Category Archives: Uncategorized

by

Gulf Countries Throw Money at the Syrian Problem. Will it Work?

I’m intrigued by one of the outcomes of the “friends of Syria” conference:

Rebels fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria will be paid salaries, the opposition Syrian National Council has announced. Money will also be given to soldiers who defect from the government’s army, the SNC added, after a “Friends of the Syrian people” summit in Turkey.

First I thought the wealthy gulf nations are trying to incentivize more people to fight the Syrian regime. But that didn’t make a lot of sense because these people are risking their lives daily to fight, and a few extra dollars won’t significantly transform their motivation. But then I read this:

“The SNC will take charge of the payment of fixed salaries of all officers, soldiers, and others who are members of the Free Syrian Army,” SNC President Burhan Ghalioun told the conference.

Aha! If you remember, the SNC is having a crisis of legitimacy with the Syrians fighting on the ground. If they become the party that is paying them Salaries, it will immediately be clear who the boss is. It’s the golden rule: He who has the gold, makes the rules. In that respect, the plan can be seen as an effort by the opponents of the Assad regime to unify the opposition behind the SNC.

I’m still skeptical of the effectiveness of this plan, if only for the logistical nightmare this will create. How can you tell if someone is fighting the regime? Will the SNC issue identification cards to FSA members? How can you prevent the massive amount of potential fraud this can create? Fraud that can easily be orchestrated by a cash-strapped regime.

This could turn out to be a brilliant plan, but throwing money at an intractable problem is not always a panacea.

by

❊ Jaleldib vs the World. Sorry, but the Lebanese Government Cannot Afford your Luxury Bridge.

Should the Lebanese government pay for a new bridge in Jaleldib?

The bridge, despite slowing drown traffic on the main highway, made life easier for many of the residents in that area. After it was dismantled, people started getting inconvenienced daily with an additional 20 minutes or so of driving to reach the main highway. But does that mean that the government should foot the bill for a new bridge?

In an ideal world, it should. And by ideal world I mean a world in which the government has extra money that it doesn’t know where to spend.

Unfortunately we don’t live in that world. $20M (or $120M depending on level of corruption) spent on that bridge is $20 million taken away from other projects that would, dollar for dollar, be a much more productive way to spend the government’s money and a much better return on investment for Lebanese tax payers and donors. $20M spent on improving electricity in Jounieh is much more useful than $20M on making life a bit easier for Jaleldibians.

The reason why I used Jounieh as an example (instead of say, Akkar) is because people are turning this into a Christian Vs. Muslim issue. But it is not. Cities and regions all over the world fight for the money of the central government, and talking about this in sectarian terms doesn’t make the cause of the bridge any more fair.

That said, the demands of the citizens of Jaleldib are not completely unfair. Jaleldib and Metn are rich areas that contribute more than others to the Lebanese national treasury. But as long as we don’t have administrative and financial decentralization, the treasury will remain tight-fisted and distributive.

The sad truth is that, despite their vocal campaign on facebook, if the people of Jaleldib want a bridge, they’ll have to pay for it themselves.

by

What Hezbollah and America Have in Common

A smart and interesting angle from Andrew Exum:

Hezbollah finds itself in much the same position as the United States as it watches the clouds of war gather between Israel and Iran. Like the United States, it has reason to hope conflict can be averted. But like the United States, it is realistic about the likelihood that it will be drawn into a conflict once the first shots are fired.

The important insight here is that both of them are so wary of a war that they’re almost willing to work together to prevent it from happening.. That would nicely explain the chumminess between the two sides lately.. (PS: Exum is one of the paint-balling 4)

by

Toulouse Terrorist Sends Video of His Killings to Aljazeera. Station Refused to Broadcast it.

What really annoys me about this New York Times story is that it’s assuming that since Aljazeera is refusing to broadcast footage of children being killed at close range, that somehow means that the station is changing its editorial policy:

The decision [not to air the footage], made at the very top of the sprawling international network, provided an opportunity for Al Jazeera to display its journalistic restraint at a time of management upheaval and accusations of a double standard in its coverage of uprisings in the Middle East. Experts said Mr. Merah’s video offered a possible hint of the broadcaster’s future editorial direction.

This is rubbish. Aljazeera has angered the Americans in the past because it broadcasted Bin Laden’s propaganda and videos of American hostages, videos that have editorial value despite being unsavory to uncle Sam. But I can’t think of any instant in which Aljazeera actually broadcasted a murder scene, let alone one involving children. To somehow suggest that this latest “restraint” is out of character is deeply disingenuous. I mean, listen to the kind of video we’re talking about:

it showed the seven killings with music, religious chants and the reading of Koranic verses in the background. “You hear the gunshots and the cries of the victims,”

Did Aljazeera ever broadcast something like this? I accept that the station is at a political inflection point, but the premise of this article is completely unfounded.

by

Citizen Reporting in Lebanon


– Annahar’s new venture –

Annahar’s twitter feed has been heavily promoting a new service (myannahar.com) on which they hope citizens will report incidents that get updated live on a Lebanese map.

The website is a simple branding of the Ushahidi platform which we used back in 2009 for Sharek961 to monitor the Lebanese general elections (I was responsible for the visual design and front-end web development). I remember we had a decent success with it.

Will My Annahar succeed? The odds are not so good. These kinds of platforms have proven really good at monitoring specific kinds of incidents and events (like elections). Cheyef 7alak does very well with reporting traffic violations, salwa’s tool for tracking sexual harassment in Beirut is a hit and the ministry of health’s map of places that are smoke-free has great potential for user input.

But I am yet to see a general-purpose incident-tracking website that took off and got critical mass, and the bare-bone implementation of My Annahar doesn’t exactly scream commitment to the service.  But one can never know. Here’s to hoping that Annahar’s strong brand can make this an actually useful service.

by

Operation “The Light Side of Hezbollah”

A few days after “paint-balling with Hezbollah”, we get yet another exposé in an english language publication in which the themes of Hezbollah, entertainment and western journalists getting privileged access and bragging about it, are mixed together.

“Inside Hezbollah’s Terror Tech Museum”, published today in WIRE, (more colorfully republished in io9) is yet another piece in which the journalist (in this case Sharon Weinberger) tries to overcompensate for his access to Hezbollah by using the words “terror” and “terrorism” whenever he can. (Translation: Yes, I fraternized with Hezbollah but I still think they’re a bunch of baby killing monsters)

Everybody wins. Hezbollah plays the journalists, the journalists brag about their access and western readers get exotic photos and material to read.

Do I get anything out of the article? Yes: I find myself thinking that the amount of visitors to the Mleeta park is directly related to how popular Hezbollah is in the region. If only I could get statistics of visits, how they changed during key Hezbollah events, and how they are affected by the events in Syria.. (Thanks Azmi)

Update:

Patric Galey, a western journalist with an extensive Beirut experience (reporting for the Daily Star, a local newspaper with a Lebanese readership), explains western Journalists’ fascination with Hezbollah:

["paint-balling with Hezbollah"] is in keeping with a long narrative of western gawping at Hezbollah. We’ve all done it. When I first arrived in Beirut I wrote excitedly that six days into my stay I’d had tea with party officials. I thought that was cool and, in a way, I suppose it was for someone fresh off the plane. But reporters learn and evolve. When you’ve gathered party sources and interviewed enough officials, you realize that, largely, Hezbollah is just like most political parties here; they just happen to have more rockets

Maybe “fresh off the plane” should be the standard way of dismissing writers who come up with such pieces..

by

The Notorious Abu Ismail


– Spoof ad campaign for Hazem Salah Abou Ismail, an Islamist candidate for the Egyptian presidency –

Candidates for elections do crazy stuff, and most of them enjoy some kinds of publicity stunts. But some candidates are so relentless, so ubiquitous, so larger than life that their campaigns eventually take lives of their own on the web. (Remember Pierre Hashash?)

A case in point is Hazem Salah Abou-Ismail, a candidate for the presidential elections in Egypt, whose epic poster campaign reverberated widely on the web and spawned many spoofs (like the ad above) and even a dedicated spoof blog. Keep your eye on this one, as this could prove to be an important reminder that web notoriety does not necessarily translate into votes.

by

Freedom Before Shariaa. A Ray of Light Comes From Kuwait

I had to read it twice before sharing it, but Tariq al-Suwaidan, a prominent Kuwaiti Muslim Scholar did announce that freedom should come before Shariaa.

The first thing I looked for was a catch. A little detail that would undermine his position, something like perhaps: “as long as we don’t choose to leave Islam”. But no, he seemed to be talking of real, honest liberty:

a human being is free in his movements and where he wants to belong, and convictions are what move people, and not force

This is really refreshing because it breaks from the common understanding in the region that Muslim moderates are not truly liberal, but people who just know how to “tolerate” and befriend people from other religions.

The natural extension of Mr. Suwaidan’s idea is that a civil state should rule and treat citizens equally under a civil law, regardless of what their religions and beliefs are. Now that would be a true breakthrough in modern Islamic thinking.

by

Waking Up to the Realities in Syria

If you’re locked in a Lebanese news bubble where, depending on your position, the Syrian opposition either doesn’t exist or is just short of storming Assad’s Bastille, you’ll be excused to have missed the parallel universe in which a realistic discussion is taking place on the balance of power, compromise and altogether unsavory diplomatic sausage-making that uses sentences like “the hard realities on the ground”.

In Syria, the expectations were demoted from the Tunisian scenario to the Egyptian scenario, and then to the Libyan scenario. Now, it seems that even a Yemeni scenario could be out of reach. We could be left with a choice between the Zimbabwe scenario (a power sharing deal in which Assad keeps the lion’s share of power) or a civil war where the opposition is less peaceful and more islamised.

The situation is very fluid. There could be a sudden denouement or things could drag on forever. Some are optimistic in the long run, and some are downright gloomy. But one thing is for sure: Clarity itself is lost, and the Lebanese media and politicians would do well to adapt.