Hizbullah in action 2

A French delegate of the Parti Socialiste, in Lebanon for the Socialist International (which has had very little publicity in this wildly capitalist neo-feudal country…), recently committed the classic faux-pas of openly taking pictures in Hizbullah-controlled territory (in this case Dahiyyeh) and was treated to the usual procedure: scooter kids surrounding the car, the local HA officials arriving and taking him in for questioning, releasing him a few hours later. ‘A statement issued by the group said Hizbullah militants had detained Pakzad and questioned him to ensure that he was not an Israeli. “Once we were sure that the Frenchman and his companion were not Israelis we had no problems” with them, the statement said. Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is Israel’s number one public enemy and the movement operates stringent security measures in its Beirut stronghold, requiring even news photographers to seek prior permission.‘ This time though, the subject was a rather wellknown international figure, so reaction was more indignant than usual, forcing the Lebanese government to – lamely and with remarkably little enthusiasm – announce an ‘investigation’ into the matter. But don’t hold your breath…

On another front, the Israelis have accused UNIFIL of concealing information on confrontations of their peacekeepers with Hizbullah militants – which UNIFIL obviously denies. Of course it is true that UNIFIL is not overly keen on discovering weapons transports or in any way getting in the way of the all-powerful HA. In fact, it is a public secret that they rely mostly on HA to protect them from the (sunni) jihadi groups of the Welch/Hariri/Saudi variety, while HA in turn is quite happy with the peacekeepers’ presence because it gives the south a measure of protection from Israeli attacks (not to mention some extra economic input) and HA a legitimate cover to claim it is not rearming (when it occasionally wishes to play the game that way, because in fact Nasrallah is not exactly secretive about claiming new rockets and ’surprise’ weapons). In any case, as the foregoing item shows, on the ground it is Hizbullah which is watching UNIFIL rather than the other way round.

Warplanes and cellphones

It kind of becomes boring to repeat it, but Israeli warplanes make daily and routine incursions into Lebanese airspace, occasionnally feasting the population on sonic booms. The Lebanese army just as routinely shoots at them, but without any real anti-aircraft guns, they never hit anything of course. Rarely mentioned in the European press, but regularly so in both the Lebanese and Israeli papers. In fact, the IDF last week actually entered Lebanese territory overland on several different occasions – just a few hundred meters or so, as a provocation…

The infamous upcoming privatization of Lebanon’s cellphone network has been delayed again, indefinitely this time, for lack of a president and/or active parliament to supervise the bidding. The opposition is against the sale, not based on any socialist or otherwise ideological principles, mind you, but because, as they left the government and boycott parliament, they wouldn’t be able to share in the spoils. Currently, the network is run by two companies, Alfa and MTC Touch (at least one of which is owned by Ogero, part of the Hariri group), who charge some of the highest prices for mobile calls worldwide. ‘With little more than a million subscribers, the cellular networks generate over $850 million in revenues, making it the second source of income to the government after the VAT.’ (Lebanon has some 4 million inhabitants by the way, so that’s one in four owning a cellphone – if you don’t count the between fifty and a hundred thousand foreign aid workers, peacekeepers, journalists, diplomats, military advisers and other UN personnel roaming the country, that is).

The privatization of the networks is one of the conditions Lebanon has to fulfill to receive the aid promised at the Paris III conference (fundraising event, rather) held after the Israeli July war of 2006 to help finance reconstruction efforts. It’s worth noting that not only countries, but also organizations like the World Bank and even private banking consortia took part in this gala dinner event. It’s a good illustration of how war profits corporations (through the international and governmental institutions owning or representing them): first they sell the weapons to destroy, then they make money in the reconstruction, and on top they themselves lend the money needed to pay them – for both the weapons and the reconstruction – at an appropriate interest rate, of course. And then they impose ‘liberalization’ of the economy as a condition to grant the loan… One person who took this lesson to heart was Hariri: he combined his prime ministership with his position as the head of Solidere (the public/private reconstruction company) and his position as majority shareholder in a number of banks. In a move that makes Berlusconi look like a paltry hobbyist, he succeeded to first order the reconstruction projects, then award them to his own company (for which they were tailormade in the first place) and finally have the state borrow the money to pay his company from his own bank – again, at a handsome interest of course… And that’s not even mentioning the dubious way Solidere managed to expropriate many small Beirut house and land owners at the end of the civil war, buying valuable downtown property for a handful of shares in the company when they were worth nothing, buying them back immediately for peanuts from the destitute owners and enjoying the dividend now that they’re worth a lot. And after all that, he still managed to die as a national hero… It’s a useful exercise to compare the gigantic national debt he left Lebanon with at the end of his terms as prime minister to the family fortune of the Hariri’s…

Lebanese prison life

A friend of mine recently got caught rolling a spliff in the street and was arrested. As she was able to afford a lawyer with sufficient wasta she got out of prison after only a few days (drug use normally earns you between 3 months and 3 years of confinement in this country). She was very shaken by the experience of prison life, though, and told me numerous horror stories about those few days. As it happens, Nowlebanon today features an interview with Joëlle Giappési, a naturalized French woman who was teaching at the USJ university in 2001 when she got caught using heroin (she got addicted during the civil war). She spent 5 years in various Lebanese women’s prisons and wrote a book about the experience, which is about to be published. In the interview, she gives a concise but lively description of the conditions in jail: ‘Prison is the reign of “long sentences,” that is, the people who are sentenced for several years. The longer you stay in prison, the stronger you get. This doesn’t make life easy on the newcomers or the shorter sentence [prisoners], as the cells’ discipline is usually under the authority of the [one with the] longest presence in the cell (…) or, in Arabic, the shaweesha (…) Just imagine what it can be to give power over his/her cellmates to a convict, who knows that he/she must stay there for years, who feels oppressed by the system and is often bitter or desperate. It doesn’t go without some abuse. As for the prison administration, they would try to ignore the abuse, if possible, as it is not recommended to make a long sentence [prisoner] too angry. An angry long sentence [prisoner] is a potential bomb. I’ve witnessed the case of two angry long sentence [prisoners] accusing the wardens and the director of the prison of corruption and stealing. There were right, of course. They ended up [destroying] the career of the people they accused, as the investigation proved them to be right. No wonder that the administration would try to ignore the abuses committed by long sentence [prisoners].’

Hizbullah in action

A few days ago, some Lebanese policemen thought they could just arrest Hizbullah members who failed to stop at a checkpoint. Soon after, their office was besieged by a hundred or so of the bearded ones and the arrestees were freed. Just to stress their point and make clear the absolute unacceptability of the police action, Hizbullah then proceeded to themselves arrest a cop and interrogate him: ‘The policeman told his superiors later that Hizbullah officials set him free only because he is Shiite.’ Notice, by the way, how the ‘two detainees’ of the first article in an-Nahar have in the second article suddenly been transformed into ‘two wanted criminals, who remain at large’. Meanwhile, Nicholas Blanford reports in CSM on the creation by Hibullah of ’saraya’ or batallions of Sunni, Druze and Christian allied militiamen – including even former members of the Israeli-allied SLA – who will fight alongside them to stave off the next Israeli attack. ‘New tactics are being taught, including how to “seize and hold” positions, a requirement that Hizbullah’s guerrilla fighters – traditionally schooled in hit-and-run methods – never needed before. One local commander in south Lebanon said that Hizbullah had fought a defensive war in 2006. “Next time, we will be on the offensive and it will be a totally different kind of war,” he says. Jawad says that the next war will be “fought more in Israel than in Lebanon,” one comment of many from various fighters that suggest Hizbullah is planning commando raids into northern Israel. Hizbullah admits that its rocket arsenal has increased since 2006 and it has the ability to strike anywhere inside Israel. Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the party’s leader, in February said that Hizbullah had evolved into an “unparalleled new school” that is part guerrilla force and part conventional army.”

On the creation of sunni militias by the Hariri faction, meanwhile, read Delphine Minoui in Le Figaro:

Holiday in Beirut 2

Well, a holiday in some respects… I took a break from blogging partly because I took on a job outside cyberspace (I’m now translating in-house for the UN here in Beirut on a full-time basis – and in addition I’ve been working, with friends who came over from Belgium, on a documentary, of which more later), and partly because there hasn’t been a lot happening on the political front. Unless you think the Arab summit and its pathetic no-show diplomatic children’s games qualified as ’something happening’, that is. Or unless you are still interested in the local politicos endlessly shouting over and back at each other that the other one is to blame for ‘nothing happening’. Ah yes, and they also shuttle back and forth to their respective paymasters in Riyadh, Washington and Damascus, but then they come back so tight-lipped about anything that might have been said that it’s not worth the trouble reporting. A 5-day Israeli ‘war game’ along the Lebanese and Syrian borders sounded like it could be ’something happening’, but three days into it all observers seem to agree it is anything but. The only thing actually worth reporting on at the moment is… a curfew in Gemmayze. That’s right, on a Saturday night at the end of March, stressed out by the continous techno beats, car horns and drunk shouting invading their nights, parking valets occupying their streets in the evening and vomit occupying their doorsteps in the morning (not to mention construction works for new bars noising up the daytime), all of which have invaded this traditionally quiet residential neighbourhood only in the last few years, since the opposition camp near Monnot drove the party people here, the local residents took to the streets to protest. Dressed in their nightgowns and holding their pillows, they blocked Gemmayze street for an hour or two in the midst of the party rush hour, and later took their grievances to the press and the Beirut mayor. A few days later, some 20 bars were closed by the police – officially those who caused most of the nuisance and/or weren’t licensed, but judging from which places actually got closed and which remained open, the latter reason seems to have prevailed. Unless there’s any truth to the rumours of a politically motivated selection – rumours which were so prevalent that minister of tourism Joe Sarkis, who had given out the closing order, felt compelled to deny them publicly in the press. We’re talking here, of course, political affiliation of the owners, as there is nothing even remotely publicly poitical about any Gemmayze bar.