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News Analysis Lebanon: forty days, three bombs
April 1st, 2005 -- While Lebanon’s “cedar revolution” was knocked off the top of the regime-change chart by recent populist exertions in Kyrgyzstan, the political ferment that has characterized Beirut since the funeral of Rafiq al-Hariri has not abated. It has merely grown more diffuse. On the international stage, Kofi Annan received the United Nation’s report on Hariri’s murder, which — being critical of Lebanese investigations, and coinciding with the 40th day of mourning — provided an appropriate setting for the secretary-general to call for a full probe into the assassination.
Though more subdued for the last couple of weeks, the grassroots performance activism at Martyrs’ Square continues its permutations. The carnival patina has faded, however, in the glare of three East Beirut bombings in the space of 12 days. As its consumer economy drifts into the doldrums, the city’s mood has become a mix of triumph and defiance, scepticism and anxiety. Bush’s wish-list The UN fact-finding mission that arrived in Beirut on 24 February to gather information about “the circumstances, causes and consequences” of Hariri’s assassination wrapped up its work on 15 March. Led by Ireland’s assistant police commissioner, Peter Fitzgerald, the Egyptian-Moroccan-Irish team (eventually augmented by some Swiss bomb experts) was scathing in its report. The same day that the UN mission concluded its work, just after a White House meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, President Bush seemed to take a conciliatory stance vis-à-vis Hizbullah, urging the resistance to disarm and to stay out of Israeli-Palestinian disputes. There were intimations that the US would recognize the political legitimacy of a disarmed Hizbullah. The US has frozen Hizbullah’s assets, banned its al-Manar satellite television station and branded the party an international terrorist group responsible for attacks against itself and Israel since the 1980s. Evidently Bush, who had an appointment with Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfayr the next day, was briefed on Hizbullah’s prestige in the country, its social welfare network and its nine deputies in parliament. Bush’s remarks to the press after his meeting with Sfayr on 16 March seemed slightly out of synch with Lebanese realities. He remarked on his “deep desire for Lebanon to be a truly free country, free where people can worship the way they choose to, free where people can speak their mind, free where political parties can flourish, a country based on free elections”. While this last point is debatable, most of Bush’s wish-list has long been up and running in Lebanon. Evidently, the “religious discrimination” to which he seemed to refer is Lebanon’s sectarian political system, which the State Department frowns upon. Sfayr thanked Bush for his “sincere interest” in a free and peaceful Lebanon. “We are hopeful,” he said, “with this effort of our friends around the world, will be able to build a better future in a free, independent, pluralistic and sovereign Lebanon”. In what may be a mark of Washington’s special interest in ongoing events in the country, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield moved into the US embassy on 23 March. Himself a former ambassador here, Satterfield is officially standing in for Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman, said to have returned to the US for personal reasons. Satterfield’s open-ended stay and commentary have raised a few eyebrows, though. Speaking to journalists again on 22 March, Nasrallah remarked: “I think he’s going to set up an operations centre in the American embassy to direct Lebanese affairs.” “Under what diplomatic norms,” asked Hashem Safi al-Din, head of Hizbullah’s Executive Council, on 24 March, “and under what policy does Satterfield come, for one, two or three weeks?” The Fitzgerald Report The day before the Fitzgerald Report went public, Michel Abu Arraj, the Lebanese government’s chief investigating magistrate in the Hariri case, asked to be relieved of his duties. According to Justice Minister Adnan Addum, Arraj pleaded exhaustion and discouragement at the “atmosphere of scepticism surrounding the investigation”. Officially presented to Annan on 24 March, the Fitzgerald Report is a mix of political analysis and procedural critique. The former is as even-handed as one might expect — assuming the team members’ innocence of Lebanese realities and the international circumstances of the mission’s formation. The latter points with bewilderment into a murk that looks at times like incompetence, at times malfeasance. To his credit — after taking pains to short-hand the political context of Hariri’s assassination — Fitzgerald reminds the reader that political analysis is no replacement for proper investigation. A great deal of ink has been spent on what actually killed Hariri; state investigations suggested a car bomb, but rival narratives suggested bombs of varying sophistication planted under the street in front of the St Georges Hotel. Fitzgerald went with the state’s version, saying a suicide bomber in a 1995 or 1996 Mitsubishi truck, carrying c. 1,000kg of TNT, may have caused the blast. The conclusion remains provisional, since the crime scene and its evidence were so questionably handled — indications were found that the security services had removed, falsified or destroyed some evidence from the scene — as to throw the state’s case into suspicion. The mission is doubtful that the state’s prime suspect (a young Palestinian named Ahmad Abu Adas) had the wherewithal to carry out the attack. Lebanon’s inquiry into the assassination was seriously flawed, Fitzgerald said, and Lebanese security forces revealed such “systematic negligence” in their investigation that an independent probe is needed. He did not blame Syria for Hariri’s death, but he did say Syrian military intelligence was principally responsible for Beirut’s “lack of security, protection and law and order”. The greater brunt of responsibility fell on Lebanon’s several security agencies, which did not take appropriate measures to protect its most important political figures despite widespread rumours that Hariri and Junblatt were in danger (MEI 744). “It became clear to the mission,” Fitzgerald wrote, “that the Lebanese investigation process suffers from serious flaws and has neither the capacity nor the commitment to reach a satisfactory and credible conclusion.” Allegations that Syrian President Bashar al-Asad threatened “physical harm” to Hariri prior to the prime minister’s resignation last September are treated seriously, quoting Asad as telling Hariri he would “rather break Lebanon over the heads of Hariri and Junblatt than see his word in Lebanon broken”. Though corroborated from various sources, this narrative is somewhat one-sided — based on Hariri’s subsequent remarks to friends and colleagues. Arguably, Fitzgerald can’t be blamed for this, since Asad refused to give the mission his side of the story. Annan’s letter to the Security Council which accompanied the report endorsed Fitzgerald’s call for an international investigation. In Brussels, EU foreign policy head Javier Solana also backed the UN’s call for an international probe. The State Department said the report confirmed that all Syrian military and intelligence forces must withdraw fully and immediately. Lahoud responded to the report by urging the UN to “do what’s necessary to reveal the truth in the crime”. Senior Lebanese officials rejected the report, however. Though the government “welcomes all means” to find the truth about the Hariri assassination, they said the UN mission exceeded its authority in accusing the government of negligence. Opposition leaders had demanded an international investigation into the killing, saying they did not trust pro-Syrian Lebanese security chiefs. Lahoud sits tight While Syrian military and intelligence personnel continued to redeploy to the Beqaa Valley and points east, the opposition demanded the removal of the public prosecutor and the heads of Lebanon’s six security services, as well as an international investigation into Hariri’s death. Lahoud has refused to sack the security chiefs until a Lebanese investigation is completed. In a rare public statement, Jamil al-Sayyid — generally seen as one of the most powerful men in the country — on 17 March rejected opposition calls for him and his colleagues to resign. As head of the Interior Ministry’s Department of General Security, he sits at the centre of Lebanon’s intelligence network. He said he would initiate legal proceedings against himself and his fellow security chiefs in order to disprove charges of complicity in Hariri’s killing. Opposition politicians ridiculed Sayyid’s statement. “As long as Lahoud is in place, the truth cannot be revealed,” Junblatt told the press on 17 March. “There cannot be a resignation of the security agency chiefs unless he resigns.” Junblatt said he and his allies would not join a government as long as Lahoud remained in office. He did say, though, that a dialogue with Hizbullah was under way and that, contrary to Washington’s demands, few in the ranks of the opposition wanted to disarm the resistance. “No one,” he said, “is talking about weapons.” Hizbullah’s future For his part, Hassan Nasrallah answered Bush’s invitation for the party to lay down its arms and enter the mainstream in a 16 March TV interview. “I’m holding on to the weapons of the resistance because I think the resistance... is the best formula to protect Lebanon and to deter any Israeli aggression,” he said. Nasrallah said claims that the party had sought to disrupt the Palestinian-Israeli peace process were false. “We don’t carry out operations in occupied Palestine,” he said. “This is an honour that we don’t claim.” He said the Americans and Israelis simply wanted to disarm Hizbullah so as to leave Lebanon without protection. He mocked Washington’s claims to be interested in Lebanese demo-cracy. “Never for a day was America concerned about Lebanon’s free-dom, independence and sover-eignty,” he said. “If President Bashar agreed to disarm the resistance… Syrian forces would not only stay in Lebanon but they would return to Beirut.” He forecast that, in return for Syrian withdrawal, Bush and Israel would eventually demand Hizbullah’s disarmament, in effect that the opposition carry out a pro-Israeli policy. “They want us to confront each other,” he said. Nasrallah rejected the opposition’s call for an internat-ional inquiry into the Hariri assassination, saying “we have no trust in the Americans and the Security Council”; he proposed a pan-Arab inquiry instead. The dialogue over Hizbullah’s future was internalized on 18 March when Sfayr, fresh from meeting Kofi Annan in New York, called on Hizbullah to disarm. “They were a group that fought to free south Lebanon from Israeli occupation,” Sfayr said to reporters. “But now that has been accom-plished, there is no longer any reason for them to be armed.” He denied that his talks with Bush the previous week had addressed the forced disarmament of Hizbullah. After a seven-month hiatus in opposition-loyalist dialogue, Jun-blatt and Nasrallah held talks on 27 March. “The issue of weapons is not under discussion today,” Junblatt reassured journalists, adding that he would not let any new parliament be “hostile” to Syria or Hizbullah. Bombs spread fear There was clearly some hostility about, however, as a series of bomb attacks had begun rocking Beirut’s eastern sectors. Coming at four-day intervals, their modus operandi was not unlike some of the small-scale bombings carried out in years past — in public spaces at an hour of the night to guarantee material losses rather than casualties. Generally attributed to Syrian intelligence, like past bombings, these incidents have been explained as extortion: the security apparatus keeps the peace; endangering their role in the state endangers the peace. The first bomb went off late on 19 March, when a car exploded in the mixed commercial and residential suburb of New Judayda. Nine people were wounded. Four days later a second 80kg bomb tore through Kaslik’s Alta Vista shopping centre, 16km north of Beirut, at 1.30 a.m. It killed three South Asian guest workers and injured four more. Four days later, on 26 March, a third bomb (some 25-30kg) ripped through an industrial estate between the mainly Christian quarters of Sad al-Boushrieh and Dikwayneh. Six people were wounded — two Indian workers and four Lebanese — and six buildings were heavily damaged. Since 19 March numerous false alarms, fake bombs and unrealized bomb threats have been reported in various quarters of the city. At least one car bomb was reported to have been dismantled. West Beirut’s Gefinor commercial centre was evacuated for several hours on 24 March following a false bomb alert. Hariri-owned media outlets report-ed receiving threats. Security around the UN’s ESCWA (Economic and Social Council for West Asia) offices in central Beirut was reinforced with cement blocks and sandbags. This ambient fear of more bombing is virtually as taxing on Beirutis as the bombs themselves. |
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