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Despite Hezbollah's Ties to Iran and Syria, It Also Acts Alone    [
Voices of Peace Muffled by Rising Middle East Strife    [

    "This Is a Big Disaster for the Lebanese."
    By Dahr Jamail
    Iraq Dispatches

    Friday 14 July 2006

    Once again the U.S. government has refused to condemn the Israeli invasion of Lebanon as the bombs fall on Beirut, killing scores of civilians.

    In a moment of levity while driving to the border, Abu Talat turned to me and said, "You know what I miss?" I replied, "What do you miss sir?" He smiled and said, "Iraqi chai!" He then turns to our driver and asked him if he'd ever had Iraqi chai, then went on to brag about how tasty it is. "It is the greatest of chais," he said proudly when looking back to me once again.

    When we arrived at the Lebanese border this morning we found thousands of people streaming across in cars with their luggage lashed on top, and many on foot pulling wheeled suitcases.

    Little Bush, the ever obedient spokesman for Bush, announced that he thinks Syria should be punished for their role in supporting Hezbollah, so the mood in Damascas is one of anxious waiting to see what comes next. The how and when of the punishment is what is on our minds.

    So the latest Israeli onslaught of Lebanon is in full swing, and with the Israelis need for the water of southern Lebanon, perhaps this occupation of Lebanon may last longer than the last one of 22 years. If indeed Syria gave the green light for Hezbollah to cross the UN line in southern Lebanon and launch their attack on Israeli soldiers where they detained two soldiers and killed another eight, they have effectively handed the Israeli war planners an excuse for all out war against Lebanon. In addition, the Hezbollah attack, if indeed supported by Syria, would give the U.S. the ability to give a green light to Israel to attack Syria. We wait, watch, and hope that the bombs don't begin to fall on Damascas.

    A reported 15,000 people crossed the Lebanese border into Syria on Thursday, seeking refuge from widespread bombings in Beirut, carried out by Israeli F-16 warplanes. Today, the situation continued, with reports of bombed petrol stations, police stations, and a hospital.

    Interviewing people at the border who had fled the bombs in Beirut, I felt like I was back in Iraq by what people were telling me.

    "I was in an area south of Beirut which was bombed heavily by the Israelis," 55 year-old electrician Ali Suleiman told me, "There were so many refugees in shelters nearby us, which was also nearby an old hospital which the Israelis bombed last night. It was terrifying at night when they attacked our area, and the Israelis thought the hospital was an ammunition dump for Hezbollah, so they bombed the hospital. Both Syrian and Lebanese people are leaving now. There is no more food, not even bread. There was no more electricity or water in our area. If this situation continues, it will be a giant catastrophe."

    The same tactics I've seen used by the U.S. in Fallujah, Al-Qa'im and other cities in Iraq.

    I was told a similar story by a 22 year-old Lebanese student, Nebham Razaq Hamed, who was in southern Beirut. "The bombing at night was continuous and has continued today, they are using warplanes and sometimes artillery. Everybody is in a panic because of the haphazard bombing which is killing so many civilians now. The Israelis are terrorizing the people intentionally by not discriminating between fighters and civilians."

    As the level of fighting deepens, one can only hope that other forms of terrorism don't beset the people of Lebanon, particularly the women. In Ruth Rosen's "The Hidden War on Women in Iraq," an incredible piece posted on TomDispatch recently, the disastrous situation for women caught up in the chaos of war is outlined well. This must read paints the tragic picture of what we can only hope will not descend on the women of Beirut as the Israeli siege of that city grinds on.

    A man from Saudi Arabia on a bus with his family said, "Are the Israelis not occupying enough Arab land already?"

    It is only 127 kilometers from Beirut to Damascas, so the attacks were very fresh on the minds of the people I spoke with-many of them with shaky hands.

    Others told me that the Bekaa Valley of central Lebanon, located on a high plateau situated between the Mt. Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountain ranges, is being bombed, including the ancient city of Baalbek. The city, which began at the end of the third millennium BC, was originally Phoenician, is located near two rivers and shortly after a Roman colony was founded there by Julius Caesar in 47 BC, construction on the massive temple complex began in earnest. Whether the temples are being bombed is doubtful, but the nearby city of Baalbek, where Hezbollah controls the area, has been bombed according to two people I interviewed.

    "It's very bad there, as the Israelis are attacking civilians, bombing police and petrol stations, and even the fuel storage depots," said a 50 year-old Kuwait man who was fleeing Beirut, "In fact, they have even bombed the airport once again. I saw F-16's bombing and there is smoke everywhere. This is a big disaster for the Lebanese."

    When asked what he thought it would take to end the fighting, he promptly replied, "It looks like the Arab governments are not moving their asses, so I am leaving."

    Go to Original

    Despite Hezbollah's Ties to Iran and Syria, It Also Acts Alone
    By Paul Richter, Josh Meyer and Sebastian Rotella
    The Los Angeles Times

    Friday 14 July 2006

The US has blamed the militants' patrons for the Middle East crisis, but some experts aren't sure.

    Washington - The Bush administration was quick to pin responsibility on Iran and Syria when Hezbollah militants captured two Israeli soldiers this week. Yet those countries may not have specifically planned and ordered the raid that has brought the Middle East to the edge of war, U.S. officials and terrorism experts say.

    Iran and Syria each have long-standing ties to Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim militant group, and no Western government doubts that they provide financial, political and logistical support. But some officials and experts say Hezbollah can also move on its own initiative, for its own reasons, even as it seeks to avoid any move that would displease its chief patrons.

    "It sometimes does act on its own," said Wayne White, who was a senior official in the State Department's intelligence arm until last year.

    White said intelligence agencies have differed on how much Iran might be spending on Hezbollah but that they agree there are very strong ties between that country and the group. Even so, he said, it would be an overstatement to say that Hezbollah is a "pawn" of Iran.

    Wednesday's kidnapping "could have been someone seizing a moment of opportunity - a bunch of Hezbollah guys could have done it without even thinking they need permission from on high," said a U.S. counterterrorism official, who said he was basing his speculation on experience with the group and spoke on condition of anonymity while discussing intelligence matters. "Terrorist operations can happen at any moment and be quite fluid."

    The possible role of Iran and Syria has become an issue as the raid brought fierce Israeli retaliation and stirred fears that fighting could engulf more of the region. If Iran and Syria ordered the Hezbollah raid, it might signal their willingness to see the conflict continue and widen. But if they did not, U.S. and Israeli charges that their longtime adversaries were somehow involved could heighten the tension in the region.

    U.S. officials declined to offer specific evidence of Iranian or Syrian involvement in Wednesday's raid, in which eight Israeli soldiers were killed. But the Bush administration, in a statement afterward, said the two nations "bear responsibility" based on their longtime ties and support.

    Sean McCormack, the chief State Department spokesman, said the countries "subcontract" terrorist attacks through Hezbollah.

    "Hezbollah received material support from Iran.... The Syrian government provides political as well as other kinds of support," he said. "So I think it's really time for everybody to acknowledge that these two states do have some measure of control over Hezbollah."

    At the same time, even the State Department's annual report on terrorism notes that Hezbollah is capable of independent action.

    "Hezbollah is closely allied with Iran and often acts at its behest, but it also can and does act independently," this year's report says.

    Israel declared that primary responsibility for the raid lay with the Lebanese government. But officials also have made it clear that they believe Iran and Syria were involved in the attack.

    "I don't have evidence that there were direct instructions," said one Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "But they were under the influence of the Iranian government."

    The ties between Hezbollah, Tehran and Damascus are well documented and rarely in dispute. Hezbollah, a potent force in Lebanon, has been supported and guided by Iran and Syria since its beginnings in the early 1980s.

    Tehran has maintained a flow of weapons - including rockets with a range of more than 120 miles - to Hezbollah military forces. U.S. and Israeli officials say the hardware has been flown to the Damascus airport and then trucked to southern Lebanon.

    Hezbollah leaders deny that they are agents of Iran or Syria. But they publicly acknowledge Tehran's financial support, which some Western intelligence agencies say may amount to more than $200 million a year. Iranian officials have toured Hezbollah camps in southern Lebanon, and Iran maintains emissaries in the country to act as liaisons with the group.

    Robert Malley, who was special assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli issues, said Hezbollah is likely to seek ways to advance the interests of its benefactors.

    "There is a very short list of countries that are prepared to help Hezbollah, so [it is] not about to do anything that would alienate them, and they're always more likely to do things they believe would serve Syrian and Iranian interests," Malley said.

    Yet those factors do not lead inevitably to concerted action in every instance, he said.

    "I think there's more local autonomy, a greater degree of local decision-making, than people give credit for," said Malley, who directs the Near East and North Africa program for the International Crisis Group in Washington, which deals with conflict resolution.

    Experts noted that Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has made it known he wanted to kidnap Israelis and use them as bargaining chips in a trade for at least three Lebanese prisoners held by Israel. Among them is Samir Sami Kuntar, whose band of militants was responsible for a 1979 attack that killed three members of an Israeli family and a police officer.

    Magnus Ranstorp, a veteran Hezbollah expert now at the Swedish National Defense College, said Hezbollah could have had several motives.

    For one, it might have hoped to provoke Israel into a military reaction that would increase the group's support in Lebanon at a critical moment, Ranstorp said. Hezbollah is under pressure from the United States and allies to disarm, in accordance with a U.N. resolution, he noted.

    Or, Ranstorp said, the group might have been looking for a way to show its solidarity with Hamas, the Palestinian militant organization that has been under attack in the Gaza Strip for two weeks after an Israeli soldier was captured and taken there.

    Ranstorp said that for now there can be only "a strong suspicion" that Iran participated in the latest seizure of Israeli soldiers. "But it would be inconceivable that Hezbollah did not inform Syria but also the Iranians in advance of this, particularly the Iranian intelligence," Ranstorp said.

    Claude Moniquet, director of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, a Brussels think tank, played down Hezbollah's autonomy.

    "Whatever the reality of its local presence in the south of the country, and the poor area of Beirut ... Hezbollah has never been more than, and remains today, a simple political instrument of Tehran and, to a lesser extent, a tool Damascus uses to pressure Lebanon," Moniquet said.

    Milton Bearden, a former CIA official who remains involved in Middle East affairs, said it was possible that some militants thought they had the green light to conduct such a raid, without thinking through the consequences.

    "People will say they know why it happened, but they don't know," Bearden said. "Never discount the possibility of things in the Middle East to just spin out of control so easily that people say, 'How did we get here?'

    "It is possible it was a gross miscalculation," he said, "which are responsible for many wars in the Middle East."

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    Richter and Meyer reported from Washington and Rotella from Paris. Times staff writer Ken Ellingwood in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

    Go to Original

    Voices of Peace Muffled by Rising Mideast Strife
    By Michael Slackman
    The New York Times

    Friday 14 July 2006

    Cairo - A few months ago, representatives of every Lebanese political faction gathered in downtown Beirut to discuss the issues that divided them - including how and when to disarm the Hezbollah militia.

    Intent on keeping its weapons, however, Hezbollah has stymied that discussion by crossing into Israel, killing and capturing Israeli soldiers and prompting a fierce Israeli counterattack that has all of Lebanon in a defensive posture.

    "It is strange that one man representing a faction of the Shia, Hassan Nasrallah, is holding the whole Lebanese population hostage," said Elie Fawaz, a Lebanese political analyst and critic of Hezbollah, speaking of the Hezbollah leader.

    With three Israeli soldiers kidnapped - one now in Gaza and two in Lebanon - and Israel carrying out military reprisals, there is for now less room in the Middle East for moderate voices, voices of peace, according to political analysts, government officials and security officials in Syria, Jordan and Egypt. The region's agenda, as often in the past, is largely being set by militants - with the masses swept along in emotion, anger and vengeance.

    "They are happy, very happy," said Marwan Shahadeh, an Islamist and researcher in Amman, Jordan, speaking about the groups that want to focus on war with Israel.

    The same dynamics are true of governments. The leaders of Egypt and Jordan, the only two Arab countries with peace treaties with Israel, are facing increasing hostility in the news media and on their own streets, while Iran and Syria, strong opponents of peace with Israel, have seen their credibility on the street increase. Sensing the tension among their people, Egyptian and Jordanian officials have stepped up domestic security efforts. In Egypt officials have moved to rein in the news media and stop street demonstrations. In Jordan, officials have pressed older members of the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, to rein in its more militant young members.

    "They are in great embarrassment," Taher al-Masry, a former prime minister of Jordan, said of Jordan and Egypt. "These two countries have signed peace treaties, but having and observing peace with Israel is not the same as letting Israel do what it likes because we have peace with them. I think there is a major burden on both countries to do something. I don't know what, but something."

    Regional momentum is supporting hard-liners. Newspapers and television commentators have assailed Egypt and Jordan for trying to negotiate a peaceful solution between Hamas and Israel. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who planned to call a referendum on whether to support a two-state solution, has been increasingly silenced. Even the Hamas leadership in Gaza, which had sought to forge a consensus with other Palestinian factions, found itself trumped by its more militant members.

    Trying to explain his own impotence, Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, told an Egyptian newspaper that he had tried to negotiate a settlement between Hamas and Israel over the capture of Cpl. Gilad Shalit. He said he had worked out a deal - but a third party pressed Hamas to back out.

    Mr. Mubarak said he did not want to name the third party, but political analysts here said they believed that it was most likely Iran or Syria.

    "Politically active Islamist groups like these kinds of battles because they reap misery for the people who then automatically adhere to extremist groups," said Aly Salem, an Egyptian playwright who has supported normalizing ties with Israel, but says now that there is no margin even to discuss such ideas.

    The crisis directly involves four parties - Hezbollah, Lebanon, Israel and Hamas, but is being driven by multiple and diverging agendas. That has often been the case in Lebanon, which for decades has been a proxy battlefield for foreign forces. Gaza has also been a front for varying agendas, from Iran's desire to strengthen its regional role, to the exiled faction of Hamas trying to maintain control over its group. Caught in the middle are civilians.

    While recent events seem to have served Hezbollah's interests, there is also a strong feeling that the decision to take that action was guided by Iran's interests as well. Leaders of the top world powers, including Russia and China, agreed this week to haul Iran back before the United Nations Security Council for what they said appeared to be its unwillingness to negotiate in good faith over efforts to stop its enrichment of uranium.

    "They have a lot of interests, strategically, in the kidnapping, in light of their position today, which is very uncomfortable regarding their nuclear capability," said Jonathan Fighel, a retired Israeli colonel who is a senior researcher at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism. He said he did not believe that Syria benefited by seeing the crisis escalate. Syria has far less influence with Hezbollah since its forces were withdrawn from Lebanon and is at risk of being attacked by Israel.

    Those benefiting most from the bombs and the blood are those groups that want to see the rise of radicalism throughout the region. Even before this crisis, people were increasingly disillusioned with the political process as a means to achieve change, and were increasingly offering support to groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

    The victory of Hamas in Palestinian elections, and the subsequent decision by the West to deny it financial support, had a strong influence on Arab public opinion, with many saying it was hypocritical not to support the duly elected government.

    Now those groups, from Hamas to Hezbollah to the Brotherhood, are trying to use the events in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip to build support. On its Web site, the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt said, "Hezbollah, with its modest military capabilities relative to the capabilities of organized state armies, was able to achieve what several Arab governments did not do while they were satisfied to remain silent about the slaughter of our brothers in Palestine."

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    Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting for this article.