Spies

Breaking news:

Lebanon's Daily Star has a scoop: It seems that the "two men arrested for running an Israeli spy ring in the Bekaa Valley are relatives of a suicide hijacker who piloted a plane in the September 11, 2001, attacks, a security source told The Daily Star on Sunday.

"The army said that the men had been arrested on Friday, but the source said that they were actually captured two weeks ago and the discovery of the arrests by the media prompted the army to announce their capture"

*** ***

Media Line reports:

Lebanese authorities announced over the weekend it had apprehended two Lebanese civilians, who were spying on behalf of Israel's foreign intelligence body, the Mossad.

The two were recently captured in Lebanon's Beqaa Valley and have reportedly confessed they were employed by the Mossad, the Lebanese daily Al-Safir reported.

The ringleader, A.G., was recruited in the 1980s, during his activities with a Palestinian organization in the Beqaa.

A.G. then recruited several other men, including his relative, Y.G., who was the second person captured last week.

The cell gathered information on Lebanese military bases, Syrian intelligence centers in Lebanon and Palestinian institutions in the Beqaa and Hizbullah headquarters, informed sources revealed to A-Safir.

During their investigation it was further revealed that the group also gathered information in security centers in Damascus and in Kafr Sousa, where Hizbullah's operations chief 'Imad Mughniyya was assassinated last February.

In 2006 the LAF's Intelligence Directorate revealed it had captured an Israeli network that had been operating in Lebanon for many years. Its leader, Mahmoud Rafi, admitted that the network was behind the assassination of Hizbullah and Palestinian officials. Rafi further admitted the group planted explosive charges in several locations in Lebanon.

According to Ynet :

The man arrested on suspicion of employing network of agents working with Israeli intelligence to map out sensitive locations in Lebanon, Syria—including Damascus neighborhood in which Hizbullah leader Mugniyah was killed:

Sources said the network has been operating for over 20 years, and was responsible for mapping out the Beqaa Valley, including Syrian military bases and Palestinian sites. Recently, a-Safir reported, the spies have been pursuing Hizbullah operatives and outposts.

The ring was said to have operated in Syria as well, where it is suspected to have mapped out areas in Damascus such as Kfar Sousa, the secure neighborhood in which Hizbullah leader Imad Mugniyah was killed in February by a car bomb.

Investigators are currently attempting to link the espionage ring to Mugniyah's murder, as well as to divine its function in the transfer of information to Israel, the report said.

Anger in Syria

The BBC reports:

Thousands of people have held a peaceful demonstration in Damascus against an alleged US raid on a village that Syria says killed eight people.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Damascus, waving flags and carrying banners reading "No to American terrorism" and "America the sponsor of destruction and wars".

The protesters, including many civil servants and students, also waved pictures of the Syrian president, as they converged on the central Youssef al-Azmi square.

Syria said a US school would close temporarily and warned US citizens to avoid the area.

Five of those killed in the raid on Sunday were from the same family, and the BBC's Paul Wood spoke to the woman who lost her husband and four sons at the scene of the raid.

She was being treated in a Syrian hospital for injuries she said she received during the attack.

"I went outside to get my son and the Americans shot me," she said. "I was screaming in terror."

She said all the men were working on the house that was in the compound where the Americans landed, and denied any link between them and al-Qaeda.

Stability, apparently

A curious piece in The New York Times commends Lebanon's financial sector. Curious because of the great secrecy at a the heart of our banks means we don't actually know what they have in vaults. Of course it could just be that they are awash with billions of dollars looted from Iraq.

For those with time have a look at A Political Economy of Lebanon.

Here's the NYT piece:

This small country, chronically battered by war, turns out to have a banking sector that has so far been a beacon of stability and growth, The New York Times’s Robert F. Worth writes. Its banks are posting record profits, aided by conservative central bank policies, skillful management and money from Lebanese expatriates.

Lebanon’s very instability — its 15-year civil war and frequent political crises — appears to have bred the banking sector’s fiscal prudence, analysts say.

Three years ago the central bank here barred investments in derivatives and other structured financial products, giving banks virtual immunity to the widening financial contagion. The banks here have done little borrowing on international markets. Deposits account for about 83 percent of their assets, making them among the most liquid in the world.

“The banks here are used to turmoil,” Nassib Ghobril, the head of economic research and analysis for Byblos Bank, the country’s third largest, told The Times. “Since the end of the civil war in 1990, there has been no loss of deposits, and there’s great confidence in the sector.”

As of August, the money flowing into deposits grew 16 percent over 2007 — itself a record year. Lebanon had no working government for most of that period, and at times seemed to be on the verge of civil war.

Those inflows appear to be rising further. The central bank released statistics showing that it increased its foreign assets by $572 million in the first two weeks of October, possibly a sign that foreign deposits are growing.

Lebanon has also attracted the hedge fund industry, which has until now focused more on Persian Gulf markets. “We consider the well-capitalized Lebanese banks as safe as the safer banks in the gulf,” Florence Eid, the regional managing director for Passport Capital, a hedge fund based in San Francisco, told The Times.

An added asset is Lebanon’s often wealthy expatriates. About 4 million Lebanese live in the country, but an estimated 12 million live abroad, and many send money home and invest in real estate. The total of such remittances is expected to top last year’s, $5.5 billion, one of the world’s highest per capita rates.

Partly for that reason, banks here have grown so large that they dwarf the national economy. Lebanese bank assets are about $100 billion, in a country with a $25 billion gross domestic product, said Marwan Barakat, in charge of research at Bank Audi, the country’s largest lender.

This growth has allowed the banks to expand internationally. Bank Audi, for example, now has branches in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Qatar and Sudan.

The continued growth here is probably also related to some modest good news in politics. In May, after 18 months of deadlock, Lebanon’s warring factions agreed to a compromise. So far, the deal seems to be holding. But the banks are also doing their part, holding much of Lebanon’s $45.4 billion public debt.

“In this crisis, governments in the US, Europe and elsewhere have been stepping in to rescue their banking sectors,” Mr. Ghobril told The Times. “Whereas in Lebanon the sector is so large it has been supporting the state for years.”

Why attack Syria?

The US military attack on the Syrian border town of Abu Kamal I believe exposes growing divisions among the “coalition of the willing” behind the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The timing and target of the raid raise many questions.

The Syrian regime, which is dominated by the Alawite branch of Islam, has been reeling recently after a series of bomb attacks widely blamed on Al Qaida and other Sunni Islamist groups.

If Abu Ghadiyah, the main US target, was an Al Qaida leader, as the US claims, then the Syrian regime would have had no scruples in arresting him. The US intelligence services acknowledge that for several years Syria has cracked down on the so called “foreign fighters” passing through its territory into Iraq.

Some commentators say that Syria’s recent moves to ease tensions in the region are the main motivation for the US attack. The Syrian regime has been involved in peace talks with Israel and has formally recognised Lebanese independence.

The US is also worried that a resurgent Russia is preparing to rebuild its ties with Syria. Last month Russia reopened a Syrian port used as a Mediterranean base for warships. The port was closed down following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Embarassingly for the British government, the US raid came as foreign secretary David Miliband was due to hold a joint press conference with his Syrian counterpart. Miliband “withdrew” from the conference as news of the attack came through.

The fact that the US did not warn its ally of the raid has left the British foreign secretary deeply compromised.


The result, writes Sami Moubayed is that:

"One theory says that the entire ordeal was part of the internal US politics in the final lap of the presidential campaign, aimed at boosting the chances of Republican Senator John McCain by giving him more reason to pursue Bush's "war on terror" - this time with Syria.

"Had the Americans struck at a terrorist stronghold, the Bush team would have been the first to brag about it on all available media. The fact that the traditional US chorus remained silent seems proof that the Americans were not too proud of what they did, and that perhaps human error had come into play."

Another possibility is that this raid could be part of a recognition that, as the US withdraws from the western part of Iraq, the resistance will once again take over.

Whatever the truth, by attacking a Syrian border town the US is sending a message that it is prepared to spread the “war on terror” over borders.

This is a dangerous turn of events.

Saudi Games

The Saudi regime is using its cash in attempt to build a rival to Hizbollah, writes Sami Moubayed in Asia Times:

The Saudis are reportedly funding a rival wing of Hezbollah itself, modeled around Sheikh Subhi Tufayli, one of the party's original founders who has been sitting in the dark since the 1990s.

Tufayli started out as a firm supporter of Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, having studied Islam in Najaf (Iraq) during Khomeini's long exile in the holy Iraqi city, before the Islamic revolution of 1979. He returned to Lebanon and helped co-found Hezbollah - with Iranian support - during the Israeli invasion of 1982.

Under Tufayli's leadership, Hezbollah managed to drive Amal from Beirut during the height of the Lebanese civil war in the late 1980s. Under his command rose the young Nasrallah in 1989, leading a commando force against Amal in Iqlim al-Tuffah, and becoming a member of the central command of Hezbollah at the young age of 29.

A hardliner, Tufayli once said that his supporters did not dream of eradicating Israel in the near future, but plans to lead a battle that will last "for centuries". More recently, he has distanced himself from Iran for its firm support for Nasrallah, a man whom he respects but envies tremendously. He can't challenge him, beat him, or replace him as head of Hezbollah or the Lebanese Shi'ite community.

In 2000, when Nasrallah liberated south Lebanon against Israel, Tufayli was believed to be politically finished, since Hezbollah was at the apex of its career and no Shi'ite with a right mind could challenge the charisma or popularity of Nasrallah.

But on several occasions he came out and spoke against Nasrallah, objecting to the latter's alliance with Iran and claiming that he broke with Hezbollah because of the overt Iranian agenda of its secretary general. Earlier, in his final act of defiance, Tufayli clashed with the Lebanese state when his followers tried to take over a party-run religious school in Baalbak.

The Lebanese government of Siniora has tried in vain to get rid of Hezbollah, but was unable to do so due to the party's power base and the repeated victories it scored against Israel since 2000. The UN could not disarm Hezbollah, nor could the United States, or Israel in its failed 2006 war on Lebanon.

Now, all parties are trying to break Nasrallah's kingdom from within, through splinter Shi'ite groups loyal to people like Tufayli and through the money of dissident Syrians. Any person who has seen how popular Nasrallah was in Lebanon in 2000 or 2006 realizes how foolish it would be to try and challenge him by resurrecting figures like Subhi Tufayli.

Two nations, one people

The carve up of Bilad al-Sham is now formalised in the "mutual recognition" of Lebanon and Syria.

According to the BBC, "A signing ceremony has been held in Damascus establishing diplomatic relations for the first time between Syria and Lebanon. A joint statement said Syria and Lebanon would respect each other's sovereignty and independence."

This division was put in place by the French Mandate in the early 1920s and rejected by the overwhelming majority of people both sides of the border.

But after democracy was so brutaly crushed in Syria the idea of beng ruled by the cabal of Baathists in Damascus killed any chance of unity.

The death knell, I guess, was the invasion by Syrian troops in 1976 which crush the secular democratic revolution in Lebanon. It was downhill from there.

On a personal note: my grandma, who has just turned 100, still keeps her education certificate from the "Syrian Girls College" hidden in her suitcase. It always jarred when members of my family put down "Syrians", and they usually got angry when I pointed out that technically both grandfather and grandmother were born in Syrian (before 1922). There's even a boat ticket to New York (from the 1910s) were our address is given as Berbara, Syria.

Hopefully the two countries will become one again... but only under a democratic socialist system.

I will wait patiently.

Interview with Tony Cliff—1996

Saudi backed terror?

Sami Moubayed writes in Asia Times:

While Saudi Arabia's official policy remained critical of Syria, a certain branch in the Saudi royal family still harbored ambitions to topple the Syrian government altogether and replace it with pro-Saudi opposition figures like former vice president Abdul Halim Khaddam.

Tension was further elevated when terror struck in the heart of Damascus on September 27. A suicide bomber loaded with 200 kilograms of explosives killed 17 Syrians and injured between 15 to 40 civilians. Saudi Arabia was the only country in the Arab world that refused to condemn the attack, although it was harshly criticized by France, Russia and even the US.

Although it became clear to everybody - France being first on the list - that the Saudis were not getting the upper hand in Beirut politics, Lebanon remained closely allied to Riyadh, due to the personal and financial bond between Saad Hariri, the parliamentary majority leader, and the House of Saud.

One of the first to realize that the Syrians are overpowering the Saudis in Lebanon was Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, a strongman of the March 14 Coalition. He realized that the US-imposed isolation of Syria has crumbled, after Bashar Al Assad's visit to Paris in July 2008.

More recently, what worried both the Saudis and Jumblatt was the semi-rapprochement that started developing between Syria and the US. Last month, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, at her request, and discussed a variety of issues related to the Middle East.

The Syrians believe, although they have not said it bluntly, that the Saudis are furious at Syria's repeated diplomatic successes. Eager for vengeance, they are now financing Islamic fundamentalism in Lebanon to strike at both Hezbollah and Syria and have not yet digested the outcomes of May 2008.

Assad said that the sectarian violence taking place in northern Lebanon was dangerous to Syria. Many believe that the suicide bomber who detonated a bomb in Damascus was a product of a fanatical group trained and created in Lebanon. That might explain why the Syrians amassed thousands of troops on their border with Lebanon, to prevent the influx of jihadi fighters to Syria.

If Saudi Arabia was not guilty of the September 27 attack, it certainly looked and acted guilty by refusing to say anything about it.

Meanwhile, the Saudis, frantic to save their positions in Lebanon, had already started pumping money to build a Sunni armed movement to confront Hezbollah if matters escalated once again.

"Old election law"

The BBC reports:

The Lebanese parliament has approved a new election law as part of a reconciliation process begun in May.

The new law, which alters the boundaries of voting districts, will be used as the basis for parliamentary elections next year.

It is an amended version of a 1960 law under which voting is held in smaller districts known as cazas.

The new law also calls for Lebanese elections to be held on one day, rather than over several days.

Several proposed reforms were rejected, including a lowering of the voting age to 18 from 21, quotas for women in parliament, and allowing Lebanese citizens living abroad to vote.

Forest fires

The UN news agency warns:

Devastating fires caused by climate change are threatening forests in Lebanon, in turn accelerating the pace of global warming.

"We are witnessing a rise in temperature which leads to the dryness of forest soil and pushes it towards desertification," Sawsan Bou Fakhreddine, director-general of the Association for Forests, Development and Conservation (AFDC), a local NGO, told IRIN from Beirut

The country is witnessing forest fires earlier than usual. "We noticed that fires are starting in April, three months earlier than the usual season, which commences in June or July.

With the ongoing increase in temperature, the land is losing much of its humidity and trees are becoming drier. This causes severe fires that are difficult to suppress," she added.

Fakhreddine said on average, about 1,500 hectares of woodland were affected by fires annually, but in 2007 more than 4,000 hectares of forests were ravaged in the worst fires to hit Lebanon for decades. "In one day we lost three times what we planted in 17 years."

According to AFDC, forests covered 35 percent of the country in 1965 - against 13 percent in 2007. "If we witness fires like the ones that erupted last year, Lebanon will lose its forests completely in 15 to 20 years," Fakhreddine warned.

Public meeting

Resistance vs resistance

According to Naharnet:

Lebanese Army units contained a quarrel between partisans of the Lebanese Communist Party and AMAL movement in the southern village of Kfar Rumman overnight.

The quarrel started after AMAL partisans tried to knock down a monument erected by the LCP to commemorate "martyrs" of the Lebanese National Resistance Front (LNRF), the leftist alliance that fought invading Israeli troops in the 1980s.

Kfar Rumman was a main base for LNRF resistance fighters before Hizbullah established control over south Lebanon in the early 1990s.

Several LNRF fighters were killed in combat against Israeli troops and several others were liquidated in serial assassinations that targeted leftist activists in Beirut and south Lebanon in the late 1980s.

The bodies of at least nine LNRF fighters remain in Israel and have not been included in the recent swap between Hizbullah and the Jewish state.

Beirut synagogue

Bloomberg posts an interesting account of attempts to rebuild the synagogue in Beirut:

In 1983, Isaac Arazi and his wife were caught in sectarian fighting during Lebanon's 15-year civil war. A Shiite Muslim militiaman helped the couple escape.

Arazi, a leader of Lebanon's tiny Jewish community, sees the incident as a lesson in the Arab country's tradition of tolerance. Now he is trying to make use of that tradition, along with the global diaspora of Lebanese Jews, in a drive to rebuild Beirut's only synagogue, damaged during the war.

"Those who don't have a past don't have a future,'' Arazi said to explain his push to rebuild the synagogue.

Beirut's Maghen Abraham Synagogue opened in 1926 in Wadi Abou Jmil, the city's Jewish quarter, located on the edge of west Beirut near the Grand Serai palace, where the government meets, and within walking distance of parliament.

Lebanon then was something of a haven for Jews, some of whom were the descendants of those who had fled the Spanish inquisition; it later served a similar role for refugees from Nazi Germany.

With "no history of anti-Jewish tensions,'' it was the only Arab country whose Jewish population rose after Israel's creation in 1948, according to Kirsten Schulze, a lecturer at the London School of Economics and author of The Jews of Lebanon.

By the mid-1960s, there were as many as 22,000 Lebanese Jews, said Arazi, 65. In addition to heading the Jewish Community Council he owns a food-machinery business with 1,000 customers.

"Christians, Muslims and Jews were all living together when I was growing up,'' said Liza Srour, 57. "Whenever there was a war with Israel, or tension, the government used to provide protection for us.''

That changed with the nation's 1975-1990 civil war, as Jews fled the violence triggered by rivalries among the nation's Christian, Muslim and Druze factions and emigrated to Europe, North and South America.

Now, Arazi said, only 100 Jews live permanently in the country, while another 1,900 go back and forth or have intermarried into other religions. Srour is the only Jew still residing in Wadi Abou Jmil.

In 1982, according to an Associated Press report at the time, Israeli shells tore through roof of Maghen Abraham as the Jewish state invaded southern Lebanon in an effort to crush Palestinian guerrillas. The synagogue has been closed ever since, its brittle entrance gate chained and padlocked. Plaster and rubble are scattered on the floor.

Walking among the weeds overgrowing the cemetery's tombstones, Arazi said: "I remember my father when I come here.''

Image is an artist impression of what the restored building will look like.

Palestinian vs Palestinian

Reuters reports:

Three Palestinians were killed in fighting between rival factions at a refugee camp in south Lebanon on Monday, security sources said.

The fighting began when gunmen shot dead a member of the Islamist Jund al-Sham militant group in Ain al-Hilweh camp, 40 km (25 miles) south of the capital Beirut.

The killing triggered fierce exchanges of gunfire and grenades between the militants and Fatah gunmen in which a second Jund al-Sham member was killed.

Few hours after the fighting stopped, the father of a senior Fatah official was shot dead by unknown attackers.

Shia vs Sunni

China's Xinhua news agency reports:

Fierce clashes erupted in the town of Taalabaya in Lebanon's Bekaa valley on Tuesday when gunmen opened fire from overlooking hills on a funeral procession for a Sunni victim who was shot dead earlier, local As-Safir daily reported Wednesday.

The victim Abdallah al-Adawi was a member of Future movement headed by MP Saad Hariri.

The Tuesday clashes blocked traffic along the highway connecting the pre-dominantly Shiite village of Taalabaya and Sunni village of Saadnayel, said the report, giving no more details about the clashes.

In June, more than three people died in clashes between Shiite supporter of Hezbollah and Sunni supporters of Future Movement in Taalabya and the neighboring village of Saadnayel.

Christian vs Christian

The BBC reports on an armed tiff between the clan militia loyal to the Franjiehs and the Lebenese Forces. This blood fued dates from the early days of the civil war.

A gunfight between rival Christian political groups in northern Lebanon has left two people dead and three wounded, security officials say.

The clash between the anti-Syrian Lebanese Forces group and the pro-Syrian Marada group was triggered by a disagreement over hanging banners.

On Tuesday, leaders of 14 of Lebanon's rival factions started talks aimed at solving deep divisions in the country.
The army has now set up checkpoints around Bsarma where the clash occurred.

One supporter from each of the Lebanese Forces (LF) group and Marada were killed, reports say, while the injured were a policeman and two LF members.

Marada, led by the pro-Syrian leader Suleiman Franjieh, is allied to the Shia-led Hezbollah. LF is led by former rightwing warlord Samir Geagea, who belongs to the Western-backed alliance led by Sunni politician Saad Hariri.

Jaw jaw on war war

The Financial Times notes:

The assassination of a pro-Syrian politician has heightened tension in Lebanon, less than a week before talks begin aimed at reconciling deep divisions between the country's factions.

Saleh Aridi, a senior member of the Lebanese Democratic party, which is allied to the militant Shia group Hizbollah, was killed on Wednesday night by a bomb as he started his car at his house in the mountains east of Beirut, the capital.

Aridi was a close adviser of Talal Arsalan, a Druze leader who is a minister in the new unity government and who recently helped bridge differences among the Muslim sect that comprises about 10 per cent of Lebanon's population.

The attack has significant implications for Lebanon's political stability, coming only a day after [the president] Michel Suleiman announced the resumption on September 16 of a "national dialogue" aimed at forming a defence strategy and defining the roles of the army and militias such as Hizbollah.

But the government has been playing down expectations of immediate progress.

Northern deal

Agence France-Presse reports that:

Sunni and Shia rivals in northern Lebanon are heading towards reconciliation, in a move to curb sectarian fighting, sources close to both sides said on Monday.

High-ranking leaders of both factions who met on Sunday are scheduled to sign later on Monday a memorandum titled "The Tripoli Document", which offers, in addition to safeguarding civil peace, to hand over the city's security to the Lebanese army.

The document also calls for removing all armed presence in north Lebanon, allowing displaced people to return to their homes according to a set timetable and paying compensation for residents whose houses have been damaged during the fighting.

Tripoli has been the scene of a series of deadly clashes since May between Sunnis and rivals from the Alawite community who support Lebanon's Shia movement Hezbollah, in which 23 people were killed.

The initiative, launched by Sunni ruling-majority leader Saad Hariri, also the head of the Future Current movement, could pave the way for further reconciliations in light of Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah's announcement that he was open for dialogue with Hariri.

"We are open to dialogue with the Future Current movement and all Sunnis, and if a meeting with MP Saad Hariri is not possible for security reasons, nothing prevents us holding meetings between the parties' officials," Nasrallah said during a Ramadan dinner on Sunday.