One Arrest, Many Questions

The arrest of ex minister Michel Samaha brings intrigue and many questions to the Lebanese political scene.

We knew a while ago that ex minister Michel Samaha’s heydays were behind him. He belongs to a class of politicians (with Nasser Qandil, Assaad Hardan, Wiam Wahhab and others) who owe their entire political careers to the tutelage and protection of the Syrian regime. These politicians regularly did Assad’s dirty work in Lebanon, and unlike Hezbollah, they are not loyal to Iran. Also, unlike Sleiman Frangieh and Nabih Berri, they don’t have their own popular constituencies. In short, they were destined to go down with the Syrian regime.

But his arrest this morning on charges of planning to plant explosives in various Lebanese regions brings with it many important questions whose answers will help shed light on the next phase of Lebanon’s politics.

Will Hezbollah stand by him or let him drown?

If the reports of Samaha’s plans were correct, i.e. sowing social and sectarian chaos in Lebanon by detonating explosives at the eve of the Patriarch’s visit to Akkar, then we have reached a point where Hezbollah’s interests and Syria’s interests diverge. Yes Hezbollah could use all the internal allies it could get, but unlike the Syrian regime, Hezbollah has no interest in chaos and sectarian tension in Lebanon, so my hunch is that they will let Samaha take the fall..

How big is this?

People like the Ex President Emile Lahoud and General Jamil el Sayyed are already standing by Samaha and are making loud noises about due process and the evils of Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces (ISF). Were these men in on the plan? Are they panicking? Will the investigations reach them? Is Mr. Samaha’s arrest an isolated arrest or the precursor of a bigger wave of arrests that will unravel the entire criminal network of Assad’s dirty friends?

Connection to the Hariri killing?

Prime minister Miqati denied any relationship between today’s arrest and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), but speculating about this is just too tempting. If a criminal network of VIPs related to the Syrian regime was caught red-handed trying to kill Lebanese officials and sow chaos through explosives, won’t they seem like an obvious suspect for the murder of ex Prime Minister Hariri in 2005? Wouldn’t this be the perfect opportunity for Hezbollah to throw the Hariri murder back at Assad and his Lebanese goons, and use it as proof that the “Americans and Zionists” messed up with the Hariri investigation to frame Hezbollah?

There are many more questions that are related to the details of Lebanese politics. For example, how will the FPM deal with this issue? And how will that tell us about its positioning for a post-Assad Syria? But the questions above are the big ones, and we are all waiting anxiously for answers.