The Aley explosion and Its consequences
After the explosions in (Christian) Ashrafieh and (Sunni) Verdun, Aley, a popular Druze summer destination was hit. Can Walid Jumblat calm his constituents this time?
This time though, the smoke is not natural..
If one was to choose the single event which contributed most to sparking a Sunni-Shiaa strife in Iraq, one would chose the bombing of the Al-askari Mosque in Samarra. The bombing of a historic Shiaa mosque was seen by many as the straw that broke the Shiaa camel’s back, and initiated the cycle of revenge killings.
What does this have to do with Walid Jumblat, the leader of the Lebanese Druze?
To understand, one has to go back a bit to the ziad & ziad murder incident, where two partisans of Walid Jumblat were publicly kidnapped, killed, and maimed to the shock of the Lebanese. Back then, the Druze were seeing red and screaming for revenge, but their leader disappointed them by calling for calm.
The killers turned out to be, as everyone suspected, members of the Shamas family, who are Hezbollah sympathizers and who are now hiding from justice in one of their security zones. By calling for calm, Walid Jumblat had averted a potential bloodbath between the Shiaas and the Druze.
Fast forward to today, an explosion rocks a prosperous Druze Mountain village, and Hezbollah’s condemnation will probably be lukewarm as usual. There are no guarantees that the overzealous Druze will listen to their leader this time.
What this explosion clearly shows, is that March14 is the Target.
It is obvious is that the explosions targeted Druze, Christian and Sunni locations (those religious groups being the chore constituents of March 14). What is less obvious is that all those targets are also touristic hotspots (The Aley explosion was in a shopping area). Businessmen, another March14 constituency, are now lamenting the fatal blow that hit the Summer season (Aley being the favorite mountain destination of Wealthy Gulf tourists).
Whoever is doing this knows this country very well..
Do you like this post? Would you like to be always updated with new posts on this website? If so, please subscribe to this blog's RSS feed? (tell me more)Share This Post:
Print it: 
Email it: 
-->
Discussion
No comments for “The Aley explosion and Its consequences”
Post a comment
Hello, my name is Mustapha and I blog in The Beirut Spring about Lebanese society and politics. I started in February 2005 after the killing of P.M. Rafik Hariri.
Latest Posts
Recent Lebanon Video
Lebanese Bloggers
Middle Eastern Bloggers
Naharnet RSS Feed
Yalibnan RSS Feed
NowLebanon RSS Feed
Latest Lebanese News
Blog Featured In
Categories
Most Emailed
- Lebanese Bloggers Not Happy With Kuntar Celebrations - 1 emails
- Having It Both Ways.. Literally - 1 emails
- The PR Battle Over Samir Kuntar - 1 emails
Knows the country very well, ha! Let me take a guess: Maybe it is someone who has been in this country for aver 30 years?
Check the map I posted on my blog, and play the guessing game with us.
Well Bashar and his murduring clans are desperate. This time will be very different from 1975. The Lebanese not only will show solidarity with the exception of rogue ones, it will end with the Syrian regime ba bye.
To hell with solidarity man! Solidarity for WHAT? To prove that we can take a licking and keep on ticking? For WHAT? Solidarity means crap when your soldiers and the symbols of your sovereignty and national prerogatives are being bumped off and trampled upon left and right? Solidarity and its rhetoric are risible if not shorn up by decisive uncompromising NATIONAL action!
Conversations, conferences, consultations, discussions, compromises, and cute happy little arrangements are sooooooooooooo last century man! Enough with the silly charades already!
Sanioura and his freak-show should either stand up to Syria and its ringers in Lebanon and call a spade a spade, or pack up the circus and move to another town and leave the job to someone who’s actually WILLING to get her hands dirty! Enough skulking and hesitating already!
1- Declare marshall law and get the army on the streets (and the illegally armed hoodlums off, FOREVER,) NOW if not earlier!
2- Lodge a formal complaint against Syria at the UN and cut ALL ties with that arsonist regime.
3- Syria’s churlish behavior is nothing short of a declaration of war; short of bombing Damascus to smithereens, we need to shutter off our borders with that hell-hole and station blue-helmets from the North all the way down to the Southeast… Shou fhémna??
Enough hedging and stammering already!!! Sanioura should have done this and declared marshall law last summer; instead he put on a cute lacrymose show in the midst of a bunch of Arabs (in their finely embroidered national nightgowns), and took refuge in the same empty lazy Israel condemnations. That really must have REALLY scared Assad out of his wits.
pffft!!!
I hear you brother, what i meant we need to make sure nobody falls into the secterian trap…lots of idiots in Lebanon have in the past. Next we need a 5 year plan to topple the murduring regime in Syria and move on as a democracy in Lebanon and hopefully Syria too. I am no fan of the leaders, but at the same time, Sanioura is a brave and calculating man, his predecessors have been killed and he is trying to walk the line to achieve the dream. Remember who really would come to Lebanon’s rescue if the Syrian army came back in for some new excuse??? we don’t have a lot of friends with a spine to help us in the line of fire. Even the Hariri proble is going the way of others…I used to be outraged like you but hey, one step at a time, it is something :)
mustapha,
the two PSP members that were murdered a while back were beiruti sunnis. they were not druze.
Yes dead man walking,true,but they were or their fathers were members of the P.S.P.
Loius Noel Harfouche, that means a potential uprising by Hizbollah/Palestinian/Opposition groups that can number half the country,not mentioning some members of the army might defect into their own sects once it gets apocalyptic…then what?Most people agree with your points but when push comes to shove,its going to be a massacre and guess who will volunteer to save Lebanon?
Maverick, no offense, but if the army is going to split over a bunch of foreign louts (and illegally armed local non-governmental actors, aka “mu’aawamé”), then good-bye and good riddance, let it freagin’ split cause then it would have proven that it never deserved the “national army” label to begin with. In fact, yours is the same argument that the cretin Rachid Karamé advanced back in 1972 (and again later in 1975 and 1976.) That’s just a load of bunk, Maverick! Had the army been allowed to take the streets and perform its national duty (unhindered by Karamé’s base sectarian considerations) back then, it would NEVER have been emasculated and would never have had the chance to sit idly by, percolating and commiserating over (or getting in touch with) its ethno-religious make up. The Lebanese National Army of the 1960s and 1970s split PRECISELY because it was crippled by unprincipled politicians more concerned with the “Arab nationalist” credentials than with Lebanese sovereignty and national prerogatives. It split because it was PRECLUDED from fulfilling its national duty, not BECAUSE it fulfilled it!!!
The Army’s job is to protect the homeland, Maverick, not sit “above the frey” and watch the homeland get torn asunder by a bunch of foreign predators and their local stool-pigeons!