operations. “The fact that a massive amount of explosive material was just sitting in the Port of Beirut – long suspected to be exploited by Hezbollah for illicit trade and smuggling – raises troubling questions about whether the Iran-backed terror group, which is the political glue that holds together Lebanon’s current government, had any intentions of deploying that material in an attack,” wrote Jonathan Schanzer, the senior vice president at Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).
Obtaining ammonium nitrate
WELT places Hezbollah operative Mohammed Qasir as heading the purchasing operation. Qasir was designated by the US Treasury in 2018 for acting as a “critical conduit for financial disbursements” from the Quds Force to Hezbollah.
Qasir, based in Damascus, Syria, worked closely with a Quds Force unit that was under the supervision of Iranian Commander Qassem Soleimani, who himself was assassinated in January 2020, Washington Institute analyst Matthew Levitt wrote in March 2019. Hezbollah has been heavily involved in neighboring Syria’s war, and teaming up with the Quds Force meant that the Lebanon group could “develop integrated and efficient weapons procurement and logistics pipelines through Syria and into Lebanon that can be leveraged to greatly expand Hezbollah’s international weapons procurement capabilities,” Levitt wrote.
There is still no explicit evidence linking Hezbollah to the nitrate stored at the port of Beirut, but many have pointed the finger at the Iran-backed group’s regional behavior and past track record as indication that the group was likely linked to the chemicals stored at the port.
Why Do ‘Non-Lethal’ Weapons Maim and Kill Protesters?/Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 20/2020
Riot police from Beirut and Baghdad to Hong Kong and Minsk often use so-called “non-lethal” weapons for crowd control — so why do protesters keep dying and being maimed? As street protests worldwide have multiplied, rights groups have sounded the alarm about tear gas, rubber bullets, stun guns and other anti-riot weapons causing serious wounds and fatalities. Law enforcement use them to avoid firing live munitions at violent protesters who may attack them, hurl rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails, start fires or try to blind them with laser pointers. But malicious and excessive use, often but not only in authoritarian states, has long since earned riot control tools the official designation of “less-lethal weapons”. The arsenal also includes truncheons, shields and restraints, chemical irritants, electric shock devices, baton rounds, flash-bang grenades, water cannon and high-decibel acoustic devices.
Police forces “have at their disposal a dizzying array of weapons and kit that, while known as ‘less-lethal’, can cause serious injury or even death”, says an Amnesty International report. “Some of the equipment we’ve surveyed is worthy of a torture chamber and should be banned outright,” said the group’s specialist Marek Marczynski in a 2015 report on the subject. In Iraq, which has been torn by repeat anti-government protests since last year, dozens of protesters have been killed by tear-gas canisters fired directly at them. They have died of blunt force trauma to their eye sockets, skulls and chests as security forces have shot the grenades in flat, not upward, trajectories and at close range. Amnesty documented that several such deaths were caused by military-grade tear gas and smoke grenades made in Serbia and Iran that are about 10 times heavier than standard-issue canisters. “This has had devastating results, in multiple cases piercing the victims’ skulls, resulting in gruesome wounds and death after the grenades embed inside their heads,” said Amnesty’s Lynn Maalouf.
‘Excessive use of force’
Human Rights Watch reported similar severe injuries in the protests that shook Beirut in the aftermath of the massive August 4 explosion that leveled parts of the Lebanese capital and killed more than 180 people. HRW said it observed “security forces fire a tear-gas canister directly at a protester’s head, in violation of international standards, severely injuring him.” Security forces were also beating demonstrators with clubs and “firing rubber bullets and birdshot pellets indiscriminately,” it said in a blog posting. Amnesty said it had “monitored the largely peaceful protests on 8 August where tear gas, rubber bullets and pump-action pellets were fired recklessly into crowds.” Deaths have also been caused elsewhere by so-called kinetic impact rounds, such as plastic and rubber bullets, first used by the British army in Northern Ireland 50 years ago. Protesters have lost eyes to them in the French yellow-vest demonstrations, Palestinian anti-Israel protests and in the unrest that followed the George Floyd killing in the United States. The force of such munitions, designed to bounce off the ground and hit people’s legs, can break bones, tear vessels and cause internal bleeding when fired directly at them. Lebanese surgeon Mohammed Jawad Khalifeh tweeted that one Beirut hospital had to perform seven eye surgeries and treat “an exploded spleen” after one night of street clashes this month. Amnesty has argued that the indiscriminate use of multiple such projectiles has “no legitimate law enforcement use” and urged a ban on the most dangerous rubber-coated metal bullets. Tear gas, says Amnesty, is also far from harmless when fired in excessive quantities, in enclosed spaces or when it sparks panic and triggers a crowd stampede. While most healthy people recover from the effects of tear gas — burning skin, streaming eyes and breathing difficulties — children, pregnant women, asthmatics and the elderly are at far greater risk. The U.N. Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials encourages states to develop less-lethal weapons “to enable a graduated response in the use of force.”
Amnesty has also acknowledged that less-lethal equipment can reduce the risk of death or injury on all sides when used responsibly by “well-trained and fully accountable” officers. But it warned that in scores of countries “law enforcement officials commit a wide range of human rights violations using such equipment -– including torture and other ill-treatment in custody, as well as excessive, arbitrary and unnecessary use of force against demonstrators.”
August 18: Justice is the Lebanese People’s Right/Hanna Saleh/Asharq Al Awsat/August 20/2020
In a dangerous precedent, Lebanese President Michel Aoun settled the controversy over the August 4 earthquake; getting ahead of the judicial investigator and local and international investigations, he declared that is it “impossible” for the massive blast at the Beirut Port to have been the result of a Hezbollah weapons depot exploding, adding that the party “did not store weapons at the port.”
The laughable aspect here is that his verdict on this sensitive issue came before the missing buried under the rubble of Beirut Port had been found. Its remain a political, not a judicial verdict, as it got ahead of the findings of the French investigators and the FBI, and ignored the crucial facts of the case that have been disclosed, starting from the date at which the shipment of death arrived and leading up to and ending with the destruction of Beirut on August 4, the day a war crime was committed against the capital, its people and its inhabitants, all of them.
Everything we know so far shows that those responsible for all the bloodshed and the destruction and material losses, which are far higher than that of the July war, are liable to far more than administrative-security accountability alone.
Also drolly, the settling of the issue preceded the Special Tribunal for Lebanon’s verdict on Rafik Hariri’s assassination, a conclusion that provided an exemplar when it broke with a long period during which blame for major political crimes was restricted to anonymity. The murderers evaded justice. These heinous crimes were invested in to further major political projects that subjugated the country to foreign domination, first that of the Syrian regime and then the Iranian regime.
Much will be said about the Special Tribunal’s verdict, and much will be written. The constant is the consolidation of the tribunal’s legitimacy and the attenuation of the smear campaigns and accusations that it is politicized and not to be relied on. The verdict, with the undeniable evidence that was provided, affirmed that the crime had been committed for political reasons. Political factions with experience in committing acts that fall under the category of terrorism stood behind it. The court left no room for doubt when it found that the Syrian regime and Hezbollah had motives for committing the crime and even ascertained that the decision to physically liquidate was made after the Bristol Conference, which demanded the withdrawal of the Syrian regime’s army from Lebanon.
The tribunal also ascertained the precise role played by each of the accused, from Mustafa Badreddine, a prominent Hezbollah military commander who is said to have been killed in Syria and thus was not charged, to the four others who were accused. Only one of the armed group’s commanders, Salim Ayyash, was found guilty after the court did not find evidence presented against his comrades, Oneissi, Merhi and Sabra, sufficiently compelling, and it is known that the absence of the precisely needed proof does not imply its absence.
For this reason, the tribunal clarified that this operation demanded a great deal of resources and capabilities, thereby ruling out the possibility that it had been perpetrated by a lone wolf. Instead, it ascertained that the operation had required the collaboration of a group of individuals who are members of a fully-fledged, highly capable organization that is not easily penetrable. It goes on to ascertain that Ayyash was not alone and had been assisted by a reliable group, which proves that Hezbollah cadres formed the network that carried out the operation.
The judicial verdict, which took all these years to reach, was justified by evidence that leaves no room for doubt and undeniable proof, not political by analysis.
Whatever has been said, the ruling did require all the time and money that had been spent. This would not have happened had it not been for the total lack of justice in Lebanon, after the judiciary had been subjugated by the corrupt ruling regime. This state remains unchanged to this day, and Baabada Palace’s confiscation of judicial appointments is the latest manifestation. This verdict changed the course of history that had been taken since 1975, wherein the perpetrators of major crimes are left anonymous. The decision affirmed it is better to receive justice late than never, and that the era of plucking out the country’s great men, such as Kamal Jumblatt, Rene Mouwwad, Mufti Hassan Khaled, and others, to impose political directives, is no longer possible.
This is precisely how Lebanon should deal with the genocidal crime that destroyed half of Beirut and had catastrophic repercussions from which Lebanon will not quickly recover.
The tragic event that took only a few minutes to unfold will remain in people’s hearts. Realistically, no one will be capable of going back to their normal lives or even merely continuing to abide by the restrictions imposed by the epidemic! Therefore, there is no alternative to demanding full transparency and serious accountability. This would slightly compensate those who paid the high price, especially since Lebanon is now in the midst of an existential phase characterized by extreme tensions between the majority of the Lebanese and the ruling mafia!
Those who rose furiously in the aftermath of the Beirut blast insisted on justice, rejecting a local investigation and demanding a joint or international probe. This demand stems from the conviction that the Lebanese judiciary, which does not have all of the required investigative tools, has lost its independence, and many in the judiciary fear retaliation. The assassination of judges on court benches more than twenty years ago has not left their memory.
The investigation into this crime against humanity needs to expose the entire scenario of the ship of death, from who is responsible for seizing its cargo to unloading it in warehouse No. 12; It must expose those who were part of the poorly devised cover-up of the presence of a deadly pillow under people’s heads by looking into internal correspondences that were of no effect.
State Security has revealed that since the 3rd of last June, the Prime Minister has known of the details, along with the ministers of defense and labor. Then, on July 20, Aoun and Diab received a detailed memo warning of the danger threatening to destroy Beirut, but no one took action to save the capital and the lives of its residents!
The investigation is called upon to go back to the date of February 21, 2014, the day Colonel Joseph Skaf wrote to the Ministry of Finance’s Smuggling, Inspection and Search Agency demanding that the ship “RHOSUS”, loaded with 2,750 tons of “ammonium nitrate” be removed from the port.
This has cost him his life after he was subsequently treacherously murdered, and his family has been waiting for years to learn the details of the crime! The question was, why wasn’t the shipment returned to its owner, only for it to become clear that there was no known owner… so the real owner kept quiet, but he is being covered! And because the special tribunal has demonstrated its high degree of credibility and ended the era of political crimes going unpunished, it is unacceptable to insist on covering it up with a local investigation, even if Hezbollah is behind it. Just as the court has proven that the assassination of ex-Prime Minister Hariri is a link in the broader chain of control and subjugation, the majority of the Lebanese consider the crime of August 4 to be the most significant link in the plan to tighten the Iranian hegemony of Lebanon. Thus, there is no alternative to adhering to an international investigation because it is the only way to achieve justice for the Lebanese!
Lebanese Information Centre (LIC) Statement On The Beirut Explosion/USA/August 18, 2020
At around 6:10pm on Tuesday, August 4, 2020, a massive explosion rocked the Lebanese capital, causing catastrophic damage that was unprecedented even for Beirut, which has seen several rounds of war in the last five decades.
The blast, seemingly caused by the storage of some 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate in Warehouse 12 at the Beirut Port, left more than 170 dead and nearly 6,000 injured, in addition to dozens of missing persons. The explosion caused severe damage to residential buildings, factories, shops, and hospitals estimated at up to $30 billion. The destruction spread over miles from the epicenter of the explosion in one of the most densely populated cities on the Mediterranean and has left some 300,000 people without homes. Without a doubt, it has only exacerbated the dire economic crisis gripping Lebanon for the past year.
In view of this calamity, the LIC extends its deepest condolences to the families of the victims and wishes the wounded a speedy recovery. We are also very appreciative of the swift worldwide response in support of the Lebanese people, especially from the United States, which has generously allocated $18 million to the relief effort and has provided technical support to the blast probe through the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
In the immediate aftermath of the explosion, the LIC launched several initiatives to aid and assist the Lebanese people:
The LIC engaged a number of Lebanese political, humanitarian and civil society groups in Lebanon as well as the Lebanese Army command in order to determine the most efficient pathway for aid and relay this information to decision-makers in Washington.
The LIC contacted a number of senior officials in the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon, members of the U.S. Congress, relevant congressional committees and subcommittees, the U.S.-Lebanon Friendship Caucus, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The discussions centered around providing the most possible aid directly to the Lebanese people, especially in medicine, food and other crucial supplies.
The LIC mobilized its chapters around the nation, launched direct fundraising campaigns and collaborated with other U.S.-based charity groups such as the ‘Children of Mary’ to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in aid to those affected by this tragedy.
In closing, the LIC:
Expresses its sincere appreciation to individuals, organizations, and countries that have contributed to the relief effort, especially the United States.
Demands an independent international commission of inquiry into the cause of the blast and the conditions in which these materials were stored
Condemns the irresponsible manner in which Lebanese authorities stored these hazardous substances and their refusal to accept an international investigation.
Stands with the Lebanese people in demanding a change of power through early parliamentary elections, allowing the country to restore the foundations of a true sovereign state and recover from the hegemony of armed militias, neglect and corruption.
Emphasizes that all assistance should be provided directly to those affected and not to corrupt and irresponsible Lebanese authorities.
Remains steadfast in its commitment to help the Lebanese people in their struggle to reclaim their country and to represent their voice in the United States.
Hezbollah identified with Lebanon’s corruption, faces public anger The Arab Weekly/August 20/2020
BEIRUT–Fifteen years after the assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, Hezbollah has risen to become the overarching power in a country that is now collapsing under its feet amid a series of devastating crises.
A UN-backed tribunal on Tuesday convicted a member of the Iranian-backed group of conspiring to kill Hariri in a 2005 bombing and acquitted three others.
The verdict came at a time when Lebanon’s economy has collapsed. Institutions from the security services to the presidency, occupied by a Hezbollah ally, have been found wanting, and people are struggling with the aftermath of the massive explosion that shredded central Beirut this month.
Added to this, there is no functioning government and there is a spike in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has denied that the group has ever controlled Lebanese governments or that it has a majority that would allow it to act on its own.
But Lebanon is slipping from Hezbollah’s hands, said a political source familiar with the thinking among the group’s Christian allies.
“By getting the majority (in parliamentary elections) and a president on their side, they thought they controlled the country, but what happened now with Hezbollah and its allies is that they got power but they lost the country and the people.”
Hezbollah has faced growing criticism for its perceived failure to deliver on promised reforms since winning a parliamentary majority with its allies in 2018.
The government – nominated by Hezbollah and its allies after the previous administration led by Saad al-Hariri, son of the slain PM, was toppled by a civic uprising last October – resigned over the Aug. 4 blast.
It had tried to negotiate a rescue package with the International Monetary Fund, but was blocked by the very powerbrokers who appointed it.
“There are so many problems internally apart from the port explosion,” says Magnus Ranstorp, a Hezbollah expert. “The country is breaking under their feet.”
Fawaz Gerges, Middle East expert at the London School of Economics, adds: “This is one of the most fundamental challenges facing Lebanon since its independence from (France) in 1943 as you have now multiple crises facing Lebanon and Hezbollah.” “I fear this (the tribunal verdict) could provide a trigger. The country, which is already divided, will become more polarised along sectarian lines as opposed to political and ideological lines.”
Western donors say they will not bail out Lebanon without fundamental reforms to a corrupt system.
At rock bottom
US Undersecretary of State David Hale said on Wednesday there is no more foreign money for a Lebanese leadership that enriches itself and spurns the popular will.
“They (the Lebanese people) see rulers who use the system in order to enrich themselves and to ignore popular demands,” Hale said. “That era is over. There is no more money for that. They are at rock bottom and sooner or later, I believe, that the leadership will appreciate the fact that it is time to change.”
Asked about Hezbollah’s role in any potential government, Hale said: “Reforms are contrary to the interests of all the status quo leaders and that very much includes Hezbollah, which today is perceived as a big part of the problem,” he said.
Mohanad Hage Ali, fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, said Hezbollah had “failed miserably” to keep its election promise to fight corruption. “They literally delivered nothing on this promise. In fact, their anti-corruption campaign is now a popular joke.” “As is the case with most of this political class, Hezbollah hasn’t been in a weaker position than they are right now,” he said.
The militant Shia movement, which has acted as a spearhead for Tehran in Syria’s civil war and across the region, is also facing public anger over the explosion in the Beirut port that has traumatised the country.
The detonation of what authorities say was 2,700 tonnes of unsafely stored ammonium nitrate fuelled outrage over government negligence, incompetence and inaction. Hezbollah is not only the predominant power in Lebanon but is seen as protecting a corrupt political class that has driven Lebanon into the ground.
“Losing the narrative”
“What Hezbollah doesn’t understand about the port explosion, the outcry, the protests, is that people view it as the latest manifestation of the corrupt elite and they hold Hezbollah responsible for safeguarding this elite,” said Gerges. “Hezbollah is losing the narrative inside Lebanon,” he said. Many Lebanese, including some Christians who once supported Hezbollah, have turned against the group even though it is not responsible for an economic crisis that had piled up for years under previous governments. The mood changed after Nasrallah gave a televised address denying responsibility for the blast and warning protesters that any more attacks on the system and its leaders would meet a robust response.
“You would have expected him to have reached out to the public by saying he would do anything to find out what has happened, that ‘we are with the people’,” Gerges said.But Hezbollah’s priorities are geo-strategic rather than Lebanon-centric.
It fears change in Lebanon might undermine its ability to influence a political system that allows it to maintain its weapons and fighters, analysts say. As a result, Hezbollah has become bogged down in Lebanon. “They want to maintain their powerful position in the country, they want to maintain their weapons, they want to maintain a veto in the decision-making process while at the same time they want to tell people they are against corruption and they are different from the corrupt ruling elite. These contradictions have caught up with Hezbollah,” Gerges said.
Khalil Gebara, Senior Policy Fellow at Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, said: “After the blast, it is clear that the political system is also close to collapse … Hezbollah’s objective today is to extend the life of the Lebanese political system.”
Although the court found no evidence of direct involvement by the leadership of Hezbollah, the judges said Hariri’s killing was clearly a politically motivated act of terrorism. A Hezbollah operative was also found guilty.
The verdict, analysts say, is likely to exacerbate the difficulties of Hezbollah, already designated by the United States and several others as a terrorist group.
“More and more countries will likely view Hezbollah as a paramilitary terrorist organisation,” Gerges said.
Ranstorp says even before the Hariri verdict the mood in Europe and Washington had swung against a Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon, because of the axis of Shia power Iran has built across Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
The challenge to Hezbollah comes as it and its forces in Syria are being regularly attacked by Israeli warplanes, and powerful allied militias in Iraq are under pressure.
Most analysts say Hezbollah will sit tight, hoping that time will work in its favour, either through a new US president or a possible new understanding between Tehran and the Trump administration ahead of the November election.
“They want to preserve the (Lebanese) state as it stands today. They don’t want a strong state. But they don’t want a fragmented weak one because that means more headaches, more challenges for them,” Hage Ali said.
Pressure grows for Hariri’s return as Lebanon leader/Najia Housari/Arab News/August 20/2020
BEIRUT: Lebanese President Michel Aoun said on Thursday that he plans to include “competent figures representing the voice of the street” in the new government. Ten days after Prime Minister Hassan Diab’s government resigned in the wake of the Beirut port blast, Aoun is yet to set a date for parliamentary consultations to name a leader for the next government. In a tweet on Thursday, he added that it is not clear if talks will take place soon. Diab’s government stepped down amid widespread public anger following the port explosion that devastated Beirut, killing 180 people and causing widespread damage.
Opponents of Diab’s leadership claim it was a “shadow government” dominated by Hezbollah that failed to carry out reforms demanded by the international community. Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri is fighting to restore Saad Hariri as prime minister.
Hariri’s government of national unity resigned in October, 2019, after violent protests broke out amid claims of growing government corruption. Protesters called for a transitional government to implement reforms demanded by the global community to help Lebanon overcome its economic crisis. Aoun and Berri held a meeting two days ago in which the parliament speaker suggested Hariri return to the leadership. MPs have reported Berri saying that he considers Hariri “the perfect man for the stage.”Berri also claims that he has Hezbollah’s backing for Hariri. Sources say he is insisting on a political government, not a technocratic one, and wants Hariri to provide it with an acceptable cover in light of the political and economic crises facing Lebanon. However, the dispute between Hariri and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) worsened during his time as prime minister, bringing an end to the relationship between the two parties. French President Emmanuel Macron told Lebanese leaders during his visit to Beirut two days after the port explosion that he would return to Lebanon on Sept. 1 to ensure reforms were being carried out.
He called on officials to “assume their responsibilities during the coming weeks, launch reforms and form a national unity government.” Future Movement leader Mustafa Alloush told Arab News: “The conditions for Hariri heading any future government have not changed. What is required is an independent government that convinces the international community of the possibility of helping Lebanon and persuades the Lebanese of its ability to rescue (the country). “The government must enjoy wide and exceptional powers in order to be able to be productive and eliminate the burden of obstruction that parliament poses.” While Berri and Hariri are expected to continue discussions, Alloush could not predict a date for any meeting. “There is a positive endeavor that Berri is undertaking and he has presented a government project to Aoun,” Alloush said.
He said that “the political dispute with the FPM continues. What is required is that the FPM — and not Hariri — changes.”
Lebanon’s momentum for change should not be wasted/Elie Al HindyThe Arab Weekly/August 20/2020
Lebanon is at a crossroad with an opportunity to take the right turn. But the international, regional and local landscape may hinder a positive change.
As I write these words, Beirut is overwhelmed by the visit of high calibre foreign visitors: the French president and ministers of foreign affairs and of armed forces, the US under-secretary of state, the Turkish vice-president, the ministers of foreign affairs of Germany, Egypt, Iran and many others…
This proves anew how much love, respect and support Lebanon and the Lebanese people have from their friends around the world and gives hope that the dire economic situation is not forlorn.
However, this surge in international attention on Lebanon is not necessarily all positive. Lebanon reaches this crossroad amid the movement of political tectonic plates in the region whose main players are often blamed — rightfully — for much of Lebanon’s corrosion in the past, present and probably future.
US policy consistently prioritised Israel’s security. Therefore, facilitating a deal on the Lebanese-Israeli borders might require cutting Hezbollah “some slack” internally and delaying sanctions on the party’s brokers and allies who are squeezing the life out of Lebanon. Also prioritising the “Deal of the Century” that is slowly becoming a reality, although rejected by many, will probably cause aftershocks that will be felt in the streets of Lebanon.
On the other hand, France continues to blow hot and cold reflecting its ambivalent and perplexing policies on Lebanon. The French want to save Lebanon but pursue horse-trading between the US and Iran. They want to replace the Lebanese polity altogether but continue to befriend most of the Lebanese politicians.
Meanwhile, Iran could not care less about Lebanon and considers it as a mere pawn on the broader chess-board. They will not hesitate to sacrifice Lebanon for the survival of the regime or of its strategic assets (i.e. Hezbollah).
On the other side of the Gulf, Lebanon’s experience with the Saudi policy is bitter: They drag their allies into compromises and the Syrian quagmire, only to give up later and decide not to invest any further efforts, finances, or political support, leaving Lebanon to its doom.
With the UAE pushing for its own views, Qatar closely coordinating with both Islamists and Hezbollah, Turkey expanding its presence and influence in northern Lebanon as part of its regional policies, Russia focusing on defeating the US in Lebanon, Egypt striving to resuscitate its regional role, Lebanon finds itself dealing with a conundrum of contradictory policies and clashing interests. Such troubled times usually end up badly for the “weakest link,” a characteristic that has become a synonym for Lebanon.
On the internal level, the picture does not seem any brighter. The main political forces are exploiting the Beirut blast disaster to preserve or improve their benefits. Not only completely delusional, they are also in complete denial that the major changes that occurred in October 17 have been further entrenched with the port explosion. They fail to acknowledge that politics can no longer be “business as usual.” On the other end of the spectrum, the politically immature protest movement continues to hem and haw with the rage of a lion but the muscles of a cat.
Is there a way out?
The humanitarian crisis resulting from the Beirut explosion and the economic crisis that has been hitting Lebanon in the past year are only by-products of the real political crisis that has not been dealt with so far. Thus, responding to humanitarian needs alone will only leave Lebanon under even more significant economic pressures. Solving the bigger economic crisis can only be done through working out the political issues. Political reform must necessarily happen with faithfulness to the “raison d’être” of this country that was initially created to be a land of freedom and refuge to the persecuted, and a bridge between the east and the west. Thus, reform must enshrine internal coexistence and external neutrality, democracy, accountability, human rights and freedom.
While venturing into the uncalculated and unwise suggestion of “system change” is neither relevant nor useful now, building state institutions on solid ground is imperative. This is necessarily at odds with the presence of armed militias as well as corrupt and uncontested leaders of various sects or populist reformists, none of whom can be part of the solution.
At this crossroad, Lebanon needs to take the right path of a credible and legitimate emergency government. It will certainly be met halfway by an international community eager to help. The next government should be impartial and independent with new figures driven by innovative governance paradigms. The top priority of such a government should be to stabilise the situation, organise snap elections and start immediately the long-overdue structural reforms.
In parallel, the international community should not commit the sin of trying to revive a factitious stability through a “national unity government” or try to provide oxygen-funding under the pretext of avoiding collapse, because this will only delay the collapse for a few months and prolong the agony of the Lebanese people.The momentum for taking the right turn for Lebanon is there, like it has been many times before, but unfortunately looking at the international and local scenery, it is very possible that this momentum could be lost and this opportunity for change wasted.
Pity the nation that continues to be a battleground for competing international interests. Pity the nation that continues to be led by leaders who lack basic statesmanship and who are less, much less, than what its people deserve.
Pity the nation whose reformists are as corrupt, incompetent and shortsighted as its establishment.
Pity the nation that is neither able to turn the page nor able to start a new one.
Pity the nation that is unceasingly destined to rise from its own ashes and rebuild itself.
Pity the nation… again!
**Elie Al Hindy (PhD) is an Associate Professor of Government and International Relations and Director of the Middle East Institute for Research & Strategic Studies.
Lebanese surprised only one Hezbollah suspect convicted in Hariri case The Arab Weekly/August 19/2020
The court found that “the assassination was undoubtedly a political act directed by those for whom Hariri posed a threat.”
LEIDSCHENDAM, Netherlands –The Netherlands-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon, in charge of trying the case of the assassination of Lebanon’s former PM Rafik Hariri and his aides, surprised the Lebanese by convicting just one Hezbollah suspect, Salim Ayyash.
Lebanese politicians, however, have said that the most important aspect of the ruling is the political message it contained when it placed the February 14, 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri within the context of the Syrian regime and Hezbollah’s resentment of the victim’s behaviour.
The main defendants in the case, who all have links to Hezbollah, are Salim Jamil Ayyash, Hassan Habib Merhi, Hussein Hassan Oneisi and Assad Hassan Sabra, in addition to a fifth individual named Mustafa Badreddine who was “killed in Syria.”
Saad Hariri, who came to The Hague to hear the court’s ruling in person, picked up on the political dimensions of this ruling, saying: “We all know the truth today, and justice must still be done, no matter how long it takes.”
He also expressed his satisfaction with the court’s decision, asking Hezbollah to cooperate and hand over his father’s convicted assassin, while urging the Lebanese not to accept for their homeland to become a haven for assassins or a refuge to escape punishment.
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah had said in his Friday speech that the party would deal with the court’s decision “as if it had not been issued.”
On Tuesday, Lebanese President Michel Aoun considered that achieving justice in the assassination of Hariri and his companions “responded to everyone’s desire to uncover the circumstances of this heinous crime.”
Aoun added that Hariri’s assassination “threatened stability and civil peace in Lebanon, and made a victim of a patriotic figure, loved by his admirers and followers, and carrying a national project.”
On Tuesday, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon ended the six-year long trial by indicting one of the four defendants in the case, all Hezbollah members.
The reading of the court’s findings took hours. Judge David Re, president of the court, concluded by saying “The First Instance Chamber finds Salim Ayyash unquestionably guilty as an accomplice in committing a terrorist act using explosive material, deliberately killing Rafik Hariri, killing 21 other people, and attempting to kill 226 people,” in reference to the wounded in the car bombing that killed Hariri and his companions.
The court found the other three defendants—Hassan Habib Marei, Hussein Hassan Oneisi, and Asad Sabra— “not guilty of the charges brought against them.”
In its decision, the court stated that “the assassination was undoubtedly a political act directed by those for whom Hariri posed a threat.”
The court added that the defendants “were involved in the conspiracy at least on February 14, 2005 and the period preceding it, and the evidence does not prove with certainty who directed them to kill Hariri and then liquidate him as a political opponent.”
“Syria and Hezbollah may have had motives to eliminate Mr. Hariri, and some of his political allies. However, there was no evidence that Hezbollah leadership had any involvement in Mr Hariri’s murder and there is no direct evidence of Syrian involvement in it,” Judge Re said.
Rafik Hariri’s son and former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri considered that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon had revealed the “truth” of his father’s assassination and announced on his behalf, on behalf of his family and on behalf of the families of the victims his “acceptance” of the verdict.
“The court has ruled, and we, in the name of the family of martyr Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and on behalf of the families of the martyrs and victims, accept the court’s ruling, and we want justice to be done,” Hariri said at a press conference held in Leidschendam near The Hague, where the court is located. “We all know the truth today, and justice must still be done, no matter how long it takes,” he added.
“It is time now for Hezbollah to make sacrifices,” he added, “and it has become clear that the network of killers came from its ranks, and they believe that for this reason they will escape justice and punishment; so I repeat: I will not rest until they are brought to justice and their punishment is carried out.”
Lebanese political sources considered that finding only Salim Ayyash guilty of the crime does not eliminate the participation of others in the crime, as such an operation must have been carried out by a very reliable and tight group of professionals from Hezbollah that would be difficult to breach, which is why it is difficult to know all those involved and gather sufficient evidence to convict them. A Lebanese politician considered that the decision to assassinate a figure such as Rafik Hariri could not have been made by only Nasrallah and Qassem Soleimani. They must have been partners in the decision, the politician said, but a crime of this magnitude cannot be carried out without Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s personal approval. “What we got today was the technical part of the truth, but the assassination of Rafik Hariri is an integrated political project, and the technical truth that we knew is nothing but a tool for this project,” the politician added. He told The Arab Weekly that stopping at technical truth and justice is a deficient option, because they do not constitute a sufficient deterrent to stop the killing machine.
He said punishment was an inevitable duty because “that criminal system is immoral and evil. It cannot be morally deterred by the disclosure of the truth.”
Rafik Hariri verdict: Nearly $1bn later, where is the justice?/Kareem Shaheen/The National/August 19/2020
Even after the Special Tribunal for Lebanon convicted one Hezbollah operative, too many questions remain.
On Tuesday, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon issued its judgment in the case of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination. It took a little over 15 years of investigations, delays and hearings since the bombing that devastated downtown Beirut on Valentine’s Day 2005 for the court to reach a decision. It found one member of Hezbollah guilty.
Full disclosure: I worked for the court for two years between 2011 and 2013.
The prosecution had indicted five members of the militant group in the case, which was built on a vast trove of telecommunications evidence and “co-location” to identify the suspects by tracking their mobile phones for days as they carried out surveillance of the Lebanese prime minister, bought the lorry that was laden with explosives and carried out the bombing.
The telecommunications evidence was built on the earlier work of Wissam Eid, a heroic Lebanese security officer who was murdered for his role in uncovering it.
The trial took place in absentia because Hezbollah refused to hand over the suspects, after carrying a broad propaganda campaign to discredit it as a tool of American and Israeli imperialism.
One of the suspects was Mustafa Badreddine, who was the overall military commander of Hezbollah at the time of his death under mysterious circumstances in Syria in 2016. I covered Badreddine’s funeral in Beirut, which was carried out with great pomp and ceremony.
In addition to leading the party’s campaign in support of Bashar Al Assad, he was also the brother-in-law of Imad Mughniyeh, his predecessor and the notorious Hezbollah commander who led the militia in its war with Israel in 2006, and was later assassinated in the heart of Damascus in a joint CIA and Mossad operation. It doesn’t get much higher than this in the party’s top echelons where its leader Hassan Nasrallah resides.
The other key suspect was Salim Ayyash, a Hezbollah member who led the assassination cell and was the main conduit to Badreddine, in addition to buying the truck that was used to attack Hariri’s convoy. The three other suspects were allegedly involved in preparing a false claim of responsibility for the assassination.
The court found Ayyash guilty on all counts and refrained from making a detailed statement on Badreddine’s role, because he was dead and therefore no longer an accused. The other three suspects were declared not guilty due to lack of evidence. These decisions are of course all subject to appeal.
The court said it did not find evidence implicating Hezbollah as an organisation in the killing. It is, however, hard to conceive of an operation of such magnitude, sophistication, and with these political ramifications – and with the involvement of one of the party’s most senior and well-connected cadres – taking place without the knowledge of Hezbollah’s leaders and the party’s foreign sponsors.
Many questions remain unanswered though. Who worked with Ayyash to carry out the assassination (most of the cell that carried out the murder on the day itself have not been identified)? Who did he and Badreddine answer to? Who ordered the assassination? Who made the false claim of responsibility? Were the same people involved in all the other political assassinations that took place in Lebanon around that time? Preparations for a trial in those connected cases are under way. What evidence existed to implicate Syria in the killing of Hariri and others within his political bloc? Who assassinated Eid and what were they worried about him revealing?
But the prosecution’s biggest sin is perhaps that it never did figure out a motive for the killing. Hariri’s assassination was not an isolated event. It came amid extremely high tensions with Bashar Al Assad, with pressure from foreign powers and Hariri’s political bloc and growing popular demand for the departure of Syrian forces from Lebanon, which was under the tutelage of Damascus since the end of its civil war. Even after the Syrian army withdrew, a series of assassinations targeted politicians and thinkers from Hariri’s political bloc in the aftermath of his death.
Syria initially co-operated with the UN’s Hariri probe, and senior security officials were implicated in the initial phase of the investigation. It is unclear whether that evidence was up to the standards of an international tribunal. Prosecutors and investigators since then dithered and delayed, slowing down the pace of the investigation, perhaps in the hopes that more direct evidence would materialise, perhaps to retain their cushy UN jobs.
But justice delayed is justice denied. Hariri’s killers and the murderers of two dozen Lebanese who died in the blast deserve justice and accountability.
But Lebanon and the region have seen great atrocities since that political earthquake: all the subsequent political assassinations and bombings in Lebanon, the war in Syria, the brutality with which the region’s strongmen suppressed dissent and protests during the uprisings. And of course, the explosion in Beirut on August 4, a result of sheer criminal negligence, which killed at least 177 people, wounded thousands and levelled an entire city.
The Tribunal’s goal was to put an end to impunity in Lebanon, to put an end to the use of political assassinations as a tool for regional powers and local militias to impose their will. That desire for justice permeates and underlines much of the region’s suffering. At least somebody tried to find out who was responsible and somebody was found responsible, even if he may never face justice. But perhaps the surest sign of the Tribunal’s failure is that 15 years after Hariri’s death, the perpetrators of the explosion in Beirut are not in the slightest danger of being held accountable. After hundreds of millions of dollars and 15 years of pain, impunity still reigns supreme in Lebanon.
*Kareem Shaheen is a former Middle East correspondent based in Canada
Lebanon Needs Transformation, Not Another Corrupt Unity Government/Hanin Ghaddar/The Washington Institute-Foreign Policy/August 19/2020
If the United States lets France take the lead, the Lebanese people will get more political paralysis, cosmetic reforms, and Hezbollah control of state institutions.
The massive explosion in Beirut last Tuesday, killing at least 160 people and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless, triggered a political moment as another explosion did 15 years ago: the targeted blast that killed then-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Then, as now, grief quickly turned to anger. In 2005, the outraged Lebanese rose up to demand fundamental political change, not cosmetic reforms, and they are taking to the streets once again today. But there is a key difference. In 2005, the White House was willing and able to play a nimble and ultimately effective role helping local activists translate raw emotion into new elections and a new government. Yet today Washington is content with taking a back seat to an energetic but ambivalent French president—an arrangement that will almost certainly not produce the change most Lebanese yearn for.
The French are pushing for a reconciliation among all parties, with some kind of national unity government that would only maintain the status quo and offer a scapegoat—such as Hassan Diab’s government, which resigned en masse yesterday—to calm the streets. Yet the Lebanese need a more drastic solution. The government’s resignation will not change the system as long as the same political elites maintain their power and control over other institutions.
Lebanon was already in the middle of an unprecedented economic and political crisis when the twin blasts hit. It’s a crisis so severe that it has already begun to trigger hyperinflation and hunger in a country that weathered 15 years of civil war without experiencing such economic devastation. And it is being kept alive by the greed of a political class that refuses even the most modest reforms demanded by an International Monetary Fund that actually wants to give the country money.
France seems to be taking the lead for now, as illustrated by French President Emmanuel Macron’s symbolic visit to Beirut last week followed by his quick move to kick off Sunday’s international donor meeting. Countries have already pledged over 250 million euros (approximately $300 million).
As other countries follow in France’s footsteps, it is worth keeping two things in mind: First, the Beirut port explosion was not a natural disaster, and it should not be treated as such. Therefore, as much as humanitarian aid is vital to help the Lebanese stand back on their feet, accountability is much more significant in the long term, and this is exactly what Lebanese protesters in the streets are calling for.
Second, the Lebanese people no longer trust their government, whose incompetence was one of the possible causes of the explosion. Therefore, assistance should not by any means go through government institutions or political organizations and charities.
The deeply corrupt political system will prevent aid from reaching the people who need it. A number of local and international nongovernment organizations—such as the Lebanese Red Cross—have already been offering relief and assistance on the ground from day one. They were the first responders and have a good infrastructure and knowledge of the situation on the ground. If aid goes through these organizations, the likelihood that it will reach the right beneficiaries is much higher.
If Lebanon’s government is asking for international assistance, then it should accept an international investigation. The United States could take the lead on these two policy questions while coordinating with the French on a humanitarian initiative.
France has been trying to strike a difficult balance: mobilize the international community to support Lebanon while exerting pressure on Lebanese political leaders to implement reforms to allow more aid to be sent. But Macron made clear in his press statement at the end of his Beirut visit that he would not craft a political solution for Lebanon and that it was up to the Lebanese to construct it, giving an opportunity for both the political elite to compromise and for the protest movement to reorganize and prepare for the next elections.
But the Lebanese elite won’t budge without pressure, and the authorities won’t hesitate to use violence to suppress the protests. For many Lebanese, this is a Catch-22 situation that can only be overcome if the authorities are pressured as they were in 2005—by a robust U.S. presence in the region and a very clear message from the United States to the Lebanese authorities—when the government was forced to resign and early elections were organized. Unfortunately, there’s no sign of an international initiative in this direction.
Only an international investigation would achieve real accountability and justice. Lebanese President Michel Aoun has already refused this suggestion, as expected. Not only could an international investigative team hold many in the political establishment accountable, but it could also reveal Hezbollah’s control, presence, and storage facilities at the city’s port—even if the group had nothing to do with the 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate stockpiled at the port.
Although it is too early to tell if the ammonium nitrate belonged to Hezbollah, there are many factors suggesting the group is responsible. It has control over a major part of the port, including the area where the explosion took place and where Hezbollah had temporarily stored its missiles since approximately 2008.
Not much has changed in the last four decades. According to a 1987 CIA report, “Most operations in Lebanon’s ports are illegal and beyond the reach of the government.” Although the report was focused on Palestinian factions during the Lebanese Civil War and the role of the Syrian regime, the dynamics of control have benefitted Hezbollah, which seems to have inherited both the Syrian regime’s and the Palestinian factions’ control of Lebanon’s ports.
It’s not a secret that Hezbollah has access and control over all of Lebanon’s points of entry: the Syrian-Lebanese borders, the airport, and the port. Nor is it a secret that Hezbollah has been smuggling weapons through the port to store in Lebanon and transfer to Syria.
And it’s no secret that Hezbollah and its allies have put their people in many of the port’s sensitive positions. Indeed, in July 2019, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Hezbollah security official Wafiq Safa for acting on behalf of the group. The Treasury said Safa, as the head of Hezbollah’s security apparatus, “has exploited Lebanon’s ports and border crossings to smuggle contraband and facilitate travel” on behalf of the group. According to the report, Hezbollah “leveraged Safa to facilitate the passage of items, including illegal drugs and weapons, into the port of Beirut, Lebanon” and “specifically routed certain shipments through Safa to avoid scrutiny.”
There are many questions an impartial investigation could answer: Why were Dutch and French rescue teams kept away from the port for hours the second day after the explosion? Why was the ammonium nitrate stored at the port? Who left it there for six years, despite warnings of the risk? What exactly caused the explosion? The Lebanese authorities will not be able to answer these questions on their own.
In 2005, many Lebanese opposition parties rushed to accuse the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and Hezbollah for Hariri’s assassination. Back then, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah accused Israel and didn’t hesitate to thank the Syrian regime after its army withdrew from Lebanon, in a gesture that was understood as an act of defiance against the international community and local opposition.
Fifteen years later, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon is ready to announce its verdict on Aug. 18 against four Hezbollah members. Hariri’s accused killers will almost certainly be convicted in a few days, and that was only possible because the international community pushed for an international investigation and helped establish the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. As the events in Beirut develop, a similar opportunity presents itself today.
Hezbollah is clearly worried. The party has accused state institutions and state employees rather than Israel this time. Accordingly, Hezbollah and the Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese government appear to have decided that to survive this, some employees will have to be sacrificed, including the country’s customs chief, Badri Daher, who was appointed by Gebran Bassil, Hezbollah’s main ally in Parliament.
The Trump administration should take advantage of this situation. Washington has lately been focused on applying maximum pressure on Iran; therefore, it would make sense to recognize that the horror and tragedy of the Beirut blast presents an opportunity to trim the sails of Iran’s most effective regional proxy, Hezbollah. There are many hard-power reasons for Washington to get more deeply involved in Lebanon right now: to burnish its regional leadership credentials, to beat the Chinese and Russians to it, and to ensure supply lines into Syria. But taking advantage of the moment to give the Lebanese a chance to create a new political system in which Hezbollah is cut down to size is certainly high on the list.
There are several things the U.S. government can do to achieve that objective. First, it must grasp that this is a 2005 moment. The old anti-Hezbollah March 14 coalition is not an alternative because corruption exists across both coalitions and the Lebanese protesters’ demands—with their main slogan, “All of you means all of you”—target every sectarian and corrupt politician no matter their political position on Hezbollah.
Lebanon’s people are demanding a total replacement of the system—a new kind of Taif Agreement, the accord negotiated in Saudi Arabia in September 1989 to provide “the basis for the ending of the civil war and the return to political normalcy in Lebanon.” Today, the tragedy in Lebanon requires a new agreement that would lead to real change and an end of the sectarian system.
Second, Washington should make sure that humanitarian aid does not go through any state institutions, including the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). The United States has been assisting the LAF since 2006 for clear security objectives, but the LAF in turn has used brutal force against protesters during the recent demonstrations. Security assistance could continue, as long as the LAF does not use it to suppress protesters, but humanitarian assistance should go through local and international NGOs that are doing a much better job at relief efforts.
Third, the United States and its allies must push for an independent and transparent investigation of Lebanon’s port explosion. If the U.S. policy is to contain Iran and its proxies, then this is a golden opportunity. Holding Hezbollah accountable for perhaps killing hundreds of Lebanese and injuring thousands could push the Lebanese people—and Western public opinion in general—to reject Hezbollah’s grip on the country.
Fourth, there must be an investigation into the LAF’s use of violence against protesters. The 2005 Cedar Revolution happened because the army’s leadership took a decision to protect the protesters, who were peaceful. The army today seems to have decided to protect the authorities and punish the victims. The U.S. government needs to send a clear message to the LAF that if it does not protect the protesters as they did in 2005, assistance will stop.
Finally, the U.S. government should take the lead in pushing for genuine change rather than following Macron’s lead. The French president might be satisfied with a national unity government. However, this idea reminds the Lebanese people of the first national unity government that was forced on the Lebanese after the events of May 2008.
At the time, Hezbollah took over Beirut and the Druze mountains, used its weapons against the Lebanese people, and pushed the March 14 coalition to effectively give up power to Hezbollah through the national unity government—launching a process that allowed the group to take over most political, military, and security institutions. Another national unity government today would maintain Hezbollah’s power over state institutions.
What Lebanon needs instead is a new beginning—a new political and social contract that eliminates sectarianism and establishes accountability through judicial reforms. This can only happen through a new electoral law that entails proper representation and an end to the confessional system, as well as early elections, which would produce a new parliament, a new government, and a new president. Lebanon also needs the truth—and the accountability that follows—to overcome this tragedy.
*Hanin Ghaddar is the Friedmann Fellow in The Washington Institute’s Geduld Program on Arab Politics. This article was originally published on the Foreign Policy website.
Gun boat diplomacy in Lebanon will not bring back former PM Saad Hariri Makram Rabah/Al Arabiya/Wednesday 19 August 2020
To call Lebanon a failed state at this stage is nothing short of an understatement, as this nation is grappling with how to stay alive. This has been rendered almost impossible after the Aug. 4 Beirut port explosion which destroyed vast swaths of the city and left some 300,000 people homeless and billions of dollars of damages that the Lebanese simply do not have.
If the carnage and destruction of their city was not tragic enough, now there is talk of bringing back a national unity government headed by former Prime Minister Saad Hariri to replace the caretaker government of former Prime Minister Hassan Diab, who resigned six days after the seismic port explosion. The idea of Hariri returning has infuriated the Lebanese public who object to the return of a political class responsible for their demise and the destruction of their country.
The talk of a national unity government was not triggered by the blast itself, but rather was floated previously by Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri and his traditional ally Druze chieftain Walid Joumblatt. They peddled this plan as a way to help Lebanon secure the much-needed loan it is seeking from the International Monetary Fund. On his solidarity trip to Beirut last week, French President Emmanuel Macron was clear to warn the Lebanese political class of the need to reform, yet his shortsightedness, or perhaps duplicity, led him to call for the formation of a national unity government which is neither an option, nor a solution, for Lebanon’s quagmire.
In fact, the terrible state of affairs is largely the product of successive national unity governments, first during the Syrian hegemony over Lebanon that continued after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which have acted as a political fig leave for Hezbollah and its Iranian weapons.
The French approach to the Lebanese problem wrongly underscores reform as the only way forward and clearly neglects that economic and political reform are a byproduct of good governance, and not the other way around.
Bringing in Hariri to lead a government of “supposed technocrats” representing the different political parties therefore is a recipe for disaster, simply because such a foolish experiment has been tried many times over and has produced the same failed results. Perhaps more wickedly, Macron and many of the European countries that support him are still convinced that the Iranian regime can be contained and that Macron’s outreach to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is enough to bring Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in line and force them to relinquish their hold over Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s primary objective is to maintain its military infrastructure and thus any gesture to cooperate over facilitating the formation of Hariri’s government would be temporary and, more importantly, costly. It will make Hezbollah even stronger and the Lebanese state – or what remains of it – feebler. Macron would simply be doing Iran a favor by forming a national unity cabinet without official Hezbollah representation, but rather “independent” Shia ministers, as this would give the latter a chance to wash its hands from the abysmal economic downfall to which it is a partner.
Empowering Hariri, against the wish of the people, to lead a salvation cabinet would be a path riddled with challenges. Hariri himself has failed to win over the trust and respect of the Lebanese beyond his Sunni powerbase.
But more importantly, the entire political class regards national unity governments as an avenue to divide the spoils of the state and the billions of dollars in aid money which is set to come their way following the explosion at the port.
The Lebanese political elite and their clients have promoted the notion that an upcoming Hariri cabinet would have the support of the international community, and that reconstruction under French auspices is not far off.
In reality, the French drive to help Lebanon, or perhaps its ruling establishment, is far from receiving the blessing of the United States or the Arab Gulf states which have shown little fervor, only pitching in to relief funds, with no real talk about reconstruction. Both the Trump Administration and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have rightfully showed reservation in funding a government that doubles as cover for Iran’s militia on the Mediterranean.
Both the French and the British have dispatched gunboats to the coast of Lebanon to help in the relief effort and to send a clear message that their wishes to force through a political resolution of Lebanon’s predicament will not go unanswered.
Yet gunboat diplomacy and European wishful thinking belongs in the 19th century. These tactics in the 21st century will fail to convince or coerce Iran into playing nice.
Consequently, the French drive to bring back stability will simply peter out, only to be replaced by forthcoming US sanctions on Lebanon’s political class whose unfathomable corruption and unholy alliance with Hezbollah equally matches the damages from the Beirut blast.
The Lebanese political elite, including Hezbollah and Iran, are impatiently waiting for the outcome of the US presidential elections in November and hope that a potential Biden Administration would ease off sanctions, granting more leniency to Iran and subsequently giving the regime more room to operate.
The Lebanese who are looking across their coast line and hoping that ships will deliver salvation need to think again and remember that superpowers have their own agendas, which might at times meet theirs. But for Lebanon to be worthy of any sort of deal, Lebanese need to go to the streets and remind the international community that the political class that is trying to pass themselves off as statesmen are mere criminals that should be brought to justice.
Lebanon’s government resigned after the Beirut port blast. Here’s what needs to happen now./H.R. McMaster, former White House national security adviser/Think/August 19/2020
International aid must be contingent on the county’s adopting a new system of government in which seats and positions aren’t apportioned to religious factions.
By H.R. McMaster, former White House national security adviser
Lebanon was already in crisis. But the world took notice when a devastating explosion at Beirut’s port killed over 200 people, wounded more than 6,000 and left 300,000 homeless this month. An international relief effort is underway to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe; the detonation of ammonium nitrate in the blast not only rendered most of the port unusable but also destroyed or contaminated stored wheat meant to feed the Lebanese people.
In just the past few years, the country has also been buffeted by an influx of 1.5 million refugees from the Syrian civil war, an electricity crisis caused by dilapidated power infrastructure and garbage and pollution crises due to the collapse of essential services. The country’s currency has lost 80 percent of its value since October. The country’s middle class is sinking, while the poverty rate is rising from 45 percent in 2019 to a projected 75 percent by the end of this year. And COVID-19 has only highlighted the inadequacy of the health care system.
What connects all these crises is the cause: a corrupt political elite who have looted the country for decades while their people paid the price. Indeed, the Lebanese people have suffered far more from that slow-moving and devious affliction than from this month’s sudden and dramatic explosion. It is clear that treating the symptoms of Lebanon’s corrupt oligarchy will prove insufficient to arrest the devolution of the country into chaos.
President Emmanuel Macron of France, the country that administered Lebanon after the partition of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, has rightly vowed not to provide “blank checks” and to make aid to Lebanon conditional on reforms. It is past time for all responsible nations to support that reform effort, with any assistance to Lebanon contingent on three essential actions: new elections that allow citizens to eject the elites who have been looting the country, the dismantlement of Hezbollah’s military capabilities and an end to a system of government in which seats and positions are apportioned to religious factions.
Former Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi once told me as his own country was enmeshed in violence and struggling to implement reform: “Sectarianism and corruption go together.” This is particularly true in Lebanon, where laws and districting largely predetermine election results by allocating set numbers of its 128 seats in Parliament to specific sectarian parties.
By essentially guaranteeing that parties will keep their proportion of seats, the system discourages accountability or responsiveness to citizens’ needs. And with lines drawn according to religious divides — Lebanon has 18 different sects — there are no incentives for these fractious groups to find middle ground and join forces. Thus, the sectarian regime in Lebanon perpetuates failed governance and impunity for even the most egregious corruption.
This desperate situation has impelled a movement to oust the corrupt ruling class since well before the port disaster. In October, protests resulted in the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, but he was replaced by a weak prime minister and Cabinet who perpetuated the corrupt political class under the cover story of transitioning to a government of technocrats. That leadership came to an abrupt end last week, when Prime Minister Hassan Diab resigned in response to a movement that has come to blame the entire system rather than a specific party.
Lebanon now has the opportunity to hold parliamentary elections under new electoral rules. But forming a civil system that prioritizes the rights of individuals over those of religious sects — and allows citizens a direct say in how they are governed rather than suffocates their voices through layers of corrupt sectarian bosses — faces daunting challenges. Foremost among those challenges is Hezbollah, which benefits from the current system.
Reform will be impossible unless the Lebanese people, with international support, reduce the political and military power of Hezbollah. Designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Kingdom and several other countries, as well as the Arab League, it uses the corrupt sectarian system to block reforms that threaten its influence over Lebanon’s government, financial system and illicit economy.
More and more Lebanese see Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, as the main stumbling block facing international relief; they scoffed at Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s denial that the organization holds any responsibility for the explosion. The suffering that Hezbollah has inflicted on the Syrian population during the civil war and the costs the Lebanese people have borne fighting on behalf of the Iranian regime there compounds anti-Hezbollah sentiment.
Now is the time for potential international donors to Lebanon to magnify the voices of the Lebanese people and make it clear that there can be no bailout of a government and financial system controlled by a terrorist proxy for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Although Hezbollah is weakened politically and financially, because of the country’s poor economic state and banking woes that limit its ability to receive money from Iran, its militia controls parts of Lebanon crucial to threatening its southern neighbor, Israel.
As it did in 2006, it is possible that Iran will incite a war with Israel via Hezbollah to distract from growing dissension at home and arrest Hezbollah’s plummeting reputation in Lebanon. The United States, France and like-minded countries can place conditions on aid designed to prevent war and reduce Hezbollah’s ability to hold the Lebanese and Israeli people hostage.
Conditions could include a declaration of a state of emergency in Lebanon and the use of the U.S.-trained Lebanese Armed Forces to restrain Hezbollah and begin reducing its arsenal, with priority on its Iranian-supplied precision guided munitions. The United Nations should also direct its force of 10,000 peacekeepers to support the Lebanese Armed Forces as they deploy throughout the south of Lebanon and position U.N. forces along the Syrian border to help disrupt arms and munitions trafficking. Tight international monitoring of Lebanon’s airport and the port, as well as a reformed banking system, would further keep Hezbollah from receiving Iranian support.
As France and the United States help organize an international relief effort for Lebanon, it is worth remembering the explosions of Oct. 23, 1983, in the midst of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war, targeting American and French service members. The casualties included 241 U.S. service members, 58 French paratroopers and six civilians all there to keep the peace. Macron’s ambition that the explosion of Aug. 4 might mark the “start of a new era” is worthy of support. But calls for reforms to the banking, electricity and customs sectors will not work unless sustained popular and international pressure forces the corrupt political class out of power, dismantles the sectarian patronage system and loosens Hezbollah’s political and military grip on power. Otherwise, today’s reform effort, like the peacekeeping effort in the early 1980s, will end in profound disappointment and more human suffering.
**H.R. McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and chairman of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is a former White House national security adviser and the author of “Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World.”
On Feigned Tears Shed for Beirut and Lebanon/Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al Awsat/August 19/2020
Many of those we know well are feigning tears for Beirut and Lebanon. Those who plundered it and who governed it in a manner that resembles robbery more than politics. Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah was the most prominent exception among those in power, in the broader sense of the term. He did not even find what warranted pretending to cry. He was busy celebrating what he called “the victory of the July war.” He was concerned with other things. His grin covered his face. Besides those in power, in Lebanon and the Arab world as well, many honest people cried genuinely, and many liars feigned their tears. The liars referred to are those who have never had any affection for Lebanon, nor have they ever seen it as anything more than a stepping stone on their path to another objective or cause. They reject what Lebanon stood for, namely, its assumption that progress comes from pluralism and being connected to the outside world, especially the democratic Western world, and its attempt to emulate parliamentary democracy, while being careful to avoid being dragged into direct armed conflicts. We can add to this category of what this Lebanon represented the various developments and institutions that emerged in the region during the modern era, such as the parliaments and public administrations that arose and survived until they were overthrown by coup d’etats, and before them the construction of the Suez Canal or the founding of the American University in Beirut. Of course, also in this category are the Arab colored revolutions that have demanded, and are still demanding, freedom and human dignity.
Those opposed to these ideas adopted another concept of progress in which opposing the West and doing away with “dependency” is the gateway to the future and a sense of meaning. “Westernized” Lebanon seemed to them a hideous thing. In the pain of the Palestinian people, they found their path to the resumption of this eternal struggle in which compromises are rejected and politics is despised. Their model is that of a regime of tyranny that militarizes society and casts it in a single and controlled body with a final and absolute identity, which seemed to them to oscillate from glorification to endurance: some of them glorified this military security regime as a tool for salvation, and others saw it as a tax that ought to be paid on the path to salvation. In all their forms, these regimes were the sources of bullets fired at Lebanon.
Since the country was established, these sentiments have been declared unambiguously. In 1925, during the insurgency in southern Syria led by Sultan Pasha al-Atrash, such sentiment was summed up very nicely by the “village poet” Rashid Salim El-Khoury, an ardent Arabist, who was disgruntled that the Lebanese had abstained from fighting alongside Atrash: “Lebanon, O Lebanon, but it did not harm me If I said, O country without a population. ”
And he, for this reason, wished on his “people”, the people of Lebanon,
“An emminent death
By the edge of the enemy’s sword. ”
Because it is inflammatory by nature, this inclination found its major refuge in poetry. In 1950, for example, and in his elegy of the Lebanese politician Abed al-Hamid Karami, the Iraqi poet Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri could not find anything to say better than to lampoon the country to which Karami belonged. He satirized a “gang”
Colonialism terminates and rules over her, and “the dollar” gives her salvation and relaxation. Jawahiri, who was considered close to the Iraqi Communist Party for many years, spent the last years of life in Damascus, praising Hafez al-Assad. On the other hand, all the peoples of the region are today desperate for “the dollar”.These poets competed in their shoddy mockery of the fact that the Lebanese speak foreign languages, the relative freedom that the Lebanese woman had, about which they had moral reservations, the mellowness that the military-natured scorn, and of course some of the country’s symbols and patriotism, which resemble the symbols of other countries and are neither better nor worse. Talking about a pluralistic model in the Middle East that contradicts the Israeli model only induced giggles.
Beyond the mockery and poems were the ideas. The most important of which is that elections, freedoms, education and the presence of a middle class are matters that do not warrant consideration. What counts is what takes us from the “Lebanese arena” to another place: before, it had been the “liberation of Palestine”, and later it became ensuring the Assad regime’s victory in Syria. The stationing of two armies in the “Arabs’ Hanoi ” was desired, the Palestinian resistance in the sixties and seventies, and then Hezbollah starting in the eighties. Whether or not the Lebanese agree or disagree to this is not important, for Lebanon is nothing but a means justified by the end, the struggle. However, the small country afflicted these kinds of haters with two tiers of confusion: those in Lebanon who refuse militarisation are not a handful of agents and spies, as the easy narrative claims. They are in fact the majority, whose positions are based on solid political and historical choices and a certain vision of the future.
In addition, hating Lebanon does not prevent its haters from preferring it as a place to live, and the opportunity provided to express that hatred is part of this life. The fact is that the most deprived ideas are those that consider, for ideological reasons, that living somewhere is not considered a preference for the counties of residence over the countries from which those in opposition flees (East Germany, the former Soviet Union, North Korea and today China and Russia). Ideologues do not think that the pursuit of freedom, knowledge or work is worth being taken into consideration.
Indeed, this hatred is as ideological as it is miserable. The crocodile tears shed today are miserable, though they are in luck: after the revolution for freedom was defeated in Syria, it defeated the bastion of freedom in Lebanon.
Today, we are all equals in our honorable ruin, like a comb’s teeth. But we will certainly liberate Palestine!
Hariri Tribunal and the Fate of the Probe in the Beirut Blast/Hussam Itani/Asharq Al Awsat/August 19/2020
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon’s (STL) verdict in the assassination of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has dashed hopes for calls for a serious international or independent investigation into the August 4 blast that destroyed vast swathes of the capital Beirut and killed some 200 people and wounded thousands.
This, in short, is the conclusion from the reading of the verdict in The Hague, 15 years after Hariri’s assassination, in a crime that still reverberates in Lebanon to this day. The STL ruled that Hezbollah and Syria had an interest in assassinating Hariri, but there wasn’t evidence to prove the party and Syrian leaderships were responsible for it. Indeed, it said that Hassan Nasrallah and Rafik Hariri enjoyed good relations in the months that preceded the attack.
It is natural for tribunals to operate according to tangible evidence and proofs, on which they base their verdicts. They are not concerned with answering questions surrounded the crime, such as who ordered, plotted and carried out the assassination. They are also not concerned with the local and regional circumstances that led to the crime. Their role is limited to pursuing the direct perpetrators, not countries or political parties or leaders. Residents of the region do not need an explanation about the way decisions are made by authorities and governments in Lebanon, Syria or other countries that are involved in the assassination. The tribunal did not see the need to explain how people decide to carry out the assassination of a figure as important as Rafik Hariri, who enjoyed relations across the globe and who believed until the final moment of his life that his murder was a “red line” that no one could possibly cross. Everyone in Lebanon and Syria knows that the decision to carry out an assassination of such a scale is not taken by a security agency, no matter how powerful. Such an agency cannot find the means to execute the plan and deploy surveillance and their complicated telephones without a direct order from a higher power.
Moreover, the STL’s announcement that it did not have proof that directly tied Bashar Assad, Nasrallah and Ali Khamenei to the assassination appeared to ignore the world. Since it ignored the obvious, it should have offered an alternative mechanism over how such spectacular assassinations are carried out, significantly since it was followed by dozens of assassinations of figures, all of whom were part of the opposition against Syrian and Iranian policies.
It is not true that everyone was awaiting the verdict to come up with their stances. The “truth” was known to all the moment Captain Wissam Eid, using a normal computer, uncovered the telecommunication network that perpetrators had used. He discovered the names and party and security affiliations of these figures. Eid paid for this discovery with his life in yet another bombing whose criminals have not been found. What was expected from this tribunal was giving some value to the concept of international justice and its fulfillment of a pledge by the international community to the Lebanese in 2005 that the criminals will not escape punishment. The exact opposite has happened: The verdict repeated facts that have already been known about the people, mobile phones and the unknown suicide bomber.
We can compare this court to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia that put on trial all war criminals from all sides, reaching all the way to the top to Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. The STL, meanwhile, languished in mobile phone details and the number of calls that were made by each one. The former Yugoslavia tribunal was necessary for Europe, while the tribunal for Lebanon isn’t necessary for anyone.
This takes us to the present, to a crime that is greater than Hariri’s assassination with its horror, destruction and death. The August 4 Beirut blast. This explosion had a devastating impact on Beirut neighborhoods, its communities and culture. The blast is killing off everything the capital has in values and even vices. If attempts to mislead the public, hide facts and task partisan figures and state loyalists in the judiciary and security forces to come to the bottom of the catastrophe, then there will be no truth or justice. The blast will be blamed on some anonymous person or, at best, some minor expendable employees as cheap sacrifices on the altar of the murderous system. Once again, the STL reminds the citizens of this country of the worthlessness of their lives, deaths and pain. More importantly, it reminds them that this region will remain immune to the very basic alleged universal principles of truth, justice and impunity, and above all else, the meaning of a human life. The Lebanese criminals’ escape from justice will most likely entice others to intensify their crimes and justice will remain an unfulfilled dream in our country.
