A tale of feisty men, a neighborhood and a panther that has to change colors.
When a diligent Daily Star reporter approached Ahmad el Masri, a Tareek Jdeedeh resident to ask him if he’s familiar with the neighborhood’s new “black panthers” logo, Ahmad whipped out his mobile phone, smiled and pointed at his screen: “This one, you mean?”

The unmistakable “black panthers” design is indeed a hit with Tareek Jdeedeh residents (or the TJ as a hip panther would call it). Even the logo’s designer, code named M.A, was surprised at its enormous success:

“I was so surprised to see my logo on flags and T-shirts,” said M.A., who added a special mark on the logo as a signature. “Today, I went to the store that sells flags and it was sold out. Imagine I have to buy my own design.”

So who are the panthers?

Maya Abdel Aziz, 18 year old Tareek Jdeedeh resident explains:

“The Panthers are security so that nothing happens to the people[..] They’re needed because the army can’t do anything. Like when the [BAU clashes] happened on Thursday, the army just watched while people broke cars.

“The Panthers stay awake,” Abdel-Aziz continued. “They take care of the security and they take shifts staying up and are aware of all the happenings in the area. They keep in contact with each other and they’re organized. For security though, both the Panthers and the army need to be present.”

Of course, a black panther is a bit harsh as a logo for armed vigilantes on the loose. This is why a brand face-lifting is in order. Shop owner Fatima discloses a secret on the next version of the logo: “Soon we’ll be selling buttons, only they’ll be in blue,”.

The color change might be a large and costly operation. Just ask Mr. Al-Masri who’ll have to upload a brand new image to his mobile phone.

If the “facts” mentioned in Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker article are true, Saad Hariri has a moral obligation to come out clean.

The media in Lebanon has been focusing on the Hersh report in The New Yorker for good reasons. The central premise of the report is that the Americans, Saudis and Israelis are engaged in a clandestine operation (Hersh likens it to the Iran-contra affair) to undermine Iranian influence in the region, by actively working on a Sunni-Shiite confrontation and empowering extremist Sunni elements.

Hersh believes that the Saudis and Americans are backing fundamentalist Sunnis in Lebanon:

according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant. “We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can,” the former senior intelligence official said.
[..]American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.

Hersh spoke with Alastair Crook “who spent nearly thirty years in MI6, the British intelligence service, and now works for Conflicts Forum, a think tank in Beirut”, who told him:

The Lebanese government is opening space for these people to come in. It could be very dangerous.” Crooke said that one Sunni extremist group, Fatah al-Islam, had splintered from its pro-Syrian parent group, Fatah al-Intifada, in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, in northern Lebanon. Its membership at the time was less than two hundred. “I was told that within twenty-four hours they were being offered weapons and money by people presenting themselves as representatives of the Lebanese government’s interests—presumably to take on Hezbollah

Hersh sees Saad Hariri’s role in providing amnesty to the Dinnieh insurgents as part of that plan:

In 2005, according to a report by the U.S.-based International Crisis Group, Saad Hariri, the Sunni majority leader of the Lebanese parliament and the son of the slain former Prime Minister [..] paid forty-eight thousand dollars in bail for four members of an Islamic militant group from Dinniyeh. The men had been arrested while trying to establish an Islamic mini-state in northern Lebanon. The Crisis Group noted that many of the militants “had trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.”
According to the Crisis Group report, Saad Hariri later used his parliamentary majority to obtain amnesty for twenty-two of the Dinniyeh Islamists, as well as for seven militants suspected of plotting to bomb the Italian and Ukrainian embassies in Beirut, the previous year.

Hersh elaborates on the bigger picture, and explains Jumblat’s role:

Walid Jumblatt, who is the leader of the Druze minority in Lebanon and a strong Siniora supporter, has attacked Nasrallah as an agent of Syria, and has repeatedly told foreign journalists that Hezbollah is under the direct control of the religious leadership in Iran. In a conversation with me last December, he depicted Bashir Assad, the Syrian President, as a “serial killer.” Nasrallah, he said, was “morally guilty” of the assassination of Rafik Hariri and the murder, last November, of Pierre Gemayel, a member of the Siniora Cabinet, because of his support for the Syrians.

Jumblatt then told me that he had met with Vice-President Cheney in Washington last fall to discuss, among other issues, the possibility of undermining Assad. He and his colleagues advised Cheney that, if the United States does try to move against Syria, members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood would be “the ones to talk to,” Jumblatt said.

Also in a twist that would please Aounist supporters, (but which I think is utterly rubbish) is this part:

Robert Baer, a former longtime C.I.A. agent in Lebanon, has been a severe critic of Hezbollah and has warned of its links to Iranian-sponsored terrorism. But now, he told me, “we’ve got Sunni Arabs preparing for cataclysmic conflict, and we will need somebody to protect the Christians in Lebanon. It used to be the French and the United States who would do it, and now it’s going to be Nasrallah and the Shiites.
“The most important story in the Middle East is the growth of Nasrallah from a street guy to a leader—from a terrorist to a statesman,” Baer added. “The dog that didn’t bark this summer”—during the war with Israel—“is Shiite terrorism.” Baer was referring to fears that Nasrallah, in addition to firing rockets into Israel and kidnapping its soldiers, might set in motion a wave of terror attacks on Israeli and American targets around the world. “He could have pulled the trigger, but he did not,” Baer said.

**Update**
Bilal Saab from the Brookings Institute disputes Hersh’s findings and argues that it is in fact Hezbollah that is in control of extreme Sunni elements. Read more..

**Update 2**
More skepticism from Tony and SM.

Not a good week for the Lebanese in Africa..

Amid a clear blue sky, a toy-like plane lands on a sunny landscape covered with cute Baobab trees only to be greeted by a smiley giraffe before taking off again. This is how a banner advertising OTV’s fundraising “road-trip” portrays the magical continent on the Tayyar’s website.

Unfortunately, not even friendly giraffes can sheer up the Lebanese in Guinea these days. Our compatriots there are so scared of the upcoming civil war they fled to Sierra Leone, the same country where the gory events in “Blood diamond” took place (A side note: This is also where Speaker Nabih Berri was born)

The Lebanese in Nigeria are not doing well either. After the alledged “escape” of Lebanese hostage Imad Saliba from his captors in oil-rich Port Harcourt, armed factions opened fire at two Lebanese construction workers killing a Zgharta native and injuring another.

Of course, things should be put in perspective. Africa is not one country as many Lebanese seem to think, although it does tend to have a bad image in the Lebanese collective memory (remember Cote D’ivoir’s war two years ago that drove tens of thousands of Lebanese away? Or the plane crash that killed dozens of Lebanese in Cotonou, Benin?)

I live in Ghana, which is somewhere between Guinea, Cote D’ivoir, Benin and Nigeria, yet life here is peaceful and prospering (thank god). Even in Nigeria (a country with more than 100 million people,) the Lebanese are generally doing very well. Why else would Michel Aoun want to send Gebran Bassil there? (Bassil, incidentally, was also hit by this week’s curse and had a “car accident” that forced him to fly back home for treatment)

Still, it wouldn’t be bad for all of us to reflect on the case of Joseph Issa, the electronic engineer who couldn’t make a living in Lebanon, who decided to flee to a remote part of Africa, only to return back as a cold corpse.

So apparently the Israeli Minister of Defense doesn’t take off the lens caps of his binoculars when he watches military maneuvers in the Golan heights.

No wonder the Syrians think they got a chance..

Every once in a while someone comes along and coins a memorable term that captures the essence of a crisis. Yesterday, Amin Gemayel gave us “Cold Civil War”.

A cold civil war is exactly what is happening in Lebanon today. It is mostly felt in “mixed” environments.

In offices, for example, you can’t avoid the sense of “otherness” emanating from the person sitting in the next cubicle. In gatherings, family or otherwise, entire conversations change if someone in the crowd is from the other camp. A rich lexicon of euphemisms has flourished, where you say “Southerner” when what you really mean to say is “Shiaa” and by extension “Northerner” replaces “Sunni”.

“Those Syrian Iranian Scumbags” change into “The Opposition” and “Those Zionist American Traitors” become “The Pro-Government loyalists”. Among Christians, “Those Aounist Traitors” and “Those War mongering LF Militias” both magically transform into “Our brothers in the other camp”.

The fact is: we can’t stand each other. We try to hide it but we secretly wish the other never existed.We can’t have a real civil war because memories of the previous one are still too vivid. But at the same time, our aspirations, goals and objectives are just too conflicting.

We won’t fight each other. We won’t make nice. We’re stuck at the brink of “mutually assured destruction”.It is indeed a cold war. A Cold Civil war.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has designated Hezbollah’s construction arm, Jihad al Binaa, as a terrorist organization. What difference does this make?

Not looking good

It is always tempting to dismiss Treasury department bans as nothing more than symbolic gestures. Fine, you might think, Hezbollah will just switch American made Caterpillar trucks for European made JCB ones. What’s the big deal? it’s America’s loss.

In reality, though, the ban is aimed at Iran.

The story goes back to when Jihad Al Binaa began reconstruction work immediately after the July war. The group’s no-nonsense dynamism and efficiency impressed international development funds who turned a blind eye to the Hezbollah connection and poured money onto their projects.

With a belief that Hezbollah was a “grassroots Lebanese movement” that could get the job done, the funds simply stepped over Lebanese official channels, rightly perceived to be corrupt and inefficient.

This was a win-win situation for Tehran which, as Jihad Al Binaa’s main funder, was happy someone else was footing the bill while still getting the popularity boost for itself.

By stepping in, the Americans have decided to tighten the bolts on Iran.

By clearly marking Jihad Al Binaa as a terrorist organization, the Americans hope to achieve two objectives: First, they would squeeze Iran financially in a time of falling oil prices, and second, they would boost the Lebanese government’s official construction works. As Stuart Levey, the Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence puts it:

“At the same time that we are targeting Hizballah’s construction company, the U.S. Government is also working to ensure that legitimate reconstruction efforts, led by the Lebanese Government, succeed,”

The real immediate losers would be the Lebanese “consumers” of construction who could lose the help of a highly subsidized and motivated organization.