Aftermath or intermission?

The exuberant joy and optimism of the last few days since the Doha accord is already giving way to weary suspicion, due to several shooting incidents between supporters of the opposition and the government (in one of which an LAF soldier got killed) as well as the M-14 insistence on reinstating Siniora as prime minister, even as the man himself was understandably less than enthusiastic to return to the job. The opposition was not amused, although Hizbullah itself (contrary to Aoun and the SSNP) has not issued any statements opposing his election (by a scant 68 parliamentarians out of 127), so presumably it is not going to be blown up into a real stumbling block. The negotiations on the division of the loot – sorry, on the allocation of cabinet posts – have started today. Meanwhile, the media truce (such as it was) is already evaporating and utterly biased reporting has returned on both sides of the political spectrum (the link is to an interesting and well-informed article on menassat.com describing the media war that accompanied the fighting on the ground). Read also this article about ‘Lebanon’s only objective news service’. Rami Khoury meanwhile analyzes the importance of the recent events from a global-powers-in-the-Middle-East perspective on the Agence Globale website.

On the economic level, Solidere and other shares on the Lebanese stock exchange are jumping up, Merrill-Lynch has upgraded Lebanon’s credit rating, expats and Gulf tourists are already flooding back into the country, long-stalled construction projects have resumed and downtown businesses are reopening by the dozens. Whether this will prove to be a short lull in the tensions or a lasting ceasefire, money is being spun off it in serious amounts already. Which hasn’t stopped Lebanon’s ‘odious’ public debt rising to a preposterous $43.2 billion…

In other news, Hizullah is reporting progress on a prisoner swapping deal with Israel, in which five Lebanese prisoners and ten bodies of dead Hizbullah fighters will be exchanged in return for the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hizbullah in July 2006. In case you still thought a full-scale war killing over a thousand people was more effective than negotiations… Independently of that deal, Israel will also release on Sunday a Lebanese-born man (whose jewish-Israeli mother married a Lebanese shiite and converted to shia islam) who had been imprisoned for six years on a conviction of spying for Hizbullah.

Back in the day…

Looking back at some previous posts on this blog, I came across the predictions ‘Lebanon’s Nostradamus’ Michel Hayek made in October of last year, in an article in the Daily Star entitled ‘‘Clairvoyant’ sees new Lebanese president, more assassinations, Hizbullah ’surprise’: ‘Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun and Premier Fouad Siniora are part of a plan and I see a new stand, position and equation,” he predicted, adding that Hizbullah would make a decision “that will surprise many people.”

Mmmmhh…. so are those assassinations still to come!? Somewhat less fortunate were the legendary ahlan wa-sahlan war cries of Junblatt and Hariri dating from February this year:

‘“You want anarchy? (We) welcome anarchy. you want war? (We) welcome war,” Jumblatt said, to the cheers of supporters. “There is no problem with weapons …,” added Jumblatt, an influential figure in the governing coalition whose war of words with the opposition has recently escalated.

“If our fate is confrontation, then we are for it,” said Hariri. Gunfire rang out in Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon soon as Hariri’s interview began in celebration of the deputy’s TV appearance.’

Haifa Wehbe & Hassan Nasrallah pt. 2

Yesterday evening, while throngs and throngs of tens of thousands of youths (average age 17, and a true pan-Lebanese mix, with the girls dressed in anything from ultrashort miniskirts to fully veiled and covered head-to-toe) were jampacking the newly opened streets and squares of downtown to celebrate Lebanon’s newfound unity and gape at Haifa Wehbe singing on the big stage, trouble was brewing again on the streets of Tariq al-Jdeide and Corniche al-Mazraa. Supporters of Hizbullah, shooting away at the common celebratory gunfire thing to mark Nasrallah’s speech, were insulted by some Mustaqbal supporters and off we went again, starting with sticks and stones and ending with an RPG… Same thing happened in the Bekaa valley. Future TV, demonstrating again why exactly they were the only station to be shut down by the opposition forces last week, spoke of ‘Hizbullah attacking civilians’ and ‘Hizbullah aggression‘, contrary to the rest of the press, which offered the foregoing less biased account. The shutting down of Future TV and newspaper offices was presented in the western press as an attack on press freedom and ‘independent journalism’ – in fact, the opposition didn’t attack any ‘independent media’, and not even the propaganda outlets of other parties than Mustaqbal. It’s just that Future media are utterly biased and devious and involved in inciting sectarian hatred to an extreme degree even to Lebanese standards, where unbiased reporting is hard to come by in any case and most media outlets are propaganda tools working on behalf of one or other of the parties/militias. This has now become so blatantly obvious that all other media in this country, even the not-so-unbiased themselves like nowlebanon and naharnet, have started quoting Future TV in quotation marks, as in ‘Future news, the media group associated to the pro-government Future Movement party, led by MP Saad Hariri, reported that 16 people were wounded in an “attack on civilians” by Hezbollah.”

Anyway, the celebratory gunfire thing (or ‘jubilant shooting’ in Lebanenglish) is getting completely out of hand, and on all sides – on Sunday, five people were wounded by ‘bullets of joy’ raining down randomly on Amchit, the hometown of Michel Suleyman – or Sleiman, as seems to have become the accepted transliteration in the english-language press now. The incidents of yesterday night yielded at least 10 wounded.

Nasrallah’s speech contained some interesting analyses of the Lebanese political field and the resistance-versus-collaboration issue, talked about an imminent exchange of prisoners with Israel and reaffirmed for the nth time that Hizbullah does not seek to impose an islamic state in Lebanon. The following excerpt is from nowlebanon’s reporting of the speech. For the full text, see here.

A new era or the next stage?

Downtown Beirut, after the opposition cleared its 15-month old tent city and the army cleared their 15-month old barbed wire installations and roadblocks, has yielded streets I didn’t even know were there, and has instantly been filled to the brim with droves of luxury cars belonging to high-class boutique customers and upscale restaurant patrons. Yesterday evening, fireworks erupted all over the country – a ride from Batroun up north down to Beirut didn’t leave more than 5 minutes without colourful explosions, or more than 500 meters without Lebanese flags and posters of Suleyman – in uniform or in civil dress. ‘Despite the army’s plea that citizens refrain from firing their weapons into the air, at least five people were injured by falling bullets in Sleiman’s hometown of Amchit following the announcement of his election.’ All along the Hizbullah-controlled airport road, meanwhile, the green-on-yellow stylized portraits of Mughniyeh have been replaced by billboards saying ‘Killna na’ul: shukran Qatar’ (‘All of us say: thank you Qatar’). More sober-minded Lebanese have been remarking on the eerie similarity to the eruption of national joy and celebration when Emile Lahoud, another army general, was elected president some 9 years ago. I have been getting the distinct impression that the entire population is laying the whole gigantic problem-solving load on the shoulders of this one man, who will serve as the national scapegoat when it turns out (as it inevitably will) that all the existing disputes cannot be resolved by one man alone if that man doesn’t get the cooperation of all parties involved. We are now in an orgy of joy and celebration and supposed national unity every bit as intense and dramatic as the explosion of violence and anger that erupted barely two weeks ago. Moving from one extreme to the other only takes a few days in this country…

Suleiman has been elected by 118 parliamentarian votes out of 127 – so not unanimously, as some (mostly Lebanese Forces) MP’s objected to the fact that the constitution had not been amended to allow a functioning first-grade public servant to be elected as president. Some others voted blank and 2 more voted for ‘one-time presidential hopefuls’. The session was attended by hosts of foreign dignitaries flown in to celebrate the final achievement of Suleymman’s election, after 19 failed attempts.
The first act of the newly sworn-in president, Lebanon’s 12th since independence in 1946, was to dissolve the government (and so, ironically, after 5 months of no president and (half) a government, the country now has a president but no government).

Happy happy joy joy?

‘Lebanese leaders returned Wednesday evening to Beirut aboard a Qatari plane. Press reports on Thursday said Speaker Nabih Berri had a long chat with Druze leader Walid Jumblat on the plane. They said Free Patriotic Movement leader Gen. Michel Aoun sat next to former President Amin Gemayel, while Lebanese Forces official George Adwan sat beside FPM executive Jubran.

And so… 17 months after the opposition first demanded it, and through escalating their struggle consecutively from political pressure (pulling their ministers out of the government in december 2006) via civil disobedience and economic pressure (tent city in downtown Beirut since January 2007 and blocking the airport and airport road last week) to violent street action (also last week), they have finally succeeded in getting a blocking third in the government. It has been decided in Doha, Qatar, that a national unity government will be formed containing 16 M-14 members, 11 M-8 members and 3 further ministers to be appointed by the new president, current army chief of staff general Suleiman, who will be formally elected this coming sunday. Coincidentally, the Israeli government has announced virtually simultaneously that they are now officially engaged in Turkish-mediated peace talks with Syria. Just as surprisingly, all foreign sponsors of Lebanese parties, including the US and Saudi governments who are seemingly the big losers in this game, more or less wholeheartedly approved of the deal. It seems that the stakes were bigger than just the issue of power sharing in Lebanon after all. It looks like Hariri and Junblatt have returned to what they do best, i.e. selling Lebanon out to their so-called ‘mortal enemy’ Syria… Basically, in return for negotiating a peace treaty with Israel, Syria gets to have its way again in Lebanon. The only remaining question must concern the Golan heigths (and the Shebaa farms of course). Iran gets an even better deal, seeing its influence and prestige increased without having to give in as much as an inch on any front. Qatar managed to increase its role as a ‘regional peacemaker’ while at the same time snubbing its eternal rival Saudi Arabia and its ‘diplomatic efforts’. Of course, the real losers in this game are the Lebanese people, who will continue to be ruled by the same bunch of warlords, feudal landowners and assorted mafioso’s who have been exploiting them and their country for the past hundred years or so. The puppet masters change, the puppets remain in place. There’s still no sign of Lebanon becoming a real democracy or a secular state, and sectarian tensions have been exploited to the full in the course of the political struggle, and remain at frightening levels even with this accord, which is widely felt as a humiliation for the sunni population. The druze, flexible as ever, have already made the switch to allying themselves with the new winners, even if Junblatt has yet to formally announce it (he did ask US ambassador Michèle Sison yesterday to please stop praising M-14 personalities, especially Siniora). And the minimum wage increase? Oh, we’ve kind of conveniently and collectively all forgotten about that…

Update 1: ’1:50pm Cabinet minister Jihad Azour said the pay raise is effective as of May 1, 2008.’ That is the 50% raise conceded by the government on the day before the scheduled strike, not the tripling of the wage demanded by those trade unions linked to the opposition (except the ones linked to Aoun, who is the most neo-liberal laissez-faire capitalist in Lebanon). The day after, the government raised the price of fuel…

Meanwhile, the ever prompt and efficient Hizbullah militants have already started to dismantle their tents in downtown, which can now return to being the commercial and (posher kind of) nightlife hub of Beirut. Apart from one isolated incident at Tariq al-Jdeide yesterday night, no violent clashes seem to have taken place this week, and so we can envisage a period of relative calm, peace and prosperity for Lebanon, maybe even including a profitable tourist season this summer. The perfect occasion, in other words, for Israel to return on an extensive bombing campaign against the now officially ‘Hizbullah-controlled’ state of Lebanon, especially after neutralizing Syria with a (possible) peace treaty…

Update 2: ’2:45pm New TV reported that all tents have been removed from down town Beirut and the barbed wire fence protecting the seat of government also has been removed.’

Where all this leaves the Hariri tribunal is an open question too – and, in fact, a moot one, since the tribunal has never been intended to reveal ‘al-haqiqa’ (the truth), but rather has been a mere political pressure tool from the start. As soon as possible, unless it still proves to be useful to those who set it up, it will probably be allowed to die a quiet death…

And so we remain…

Beirut to Doha

So the whole lot of bickering militia leaders has now been flown to Doha to continue their unending stubbornness in a different environment, leaving on two separate planes of course: the opposition on a regular scheduled flight, M14 on an ‘executive jet’‘ (noblesse oblige). At Beirut’s freshly reopened international airport, an organization of handicapped civil war veterans and other NGO’s waved them out with signs saying: ‘If you don’t agree, don’t come back!’ – probably the best and most concise representation of current national opinion across the board. One of the many Lebanese who have been forced to move to the GCC countries to make a living writes to Angry Arab: ‘Well i’ve been residing in Doha-Qatar for the past one and half years and all has been going nice, smooth and tidy. Hahaha, until those lebanese ‘leaders’ of ours came to Doha for their meeting. I tell you, for the first time in AAAAAAGES, Doha experiences a 20 minutes electricity failure!!! The day they arrive, the power shuts down! How weird for us Lebanese in here to feel the ‘darkness’ again, man…”‘

Other worrying recent developments include a pledge in an-Nahar newspaper from Fatah al-Islam to defend the sunni muslims against ‘the infidels blowing their heads in Beirut’…

For those of you who are bewildered by the seemingly endless list of parties, sects, militias and leaders in

this tiny country, here are some handy overviews accompanying an article in the latest edition of The Economist. The article itself, called ‘Iran’s tool fights America’s stooge’, provides an excellent and reasonably objective concise overview of political issues and developments in Lebanon since the end of the civil war in 1990, focusing specifically on the period since the last elections in 2005.

Other interesting recent articles:

- ‘The view from the left’ (here on menassat), an interview with socialist activist Rania Masri on the economic issues that were the initial reason for the strike on 7th May, also including an extensive description of the importance of the notorious communications network to the resistance.

- Asad Abu-Khalil’s take on the events in al-Akhbar: ‘A coup against a coup’ (in Arabic).

_ Karim Makdisi writes for Counterpunch: ‘With the army deployed throughout key areas, Lebanese citizens once again resumed their everyday activities under the more familiar conditions of a devastated environment, massive traffic jams, unregulated construction and urban planning, electricity and water shortages, state-sponsored theft or abuse of public lands and resources, rising poverty, inflation and unemployment, and one of the worst budget deficits per capita in the world. The illusion of normalcy, in other words, has returned for the time being but the real question is: for how long?’ Which is a nice cynical introduction, but the cutting analysis follows further down: ‘Still, Hizbullah understands well that its take-over of Beirut—following over a year’s non-violent campaign that yielded much bating by March 14 militias but no political gains—required the betrayal of its long-standing commitment to the Lebanese people not to use its formidable weapons internally. Ironically it thus fulfilled one of March 14’s strategic objectives: dragging Hizbullah into an internal fight and portraying it as a mere sectarian ‘militia’ instead of a noble and widely-supported national resistance movement. Accordingly, the very idea of the national resistance in Lebanon, so effective in militarily defeating the Israeli occupation and puncturing the myth of Zionist supremacy vis-à-vis the Arabs, has been eroded following the battles of last week. Under these circumstances, it is not difficult to imagine yet another US-backed Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the coming months but this time, some of those that lost the street battles in Beirut might join the fight against Hizbullah.’

- This interview with Augustus Richard Norton on the LATimes blog Babylon and Beyond focuses mostly on the implications of all this for US foreign policy: ‘I take no joy in saying it, but the Bush administration has continued to blunder badly in Lebanon. In 2006, the U.S. stiff-armed attempts to reach a ceasefire early in the war between Hezbollah and Israel with the result that Hezbollah was seen in many quarters as the victor. Since the war ended in August 2006, the US has thrown spanners in the works to prevent a compromise that would be seen as benefiting Hezbollah or its allies. There is also credible reporting … that the U.S. has attempted to build up anti-Hezbollah militias (much as it did in Gaza vis-a-vis Hamas) and those efforts have come up short this past week.The latest statements by President Bush reveal that he has learned little from what has been happening in Lebanon, and he seems to be drawing battle lines for a confrontation in Lebanon, which would be unfortunate, in my view.’

- The International Crisis Group’s thorough analysis of the events can be downladed as a PDF file here:‘While these decisions could have been taken a long time ago, they were not, reflecting an unwritten modus vivendi between March 14 forces and Hizbollah. The issue of the Shiite movement’s weapons has been raised and debated regularly since 2005, but until now the majority had refrained from any tangible measure to undermine Hizbollah’s operational capability. Instead, attempts to weaken or corner the movement were limited to verbal condemnations and political manoeuvres. Conversely, Hizbollah consistently had pledged to reserve its weapons for the fight against Israel and not to use them domestically. Whenever its anti-government activities risked provoking intra-Lebanese confrontations, it had taken a step back, determined not to appear as a purely sectarian militia as opposed to a broader resistance movement. The violence that engulfed Beirut this month ended this precarious status quo and shed any remaining illusion about the ultimate stakes of the struggle. Whatever implicit rules once prevailed and helped maintain a fragile calm even amid intense political disputes no longer are in force. March 14 elements likely felt they could afford to embarrass Hizbollah and address head-on the question of its military apparatus without provoking a major flare-up because of the Shiite movement’s fear of the consequences of a sectarian clash. Hizbollah’s reaction, in other words, was expected to be relatively mild, but it was nothing of the sort. On 9 May, in his first press conference since the onset of the 2006 war, Nasrallah proclaimed the legitimacy of “defending our weapons with our weapons”, thereby violating his earlier promise never to turn them inward. Hizbollah’s subsequent course was methodical, deliberate, massive, brutal and fully planned. Although many in the majority evoked a possible coup, that does not seem to have been Hizbollah’s goal. Its attacks appear to have been undertaken for other objectives: to send the March 14 forces an unequivocal message not to touch its weapons and prove its military superiority and capacity to overthrow the government if need be. A well-informed opposition member said that: ‘Hizbollah’s fighters entered into Beirut because a red line had been crossed. Indeed, this was the first time a concrete measure was taken against the resistance, and this happened after several warnings were sent to the government, before and even during the fateful council of ministers meeting.’ Operating at lightning speed, the Shiite movement quickly conquered most key sites; it subsequently handed over some neighbourhoods to the military, which studiously remained neutral throughout the fighting – largely out of fear that its multi-confessional army could splinter if forced to take sides. The Siniora government has not been toppled, a sure sign that Hizbollah understands the perils of such an enterprise as well as the enormous challenge of ruling either against or without Sunnis – and with virtually no international support or recognition. A senior opposition official said, “the problem is not to take power, but what to do with it. In a multiconfessional system such as Lebanon’s, if we were to seize power by force, we would have every other community against us”. According to a wellinformed opposition member, Hizbollah’s actions were aimed exclusively at protecting the resistance and would end as soon as the government met its core demands: withdrawal of the two ministerial decisions and a return to the negotiating table. In short, Hizbollah did not conduct a military coup so much as it imposed militia rule in several areas previously dominated by the Future Movement.’

Another divine victory or a PR disaster?

So Hariri and Junblatt, realizing all those messages of support from Bush, Faisal and the lot are not going to be accompanied by any concrete military or even diplomatic support (the Saudi ambassador actually fled to Cyprus on day two or so), have finally given in and around 23:30 last night ‘accepted the proposal of the Arab League delegation’, which is basically a reiteration of Hizbullah’s demands anyway, and have now officially rescinded the two government decisions that sparked this whole crisis off in the first place. Celebratory gunfire was heard all over Beirut and troops of hooting scooters with hollering kids carrying HA flags cruised the streets of appropriate neighbourhoods for hours. Today at 15:30 Nasrallah wil be speeching to announce his response, and is widely believed to announce the reopening of the airport and airport road – at least, Middle East Airlines seems to think so, as it has already announced the ‘likely resumption of incoming flights from Europe from this afternoon onwards’. Another divine victory? Or does HA’s loss of sympathy and perceived integrity for turning its weapons on the Lebanese outweigh this outcome? It’s not like the government would actually have been able to ‘dismantle’ HA’s communication network, so the only thing gained would have been retaining Shuqeir and a surveillance camera or two at the airport. As I heard someone joking in a bar last night: ‘So it was all about a camera? They took over the whole fucking state and then just handed it back, saying: we don’t want your state, just give us back our fucking camera!?’

On the other hand, M14 has lost at least as much credibility, seeing as it not only lacked the military power to stop the opposition anywhere (apart from the druze who managed to defend their Shouf homeland fairly well), which everybody apart from Bush and Welch knew anyway, but didn’t get any concrete support from their allies in the US, Saudi Arabia or Israel either. Both Hariri and Junblatt were reduced to negotiating their very own personal safety in their besieged town houses in Beirut and to eventually backing down from their belligerent position into just accepting whatever the opposition dictated them. For the US & co, it’s another foreign policy defeat. France has seen its influence diminished to the point where it hardly even bothered to make a statement anymore. The christians, both on the side of the opposition and that of the government, were basically irrelevant to the whole proposition (and very wise to accept the fact and just stay out of the conflict). In fact, the only party to come out of all this in a better light is… the Arab League, which can now, probably for the first time since its inception, boast of having solved a (very minor) conflict…

See also Chris Floyd & As’ad Abu-Khalil: ‘The current American strategy in the region is to give arms and money to extremist Sunni groups allied with al Qaeda in order to ward off Shiite factions making trouble in our client regimes.’

The Voice of Lebanon

This one for Egyptiansandmonkey, a deluded far-right nutter who apparently considers any blog not repeating in every line ‘Bush is great, Hariri is god and Hizbullah are a bunch of evil terrorists’ an ‘opposition blog’…

By the way, notice the careful omission of Israel in the red box…

May 14th

The situation seems to have stabilized and, to use the tired cliche of the last week, ‘an uneasy calm prevails’… I could’ve sworn I heard very distant gunfire and RPG’s last night coming from down south, but I might have been mistaken, as there’s no mention of any fights in any press or blogs today. The Arab delegation has arrived today (they opened one of the airport roads for them, though I don’t know whether this will remain open or not). The delegation headed straight to Berri’s residence in Ain al-Tineh before moving on to the Grand Serail to see Siniora. That kinda gives a good indication of where the real power is today, notwithstanding the newly defiant M14 rhetoric of yesterday and today.

Read the Land and People blog for an overview of the situation now (well, yesterday really, but nothing seems to have changed yet), as well as a glimpse of Lebanese war ‘entrepreneurship’: ‘Most roads in and out of Lebanon are closed or dangerous. The Damascus highway is closed in Majdel Anjar by masked men belonging or close to the Future movement, although there are rumors and press reports that they are closers to Salafis than to the Future. In any case, all the hotels of Damascus are fully booked, and travelers will have to spend the night in the airport if they find seats of a flight. The airport road is still closed. A new luxury yacht transport system has been initiated from the Dbayyeh and Jounieh ports by seafaring entrepreneurs. The yachts are fully equipped with satellite TVs and cell phones and will take you to Cyprus in 6-7 hours for $1,500 per adult. One way. They take 14 passengers. Do the math: that’s a quarter of a million US$ in a week’s work. I’ll stick around.’

Meanwhile, in the typical Lebanese fashion of joint public-private partnership (i.e. public investment to generate private profits): ‘Public Works and Transportation Minister Mohammed Safadi gave instructions to rehabilitate the port of Jounieh.’

13th of May

“I am a hostage now in my home in Beirut,” (Junblatt) said. “Tell 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.” (…) “The U.S. has failed in Lebanon and they have to admit it,” he said. “We have to wait and see the new rules which Hizbollah, Syria, and Iran will set. They can do what they want.”

On Sunday, former IDF chief of staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak said 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.”

Meanwhile, Lebanese Forces militiamen are reported to be deploying in Sodeco. Quads carrying suspiciously gun-sized boxes are driving on and off through the streets of Ashrafiyeh. The Lebanese army has announced it will from today onwards use force to remove armed men from the streets - provided, one may assume, that they are not of, or with, Hizbullah. Salafist sunni groups in Tripoli and the north have declared jihad on Hizbullah and the rest of the opposition. In Ouzai (south Beirut, close to Sabra) Hizbullah fighters have clashed with members of the Shamas family, one of these powerful clans from the Bekaa valley who, although shias, have never gotten along with HA really well.

The blog Lebanese Political Journal tries to puzzle together an account of the Chouf battle: ‘The Druze community in the Chouf utterly defeated Hezbollah’s attack. On the very first night of Chouf combat, the Druze community in Aley armed with hunting rifles, kalashnikovs, and a few RPGs killed approxiamately 21 Hezbollah soldiers and captured two others. In a later conflict, Iranian “observers” were captured in Aley, according to a local source. (…) Druze members of the Hezbollah allied Syrian Social Nationalist Party sided with their community against their political ally. One Druze SSNP member argues, “when your guard dog becomes too powerful, you need to think about putting it to sleep.” This was a war for survival. Thirteen Hezbollah vehicles invaded the Chouf from the Bekaa Valley, but were captured in Barouk and Niha. Barouk is one of Lebanon’s few wildlife sanctuaries. The sanctuary is a pet project of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and his wife Nora, who is of Shia origins. It is one of the few places in Lebanon where the Cedar of Lebanon grows; thus it is a symbolic site for both the Druze leader and Lebanon. Niha is where the Druze religious leader the Sheikh al Aql lives. It is a religious pilgrimage site, Naby Ayoub, or St. Job. Hezbollah attacked a holy place, and were rightly prevented from committing acts of violence there. According to media reports, the Druze community dragged out World War II era 160 millimeter shells to defend themselves. Friends living in Dahieh report that they observed the Druze descending down the mountain towards Hezbollah dominated Dahieh. She claims that ordinance (but unsure of what type) hit Dahieh and set off car alarms in her area. Many local residents fled. The Druze community made sure that Hezbollah knew that the Shia community, too, is vulnerable to attack.’