Draft Gore 2008 PAC

Part II  - The Syrian Response – Shy and Feeble

by Averroes 

(Read part I here)

A media onslaught such as the one waged on Syria and its allies, and especially the non-stop pumping of sectarian hatred is and must be approached as a serious strategic threat to the country’s (and the region’s) security. But what has Syrian media channels done in lieu of countering this attack? In addition to Syrian TV – which does not enjoy an overwhelming popularity – and official newspapers, which have even less popularity, the Syrian view is represented by a very small number of scanty internet web sites. Cham Press and Syria-News are probably the best known of this category. Privately owned and enjoying a degree of freedom for sites hosted in Syria, they are probably the most read pro-Syrian sites operating from within the country.

Besides the fact that their readership is orders of magnitude less than that of Alarabiya web site for instance, these sites would qualify for no more than the low end of the Second Layer media outlets described earlier. The responses they produce to news and events vary from being feeble and incompetent, all the way to being overly coarse and abusive. On a couple of occasions, Cham Press ran inflamed articles aimed at the Saudis, and posted the picture shown here. The mock-up is most likely hijacked from some Arab internet club somewhere (was supposed to portray a group of hip-hop Arab college kids) The media Einsteins at Cham Press decided to use it in a cheap take at mocking up the Saudis instead.

Needless to say, not only do such crude tactics discredit the entire web site, they also make Al-Rashed and Co. very comfortable as these tactics downgrade the average Saudi individual, which creates an immediate immunity to the content. There is nothing in Syria that comes even close to the levels of the First Layer media the Saudis have built. The question is why is that the case? Why doesn’t (or couldn’t) Syria formulate a response to the relentless war that “Moderate” Arabs are waging against it at the media front? There are many theories.
The easiest answer, and the one often quoted by Syrian officials when asked this question, is that “it costs too much.” This is actually both true and false, depending on how you look at it. It’s true that Syria cannot match the Saudi media empire station for station, newspaper for newspaper, article for article, and writer for writer. There are estimates that the budget at Al-Rashed’s disposal is in excess of $1 Billion a year, probably many times more when you add up the many other separate networks the Saudis run. The money goes into creative marketing, which takes the shape of expensive Hollywood movies, high-budget programs, high rates for Arab and especially Western essayists, and much more as described earlier. To stand up to the challenge, a would-be Syrian network would at the bare minimum have to find educated, trained and skilled journalists that would also say “no” to lucrative job offers from Al-Rashed and Co. These are not very easy to find. The argument for the financial barrier, however, is not entirely true, because a would-be Syrian network would not have to match the Saudi empire bullet for bullet.
 
Another very plausible reason for why the Syrians choose to endure the Saudi abuse unchallenged is that there are close to 1.5 Million Syrians living and working in Saudi Arabia. This is almost a WMD that the Saudis have aimed at Damascus. In 1990, Saudi Arabia evicted close to a Million Yemenis from the country within a matter of days, because Yemen would not go along with the Saudi intentions for war against Iraq. The potential to doing something similar to its current Syrian residents – although not very likely – is never truly off-limits. This gives the Saudis a huge advantage. Where they are able to host people like Khaddam and Bayanouni, and talk openly about over-throwing the Syrian regime, while the Syrians could never do the same. The Saudis allow themselves the liberty to discuss internal Syrian, Lebanese, and Iraqi demographics and social differentiators, while no one in the entire Arab world is allowed to talk about parallel aspects internal to Saudi Arabia.

A third and hugely important reason is Saudi’s declared monopoly on Islam, and Sunni Islam in particular (when a differentiation between the two is useful, that is.) Although this has significantly receded in recent years, a majority of Muslims and Arabs world-wide still associate the Saudi state with Islam. They are literally unable (even privately) to criticize them because they genuinely fear they would be criticizing Islam. The Saudis excel at promoting and making the most of this association, and have spent billions upon billions of dollars advancing it. This gives the Saudis another advantage in that they can tap into the religious feelings of many Syrians, while the Syrians can’t do the opposite even if they wanted to. So at the best of times, the Syrian regime used to be referred to as a Ba’thi and Aflaqi (after Michelle Aflaq, the founder of the Ba’th party). In Saudi nomenclature this is an underlining of the Christian link of the party, and its secular nature. The world ‘secular’ in Saudi is marketed to sound something like the Anti-Christ in Kansas, by the very same people who are paying billions of dollars to soak the Arab recipient with American media. In the worst of times (like the last few years,) the Syrian regime is referred to (in Second and Third Layer media) as Alawi and Rafidhi, which taps into the collective heritage of age-long religious-turned-political-turned-sectarian history of conflict in the region. As a secular state, Syria does not have the same liberty of using these dark and deadly social forces.

A forth and also important reason for the Syrian position, is that decades of heavy media censorship dry up the talent pool you have. A good, self respecting journalist will not sit around and take orders from unqualified, government-imposed directors that know little about the huge developments in journalism and modern media. Like with any profession, journalists learn from making mistakes. If you do not allow them enough freedom to work and make mistakes, they’re not going to learn. The Total-Control mentality that many old-timers hold on to in Syria is massively counter productive and is hindering the development of Syrian media, as well as many other aspects of Syrian society. Some within the regime might worry about a free media exposing corruption or painting a bad picture of the country. But this way of thinking has to be challenged, as good media can really be an authority and an element of positive change in society, which is something I think the Syrian leadership wants. The barriers that such media might break actually deserve to be shattered.

A fifth reason why the Syrians are not actively answering the Saudi onslaught might actually be because they choose to. This can be looked at from two angles. For one thing, the more sophisticated your system is, the more maintenance it would need, and the more subject to faults and penetration it would become. On the other hand the more primal your system is, the easier to control and less prone to embarrassing mistakes it becomes. When you can afford very little embarrassment with other nations, you might be tempted to take the simpler approach. Another angle, and one that might have some merit to it, is that a big mouth does not make you a bigger than you really are. The abrupt folding in of the March 14th leaderships may offer some merit to that thought. Syrian leadership may have chosen to take the loud verbal abuse and preserve its energy to more tangible work on the ground.

Conclusions
The above list of possible explanations to the Syrian non-response on the media front may offer some argument in explanation of the media’s current state. However, and taking all the points above, I still think that there is a place and in fact a necessity for good media. I also believe it can be done in a smart way and with reasonable budget. The domain of a population’s public opinion is a very important front of any nation’s national security. What Al-Rashed and Co. are doing on a daily basis is an assault on the national and social integrity of the Syrian, Lebanese and other Arab societies. The poisonous venom they’re injecting into people’s minds is extremely dangerous, as it lays the ground for devastating explosions on the ground if the manipulated masses find arms and cash in their hands. We have seen it in Iraq, and we don’t want to see it in Syria or Lebanon. The reckless sectarian intimidation that Al-Rashed and Co. are waging on a daily basis is a strategic threat and cannot be left without answer. The answer to it is not by shutting down Al-Mustaqbal TV (not withstanding how trashy and irresponsible it really is,) but by offering alternative, sane media options for the recipient. The Syrian population has in general stood by its leadership during the past especially hard years. They deserve better respect of their sense of responsibly and intelligence than they’re currently getting. In fact, if the will for positive change is there, as many believe, then a well-designed, respectful and free media would help get the country there.
The inhibiting factors mentioned are real and potent, but they do not preclude the possibility of counter measures. There is place for respectful, professional, and rational Syrian media to be developed, and there are means to counter and defeat every single one of the factors mentioned. It can be done, and it can be done well. It would not require a multi-billion dollar budget per year, but a fraction of that. It can be made to operate in an attractive and diplomatic way without risking Syria’s national interests. It can show that Islam is not a Saudi monopoly, and that Muslims everywhere are sane people who are not fanatic about slitting throats of their brothers in religion, as Al-Rashed and Co. would have us believe. It needs to highlight the political nature of conflicts, and expose the shameless and irresponsible manipulation that some countries are trying to exercise over entire populations. Their foul produce must not be allowed to pass unchallenged.

Averroes

Joshua will be away this week. I will be posting a series of contributions from our readers. Alex

 

Syrian Media – The Challenge and the Need to Act 

by Averroes

With the latest events in Lebanon, Saudi channel Alarabiya is again doing what it does best, inflaming Arab public opinion against Shiites, Syria, and the Lebanese Opposition,  and it is doing so using the most recklessly sectarian language imaginable. The words Shiite, Sunni, Ta’ifi (sectarian,) and Alawite, are being repeated at an alarming rate on this and similar “Moderate Arab” media outlets, in reference to the political situations in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. In spite of the fact that the two sides of the power struggle in Lebanon have Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, and Druze, Alarabiya and other similar media outlets are adamant on painting everything with the ugly sectarian color.

Giving politics a religious and sectarian angle is like taking a shot in the arm. It immediately gives the side evoking it a false sense of power, endurance, and meaning. It drives young kids to the streets shouting slogans over a thousand years old, as if echoes of the ancient bloody struggle that once took place in the region. Schoolmates suddenly find themselves standing opposite each other, shouting their lungs out with utter, incomprehensible hatred toward one another. And just like a shot in the arm would eventually devastate you, so would sectarian violence were it to be unleashed. Since the invasion of Iraq, Saudi owned and sponsored media outlets have been busy handing out free loaded needles to anyone with a TV set. Today’s news on Alarabiya and Asharq Alawsat is but a small sample of that, although it has upped the doses to desperately insane levels.

With that media provoking such destructive forces upon Syria, the Levant, and the Arab world in general, the question is where is the answer to that? Where is the media alternative provided by the secular interests in the region in today’s media spectrum in the Middle East? Where is the ‘Say-NO-To-Drugs’ campaign to the drug dealer handing out the deadly substance to the children and the youth of the region? It might be good time to take a small step back and look at the state of the Syrian media.  

It’s no news that official Syrian media has always been, shall we say, less than adequate. However, it has perhaps never seen more miserable times than the weeks and months that immediately followed the assassination of Rafiq Hariri on March 14th, 2005. I think Syrian TV was showing a pre-recorded program about tourism in Palmyra when the explosion took place in Beirut. Within seconds, major news networks had interrupted their normal coverage and converged on to the event. Within minutes, Al-Jazeerah, Alarabiya, LBC, NTV, BBC, CNN, NBC, and of course Al-Mustaqbal (Hariri’s own network) had placed teams on location with reporters and live feed from the site of the horrific explosion. Syrian TV, on the other hand, continued showing its crude, humdrum program of Western tourists happily riding camels in Palmyra, followed by a program about hand crafts in Hamidiyeh market, probably followed by the age-old Arduna el-Khadraa’ (Our Green Land, a weekly farming program that has had the same title and format for over thirty years.) Regular programming continued for the rest of the day as if nothing had happened. The explosion and Hariri’s assassination appeared as one of the day’s events on the evening news, and that was about it. By that time, however, most Arab news networks had already launched an unprecedented media war against Syria. That war continues today, albeit at lower effect. After more than three years, Syrian official media is still unable to muster a viable defence.   

It wasn’t the first time that a TV station has acted in this deer-freezing-in-middle-of-the-road type of response. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1989, for instance, Saudi TV did not mention the momentous event for another three days. Saudi authorities were so shaken by the invasion, that they did not know what to do for three whole days. But that was in 1989, and they’ve learned quite a few lessons since then. In fact, the Saudis have moved from a position where they were being blackmailed by just about anyone who ran a printing press in the nineteen sixties, to a position today where they rule the Arab media space almost unchallenged. It is necessary to shed some light on that network in order to understand the impact it has had on Syrian and Lebanese societies, and on the Syrian regime. An observation of how the closely tied pack is orchestrated reveals unmistakable patterns, as we will see.

At what we might term as First Layer media are the higher end media outlets like Asharq Alawsat and Alarabiya TV. These can be characterized by their professional-looking styles and especially their subtle approach. Alarabiya, probably best described as the Saudi replica of Fox News, employs the latest trends in mass-media marketing technologies. The methods here are slick and highly polished, where great attention is taken to promoting certain pro-Saudi,  pro-US, anti-Resistance terminology and nomenclature. A key characteristic of this layer is the highly selective news coverage and the extremely biased “opinion” forums and commentary. Abdlrahman Al-Rashed, is probably the most fitting journalist to represent this layer. As careful with his words as a shrewd layer, he manages to get his daily sectarian tainted anti-Syria, anti-Lebanese Opposition message through loud and clear.

Take a look at this article, dated May 3rd, 2007, discussing the fighting at the Palestinian camp Nahr el-Bared in Lebanon. It might be a little old, but it is quite fitting to illustrate his methods.

قبل معارك نهر البارد كانت مشكلة سورية، وكذلك القوى المؤيدة لها، محصورة في دائرة النزاع اللبناني لكن بعد ان صارت الجماعات الإرهابية الدولية طرفا حقيقيا في الأزمة، سواء بالاستخدام أو بالتأييد، فإننا سنرى تبدلا في القضية اللبنانية. لن تجد هذه القوى المتورطة من يساندها دوليا لأن الجميع في حال حرب مع الجماعات المتطرفة، سواء كانوا روسا أو صينيين أو أوروبيين.
Before the fighting at Nahr el-Bared, Syria’s problems, as well as the problems of its allies were limited to the conflict in Lebanon. But now that international terrorist groups have become a real side in the conflict, whether by [direct] use or by support, we’re going to see a change in the Lebanese issue. These forces will not find anyone to support them internationally because everyone is at war with the extremist groups, including the Russians, the Chinese, and the Europeans.

Note the crafty wording as he goes on to warn Syria of its imminent loss of its allies and of looming world prosecution, due to its alleged use of the extremist groups at Nahr el-Bared; groups that in fact, happened to be Wahabi Salafis with 300 Saudi nationals in their ranks. As Syria’s allies did not conform to his ultimatum, he later makes a rather desperate accusation that it “was actually Syria, more than anyone else in the world, that has defeated the US in Iraq,” in his article titled Syria, Sleeping with the Fundamentalists dated May 26th, 2008, in which he goes:

لا أحد يجهل أن تسمين وتربية الحركات الأصولية في منطقتنا، شيعية كانت أم سنية، نتيجته فوضى مدمرة. معاركها محتومة بحكم طبيعتها الدينية، والشواهد أمامنا عديدة من المغرب الى السعودية. وما زاد في حيرة الكثيرين، قدرة دمشق على استخدام هذه الحركات الأكثر تطرفا في العالم، من أجل مواجهة الأميركيين في العراق، أو التحكم في لبنان، أو إدارة الصراع في الأراضي الفلسطينية المحتلة.
No one is ignorant to the fact that the raising and fattening of fundamentalist groups in our region, be those Shiite or Sunni, inevitably leads to devastating chaos. With imminent fighting due to its religious nature [sic], and we do in fact have many examples in front of us from Morocco to Saudi Arabia. But what’s really surprising, is the ability Damascus has to use the most extremist of groups in the world, in order to fight the Americans in Iraq, or to control Lebanon, or to manage the struggle in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Lest you got carried away reading this convoluted peace, this is a Saudi journalist, preaching the secular Syrians about the malice of raising and nourishing terrorist and extremist religious groups. He was writing that article while his country’s National Security Advisor, prince Bandar, according to the Guardian here and here, was making it very clear to British officials, that his country would “cut off intelligence on terrorists if investigations into him and his family was not stopped.” The British took Bandar’s statements so seriously, that “Investigators said they were given to understand there would be "another 7/7" and the loss of ‘British lives on British streets’ if they carried on delving into the payments.” If that is not a clear “use of terrorism” to arm twist a Western nation, then I don’t know what is.

In the last few days, you could not listen to Alarabiya for one minute without hearing sectarian language from their anchors or their almost completely single-sided guest array. The examples are too many to mention, and yet, this is Abdelrahman Al-Rashed; the top-brass journalist of the Saudi media industry, who is marketed as a liberal and is (by-far) the most professional of Saudi journalists. He now leads the MBC ensemble including Alarabiya TV station, constituting with Asharq Alawsat the most competent and most respectful of media institutions that the Saudis have (Wish el-Basta). It’s all steeply downhill from here.

Second layer outlets such as Alarabiya online and Elaph web site are targeted at different recipient sectors and thus use different tools and tactics. As an example, both use sexually appealing reports and imagery on a regular basis to attract more traffic. Visit the sites any time and you are guaranteed to find content that’s specifically tailored to the perceived whims of their intended audience. The subject of choice at Alarabiya at the time of this writing is an investigation of whether or not women’s public baths in Damascus are actually a cover for clandestine Lesbian relationships, and another on the First Arab Movie on Lesbian Love. Now that they have your attention (note the number of replies to the subject) – and keeping to our discussion of their position vis-à-vis Syria, you’re very likely to find much harsher articles and extremely cruel reader comments targeted at Syria and the Lebanese Opposition. Here, one can expect to find the odd Ikhwani (members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood movement,) typically living in Saudi Arabia or working for some Saudi sponsored “Islamic” organization somewhere. You’re also likely to find the March 14 variety, and just about anyone who has something bad to say about the Syrian regime, the Lebanese Opposition, or Iran. The job of the editors at these sites seems limited to clipping out not just attacks on Saudi Arabia, but also any counter arguments that might attempt to point out the political nature of the conflicts. Elaph, having lower readership than Alarabiya, takes the liberty of editing your comments for you before posting them. The combination of targeted marketing techniques, the abundance of essayists, and the uneven handedness in editing makes a potent combination. Reading hundreds of notoriously sectarian comments on a daily basis has also taken its toll on the collective Syrian psyche.

Third layer channels, which have still a different readership, sink even lower. The Kuwaiti newpaper Alseyassah, described by the notoriously anti-Syria columnist Michael Young as bring “close to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia”, has made a career of repeatedly quoting “extremely intimate and reliable sources” inside Syria for fantastic “news.” Its news about Syria usually targets the Syrian economy, the availability of goods in Syrian markets, and often Bashar’s direct inner circle. In the past few years, headlines have read “Six months, and it’ll be all over in Syria,” and “Bashar has a nervous breakdown in anticipation of a similar fate as that of Saddam” and “Syrians hording in the streets for food, in anticipation of an imminent American strike”. Leachate from this shabby and tasteless publication ironically feeds a large number of seemingly more restrained outlets. Lebanese March 14 newspapers and sympathizers including Khaddam’s site, regularly quote Alseyassah for “news”. Almost a hundred percent of Alseyassah’s reports have been refuted as bogus and totally unfounded. In fact, this layer of media is so outrageous, that it has repelled many Syrians away from their initial sympathizing with the March 14th movement. The comedy show La yumall on Al-Mustaqbal has made a career of mocking the Syrian accent, the supposed Syrian demeanour, and even their depiction of a Syrian’s physical features (the actor always put on very heavy eye browses and talks in ridiculously exaggerated Syrian dialect.) Having said that, Alseyassah and similar outlets continue to take their position in today’s spectrum of Arab media.

In today’s Asharq Alawsat, Al-Rashed writes “Today, 200 million Arabs see him [Nasrallah] fighting the Sunni enemy. I repeat: The Sunni Enemy, the Sunni Enemy, the Sunni Enemy.” He totally ignores and does not report that both sides of the conflict have followers of all sects within their ranks. The kind of hatred he and his media empire are  unleashing is resulting in Sunnis killing Sunnis, as Hariri’s thugs butchered up to 15 fellow Lebanese of the Syrian Socialist National Party (SSNP) in Halaba, Lebanon. Most of the victims were actually Sunnis. In order to promote the failing March 14 group, this man and his government do not mind to set Lebanon on fire.

Storm Rocks the Ship

So there we have it. A media empire spanning literally hundreds of publications and satellite TV stations, and covering interlacing and overlapping sectors of the Arab public audience, and one that’s not only there to promote Saudi Arabia’s interests, but is also on the offensive against Syria and the Lebanese Opposition. An excellent source of information about the Saudi media can be found in Paul Cochrane’s article Saudi Arabia’s Media Influence.

Here, we're looking at a very important question. What proportion of a newspaper's, or a TV station's job is to report news and events, and what proportion is it to manufacture public opinion. How do you distinguish between press that's run and funded by a country's governing elite, and propaganda? Why does everyone seem to agree that Saddam's media was propaganda, but not Fox News or its Arabic replica Alarabiya? These are big questions that I'm not going to attempt to answer here. But I think it's fair to say that the media is an extension of language, law, religion, politics, and other fields of human endeavour that still have no scientific or precise definitions. The use of modern media is an extension of the use of spoken, scripted, and printed word that we have been using for millennia, only now it's orders of magnitude louder. Modern media is an interactive, dynamic process that receives inputs from its domains of operation (society, policy makers, history, interest groups) but also projects output onto that domain with an intention of achieving varying degrees of influence.

With that in mind, let us try to examine what influence the Saudi owned, sponsored, or inspired media outlets may be trying to achieve. To start with, there are a number of very important domestic objects. Read Andrew Hammond's Saudi Arabia Media Empire: Keepiong the Masses at Home for a review of some of the most important objectives of Saudi Arabian media network. However, following 9/11 and the extreme pressure and embarrassment that the Saudis were subjected to, radical measures had to be taken. Where the American TV station Al-Hurra (the Free) has failed miserably, Al-Rashed's MBC channels and Alarabiya has had much better success in promoting the US administration’s views. When the MBC ensemble was first announced, the Arab audience was promised something spectacular. The ads ran for weeks "now, you will watch what they get to watch! and see what they get to see!" 'They' in the ad, meant the Americans! The Arab recipient of this message was supposed to be taken with awe and gratitude, that now he or she would see American shows just as the average American does.

That was the undertaking of the TV network that’s owned by the very country that bans women from driving. The country that in 2007 had the highest world-wide number of executions per capita, and the country whose state-backed and state-paid religious police are so stringent about girls coming in contact with boys that they’d rather let them burn than have firemen rescue them. Do you get that? This is a country that spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year to bring Friends to its public, while simultaneously spending equally enormous amounts of money jailing that public, for sitting at a public café with a woman. Are you confused? You shouldn’t be. Control and mass manipulation is what they’re after in both cases. By showing non-stop, around the clock Hollywood hits (fully translated and quite new too,) exclusively American children’s cartoons, in addition to Oprah, Dr. Phil, and American Idol, Al-Rashed and Co. have created a very attractive packaging that attracts millions of Arab viewers. Unfortunately, it has been using the attractive packaging to try and destabilize the Syrian regime and its allies by spreading sectarian hatred and inflammation throughout the region. Similar dynamics – in message and packaging – can be shown for the other media outlets mentioned earlier, most of which are Saudi sponsored in one way or another.

Although these are clearly the tactics of desperation from a bad loser, messages sent by this media empire do find ears, unfortunately. The most serious damage caused by the onslaught with respect to Syria can probably be divided into two main parts: Syrian (as well as Lebanese and Arab) public opinion, and Western research institutions and decision makers.

In the weeks and months that followed Hariri's assassination in 2005, the above-described media peaked in the toll it took on the Syrian public opinion. With lack of adequate Syrian response, the Syrian public was pinned to reports by Alarabiya, Almustaqbal, and many others, relentlessly attacking the Syrian regime and spreading rumours of an imminent US invasion of Damascus. It was so stressful on the Syrian public that at one point, the Syrian Lira lost about 20% of its value, the lowest point it had reached in over 15 years. Although it did adjust back after intervention from the Central Bank of Syria, many investments had already been scared away. People stopped spending, were genuinely worried and braced for the worst. With utter irresponsibility, these networks continued to gush wave after wave of sectarian frenzy, recklessly pouring gasoline on the worst fears of Syrian, Lebanese, and Arab masses everywhere.

Lebanon in particular has been hardest hit by the sectarian angle the Saudis excel at, although a common consensus not to drift into another civil war has been stronger than Al-Rashed and Co. Nonetheless, the billions of dollars spent have been successful in feeding deep mistrust and fear along every possible differentiation line that exists in the region, be that sectarian, ethnic, religious, or national. Fear is a force to reckon with. It can build irrational worlds in the minds of targeted groups and individuals, derailing life plans and causing people to make desolate, uninformed decisions. Fear can also manifest itself as a potent recruiting tool, reaping a constant supply of confused and desperate people, ripe and ready for manipulation.

Another implication of Syria’s absence on the media front, is that others get to set what is said about it in the international media.

 

Tomorrow: Part II The Syrian Response – Shy and Feeble

Bush Will continue to support the Lebanese army, even though the army refuses to fight Hizbullah and prefers to cooperate with it.  March 14 is not convinced.

Christopher Dickey quotes George Shultz in 1984, when Reagan pulled US troops from Lebanon. Shultz said: "This is a kind of warfare, really, that is something different for us … We have to improve our intelligence capability, and we have to think through how, within the concept of the rule of law, which we hold so dear, we can take a more aggressive posture toward what is a worldwide and very undesirable trend."

Paul Salem writes that, "The timing of the government's two decisions, which HA used as an excuse to launch its military operations, left many observers puzzled. The government apparently realized that the decisions were momentous and might cause a strong reaction: the session dragged on for eleven hours of heated discussion."

Some commentators had believed that Jumblatt dragged the Siniora government into its confrontation with Hizbullah. This turns out not to be true. The government knew that it was taking a momentous step in confronting Hizbullah's security apparatus.

Sami Moubayed goes into greater detail about "The Miscalculation"

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
_________________________________________________________

For Immediate Release                        May 12, 2008

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT

I strongly condemn Hizballah's recent efforts, and those of their foreign sponsors in Tehran and Damascus, to use violence and intimidation to bend the government and people of Lebanon to their will. The United States will continue to firmly support the Government of Lebanon, led by Prime Minister Siniora, against this effort to undermine the hard-fought gains in sovereignty and independence the Lebanese people have made in recent years. The international community will not allow the Iranian and Syrian regimes, via their proxies, to return Lebanon to foreign domination and control.  To ensure the safety and security of the people of Lebanon, the United States will continue its assistance to the Lebanese Armed Forces to ensure they are able to defend the Lebanese Government and safeguard its institutions.

It is critical that the international community come together to assist the Lebanese people in their hour of need. I plan to consult with regional leaders on my upcoming trip to the Middle East to coordinate efforts to support the Lebanese Government and implement U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1559 and 1701, among others, which seek to bolster Lebanon's sovereignty against external efforts at destabilization and interference. The Lebanese people have sacrificed much for the sake of their freedom, and the United State s will continue to stand with them against this latest assault on their independence and security.

AHMADINEJAD: ISRAEL TO BE “SWEPT AWAY SOON''
2008-05-13 08:45 (New York)

Tehran (dpa) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that Israel would “be soon swept away'' from the Palestinian Territories by the Palestinians.

It is the second time within less than three years that the Iranian president predicted the eradication of the Jewish state. The first time was in 2005 when Ahmadinejad hoped that Israel would be eradicated from the Middle East map.

“This terrorist and criminal state is backed by foreign powers, but this regime would soon be swept away by the Palestinians,'' Ahmadinejad said in a press conference in Tehran. Referring to worldwide celebrations for the 60th anniversary of Israel's foundation, he said that “it would be futile to hold a birthday ceremony for something which is already dead.''

“As far as the regional countries are concerned, this regime does not exist,'' Ahmadinejad added. The Iranian president said last week that the anniversary feasts could not save this “rotten and stinking corpse.''

Ahmadinejad caused international outrage in the past by hoping for the eradication of Israel, the relocation of the Jewish state to Europe or Alaska and questioning the historic dimensions of the Holocaust. dpa fm wjh

Ray Close - Former CIA analyst and Lebanon hand

The key question:  Is the Bush administration supporting constructive compromise, or are they pushing the Siniora government to stick relentlessly to a maximalist position that is almost certainly beyond its capability to sustain, and which could quite easily drive Lebanon toward a renewal of civil war.  I have a nagging fear that uppermost in Bush's mind is his determination to find something that he can claim as a clear-cut victory over "terrorism" before he leaves the world's stage.  In that mood, the notion of supporting a compromise solution in Lebanon between a "pro-American" government and a "terrorist" organization (Hizballah), a surrogate of Iran and Syria, is anathema to the Bush-Cheney crowd, and may be tempting them to use American influence in exactly the wrong way in this crisis.  Can any of us really imagine George W. Bush endorsing what Rami Khouri visualizes as "the first American-Iranian joint political governance system in the Arab World?".  Rami Khouri is exactly right when he correctly characterizes that outcome as "a huge defeat for the United States and its failed diplomatic approach that seeks to confront, battle and crush the Islamist-nationalists throughout the region."  However, Rami Khouri is equally correct in declaring that this would be an ideal outcome, in that a solution based on a more equitable balance of power within Lebanon might set a constructive precedent that would by its example contribute to achieving some level of political stability in Iraq and between rival factions in Palestine.  This would be a magnificent result of an otherwise ugly crisis. 

Unfortunately, however, the situation reminds me (with mixed bitterness and guilt) so much of the mistakes we made (under Eisenhower-Dulles orders) in 1957-58, when we attempted by hook or by crook (mostly crook) to push Lebanon off its traditional position of neutrality in inter-Arab affairs and to become an openly committed partner of the United States in opposing post-colonial Arab nationalism — under the contrived justification of resisting "international communism".  That ill-advised effort laid the foundations of the future 1975-90 civil war.

This time, I hope we don't make the same heavy-handed and short-sighted mistakes all over again.  And let's hope that Rami Khouri's vision proves to be realistic and achieveable.  We've had enough bad news!
Ray

Slaughterhouse Beirut
Lebanon's chances for meaningful reconstruction are diminishing by the day. And despite Bush's bravado, it's going to be the same in Iraq. Christopher Dickey Newsweek Web Exclusive May 13, 2008

If you want to know what Iraq will look like 25 years from now, look at Lebanon today. The similarities and differences—but mainly the similarities—raise a lot of painful memories and questions for
Americans.

This fact hit me once again when I was talking to Mike Sheehan, who is one of the more clear-eyed analysts of terrorism and the way we react to it. The subject came up of Beirut as it is now, a bloody mess, and as it was when Mike and I first focused on it a quarter-century ago, when it was even bloodier.

Back then President Ronald Reagan waded into the Levantine quagmire, quickly understood that he had made a big miscalculation, and withdrew. "Some counterterrorism experts argue the Reagan pullout from Lebanon was a mistake and emboldened future terrorists," says Sheehan. "I never bought this analysis, then or now. I think it was one of the smartest things Reagan did during his tenure—to get out of the Lebanese civil war. To stay in any war to 'make a statement' has never made sense to me. You have to have well-defined interests and achievable goals when you put American soldiers in harm's way; both seemed to be missing in Lebanon. Reagan recognized it and withdrew."

Sheehan believes symbolism is a major factor in the fight against terrorists only if it's accompanied by the systematic elimination of the terrorists' operational cells and infrastructure. (Hence the title of his recent book, "Crush the Cell" [Vintage, 2008], which I wrote about last week.) Sheehan is not arguing that a Lebanon-style pullout from Iraq, which is a different war in a different time, would be so sensible now. President George W. Bush will probably make that point many times during his upcoming nonvictory tour of the Middle East.

And yet, whether the United States stays in Iraq or goes, "Lebanonization" is the most likely result: a foundering half-failed state where neighbors fight proxy battles through sectarian militias and through the many factions in a government that is unable to govern at all. There will be times of war when life seems to go on almost as normal, and times of peace when it seems not to. There will be spurts of investment, maybe even tourism. There will be festivals of democratic excitement. And then sudden storms of savage violence will sweep through the streets of the capital, only to subside, then erupt in smaller cities, and subside. And erupt again. And so it goes, to borrow the old refrain from Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Slaughterhouse Five." If the world pays any attention at all, the span will be brief. The fighting and the failures to govern will have gone on so long that nothing seems new in that news.

The chances for meaningful reconstruction diminish by the day in such a place. The brains and talent needed to build the home country will, for the most part, be building other countries, having left over the years as much out of frustration as fear. The best, lacking all conviction that things can improve, will have established their own families in Abu Dhabi or New York—wherever there seems some modicum of sanity and a real commitment to the future, not just an endless settling of past scores. The worst, filled with passionate intensity and armed with rocket-propelled grenades, will rule the streets. As it is in Beirut, so it will be in Baghdad.

Even many of the players in Iraq and Lebanon are similar: Syria, Iran, ferocious fighters in the mountains (the Druze and Christians in Lebanon, the Kurds in Iraq), competing and combative Shiite factions (Amal and Hizbullah in Lebanon; the Dawa, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Iraq).

If we Americans had stayed in Lebanon, could we have made a difference? It would be nice to think so, but we didn't really have the option.

The U.S. Marines went into the country in 1982 to help Israel usher out the Palestine Liberation Organization, then went in again when Israel's Christian militia allies massacred defenseless Palestinian civilians at Beirut's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. A young political officer from the U.S. embassy, Ryan Crocker, was one of the first outsiders to see the carnage up close. Amid the stench of decaying flesh he counted 106 bodies, 27 of them women and children. But this was "by no means a complete figure," he said in a cable to Washington dictated over his car radio. Washington decided the atrocity demanded some sort of American solution. But what sort? Nobody was sure. But in went the Marines again.

It turned out the Palestinians were far from the only fighters in Lebanon, and Iran nurtured one new group, the Shiite Party of God, or Hizbullah, that proved especially effective. Its recruits were willing to commit suicide to kill their foreign enemies: the Israelis occupying the southern part of Lebanon, the French who had come in as part of the same deployment as the Americans trying to stabilize the situation, and the Americans themselves. The Party of God blew up the U.S. Embassy, it blew up the Marine barracks, it blew up the U.S. Embassy again.

The Reagan administration's exit strategy from Lebanon was to train up units of the Lebanese Army to act as effective keepers of the peace. But the Lebanese Sixth Brigade, responsible for most of the capital, was mostly made up of Shiites. In February 1984 the entire brigade, in effect, joined the ranks of one of the militias. And the Marines at that point had no choice but to get back on their boats.

The critical differences in Iraq are that Americans have stayed much longer already, fought much harder, and died in much greater numbers. Iraq is bigger. It is even more complicated. And it has oil, which means, especially given today's markets, that it is vital to the world's economy. The Bush administration, moreover, has created an Iraqi military that is incapable of defending itself from direct aggression by others in the neighborhood, whether Iran or Israel, Turkey or Saudi Arabia, should any of those countries want to pick a fight or stake out a little territory. So at the same time that Iraq has become America's curse, it has become its dependency.

As the United States had no choice but to leave Lebanon, it has created a situation in which it has no choice but to stay in Iraq.

That's why Crocker, now the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, and Gen. David Petraeus and the other professionals trying to salvage the situation there are always so guarded in their progress reports. The situation can indeed get worse. The patient's on life support, and if Congress pulls the plug it will probably die, but we'll still be stuck in the room with the decaying corpse.

One of the more reasonable prescriptions for Iraq I've heard lately was on a panel with Colin Kahl, a political scientist at Georgetown University. His catch phrase was, as opposed to victory, sustainable stability: contain or crush the remnants of Al Qaeda in Iraq, try to keep the state from collapsing altogether or becoming an Iranian puppet and prevent genocidal violence. And if you can do all those things, whether by negotiation with Iran, twisting the arms of Iraqi politicians, using troops on the ground or threatening to pull them out, then that's about as much as can be expected.

All of which sounds as if we'll be fighting for a long time just to achieve the kind of painful stalemate that emerged in Lebanon when we left after a mere 18 months on the ground. But I'm not so sure I'd give as much credit to Reagan's wisdom as Mike Sheehan does.

On the day the last Marine combat unit pulled out of Lebanon in 1984, a television interviewer asked then-Secretary of State George Shultz if that meant a victory for the bad guys. He could not but equivocate: "This is a kind of warfare, really, that is something different for us … We have to improve our intelligence capability, and we have to think through how, within the concept of the rule of law, which we hold so dear, we can take a more aggressive posture toward what is a worldwide and very undesirable trend." That was 24 years ago, and we're still thinking it through.

In the WaPo, here: March 14 — "U.S. statements on the crisis have been too weak" (Thanks "friday-lunch-club")

"…In an earlier interview with the al-Arabiya television network, Bush said he personally admired Siniora. "We will help him," Bush said. …. One March 14 politician, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, called for "tactical strikes" against Syria to pressure the government to rein in Hezbollah….. members of a coalition known as March 14 — said U.S. statements on the crisis have been too weak and called for more pressure on Hezbollah and its Syrian backers. The politicians said they felt abandoned by the United States….. . The Americans are telling March 14 they have to resist," said one Western diplomat in Beirut. "But they're not bringing much operational support." "We're not asking them to fight our fight for us," said Mouawad, the minister. "But at least don't let us be slaughtered by total indifference." Andrew Lee Butter, in TIME, here "…..Jumblatt, a top American ally, is under virtual house arrest. After the lightning speed with which opposition Hizballah fighters defeated government supporters in a six hour battle on Thursday — only to vanish a few hours later……"I am a hostage now in my home in Beirut," he said over the telephone to his rival Nabih Berri, …."Tell [Hizballah leader] Sayeed Hassan Nasrallah I lost the battle and he wins. So let's sit and talk to reach a compromise. All that I ask is your protection."….. …. Jumblatt is quickly coming to grips with the new political landscape. "The U.S. has failed in Lebanon and they have to admit it," By Paul Salem

Lebanon’s prolonged political crisis erupted in violence last week following the dismissal by the Lebanese government of an official close to Hizbollah and the launch an investigation into the organization’s telecommunications network. Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, outlines the key actors of Lebanon’s worst violence since the end of its civil war in 1990 and their aims.

Key Conclusions:
• Hizbollah’s immediate goals are to force the government to rescind its controversial decisions and establish a unity government with increased authority for Hizbollah. Over the long-term, they could demand on a larger share of power for Lebanon’s Shi’a.
• Hizbollah is not eager to elect a new president immediately. They hope to stall until after new parliamentary elections (which must be held before June 2009) in the hopes of having more say in the choice of candidate.
• The army is under intense criticism for failing to stop the violence but argues it must remain neutral or risk splitting along sectarian lines.
• Contrary to a similar escalation in December 2006, Iran has not interceded to halt the violence. This could be the result of the latest round of Security Council resolutions and increased hostile rhetoric by the United States. It could also reflect Iranian concerns about the possibility of a Syrian–Israeli agreement.

“The situation in Lebanon remains extremely tense. An Arab League ministerial delegation is to arrive to help negotiate an end to the crisis. The next days will indicate whether the opposition will escalate and widen its military assaults, or whether Lebanon is entering a lull in which discussions and political bargaining will come to the fore,” concludes Salem.. [Read the whole report - Hizbollah Attempts a Coup d’État]

Lebanon’s Hariri vows no surrender to Hezbollah
Tue May 13, 2008 12:35pm EDT
By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon’s Sunni Muslim leader Saad al-Hariri pledged on Tuesday there would be no political surrender to what he called a bid by Hezbollah and its Syrian and Iranian backers to impose their will on the nation by force.

The Shi’ite Hezbollah group and its opposition allies have routed supporters of the Sunni-led government in Beirut and hills to the east in fighting that has pushed Lebanon to the brink of a new civil war.

“They simply are demanding that we surrender, they want Beirut to raise white flags… This is impossible,” Hariri told a news conference in his first public appearance since Hezbollah swept through Sunni-dominated areas of the capital last week.

“They will not be able to obtain Saad al-Hariri’s signature … on a deed to surrender to the Iranian and Syrian regimes.”

Lebanon experienced its calmest day since violence broke out on May 7 after U.S.-backed Prime Minister Fouad Siniora outlawed Hezbollah’s communications network and fired Beirut airport’s security chief, who is close to the Shi’ite group.

[Comment by Joshua Landis] Washington's Middle East policy is in deep trouble. The ultra conservatives, such as Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal, are advocating bombing Syria again in order to broaden the crisis. They believe that Hizbullah is too strong to do any remedial work in Lebanon to defeat it. Stephens knows that the Bush administration will not bomb Syria, so he advocates pulling the chain on Lebanon. His last line says it all: "Lebanon will continue its transformation into Hezbollahstan, a sad fate for a country that might have stood for something fine."

Perhaps a decrease in US interest would be the best thing for Lebanon.

The flollowing story in French is about a UN investigative team that spent three days interviewing the editor in chief of "Al Siyassa" of Kuwait. It is discovering a complex dissinformation ring linked to the March 14 leadership and Israel.

Ahmad Jarallah (Al Siyassa Koweit) under thorough interrogation by the Bellemare’s Hariri commission as reported by Al Diwan for propagating false information and hampering the investigation.

“La Commission d’enquête internationale sur l’assassinat de l’ancien Premier Ministre libanais HARIRI interroge le propriétaire du quotidien koweitien As-Syassa
1 mai 2008

Le quotidien koweitien Al-Diwan a rapporté citant des sources de presse au siège de l’ONU à New York et d’autres sources au sein des bureaux du quotidien koweitien Al-Siyssa qu’une délégation de la commission d’enquête internationale sur l’assassinat de Hariri composée de 3 enquêteurs accompagnés de techniciens et d’analystes d’informations s’était rendue au Koweït où elle avait interrogé pendant 3 jours et au rythme de 10 heures par jours l’éditeur et propriétaire du quotidien koweitien As-Siyassa Ahmed EL-JARALLAH connu pour ses positions alignées sur les forces du 14 février au Liban et accusé par l’opposition d’être le porte parole d’Israël et des alliés des Etats-Unis au Liban.

L’interrogation de M.EL-JARALLAH s’inscrit dans le cadre d’une enquête secondaire ouverte par le nouveau chef de la commission d’enquête internationale sur l’assassinat de HARIRI sur la présence de groupes et de réseaux chargés de fournir des fausses informations ainsi que des faux témoins à la commission d’enquête pour brouiller le cours de l’enquête qu’elle mène sur l’attentat ayant coûté la vie en 2005 à Beyrouth à l’ancien Premier Ministre libanais, Rafic HARIRI.

Selon des sources à l’ONU, le magistrat BELLEMARE a décidé de former une telle commission après avoir subi de fortes pressions de la part de la Russie, de l’Afrique du Sud, de la Libye, et de la Chine pour le pousser à prendre les mesures adéquates contre ceux qui veulent faire avorter l’action de la commission d’enquête internationale.

Le magistrat BELLEMARE a réussi à mettre la main grâce à l’aide de l’une de ces grandes puissances (peut-être la Russie) sur des enregistrements audio, des messages électroniques, et des fax contenant des ordres reçus par le propriétaire du quotidien koweitien As-Siyassa et son réseau de la part de responsables de la propagande auprès du député Saad HARIRI à savoir : le Ministre libanais Marwan HAMADE, le député Bassem EL-SABAA, les deux conseillers de Saad HARIRI, le journaliste Fares KHACHAN et Hanni HAMOUD.

Ces responsables font partie d’autres réseau de propagande liés à la famille HARIRI, à Israël et à ses collaborateurs libanais aux Etats-Unis et qui appartiennent au soi disant groupe mondial de soutien à la révolution du cèdre à savoir : Ziad ABDELNOUR, Walid FARESS, Jo BIANI, Tom HARB, et Kabalan FARES.

Le rédacteur des affaires juridiques au sein du quotidien koweitien Al-Diwan, M.Hamed YOUSSEF a affirmé avoir suivi cette question sur le terrain et obtenu une confirmation des informations fournies par les sources de presse à l’ONU de la part d’une partie indépendante à savoir : un haut fonctionnaire au sein du quotidien koweitien As-Syassa qui lui a affirmé que Ahmed EL-JARALLA avait refusé d’accéder à la demande de la commission d’enquête internationale de venir à Beyrouth sous prétexte que sa vie était en danger.

M.YOUSSEF a également affirmé que l’agent d’Ahmed EL-JARALLAH à Beyrouth Samir GHERIAFI écrivait dans les journaux sous le pseudonyme de Hamad GHERIAFI et qu’il prétendait être installé à Londres alors qu’il travaille au bureau de Marwan HAMADE à Beyrouth et ne réside pas à Londres comme l’a découvert la commission d’enquête internationale.

Les sources de presse à l’ONU d’ajouter : 7 enquêteurs de la commission d’enquête internationale sur l’assassinat de HARIRI sont entrés dans les bureaux du quotidien As-Siyassa accompagnés d’agents de sécurité en civil pour interroger Ahmed EL-JARALLAH qui a nié être impliqué dans un réseau sécuritaire et médiatique chargé de propager des rumeurs pour brouiller l’action de la commission d’enquête.

Selon ces sources, ce réseau est composé de dizaines de journalistes dont Samir GHERIAFI et un autre journaliste installé à Paris à savoir : Nizar NAIOUF, propriétaire du site électronique Al-Hakika (la vérité) et qui reçoit une somme mensuelle de 1500 euros de la part de Saad HARIRI.

Cette somme est virée sur le compte de NAYYOUF à Paris par l’intermédiaire de Bassil YARED chargé par Saad HARIRI de verser des pots de vin et d’acheter les consciences dans la capitale française. (As-Saoura)

From Lebanon to Hezbollahstan
May 13, 2008; Page A15
Bret Stephens

On Friday, Hezbollah gunmen set fire to the Beirut offices of Future TV, a Lebanese broadcaster. On a purely symbolic level, it was an apt demonstration of where the Party of God stands in relation to the future itself.

But that wasn't the worst of what has happened in the past week in Lebanon, where scores of people have been killed in interfactional violence. More ominous was the role of the Lebanese army, avowedly neutral and nominally under civilian control. "An army officer accompanied by members of Hezbollah walked into the station and told us to switch off transmission," an unnamed Future TV official told Reuters. So much for army neutrality.

AP Shiite gunmen patrol the streets in Chouweifat, south of Beirut, May 11.

The army also countermanded government orders to dismantle Hezbollah's telecommunications network at the Beirut airport and remove the brigadier responsible for airport security, who is said to be a Hezbollah pawn. "I have called on the army to live up to its national responsibilities . . . and this has not happened," Fouad Siniora, Lebanon's increasingly irrelevant prime minister, said on national TV.

Future historians will look for the precise moment the Lebanese Republic began to transmogrify into Hezbollahstan. Was it the June 2005 murder of anti-Syrian journalist Samir Kassir – the earliest sign that Syria, whose 29-year military occupation of its neighbor had ended just two months before, intended to reinsert itself by stealth and terror (and with the connivance of Hezbollah)? Was it the role played by the Maronite Gen. Michel Aoun, a hero of the last Lebanese civil war, who returned from exile in 2005 intending to play the part of de Gaulle only to become, after striking a bargain with Hezbollah, another Pétain?

Was it the summer war of 2006, when Israel failed to destroy Hezbollah militarily and, in so failing, gave Hezbollah an aura of invincibility? Was it the unwillingness of international peacekeepers to patrol the Lebanese-Syrian border, thereby allowing Hezbollah to rearm itself after the war? Was it the absence of an effective, or even intelligible, American policy toward Lebanon, epitomized by Condoleezza Rice's decision to rehabilitate Damascus by inviting it to November's Annapolis Middle East conference?

The answer is all of the above: An accumulation of policy mistakes, political dodges and moral atrocities that have nearly killed the "new" Lebanon in its crib.

Demography has also played a role. Christians in particular have been fleeing Lebanon for decades. And though a census hasn't been taken in Lebanon in 75 years, Nizar Hamze of the American University of Beirut estimates that there are between eight and nine live births per Shiite household. The comparable figure for Lebanon's Sunnis is about five; for Christians and Druze, about two. These numbers must ultimately count against an outmoded constitutional order geared to favor Christians first, Sunnis second, Shiites third.

But even if Lebanon cannot escape its Shiite destiny, it is not ordained that it must also become a Hezbollah state, taking its orders from Tehran. So what are the U.S.'s policy options?

Inside Lebanon, they are few. No American president will send American troops back to Beirut and risk a reprise of 1983. Supplying the Lebanese army is a nonstarter; it is no longer clear whose side that army is on. Should the U.S. arm the anti-Hezbollah factions in the event of an all-out civil war? Some of them, like Samir Geagea's Lebanese Forces, have well-earned reputations as war criminals.

A more productive thought comes from Dwight Eisenhower, who observed that "if a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it." The reason the U.S. lacks for options in Lebanon is because it has no policy toward Syria.

In 2003, Congress passed the Syria Accountability Act, but the administration has observed only its weakest provisions. They could be enforced in full. A Syria Liberation Act, similar to the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, would be a step forward. So would international sanctions for Syria's violations of the Nonproliferation Treaty, exposed by Israel in its raid last year on an unfinished nuclear reactor. Bombing the runway of the Damascus airport for the role it plays in serving as a conduit for Iranian arms to Hezbollah would also be an appropriate signal of American displeasure.

None of this is likely to happen, however. U.S. policy toward Syria will continue to vacillate between partial engagement and partial ostracism, achieving neither. And Lebanon will continue its transformation into Hezbollahstan, a sad fate for a country that might have stood for something fine.

The Other Mideast Talks 
Israel and Syria are edging closer to the negotiating table. What Bush must do to make sure they get there.
By Mohamad Bazzi | Special Guest Columnist
May 12, 2008 

If President George W. Bush truly wants to leave a legacy of peacemaking in the Middle East, he's looking in the wrong place. Instead of focusing exclusively on Israeli-Palestinian talks, Bush should do more to encourage renewed Israeli-Syrian negotiations.

The United States has much to gain strategically from renewed Israeli-Syrian dialogue. Syria could be pressed to play a more constructive role in the region—instead of being a spoiler or, worse, turning into a full-fledged rogue state.

In recent months Israeli and Syrian leaders have been exchanging positive messages through Turkish mediators. Unlike the weak Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, Syrian President Bashar Assad can actually deliver on a peace deal with Israel. The Israeli-Syrian track can move faster than Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, where the two sides are still far apart on the central issues: Israeli settlements, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the final status of Jerusalem. By contrast, the Syrians and Israelis mainly need to negotiate over the return of the Golan Heights, a strategic terrain that Israel has occupied since the 1967 Middle East war. …

Even without a regional settlement, Israel has much to gain from a deal over the Golan. It would mean not only a peace treaty with Damascus but an end of Syrian aid to what is now Israel's most dangerous enemy: Hizbullah, the Lebanese Shiite militia that did surprisingly well in its war with a far superior Israeli army in the summer of 2006. On May 9, Hizbullah dispatched hundreds of heavily armed fighters into West Beirut, and within 12 hours it had altered Lebanon's delicate political balance. Hizbullah's military victory—in which it quickly routed Sunni militiamen, took control of their political offices and shut down media outlets owned by the Sunni leader Saad Hariri—is likely to bolster Assad's position in any negotiations.

Lebanon's Sunni bloc built militia, officials say
The Future movement used a security firm to assemble a private force, officials say. But the fighters were no match for the Shiite group Hezbollah.
By Borzou Daragahi and Raed Rafei, Special to The Times
May 12, 2008

BEIRUT — For a year, the main Lebanese political faction backed by the United States built a Sunni Muslim militia here under the guise of private security companies, Lebanese security experts and officials said.

The fighters, aligned with Saad Hariri's Future movement, were trained and armed to counter the heavily armed Shiite Muslim militant group Hezbollah and protect their turf in a potential military confrontation.

But in a single night late last week, the curious experiment in private-sector warfare crumbled.

Attacked by Hezbollah, the Future movement fighters quickly fled Beirut or gave up their weapons. Afterward, some of the fighters said they felt betrayed by their political patrons, who failed to give them the means to protect themselves while official security forces stood aside and let Hezbollah destroy them.

"We are prepared to fight for a few hours but not more," said one of the Sunni fighters in the waning moments of the battle. "Where do we get ammunition and weapons from? We are blocked. The roads are blocked. Even Saad Hariri has left us to face our fate alone."….. 

Four days that changed the Middle East
Rami G. Khouri
Monday, May 12, 2008

Events in Beirut and other parts of Lebanon continue to move erratically, with simultaneous gestures of political compromise and armed clashes that have left 46 dead in the past week. The consequences of what has happened in the past week may portend an extraordinary but constructive new development: the possible emergence of the first American-Iranian joint political governance system in the Arab world. Maybe. …. … Lebanon can only exist as a single country if its multi-ethnic and multi-religious population shares power. As the political leaders now seek to do this, they operate in a new context where the strongest group comprises Iranian- and Syrian-backed Islamist Shiites and their junior partners, Christian and Sunni Lebanese allies. They will share power in a national unity government with fellow Lebanese who are friends, allies, dependents and proxies of the United States and Saudi Arabia.

If a new Middle East truly is being born, this may well prove to be its nursery. |Full Story

Lally Weymouth interviews Olmert in Newsweek, here (Thanks FLC) 

Do you want peace with Syria, and do you think it's obtainable with President Bashar al-Assad?
We are very unhappy with the continued intensive involvement of Syria in the affairs of Lebanon and the lack of a democratic process in electing a new president in Lebanon. We are also unhappy with the continued links between Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas. [But] the relations between us and Syria have to be reexamined, [as well as] the possibility of making peace. It's not something that can be done publicly. I don't mind that President Assad made an announcement that there will be negotiations, but the actual negotiations ought to be discussed quietly. In principle, we are ready for it if they are.

In order to have a full peace with Israel, would Syria have to break with Iran? Is such a break possible?
Look, I don't know if this is a possibility or how you can describe it in terms of probabilities. But one thing I know, if I don't check it, I will never find out. I think at the end of the day, this will have to be the choice of Syria.

Have there been direct Israel-Syrian talks, or have they all been conducted via the Turks?
I prefer not to go into these details.

Hasn't the United States been apprehensive about Israel-Syria negotiations for some time?
The international and local press . . . [has left] the impression that America does not allow Israel to engage in negotiations with Syria. This is not true. I never heard from my friend George W. Bush any warning or any request not to negotiate with the Syrians. I think that if the Syrians will handle the negotiations with us in an appropriate manner, they will be surprised to see how these negotiations can improve their status with America. My personal view is that no one can be of better help to this process than President Bush. Because any new president in America, if confronted with this issue, will have to wait two years at least until he learns enough and finds the appropriate time to devote to this, while Bush knows, Bush is familiar, and Bush understands. Therefore, if one is interested in a [Syrian-Israeli] process that ultimately leads to a public endorsement by the United States of America, then he has to hurry up. I believe, for reasons that I don't want to go into, that for Syria, the road to Washington must cross Jerusalem. I know what I'm talking about.

Officials in the U.S. government are reportedly concerned that Syria's real price for peace is Lebanon. The U.S. is interested in the survival of the government of Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora.
I know what our expectations are. I know what the Americans' expectations are. I'm not going to do anything which [is in contradiction] to what my understanding of [what] the fundamental interests of the United States are in this part of the world.

So is this a pure deal about the Golan?
I didn't say that. I said that this is an attempt to achieve peace between Israel and Syria. And at the same time, to also make sure that the interests of free, democratic Lebanon are well protected. What the ingredients of peace [are] is something that will have to be discussed. I would not limit it to only one issue. It has to be peace from both sides–no threats or attacks from both sides.

What is your assessment of Assad?
Look, Assad is the president of Syria. He enjoys fairly effective control over his country. And I'm looking forward to negotiating with him.

"Bomb Syria" Woolsey advises McCain
Eric Margolis: Former CIA head James Woolsey heads group of neocon advisers to John McCain
Monday May 12th, 2008

John McCain has recruited several members of "The Committee on the Present Danger" as foreign policy advisers, including former CIA head James Woolsey. Do Woolsey's viewpoints represent McCain's vision for America and the world?

By Qifa Nabki

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is tempting to regard the political stalemate that has gripped Lebanon for the past seventeen months – with all of its futile spats and squabbles, accusations and recriminations – as yet another example of the mundane and self-destructive charade of Lebanese democracy. The level of discourse among the political elite has fallen so low that it is often scarcely distinguishable from the sloganeering of propagandists and the taunts of schoolyard bullies.

However, what is often lost in the day-to-day analysis of Lebanon’s current despair and hopelessness, is the extent to which its paralysis stems, paradoxically, from two moments of staggering hopefulness. Beneath the surface clutter of parliamentary sessions postponed, foreign sponsors maligned, and electoral laws rejected, lie two emotional currents of deep nationalist aspiration, two currents which flow beneath the landscape of Lebanese politics like parallel subterranean rivers, welling up and intersecting at various points, then diverging once again and disappearing from sight.

I am speaking, of course, of the two monumental events which precipitated the current conflict, namely the “Cedar Revolution” of March 2005 and the “Divine Victory” of July 2006. Given that we now stand at a juncture, where Lebanon’s leaders can choose to lead the country towards reconciliation or further strife, I find it necessary to recall the place of these events in the contemporary national consciousness. In many ways, these two episodes were twin revolutions, remarkably similar to each other in their structural outlines and emotional resonance. They each represented a defining moment for a sizable portion of the Lebanese population, in which a dense set of accumulated resentments, anxieties, and righteous anger was focused upon a single historical injustice, and then exorcised – successfully – through a shocking and sublime victory. These twin revolutions made visible, for many Lebanese, a political reality previously unimaginable in Lebanon, a reality in which ordinary citizens were the masters of their own fate, where the dominance of foreign powers could be resisted successfully, and where national unity was not a purely hypothetical construct.

For the hundreds of thousands of people who would come together under the March 14 banner, the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri was a great crime, not against one sect but against the nation as a whole. The huge “Independence 05” rallies displayed an unprecedented degree of national unity: people from all walks of life, all social classes, all regions, and all sects gathered together in Beirut’s central district to protest the targeting of Lebanon. The withdrawal of the Syrian army in subsequent months seemed to validate the feelings of anger and betrayal by the aggrieved Lebanese, and the string of assassinations which followed over the next two years only seemed to feature as aftershocks of the seismic event which redefined the struggle for Lebanese sovereignty and independence. Having yoked their hopes and aspirations to the idyllic prospect of a new national beginning in Lebanon free of foreign tutelage, these citizens could not bear to see their gains dashed by what they perceived to be Syria's attempt to bring Lebanon under its wing, once again.

Similarly, the outcome of the July War of 2006, for many hundreds of thousands of people within Lebanon, marked nothing less than the beginning of a new age, an end to decades of unanswered aggressions by Israel and centuries of maltreatment and persecution by co-nationalists. The inability of Israel’s army to end the rain of Hizbullah rockets on Israeli cities, coupled with the humiliating losses of its once-invincible soldiers in the field, signaled to many that a threshold had been crossed, and that the regional power dynamics had shifted to the favor of the Arabs for the first time since the birth of Israel. The stars were aligned: a leader had emerged who could finally defend his people from the aggressions of their arch-enemy, a leader possessed of a populist’s voice, a patrician’s dignity, and a genius for political and military strategy. The story of the poor grocer’s son who became an international hero led to a single inescapable conclusion: nomen est omen.

The twin revolutions of modern Lebanese history are, in a way, a single revolution played out twice. The structural similarities are many: on the regional level, both events were epoch-making, changing the regional dynamics in truly remarkable and unexpected ways. They both represented “firsts”: the Cedar Revolution being the first spontaneous mass popular protest in the Middle East, which resulted in a palpable and significant political change; the Divine Victory being the first truly effective resistance and repulsion of a full Israeli military assault on an Arab country. Both events captured the attention and imagination of the outside world, and attracted a high degree of foreign “assistance” (in the form of weapons, financial support, media coverage, etc.) meant to consolidate the decisive changes wrought by the outcome of each revolution. Lebanon suddenly became, once again, the embodiment of great promise and great risk, to all concerned with the future of the Middle East.

The similarities between the twin revolutions on the local Lebanese stage are no less striking. Both events functioned as a kind of national catharsis for different sectors of the Lebanese population. Each episode gave its participants a taste of an exceedingly rare commodity in Middle Eastern societies: self-determination. To experience one event of such great life-affirmation in today’s Middle East is remarkably rare indeed; to experience two in the space of eighteen months is unprecedented, and, given the nature of the events in question, also highly traumatic.

Traumatic because the partisans of both sides have been hamstrung by the enormity of these two victories. While the conflict has veered off along different lines and directions, and politicians have sought to exploit cheaply both events for political gain (disgracing them both and dulling their luster), I believe that the emotional contours of Lebanon’s current crisis are still defined by these twin historical moments. And this is ultimately what is so sadly ironic about the political paralysis in Lebanon today: these two events, each possessing tremendous unifying potential, have been used to cancel each other out.

A solution, if and when it emerges, will likely take the shape of a transitional government headed by General Michel Suleiman. The challenges that await this man are monumental. Beyond the inevitable feuding that will continue on the subjects of the electoral law, ministerial portfolios, and the economic situation, Suleiman will have to find a way to reconcile the Lebanese people to each other, and not just their sectarian leaders. I believe that this will be possible only by paying homage to the significance of both ‘victories’ at the root of this conflict, showing how they represent a single unifying national reality, rather than two polarizing ones. The next Lebanese president will lead a country that is beginning to understand the meaning of true self-determination. However, he will have to convince its people that achieving independence of a more lasting nature will require the energies of a unified populace.

Rex Brynen of McGill University makes a powerful argument that Hizbullah has blundered (Copied below). He is correct that the Shiite move on Sunni West Beirut has exacerbated sectarian anxieties and fears - not only Sunni fears, but Christian fears as well. Lebanon's other sects now realize how little stands between them and Hizbullah's militia.

Second, Sunnis such as Salim al-Hoss and Najib Mikati who would be expected to lead Lebanon in a compromise and who have showed themselves in the past to be willing to work with Syria even at the most trying of times, have taken an anti-Hizbullah line. This demonstrates how difficult it is for Sunnis to reach out to Hizbullah and Syria at this moment. This is not a good sign for a future compromise.

The rhetoric on all sides as grown worse than I have seen it since the civil war. Siniora has said that Hizbullah has done things that the Israelis never did when they occupied Beirut. The PPS or SSNP issued a statement that they would hold Hariri personally responsible for the killing of their people in Tripoli. Nasrallah called the Lebanese government illegal, and on it goes.

Most distressing is Rex's conclusion about the March 14 Movement's determination to ignore the implications of Hizbullah's occupation of West Beirut. In this he may well be correct. It is, after all, how March 14 responded to the Hizbullah's tent city. In essence, Siniora's government will dare Hizbullah to carry out the coup the Shiite party clearly does not want to carry out. The game of chicken will continue. Hizbullah's use of force will neither lance the boil of paralysis that has overtaken Lebanon's government, nor will it serve as a wake up call to Lebanon's bickering factions that they must compromise. That is what Rex is predicting. Here is his analysis:  

Rex Brynen wrote in the Comment Section:

It has also demonstrated that it can game out its actions and is prepared for its end-game, something that others in the region seldom seem to do.

While Nasrallah is certainly a good strategist, one is as much struck by his missteps as his successes in recent years.

First, there was the 2006 war, which Hizbullah clearly did not foresee (although it was quite foreseeable). As it turns out they secured their “divine victory” because the Israelis made even more serious mistakes, but it certainly wasn’t a triumph of strategic master thought.

Then there was the withdrawal from cabinet, and the “tent camp” siege of the government–which turned out to NOT to have the rapid and decisive effect that Hizbullah intended. Nasrallah seems to have never anticipated that he would simply be ignored, and that it would be business as usual in the Grand Serail.

Finally, there is the take-over of West Beirut. While the rather foolish and incautious cabinet decisions were the cause of this, I think it was also driven by Hizbullah’s continuing inability to leverage M14 as much as they wanted to. The withdrawal of fighters from the street (albeit, after some very thuggish behaviour by their Amal and SSNP proxies) was clearly intended to spin this all as a reluctant Hizbullah with a national agenda (rather than a sectarian move), they’ve clearly underestimated the effect in the Christian community where it has all done substantial damage to Aoun (a fact that even his most loyal deputies are privately admitting). Given that the Christian community is the only one in play–the Shiite, Sunni, and Druze communities are all pretty much solidly behind the Hizbullah/Amal, Mustaqbal, and the PSP respectively, and now even more so–the long term result could be a politically weakened M8. Ironically, this comes at a time when M14’s weak government performance were causing it some real problems with its constituents–however, events in Beirut will now counter that with a “rally around the (sectarian) flag” effect.

It is also possible that the M14 groups will now do some serious arming and training (despite all the accusations, their past efforts have been VERY limited and haphazard), probably with Saudi/Jordanian/Egyptian support–not really in Hizbullah’s long-term advantage.

Finally, what does Hizbullah do if M14 just ignores Hizbullah’s obvious preeminent military power? I suspect they’ll do exactly that: not soften on the “presidential package” (next cabinet/PM, new electoral law), leaving Hizbullah no better off than before. Indeed, given the damage M8 has taken in non-Shiite communities, in a few months it could even be in a somewhat worse position.

In short, I think this is far from being an unalloyed masterstroke of strategic brilliance.

Ex-IDF Chief: Hezbollah rule in Lebanon may help Israel beat it
By Yoav Stern and Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondents, Haaretz Service and Channel 10

Former IDF chief of staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak said Sunday Hezbollah's persistent attempts to take over Lebanon could eventually benefit Israel in its struggle against the militant group.

"If an armed conflict erupts it will be simpler to strike Lebanon when Hezbollah is the legitimate ruler," Shahak told the Army Radio.

Earlier on Sunday, Israel's Vice Premier Haim Ramon told cabinet members that Lebanon must be viewed as a "Hezbollah state," after the Shiite guerilla group seized control over the western part of the Lebanese capital over the weekend.

"Lebanon has no government. It is a fiction, there is only Hezbollah," Ramon said during the weekly cabinet meeting. "Hezbollah is directly responsible for everything that happens [in Lebanon], and the organization completely controls the state."

Furious Sunnis feel betrayed by their leader
MARK MACKINNON
from Monday's Globe and Mail
May 11, 2008

…. “I blame Saad Hariri for what has happened. He practises politics in the Middle East. You need to make a militia to protect your people here, or you will be demolished,” said Talal, a 51-year-old lawyer who asked that his last name not be used. A day before, he said, Shia militiamen from the Hezbollah-allied Amal movement broke into his apartment, stealing jewellery and asking about members of Mr. Hariri's Future Movement.

While most Lebanese have kept weapons in their homes since the country's 1975-1990 civil war, the Sunnis found themselves outnumbered and underequipped on Friday as Hezbollah and its allies carried out their lightning occupation of West Beirut. “We are fighting with sticks and stones and they have Iranian weapons,” complained Abu Tariq, a Future Movement leader in Tariq al-Jadeeda. Hezbollah is backed by both Iran and Syria.

The Future Movement, so hopefully named by Mr. Hariri's peacemaker father, formed the backbone of the peaceful uprising after his assassination in 2005 that became known as the Cedar Revolution. Those protests, which drew hundreds of thousands of people into the streets, forced Syria to withdraw its soldiers from Lebanon after a 29-year stay.

That revolution lay in shambles Sunday. Even after Hezbollah and its allies withdrew their fighters from areas of West Beirut they had seized on Friday, the Shia militant group's yellow banner hung over numerous Sunni neighbourhoods, leaving no question as to who was now the power on the ground.

Despite its popularity, the Future Movement had no fighting wing that could stand up to Hezbollah or Amal. Even as the government became more deeply embroiled in the escalating political standoff with the heavily armed Hezbollah, it directed its efforts – and the funding it received from the United States and its allies in the Sunni Arab world – into building up the national army as a military counterweight.

That strategy failed last week, as the army, afraid of splitting along sectarian lines, stood aside as Hezbollah captured West Beirut and briefly made Mr. Hariri a prisoner in his own home.

With Sunni rage rising and Mr. Hariri discredited in the eyes of many, some now worry that al-Qaeda-style radical Islamists could fill the void and give deadly direction to the anti-Shia sentiment, as in Iraq….

Syria: Will the Anti-Trust Law Make a Difference?
Joshua Landis
Arab Reform Bulletin: May 2008

On April 4, Syria issued its first Competition and Anti-Trust Law (Law No 7/2008), which some observers consider a significant marker on the road from a planned to a market economy. The anti-trust legislation follows on the heels of several new laws issued over the past months, including a new commercial law, an incorporation law, and an arbitration law, replacing old ones dating to 1949. All are designed to open the way for private investment, including foreign investment, and to bring Syria into line with international legal and business practices.

Kanaan al-Ahmar, the Syrian attorney who played a large role in drafting the anti-trust law (click here for the entire text in Arabic), told editor Jihad Yazigi of The Syria Report (Syria’s top economic digest) that the Competition and Anti-Trust law has five main provisions:

• Market prices are to be set by free competition, with the exception of some specified cases. Al-Ahmar notes that until now the government set prices and issued occasional regulations to liberalize them; now it is the other way round.
• Cartels and other agreements, whether written or oral, which could disrupt free competition in the market are prohibited.
• No economic entity may abuse its dominant position in the market.
• Traders and manufacturers are prohibited from imposing minimum prices for the resale of their products/services, from selling below cost, or from disrupting supply to the market (in order to drive up prices).
• The law establishes a Competition Council that must give permission for any merger or acquisition that leads a company to hold a market share of over 30 percent for any product or service.

But no law is better than the authority that oversees and upholds it. Yazigi explains that “the text of the anti-trust law is as good and modern as any equivalent law in another country. Syria’s business environment has been significantly improved by this and the other laws promulgated recently. However, implementation will be a problem; one should not expect too much in the short-term. Most members of the body in charge of overseeing its implementation are appointed by the government. In other words, it is a very good law that will require political reform before it works as efficiently as it is meant to.”

The government will completely control the thirteen-member Competition Council that will monitor the law’s implementation. Serving at the pleasure of the prime minister, the body will include eight financial and legal experts selected by various ministers and heads of government financial commissions, three businessmen selected by the Federations of Chambers of Commerce, and two unionists, one from the General Workers Union and another from the Peasants Union.

Among the key questions about the implementation of the new law is how, if at all, it will apply to industries currently dominated by the state. One Syrian businessman, a Wall Street executive who has numerous interests in Syria, said “It is not monopolies within the private sector that bother us businessmen; it is the state monopolies. The state owns some 250 different businesses of which only eight or so are profitable. They belong to the telecom and petroleum industries. The others are almost all dogs and produce tires, beer, biscuits, bottled water, cigarettes…the list goes on. Every businessman I know wants to get into these fields; there is good money to be made, but the state has to give up its monopolies first.”

At the same time, despite their continuing frustration at the slow pace of change and continuing heavy hand of the state, many Syrian businessmen believe that the government is on the right track. “If Bashar has done one thing, he has changed some of the archaic and idiotic laws,” one businessman said. President al-Assad also has opened up several strategic industries—banking, insurance, and advertising—to private capital. Investor response in these industries has been very good. Initial public offerings (IPO) of banks entering into the Syrian market have been oversubscribed. When Bank Audi entered the Syrian market in 2005, its IPO was oversubscribed by a massive 988 percent. Fransabank, the newest entrant into Syria just had its IPO in March, which was oversubscribed by 250 percent of the value of the offering.

The success of the financial sector has whetted the appetite of regional investors. And while it is not clear how well the new anti-trust and other laws will be implemented, they are already succeeding in creating the impression that Syria has become investment friendly. Still, business people are savvy about the risks in such an uncertain environment. A recent proposal for a $50 million venture in Syria began with the caution: “This proposal is being offered to sophisticated investors who could, in the worst case, afford to sustain the loss of their entire investment.” Investing in Syria is not for the faint of heart.

Joshua Landis co-directs the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) signs agreement to develop its first property in Syria with the M.A. Kharafi Group

Dubai, 11 May 2008: InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) has signed an exclusive agreement with MAK Hotel Holdings, a member of the M.A. Kharafi Group of Kuwait, to develop an InterContinental Hotel in the Syrian capital.

Located in the city centre, the 370-room InterContinental Damascus, due for completion in 2010, will form part of the capital’s only integrated development which will include a shopping mall, cinema complex and office space.

Targeted at the luxury leisure traveller, InterContinental Damascus will be the perfect starting point for those keen to explore the areas historic sites, known to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.

John Bamsey, Chief Operating Officer — "Over the last few years we have witnessed a substantial increase in tourism levels to Syria; our aim is for IHG to be at the forefront of this demand for accommodation."

Mohamed Fahmy, Managing Director of MAK Hotel Holdings, commented: “This is an exciting development for our group and we are thrilled to be working alongside IHG to deliver an exceptional InterContinental branded hotel in the heart of Damascus. There is great investment potential throughout Syria and we look forward to expanding our portfolio within the region.”

Syria sees low wheat crop, may use reserves
Reuters -By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

DAMASCUS, May 8 (Reuters) - Worse than expected weather will plunge Syria's wheat production to a nine-year low this year and the government may use its strategic reserve to help meet domestic needs, a senior agriculture official said on Thursday.

Syria is a major food and farm commodities player in the Middle East and a traditional exporter to Egypt and Jordan.

Food security is a cornerstone of the Baath Party led government, which is confronting a U.S. led drive to isolate it after Washington imposed sanctions on Syria in 2004.

Output of wheat, which will start to be harvested next month, is expected to fall to 3 million tonnes compared to a planned 4.7 million and 4.1 million tonnes last year, Mohammad Hassan Katana told Reuters in an interview.

Production of barley will fall to 200,000 tonnes this year compared with 784,000 in 2007 and 253,000 tonnes in 1999, the lowest on record, he added.

"We have had a massive deterioration in weather conditions this year. It is one of the worst on record," said Katana, who heads statistics and planning at the Agriculture Ministry.

"Most of our production will come from irrigated areas that have been hit by lack of rain," he added.

The year started with 55 days of frost, which delayed growth of wheat and barley, and this was followed by unseasonably scorching weather in April that finished chances of harvesting areas fed by rain, he said.

Rain-fed areas account for around one third of Syria's cereal production. Rain was 40 percent below normal this year and this resulted in a 20 percent drop in yield in irrigated areas, Katana said.

This year's wheat output, expected to be the worse than the 2.5 million tonnes in 1999, will be enough to cover demand for bread but not for flour used in pastries and other food, he added.

But Katana said wheat security, a pillar of strategic policies, will remain intact due to large reserves Syria has built over the years.

"We have the strategic reserve to use in these circumstances. It has been built for such scenarios," he said.

UNHCR signs landmark accord in Syria with international NGO

US extends Syria sanctions

WASHINGTON (AFP) — President George W. Bush said Wednesday he was extending US sanctions against Syria following Washington's charge that Damascus had been building a nuclear reactor with North Korea's help.

Bush announced his decision to continue for one year a freeze on Syrian assets and the ban on the export of certain goods to Syria in an executive order and a message to the US Congress.

"I took these actions to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States constituted by the actions of the Government of Syria," Bush said in the order. He accused Syria of "supporting terrorism … pursuing weapons of mass destruction and missile programs including the recent revelation of illicit nuclear cooperation with North Korea." The US president also said Syria was "undermining US and international efforts with respect to the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq."

Bush initially slapped sanctions on Syria in May 2004, then extended them in April 2006 and widened them in February to target officials engaged in "public corruption," amid charges Damascus was destabilizing Iraq and Lebanon.

Last month, US national security officials presented intelligence they said showed Syria had been building a secret nuclear reactor for military ends….

Syria denied the US allegations, promised full cooperation with the UN watchdog, and accused the United States of a "campaign of lies" akin to US charges that Iraq had a weapons of mass destruction program.

Syria: Atomic Agency Seeks Answers
By REUTERS, May 8, 2008

Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Brussels, said Syria had an obligation to tell his agency whether the site Israeli warplanes bombed there in September was an undeclared nuclear reactor. The government in Damascus has not granted United Nations inspectors access to the area despite several requests, diplomats say. The United States released intelligence last month that it said showed that Syria had built a reactor at the site. The Syrian government has denied the accusations.

Purchases Linked N. Korean to Syria
Pyongyang Company Funneled Reactor Parts to Damascus, Intelligence Officials Say
By Robin Wright and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, May 11, 2008; A18

When North Korean businessman Ho Jin Yun first caught the attention of German customs police in 2002, he was on a continental buying spree with a shopping list that seemed as random as it was long.

Yun, police discovered, had been crisscrossing Central Europe, amassing a bafflingly diverse collection of materials and high-tech gadgets: gas masks, electric timers, steel pipes, vacuum pumps, transformers and aluminum tubes cut to precise dimensions.

Most of these wares Yun had shipped to his company's offices in China and North Korea. But some of the goods, U.S. and European officials now say, were evidently intended for a secret project in Syria: a nuclear reactor that would be built with North Korean help, allegedly to produce plutonium for eventual use in nuclear weapons.

According to U.S. officials, European intelligence officials and diplomats, Yun's firm — Namchongang Trading, known as NCG — provided the critical link between Pyongyang and Damascus, acquiring key materials from vendors in China and probably from Europe, and secretly transferring them to a desert construction site near the Syrian town of Al Kibar.

It was the company's suspicious buying habits — and the branch office it opened in Damascus — that inadvertently contributed to the alleged reactor's discovery and later destruction in a Sept. 6 Israeli bombing raid, U.S. officials say. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen declined in an interview to say whether Washington helped with the raid, but he strongly endorsed it.

"The reactor which was being built was not very far from being operational and needed to be hit," Mullen said.

Only through the sights of its guns
By Zvi Bar’el
Tags: Lebanon, Hezbollah

Nasrallah’s rhetoric in the internal Lebanese dispute is not the important point, but it does once again portray Hezbollah not as an opposition organization, but as a force competing with the Lebanese army. Nasrallah comes off as someone who intends to rack up all the political achievements he feels he deserves. It seems he will not rest until the current Lebanese government is gone, to be replaced by a unity government in which his supporters have veto power over important decisions. Thus, while Israel continues to view Hezbollah as nothing but a militant organization that can be crushed by a military operation, it is ignoring the possibility that Lebanon will shortly be run by that very organization. In effect, one can say even now that the person running Lebanon’s domestic politics is Nasrallah - no less, and perhaps more so, than the government.

Seeing Hezbollah solely as an organization is quite similar to Israel seeing Hamas as an organization, while ignoring the public foundation on which both groups rely. The result is that Israel prefers to stick with counting Hezbollah’s Katyusha rockets, or Hamas’ Qassams, as the sole index of the threat those groups pose. In order to intensify the threat, Israel terms both organizations as “Iranian,” thereby fulfilling its obligation to issue an alert.

There is no argument over the fact that the amount of missiles and rockets is not just a potential threat - both organizations use them against Israeli targets. But the way that Israel has dealt with these groups thus far proves that military solutions alone are not practical. Hezbollah was not weakened by the Second Lebanon War. Instead, the war made it even stronger, both militarily and politically. And the military offensives in Gaza have not made much of an impression on Hamas, which holds the key to continued political negotiations.

In both cases, Israel has a political alternative. If it so greatly fears Iran’s expansion into the Mediterranean, Israel can advance talks with Syria, and if it is concerned by a Hamas takeover of the political process, Israel would do better to move forward with negotiations with the Palestinian Authority - or at least to create conditions in Gaza to relieve the threat posed by Hamas. Israel sees the political threat developing in Lebanon and in the territories, but is prepared to respond only through the sights of its guns.”

Shai writes: This is the kind of freedom of speech Israelis enjoy (thank god):

Let's be done with all the Talanskys 
By Gideon Levy in Haaretz

….. Revealing the identity of the primary witness, Morris Talansky, in the lastest Ehud Olmert affair raises questions that go beyond the prime minister. Serious questions need to be asked about the relationship between American Jewry and Israel.

Granted, Talansky is a mere individual, but he is not the only one. Jerusalem is full of wheeler-dealers, functionaries, lobbyists, donors and philanthropists. There are rich men and middlemen, envoys and delegations, many of them with good intentions, but some without.

They wheedle and schnorr and contribute to various causes. It's the kind of schnorring that begins with Shaare Zedek Medical Center and could end in court. The question here is why did Talansky, or any other Jewish American, invest, allegedly, in Olmert? What do they receive in exchange for this pot stirring? 

Offended said:

If HEZBOLLAH was indeed a thuggish organization with a sectarian agenda that is subservient to Iran and Syria, then it’d have done the following after it has crushed the future militia and got the cooperation of the army:
1- Take control of the Saray, arrest Saniora and Ahmed Fatfat.
2- Raid the residences of Sa’d Hariri and Junblatt and arrest them and put everyone to a tribunal of its liking.
3- Install a new government with a shia’ PM (and those who don’t like it can bang their heads in the wall).
4- Revoke all government decrees regarding the Hariri tribunal and deport the UN investigative team.
5- Set free the four poor security officers who are rotting in jail without trial.
6- Elect a shia’ president. ( and those who don’t like it can bang their heads in the wall)
7- Invite the Iranian and the Syrian armies to establish permanent military bases in Lebanon.
8- Anyone who doesn’t like any of the above shall be silenced and thrown into prison.

Honest Patriot said:

Offended, you may have been sarcastic in your post but I, for one, believe that item (4) is on the agenda the moment HA is back in or becomes the government.
4- Revoke all government decrees regarding the Hariri tribunal and deport the UN investigative team.

SHAMI said:

Dr Joshua, many recent studies have proved that the Sunni community in Lebanon is a little more numerous than the Shia community but they remain very close and if you add the 500 000 Palestinians there will be a clear Sunni majority in Lebanon, even if they are not Lebanese nationals but we should take them into account as permanent or i hope long term inhabitants, I would prefer that our Palestinian brothers of Lebanon became Syrian citizens if they can not go back to their home Palestine.

Likely the Muslims in Lebanon are today 60% of Lebanon population, it’s important for me as Syrian Muslim that Lebanon remain a country with a christian character and we should be honest that what make Lebanon so different it’s this liberal westernized character.

Qifa Nabki said:

Another day, another opportunity for politicians to ruin our lives.

Let’s see if we can make a few predictions.

The government will NOT resign.

Gemayel, Geagea, and Jumblatt will continue issuing meaningless statements about coups and hands outstretched in dialogue. Hariri will reluctantly play along, while loudly ruling out the possibility of fitna.

Aoun will keep his head low.

Nasrallah will be magnanimous, as he always is, leaving the shamateh to his pet parakeets, Naim Qasim and Wiam Wahhab.

Washington will throw some more sanctions on Syria and underline Hizbullah’s name on the top 10 terrorist organizations, then use a yellow highlighter to make it seem really bold and striking, and then maybe erase it and write it out in all CAPS.

In short, we will limp along as usual. Let’s hope otherwise?

Mideast reels as hunger outgrows oil earnings

In spite of record oil prices, food security across the region has reached a precarious point, with cereals imports expected to reach $22.6bn this year - May-07

Robert Malley 'sacked' by Obama "for talks with Hamas"…?
In Murdoch's London TIMES, here (Thanks FLC)  "One of Barack Obama’s Middle East policy advisers disclosed yesterday that he had held meetings with the militant Palestinian group Hamas – prompting the likely Democratic nominee to sever all links with him…."

Reem Allaf has written an excellent satirical piece on Syrian's use of the Web.

Idaf responds to Reem's article:

You should try to coordinate with these people for the embassies. It's the core of an e-government project in Syria. Most official information on government applications are listed here (with lots of forms to download and contacts to government entities):

http://www.e.sy/

http://www.e.sy/