Syria pulls some strings in Iran

Wise diplomacy makes some strange bedfellows. Such is the price of effectiveness. Bush was more interested in looking tough to the American voter than being effective diplomatically. Obama means what he says that he intents to do what he thinks is best for the American people. Of course, the truth is, he too is concerned about 2012.

Asia Times Online.

Appearing in court on Saturday, a tearful Afshar admitted she had been involved in post-election unrest, saying that "brothers at the Intelligence Ministry made me understand my mistake", the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

The decision to arrest Afshar would have needed the approval of either Ahmadinejad or Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khemanei; only top officials can order such an arrest, given Iran's troubled relationship with Europe.

The decision to release her, however, would have needed the consent of Khemanei as it involved overriding the judiciary that had her on trial. The fact that Syria was a go-between is testimony to the excellent relations Damascus enjoys with the supreme leader.

Syria has played a similar role in mediating conflicts with Iran. In 2007, it helped secure the release of 15 British sailors abducted in Iranian waters - mainly because it had the ear of the grand ayatollah. It also helped win the freedom in 2007 of BBC reporter Alan Johnston, who was being held captive in Gaza by an Islamic group close to Hamas.

During the long years of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), Syria helped secure the release of American hostages, notably the president of the American University of Beirut, David Dodge, after he had been abducted by militias linked to Tehran.

The latest release comes as part of a long list of initiatives made by Damascus. Long accused of being a source of instability in the region, Syria has proved yet again that countries that can destabilize can also play a crucial role in stability.

This week's developments raise the possibility that Iran and Syria are sending a message to the world by showing how they have the ability to coordinate their efforts to diminish Western influence in the Muslim world.

Beyond that, what matters is how influential Syria is not only within Iran but also with non-state players like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories. It illustrates that US President Barack Obama - who never embraced the notion of breaking the Syrian-Iranian alliance - was right after all.

The US president does not see the merit in trying to drive a wedge between Damascus and Tehran; rather, he sees the Syrian-Iranian friendship as a blessing in disguise. He clearly believes the Syrians are a people with whom he can do business, especially as they do not have a history of anti-Amercanism, as the Iranians have had since the Islamic revolution of 1979.

Obama's predecessor, George W Bush, faced a difficult reality in 2006 when the Baker-Hamilton Report [1] was issued and it advised working with Syria and Iran to restore normalcy and security to war-torn Iraq. Bush then had a choice: either talk to Damascus, or talk to Tehran. Talking to both was too problematical.

Bush thus approved some contact with Syria, notably at the Sharm al-Sheikh summit in Egypt of 2007, when then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice met with her Syrian counterpart, Walid al-Mouallem. The Syrians at the time, however, reasoned that any meaningful breakthrough with Bush was close to impossible, so they kept all their cards close to their chests until Obama entered the White House in January.

Since then, there has been a chain effect of positive gestures between Syria and the US. Military delegations from US Central Command have twice visited the Syrian capital to discuss security in Iraq. Syria used its considerable influence in Baghdad to get angry Sunni tribal leaders to vote in provincial elections this January.

The Sunni street of Iraq - which Obama needs to get in order before the Americans are totally out of the country by 2012 - has traditionally been divided between Syria and Saudi Arabia. As long as these countries were in disagreement over Lebanon, progress in Iraq would be minimal, at best.

Now that the two have settled their differences over internal Lebanese affairs, the prospects of real results in Iraq are high. Syria has one advantage in Iraq, however, that the Saudis do not have - a strong influence in the Shi'ite street.

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LEBANON-SYRIA: MUJAHIDEEN BLEED-THROUGH

Image via Wikipedia

Asia Times Online By Michael Scheuer

Al-Qaeda's organizational goal in Iraq was to acquire contiguous territory from which to spread its influence and operatives, as well as those of its Islamist allies, into the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula and Turkey.
Having been weaned as an insurgent in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden has consistently refused to commit large al-Qaeda resources to jihads lacking country-wide maneuver room or Pakistan-like contiguous safe haven. The US-led invasion of Iraq, therefore, opened a chance for the above-described expansion by al-Qaeda and its allies that would not have been possible under a Saddam Hussein-controlled Iraq.
This is the first of four articles that will assess the initial stages of the penetration of the Levant - an ancient term for a region stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to Mesopotamia - by al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups. This piece will look at Syria, and will be followed by analyses of the bleed-through from Iraq into Lebanon, Jordan and Israel. The quartet of articles will seek to assess the validity of the recent claim by the state-run Syrian newspaper al-Thawara that because of the war in Iraq "the [Levant] region is throbbing with terrorists".
After crushing the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (SMB) at the city of Hama in 1982 - killing up to 20,000 people and leveling a quarter of the city - president Hafiz al-Assad adopted the traditional and traditionally unsuccessful tack of Arab tyrants of trying to use government largesse to co-opt Syria's remaining Islamists and thereby moderate their message. Under Assad's program tens of thousands of new mosques were built; 22 higher-education institutions for Koran-based learning were opened; regional sharia schools for men and women were started; and Muslim students from more than sixty countries were invited to receive their Islamic schooling in Syria.
Assad's son Bashar, however, is discovering that his father's efforts to co-opt Syrian Islamists have yielded not a tame, state-sponsored Islam but a trend toward militant Islamism in both urban and rural areas of Syria. After the September 27 terrorist attack in Damascus, an Arab journalist suggested:
The Syrian regime fell - as have others - in[to] the famous illusion that they can toy with the terrorist fundamentalist bear at the beginning of the day and then get rid of it or put it back in the cage at the end of the day! This is an illusion that is repeated and always repeated in the Middle East region. No side wants to learn from the experience of others. Toying with religion or attempting to revolutionize religion or some of its aspects and then trying to benefit from this revolution on the political level without any repercussions or consequences is the biggest illusion of all. It is the first and last mistake because if you commit this mistake once it would be fatal and there would be no second time!
Compounding the failure of co-optation for Damascus is the fact that the senior al-Assad's Hama operation, although massively murderous, was not comprehensive: the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood was not wiped out. Besides members who survived Hama and remained in Syria, a number of senior SMB leaders escaped and were welcomed in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states where they found succor, academic posts, and a safe haven in which to reorganize and plan for revenge.
The bin Laden family was among the many wealthy, non-royal Saudi families that had hosted SMB leaders both before and after Hama. Indeed, Osama in his youth met senior SMB leaders on their pilgrimage, and while living in Sudan (1991-1996) several SMB members worked for or were supported by al-Qaeda's multiple businesses.
It is important to note that an al-Qaeda-led mujahideen bleed-through from Iraq to Syria had fertile ground in which to take root in 2003. Notwithstanding the ubiquitous and brutal Syrian security services, there was a Damascus-permitted militant Islamist environment to be exploited when the US-led invasion of Iraq occurred. Not only had the targets of regime co-optation become more militant, but there were also SMB remnants in the country, as well as the long-time official presence of Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah, and various Palestinian resistance groups.
Into this made-to-order milieu, then, came hundreds and perhaps thousands of young Muslim men from across the Arab and Muslim worlds, eager to enter Iraq and join the fatwa-sanctioned jihad against the US-led coalition. Bashar al-Assad's regime allowed these men to enter Iraq, trusting that they would make life miserable for US forces, kill enough American troops to force a US withdrawal and end up being killed before they could head for home. Washington singled out Damascus for sole responsibility for this cross-border flow of would-be mujahideen, but al-Assad's regime was the focal point for the flow because of the easy physical access to Iraq that it afforded.
Al-Assad certainly assisted his domestic Islamist firebrands to get to Iraq, but the non-Syrian Muslims who came to Syria en route to Iraq were sent by their own governments - Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Sudan, etc - in an effort that mirrored Assad's: send the young Islamists to Iraq to fight and die and thereby create a safety valve that lessens the pressure from domestic Islamist militancy. Obviously, al-Assad indulged the other Arab regimes by permitting the flow through. This is the same method of operation that most Arab and many Muslim regimes used during Moscow's occupation of Afghanistan (1979-89).
Having now tightened up Syria's borders with Iraq under pressure from Washington and the French government, Bashar al-Assad is now running a country-size hotel for a variety of ill-tempered Islamist guests. In addition to long-term tenants Hamas, Hezbollah, and the secular Palestinian fraternity, Syrian security has to keep tabs on newer and not fully domesticated guests: a growing Syrian Muslim Brotherhood organization; a militant "official" clergy that is stoking greater Islamic fervor at the grassroots level; more than a half-million Iraqi refugees; a multinational assortment of veteran mujahideen stranded in Syria after leaving Iraq; and would-be fighters who got to Syria but were prevented from entering Iraq.
Among the veteran fighters are a contingent of Syrians who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan - some commentators are calling them the "Syrian Afghans" - with military skills they can impart at home and in other countries of the Levant.
All told, Assad - a man not as skilled as his father or as able to control the regime's security services - is faced with a growing Islamist threat to the stability of his regime. While the regime is not in danger of falling, it is likewise not in the same position as it was in the "seventies and eighties when the [Syrian] authorities were able to liquidate, with the use of force only, what they then called the conspiracy of the 'Muslim Brothers'."
For the foreseeable future, al-Assad and his security forces will have to deal with internal Islamist anger and threats - based on Damascus' decision to tighten its borders to prevent jihadis going to Iraq, and its indirect talks with Israel - in a manner that is not so severe and brutal as to promote the coalescing of the disparate Sunni militant groups now in Syria.
They also will have to cope with an external threat by better controlling the Syria-Lebanon border to prevent the infiltration of Islamist fighters angry with Damascus and eager to strike back for the blocking of routes to Iraq. Assad and other Syrian officials have already claimed the border is being infiltrated by violent, Saudi-backed "Salafists", "Takfiris" and other "extremist forces" from northern Lebanon, and several Arab commentators have noted that this is a legitimate concern for Damascus because northern Lebanon lies close to Syria's "Sunni belt", once a hotbed of support for the SMB.
Damascus' recent decision to sign a security-cooperation deal with the Lebanese regime shows the depth of the Assad regime's concern with the Islamist threat, but the time may be passing when either Damascus or Beirut can fully control the Sunni militant forces operating on or from their territory.
Lebanon always has been a country whose people are more loyal to family, clan, tribe and faith than to the concept of Lebanon as a united nation-state. Since 2003, this existing internal divisiveness has been sharpened by the United States-led invasion and occupation of Iraq and the US-led international effort to drive Syria out of Lebanon.
The former opened a role for Lebanon as part of the path for would-be jihadis traveling to fight in Iraq. The latter - together with the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war - forced the precipitate decline of effective governmental authority in Lebanon, allowing jihadis to use the country for transit and basing. This made it a target for aggressive expansionist efforts by Saudis and other Salafis and encouraged the rapid growth of internal violence between political and religious factions.
Overall, the Iraq war and Syria's departure from Lebanon gave al-Qaeda and its Islamist allies an unprecedented opportunity to infiltrate their influence and manpower into Lebanon, as well as help strengthen the Sunni Salafist trend in northern Lebanon.
It is now old-hat to say that the US-led invasion of Iraq was a casus belli for Sunni Muslims worldwide, and especially among the Salafists who are prominent in al-Qaeda, other Islamist radical groups, and the Saudi regime, who are now effectively expanding their power across the Arab and Muslim worlds. A glance at the map showed jihad-bound Sunnis that Lebanon was a geographic key to infiltrating Islamist fighters into Iraq. The war itself made many Sunni Lebanese eager to assist that entry process, with some ready to go and fight there themselves.
With Syria effectively in charge of Lebanon at the start of the Iraq war, it appears that the transit of would-be mujahideen through Lebanon was kept moving by Syrian authorities and did not initially result in the buildup of non-Lebanese Sunni Islamists within the country.
The West's pyrrhic 2005 victory in forcing President Bashar al-Assad to evacuate Syrian forces from the country, however, seems to have created a situation which now finds growing numbers of non-Lebanese Salafi Islamists present in Lebanon and a growing Salafist movement in the north - especially in Tripoli, which is Lebanon's largest, most conservative Sunni city - as well as in the city of Sidon and Lebanon's Palestinian refugee camps.
In addition to the growth of Salifism and Islamist militancy engendered by the passions aroused by the Iraq war, Saudi Arabia has been fishing in troubled waters by encouraging the growth of each in northern Lebanon. Riyadh has paid for the construction of new mosques in Tripoli and reportedly has assisted militants residing in the northern territory abutting Syria.
According to the media, Lebanese and Syrian sources are reporting that Saudi National Security Chief Prince Bandar Bin Sultan is supervising the Saudis' pro-Salafist agenda in Lebanon, a program which includes sponsoring Islamist terrorist operations in Syria. Riyadh's activities in northern Lebanon hold the promise of fulfilling two longstanding Saudi goals: (1) creating a viable, well-armed, and militant Sunni Salafi movement in Lebanon as a military counterweight to the Shi'ite Hezbollah, and (2) to enable Riyadh to cause domestic instability for their Syrian enemy.
The turmoil of post-Syrian Lebanon also has been exploited by al-Qaeda forces based in Iraq. Multiple media reports indicate that al-Qaeda fighters - mostly Yemenis, Saudis and Jordanians who left Iraq to avoid the US "surge" and its surrogate Sunni fighters - went to both Syria and Lebanon. They have established themselves in Lebanon along the Syrian border, in the Lebanese city of Tripoli and in the Ain al-Hawah Palestinian refugee camp; they also have built working relationships with the Sunni militant groups Asbat al-Ansar and Fatah-al-Islam. In 2007, the latter fought the Lebanese army for 15 weeks at the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp.
In the face of growing Salafist and al-Qaeda influence, one Lebanese academic claimed, "Security in Iraq is improving, but the militants are being driven across the border. There are a large number of militants coming into Lebanon and Syria, and our countries are paying the price for what is happening in Iraq." The academic's words are an apt description of the westward-bound jihad highway for Sunni mujahideen that the US and its allies have unwittingly built across Iraq.
As in Syria, the growing al-Qaeda and Saudi-backed Salifist movement in Lebanon's north and its Palestinian refugee camps clearly is in part a product of the militant bleed-through from Iraq. But, as in Syria, Salafism's Lebanese growth is occurring in already fertile soil: Lebanon's Sunni north has been slowly radicalizing for much of this decade - Tripoli's Sunni leaders long viewed Hezbollah as the "resistance", but now regard it as the "party of evil" - and the eviction of Syrian forces has substantially reduced Beirut's ability to limit the growth of Salafism. Bin Laden's operatives and Saudi intelligence will continue to push these trends, thereby once again demonstrating just how closely aligned are the interests of al-Qaeda and Riyadh outside the Arabian Peninsula.
This said, al-Qaeda still has considerable work to do in Lebanon. While Ayman al-Zawahiri said in April 2008 that Lebanon was now "a Muslim frontline fort", Lebanese Salafists will for the foreseeable future be more concerned with securing increased political power and communal autonomy in the country than in flocking to support the worldwide Sunni jihad.
The possibility of the Shi'ite Hezbollah and its allies winning a majority in the spring 2009 parliamentary elections, for example, could provide a flashpoint for a confrontation between Hezbollah forces and the expanding Salafist Sunni force in the north. For now, the Salafist leaders will continue to work with Saad Hariri's "Future Movement". A group of Lebanese Salafists recently told the media, "Hariri is our leader, we respect and support him." Rather ominously, however, they added, "If [cooperation with Hariri] fails, we have another option called bin Laden."
For its part, al-Qaeda will strengthen its presence in Tripoli and the north as well as its ties to Lebanese Sunni militants and Palestinian refugees. It will also continue to spread its influence across the country in a manner that will place its operatives as close as possible to Israel's territory.
NEXT: Jordan
Michael Scheuer served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004. He served as the chief of the Bin Laden Unit at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is the once anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror; his most recent book is Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq. Dr Scheuer is a Senior Fellow with The Jamestown Foundation.
(This article first appeared in The Jamestown Foundation. Used with permission.)
(Copyright 2008 The Jamestown Foundation.)

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LEBANON-SYRIA: MUJAHIDEEN BLEED-THROUGH

Image via Wikipedia

Asia Times Online By Michael Scheuer

Al-Qaeda's organizational goal in Iraq was to acquire contiguous territory from which to spread its influence and operatives, as well as those of its Islamist allies, into the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula and Turkey.
Having been weaned as an insurgent in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden has consistently refused to commit large al-Qaeda resources to jihads lacking country-wide maneuver room or Pakistan-like contiguous safe haven. The US-led invasion of Iraq, therefore, opened a chance for the above-described expansion by al-Qaeda and its allies that would not have been possible under a Saddam Hussein-controlled Iraq.
This is the first of four articles that will assess the initial stages of the penetration of the Levant - an ancient term for a region stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to Mesopotamia - by al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups. This piece will look at Syria, and will be followed by analyses of the bleed-through from Iraq into Lebanon, Jordan and Israel. The quartet of articles will seek to assess the validity of the recent claim by the state-run Syrian newspaper al-Thawara that because of the war in Iraq "the [Levant] region is throbbing with terrorists".
After crushing the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (SMB) at the city of Hama in 1982 - killing up to 20,000 people and leveling a quarter of the city - president Hafiz al-Assad adopted the traditional and traditionally unsuccessful tack of Arab tyrants of trying to use government largesse to co-opt Syria's remaining Islamists and thereby moderate their message. Under Assad's program tens of thousands of new mosques were built; 22 higher-education institutions for Koran-based learning were opened; regional sharia schools for men and women were started; and Muslim students from more than sixty countries were invited to receive their Islamic schooling in Syria.
Assad's son Bashar, however, is discovering that his father's efforts to co-opt Syrian Islamists have yielded not a tame, state-sponsored Islam but a trend toward militant Islamism in both urban and rural areas of Syria. After the September 27 terrorist attack in Damascus, an Arab journalist suggested:
The Syrian regime fell - as have others - in[to] the famous illusion that they can toy with the terrorist fundamentalist bear at the beginning of the day and then get rid of it or put it back in the cage at the end of the day! This is an illusion that is repeated and always repeated in the Middle East region. No side wants to learn from the experience of others. Toying with religion or attempting to revolutionize religion or some of its aspects and then trying to benefit from this revolution on the political level without any repercussions or consequences is the biggest illusion of all. It is the first and last mistake because if you commit this mistake once it would be fatal and there would be no second time!
Compounding the failure of co-optation for Damascus is the fact that the senior al-Assad's Hama operation, although massively murderous, was not comprehensive: the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood was not wiped out. Besides members who survived Hama and remained in Syria, a number of senior SMB leaders escaped and were welcomed in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states where they found succor, academic posts, and a safe haven in which to reorganize and plan for revenge.
The bin Laden family was among the many wealthy, non-royal Saudi families that had hosted SMB leaders both before and after Hama. Indeed, Osama in his youth met senior SMB leaders on their pilgrimage, and while living in Sudan (1991-1996) several SMB members worked for or were supported by al-Qaeda's multiple businesses.
It is important to note that an al-Qaeda-led mujahideen bleed-through from Iraq to Syria had fertile ground in which to take root in 2003. Notwithstanding the ubiquitous and brutal Syrian security services, there was a Damascus-permitted militant Islamist environment to be exploited when the US-led invasion of Iraq occurred. Not only had the targets of regime co-optation become more militant, but there were also SMB remnants in the country, as well as the long-time official presence of Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah, and various Palestinian resistance groups.
Into this made-to-order milieu, then, came hundreds and perhaps thousands of young Muslim men from across the Arab and Muslim worlds, eager to enter Iraq and join the fatwa-sanctioned jihad against the US-led coalition. Bashar al-Assad's regime allowed these men to enter Iraq, trusting that they would make life miserable for US forces, kill enough American troops to force a US withdrawal and end up being killed before they could head for home. Washington singled out Damascus for sole responsibility for this cross-border flow of would-be mujahideen, but al-Assad's regime was the focal point for the flow because of the easy physical access to Iraq that it afforded.
Al-Assad certainly assisted his domestic Islamist firebrands to get to Iraq, but the non-Syrian Muslims who came to Syria en route to Iraq were sent by their own governments - Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Sudan, etc - in an effort that mirrored Assad's: send the young Islamists to Iraq to fight and die and thereby create a safety valve that lessens the pressure from domestic Islamist militancy. Obviously, al-Assad indulged the other Arab regimes by permitting the flow through. This is the same method of operation that most Arab and many Muslim regimes used during Moscow's occupation of Afghanistan (1979-89).
Having now tightened up Syria's borders with Iraq under pressure from Washington and the French government, Bashar al-Assad is now running a country-size hotel for a variety of ill-tempered Islamist guests. In addition to long-term tenants Hamas, Hezbollah, and the secular Palestinian fraternity, Syrian security has to keep tabs on newer and not fully domesticated guests: a growing Syrian Muslim Brotherhood organization; a militant "official" clergy that is stoking greater Islamic fervor at the grassroots level; more than a half-million Iraqi refugees; a multinational assortment of veteran mujahideen stranded in Syria after leaving Iraq; and would-be fighters who got to Syria but were prevented from entering Iraq.
Among the veteran fighters are a contingent of Syrians who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan - some commentators are calling them the "Syrian Afghans" - with military skills they can impart at home and in other countries of the Levant.
All told, Assad - a man not as skilled as his father or as able to control the regime's security services - is faced with a growing Islamist threat to the stability of his regime. While the regime is not in danger of falling, it is likewise not in the same position as it was in the "seventies and eighties when the [Syrian] authorities were able to liquidate, with the use of force only, what they then called the conspiracy of the 'Muslim Brothers'."
For the foreseeable future, al-Assad and his security forces will have to deal with internal Islamist anger and threats - based on Damascus' decision to tighten its borders to prevent jihadis going to Iraq, and its indirect talks with Israel - in a manner that is not so severe and brutal as to promote the coalescing of the disparate Sunni militant groups now in Syria.
They also will have to cope with an external threat by better controlling the Syria-Lebanon border to prevent the infiltration of Islamist fighters angry with Damascus and eager to strike back for the blocking of routes to Iraq. Assad and other Syrian officials have already claimed the border is being infiltrated by violent, Saudi-backed "Salafists", "Takfiris" and other "extremist forces" from northern Lebanon, and several Arab commentators have noted that this is a legitimate concern for Damascus because northern Lebanon lies close to Syria's "Sunni belt", once a hotbed of support for the SMB.
Damascus' recent decision to sign a security-cooperation deal with the Lebanese regime shows the depth of the Assad regime's concern with the Islamist threat, but the time may be passing when either Damascus or Beirut can fully control the Sunni militant forces operating on or from their territory.
Lebanon always has been a country whose people are more loyal to family, clan, tribe and faith than to the concept of Lebanon as a united nation-state. Since 2003, this existing internal divisiveness has been sharpened by the United States-led invasion and occupation of Iraq and the US-led international effort to drive Syria out of Lebanon.
The former opened a role for Lebanon as part of the path for would-be jihadis traveling to fight in Iraq. The latter - together with the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war - forced the precipitate decline of effective governmental authority in Lebanon, allowing jihadis to use the country for transit and basing. This made it a target for aggressive expansionist efforts by Saudis and other Salafis and encouraged the rapid growth of internal violence between political and religious factions.
Overall, the Iraq war and Syria's departure from Lebanon gave al-Qaeda and its Islamist allies an unprecedented opportunity to infiltrate their influence and manpower into Lebanon, as well as help strengthen the Sunni Salafist trend in northern Lebanon.
It is now old-hat to say that the US-led invasion of Iraq was a casus belli for Sunni Muslims worldwide, and especially among the Salafists who are prominent in al-Qaeda, other Islamist radical groups, and the Saudi regime, who are now effectively expanding their power across the Arab and Muslim worlds. A glance at the map showed jihad-bound Sunnis that Lebanon was a geographic key to infiltrating Islamist fighters into Iraq. The war itself made many Sunni Lebanese eager to assist that entry process, with some ready to go and fight there themselves.
With Syria effectively in charge of Lebanon at the start of the Iraq war, it appears that the transit of would-be mujahideen through Lebanon was kept moving by Syrian authorities and did not initially result in the buildup of non-Lebanese Sunni Islamists within the country.
The West's pyrrhic 2005 victory in forcing President Bashar al-Assad to evacuate Syrian forces from the country, however, seems to have created a situation which now finds growing numbers of non-Lebanese Salafi Islamists present in Lebanon and a growing Salafist movement in the north - especially in Tripoli, which is Lebanon's largest, most conservative Sunni city - as well as in the city of Sidon and Lebanon's Palestinian refugee camps.
In addition to the growth of Salifism and Islamist militancy engendered by the passions aroused by the Iraq war, Saudi Arabia has been fishing in troubled waters by encouraging the growth of each in northern Lebanon. Riyadh has paid for the construction of new mosques in Tripoli and reportedly has assisted militants residing in the northern territory abutting Syria.
According to the media, Lebanese and Syrian sources are reporting that Saudi National Security Chief Prince Bandar Bin Sultan is supervising the Saudis' pro-Salafist agenda in Lebanon, a program which includes sponsoring Islamist terrorist operations in Syria. Riyadh's activities in northern Lebanon hold the promise of fulfilling two longstanding Saudi goals: (1) creating a viable, well-armed, and militant Sunni Salafi movement in Lebanon as a military counterweight to the Shi'ite Hezbollah, and (2) to enable Riyadh to cause domestic instability for their Syrian enemy.
The turmoil of post-Syrian Lebanon also has been exploited by al-Qaeda forces based in Iraq. Multiple media reports indicate that al-Qaeda fighters - mostly Yemenis, Saudis and Jordanians who left Iraq to avoid the US "surge" and its surrogate Sunni fighters - went to both Syria and Lebanon. They have established themselves in Lebanon along the Syrian border, in the Lebanese city of Tripoli and in the Ain al-Hawah Palestinian refugee camp; they also have built working relationships with the Sunni militant groups Asbat al-Ansar and Fatah-al-Islam. In 2007, the latter fought the Lebanese army for 15 weeks at the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp.
In the face of growing Salafist and al-Qaeda influence, one Lebanese academic claimed, "Security in Iraq is improving, but the militants are being driven across the border. There are a large number of militants coming into Lebanon and Syria, and our countries are paying the price for what is happening in Iraq." The academic's words are an apt description of the westward-bound jihad highway for Sunni mujahideen that the US and its allies have unwittingly built across Iraq.
As in Syria, the growing al-Qaeda and Saudi-backed Salifist movement in Lebanon's north and its Palestinian refugee camps clearly is in part a product of the militant bleed-through from Iraq. But, as in Syria, Salafism's Lebanese growth is occurring in already fertile soil: Lebanon's Sunni north has been slowly radicalizing for much of this decade - Tripoli's Sunni leaders long viewed Hezbollah as the "resistance", but now regard it as the "party of evil" - and the eviction of Syrian forces has substantially reduced Beirut's ability to limit the growth of Salafism. Bin Laden's operatives and Saudi intelligence will continue to push these trends, thereby once again demonstrating just how closely aligned are the interests of al-Qaeda and Riyadh outside the Arabian Peninsula.
This said, al-Qaeda still has considerable work to do in Lebanon. While Ayman al-Zawahiri said in April 2008 that Lebanon was now "a Muslim frontline fort", Lebanese Salafists will for the foreseeable future be more concerned with securing increased political power and communal autonomy in the country than in flocking to support the worldwide Sunni jihad.
The possibility of the Shi'ite Hezbollah and its allies winning a majority in the spring 2009 parliamentary elections, for example, could provide a flashpoint for a confrontation between Hezbollah forces and the expanding Salafist Sunni force in the north. For now, the Salafist leaders will continue to work with Saad Hariri's "Future Movement". A group of Lebanese Salafists recently told the media, "Hariri is our leader, we respect and support him." Rather ominously, however, they added, "If [cooperation with Hariri] fails, we have another option called bin Laden."
For its part, al-Qaeda will strengthen its presence in Tripoli and the north as well as its ties to Lebanese Sunni militants and Palestinian refugees. It will also continue to spread its influence across the country in a manner that will place its operatives as close as possible to Israel's territory.
NEXT: Jordan
Michael Scheuer served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004. He served as the chief of the Bin Laden Unit at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is the once anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror; his most recent book is Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq. Dr Scheuer is a Senior Fellow with The Jamestown Foundation.
(This article first appeared in The Jamestown Foundation. Used with permission.)
(Copyright 2008 The Jamestown Foundation.)

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Mediterranean Summit: Sarkozy Asks Assad to Mediate with Iran on Nuclear Issue

GlobalResearch.ca

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said U.S. President George W. Bush was not interested in the Middle East peace process and as result he did not expect direct talks with Israel until Bush leaves office next January.
Ending years of isolation from the West, Assad on Saturday met French President Nicolas Sarkozy on the eve of a major EU-Mediterranean summit and signalled his willingness to improve relations with both Syria's neighbours, Israel and Lebanon.
Assad said he did not believe Iran was seeking atomic weapons, but he wanted a political solution and would convey Sarkozy's doubts about Tehran's nuclear programme to Iranian leaders, with whom Syria has close relations.
The Syrian president also said he wanted France to play a role in any eventual face-to-face talks with Israel, but added that it was essential for the United States to also be present.
[..]France had also treated Syria as a virtual pariah state following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in 2005, which Paris blamed on Damascus.
Assad has rejected the accusation and relations with France improved this year after Syria helped end a long-running political stalemate in Lebanon by supporting a power-sharing deal among Lebanon's pro-Western and pro-Syrian factions. Sarkozy said he would visit Damascus in September.
Lebanon's new president, Michel Suleiman, was also in Paris on Saturday and met Assad for the first time. Sarkozy said the two men had agreed to open embassies in each other's country.
"I would like to say, what a historic step forward it is for France that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is determined to open a diplomatic representation in Lebanon, and that Lebanon should open a diplomatic representation in Syria," he said.
The establishment of embassies would amount to a Syrian recognition of Lebanon's sovereignty. Syria has long been a dominant player in Lebanon's political and military affairs but the two countries have not exchanged ambassadors since Lebanon's independence in 1943.
Assad said Sarkozy has asked him to use his influence with Iran to help resolve Tehran's nuclear standoff with the West. "We see the solution as a political one. We cannot consider any solution that is not political because the consequences will be dangerous ..." "Of course, we will pass on to Iran what has just been said, but we think that to the best of our knowledge, Iran has no intention of trying to obtain nuclear weapons," he said.

Agreement in Lebanon to End Political Crisis

New York Times

The Hezbollah-led Shiite opposition and the Lebanese government backed by the West and Saudi Arabia, reached an agreement on Wednesday to resolve an 18-month political crisis that has crippled the country and recently triggered the worst fighting since the 1975-1990 civil war.


After five days of fraught negotiations among Lebanon’s rival political groups in Doha, the Qatari authorities said the agreement called for moves within 24 hours for Parliament in Beirut to begin the process of electing Gen. Michel Suleiman, the commander of Lebanon’s army, as president.


The deal was also expected to lead to the formation of a cabinet in which Hezbollah, supported by Iran and Syria, along with its allies will enjoy the veto power it had sought in the negotiations .


Under the trms of the agreement, the government will also debate anew electoral law designed to provide better representation in the country’s sectarian system of power-sharing.

Lebanese Army on Alert in Beirut

Monsters and Critics

The Lebanese army was on high alert in the capital Beirut on Monday a day after power cuts protests turned into clashes between opposition followers and the Lebanese army, leaving nine people dead and raising fears of an upcoming civil strife.


Troops were out in force, setting up checkpoints along roads leading from the mainly Shiite neighbourhoods of southern Beirut, a hotbed of the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, to Christian areas of the capital.


The scene reminded many Lebanese of the beginning of the 1975-1990 civil war as the first line of demarcation at the time was in the same area.


'This is the same scene we saw in 1975 when the civil war broke out in the streets of Beirut, this is a dangerous reminder,' commented one Christian resident of Ain Roumneh, the area that witnessed heavy violence on Sunday.


'The country is now opened on all options...the situation is taking a downturn,' said analyst Nabil Haythem.


Nine people were killed in Sunday's violence, including activists from the Syrian-backed opposition parties Amal and Hezbollah, hospital sources said about 49 people were also injured.

Update: PLO OKs Army to Enter Refugee Camp near Tripoli

Xinhua

Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) representative in Lebanon Abbas Zaki on Monday pledged "cooperation" with the Lebanese state and its army to wipe out the militants fighting with the army in a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon.


After talks with Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Seniora at the Grand Serail (the premier's office) Monday, Zaki stressed the need to enhance "full cooperation" with the Lebanese state and its army to resolve what he termed Fatah al-Islam's "phenomenon."


Some 30,000 displaced Palestinians live at the camp. Under a 38-year-old deal, Lebanese police and soldiers can not enter the camp.


Seniora had been negotiating a break of the rule and seeking to get into the camp to wipe out the Islamic militants. Zaki said he left it up to Seniora to decide whether to send the army into the camp, but warned that "entering the camp does not mean it will be easy to get rid of this phenomenon."


"We are open... to all the demands of the Lebanese state. We hope to cooperate in order to eliminate the Fatah al-Islam phenomenon, on the condition innocent civilians do not pay a high price," said Zaki.

Lebanon Is a Powder Keg

Hezbollah are supported by the Iranians. Now Fatah al-Islam apparently supported by Syria with loose Al Qaeda ties, trained and hardened in the Iraq war, have returned to the Palestinian refugee camps to recruit and arm. The Lebanese Army is forbidden to enter the camps to prevent civilian slaughter. Now Fatah al-Islam has taken to the streets to confront the Lebanese Army directly and apparently to kill Christian civilians.
The legacy of Israel's refusal of the right of return for Palestinian refugees rears it's ugly head again. The problem ignored festers and threatens to ignite another civil war in Lebanon.
New York Times

Fierce clashes erupted between Lebanese Army soldiers and Islamic militants in the vicinity of a Palestinian refugee camp here on Sunday, leaving 22 Lebanese soldiers and 17 militants dead and dozens injured in one of the most significant challenges to the army since the end of Lebanon’s bloody civil war.


The confrontation with the Islamist group, Fatah al-Islam, raised fears of a wider battle to rout militants in the rest of Lebanon’s 12 refugee camps, where radical Islam has been gaining in recent years. That, in turn, raised the possibility of a deadly conclusion to the crisis, placing strains on the embattled government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.


While anxious not to seem weak in the face of the militant challenge, military experts say, the government and the military also want to avoid any scenes that might draw comparisons to the Israeli attacks on Palestinian camps in the West Bank and Gaza.


Many of the complex crosscurrents of Lebanon’s politics were on display in the crisis. The army, under an agreement with the Palestinian leadership and Arab countries, was not allowed to enter the camp. Lebanese citizens, who hold the Palestinians responsible for sparking the civil war in 1975, cheered the army on the streets of Tripoli and outside the camp.


Syria, which Lebanon accuses of backing Fatah al-Islam, closed several border crossings in the area. And the fighting broke out just as the Security Council had taken up a resolution to try suspects tied to the February 2005 assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Syria has been accused in previous investigations of ordering the killing, but vigorously denies any connection.


Tensions rose further late Sunday night when a car bomb exploded in a nearly empty parking lot in a Christian section of eastern Beirut, killing one person, wounding 12 others and sparking fears of an orchestrated terrorist campaign. Last month, Lebanese authorities charged four members of Fatah al-Islam with bombing two commuter buses carrying Lebanese Christians in another Christian district.


Fatah al-Islam has been a growing concern for security authorities in Lebanon and much of the region. Intelligence officials say it counts between 150 and 200 fighters in its ranks and subscribes to the fundamentalist precepts of Al Qaeda.


The group’s leader, Shakir al-Abssi, is a fugitive Palestinian and former associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia who was killed last year in Iraq. Both men were sentenced to death in absentia for the 2002 murder of an American diplomat, Lawrence Foley, in Jordan.


In the six months since he arrived from Syria, Mr. Abssi has established a base of operations at the Nahr al Bared Palestinian refugee camp on the northern outskirts of this city, and the scene of the fighting on Sunday.

New Face of Jihad Vows Attacks

While Bush brags that he's beated back Al Qaeda, all he's done is ensure Al Qaeda has thousands of potential recruits from all over the Middle East, but especially Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and now Lebanon.
The Lebanese looked at the US as their hero and protector as Syria was driven out. But then the indiscriminate bombing by Israel showed that the US cares nothing about the man on the street in Lebanon and ensured a new source of recruits.
New York Times

The men belong to a new militant Islamic organization called Fatah al Islam, whose leader, a fugitive Palestinian named Shakir al-Abssi, has set up operations in a refugee camp here where he trains fighters and spreads the ideology of Al Qaeda. He has solid terrorist credentials. A former associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia who was killed last summer, Mr. Abssi was sentenced to death in absentia along with Mr. Zarqawi in the 2002 assassination of an American diplomat in Jordan, Laurence Foley. Just four months after arriving here from Syria, Mr. Abssi has a militia that intelligence officials estimate at 150 men and an arsenal of explosives, rockets and even an antiaircraft gun.


[..]“Guys like Abssi have the capability on the ground that Al Qaeda has lost and is looking to tap into,” said an American intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity. Mr. Abssi has shown himself to be a canny operator. Despite being on terrorism watch lists around the world, he has set himself up in a Palestinian refugee camp where, because of Lebanese politics, he is largely shielded from the government. The camp also gives him ready access to a pool of recruits, young Palestinians whose militant vision has evolved from the struggle against Israel to a larger Islamic cause.


Intelligence officials here say that he has also exploited another source of manpower: they estimate he has 50 militants from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries fresh from fighting with the insurgency in Iraq.


The officials say they fear that he is seeking to establish himself as a terror leader on the order of Mr. Zarqawi. “He is trying to fill a void and do so in a high-profile manner that will attract the attention of supporters,” the American intelligence official said.


Mr. Abssi has recently taken on a communications adviser, Abu al-Hassan, 24, a journalism student who dropped out of college to join Fatah al Islam. His current project: a newsmagazine aimed at attracting recruits.


The arc of Mr. Abssi’s life shows the allure of Al Qaeda for Arab militants. Born in Palestine, from which he and family were evicted by the Israelis, Mr. Abssi, 51, said he stopped studying medicine to fly planes for Yasir Arafat. He then staged attacks on Israel from his own base in Syria. After he was imprisoned in Syria for three years on terrorism charges, he said he broadened his targets to include Americans in Jordan. MORE

Lebanon Leader Assasinated - Middle East Continues to Destabilize

The name Gemayel is one of the most reviled across all of south Lebanon. Pierre, whose father still leads the Christian Militia Phalange, continued the tradition of being a lightning rod for controversy as part of the government coalition ruling Lebanon in it's move away from Syrian influence. The assasination was immediately blamed on Syria, but that is not entirely clear. Many benefit from his death, including others in his coalition, Hezbollah, and perhaps Syria.
Could Bashar really benefit from this death with all the negative pressure from the west, particularly the US and France? With his profile rising in the region, in part due to the victory of Hezbollah against Israel, he's been called into negotiations with Iraq and Iran to attempt to stabilize Syria's eastern border, perhaps he views he can spend some political capital on consolidating influence in Lebanon.
washingtonpost.com

One of Lebanon's most pronounced political crises in a generation slid into bloodshed Tuesday when assailants showered gunfire on a car carrying an anti-Syrian politician and scion of the country's most prominent Christian family, killing him and a bodyguard and pushing Lebanon a step closer to civil strife.


The assassination of Pierre Gemayel, a divisive figure in a country riven by sectarian tension, underlined the lack of red lines in the escalating struggle over Lebanon's political future that has followed this summer's war between Hezbollah and Israel. The struggle is crucial not only to the often zero-sum calculations of Lebanese politics but also to the regional ambitions of the United States, Iran, Syria and Israel.


"We will not allow assassins to control Lebanon's destiny and its people's future," Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said.


The shots along a busy street that killed Gemayel, the industry minister, reverberated across Beirut as dusk fell. In the city's Shiite Muslim south, where Gemayel was among the most reviled of Christian politicians, occasional gunfire erupted in celebration and some residents expressed satisfaction at his death. Across town, in Christian East Beirut, his supporters set fires in protest along usually busy intersections, sending smoke eddying over emptied streets. At the hospital where he was taken, scores gathered in the lobby and parking lot. Some hurriedly spoke into phones. Their eyes red, women sobbed and men wailed with grief.


"We want revenge!" a few shouted. "We want revenge!"


"I have one wish," Gemayel's father, former president Amin Gemayel, told them after nightfall, "that tonight be a night of prayer to contemplate the meaning of this martyrdom and how to protect this country. I call on all those who appreciate Pierre's martyrdom to preserve his cause and for all of us to remain in the service of Lebanon. We don't want reactions and revenge."

Will Hezbollah Rule Lebanon?

Since Hezbollah essentially defeated the Israeli Army in it's invasion into Lebanon, Hezbollah has been full of themselves. At some point they were promising to make their win in the battle field pay off politically. Now seems to be the time.
A coalition of Druze, Sunni, and some northern Christian leaders support the anti-Syria pro US government. But since their allies best buddy bombed most of Lebanon to the stone age, leaving millions of cluster bomblets where children can find them, this coalition has been weakened. And General Aoun, for his own reasons, joined forces with the pro-Syrian Shi'ites swinging the balence of power.
Israel, some say at the US encouragement has defeated itself at it's northern border, taking on a conflict for which it wasn't prepared to pay the cost. Sound familiar? Bush and his buddies are making the world safe for militant Salafi, the philosophical base behind Al Qaeda, and Shi'a extremists. And now they want to take on Iran?
washingtonpost.com

In a deepening crisis that has paralyzed Lebanese politics, the leader of Hezbollah urged his well-organized followers to prepare for mass protests aimed at toppling the U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.


The order by Hasan Nasrallah, given in a speech Saturday that was broadcast Sunday, was the latest in a test of wills between Hezbollah and a government that Nasrallah dismissed as more representative of the U.S. ambassador than Siniora.


More than a simple political standoff in an always fractious country, many see the escalating struggle as perhaps the most decisive in Lebanon in a generation. It may determine which forces guide the country for years ahead: the coalition around Siniora that draws its strength from the country's Sunni Muslims, Druze and some Christians and has aligned itself with the United States and Europe, or Hezbollah's Shiite Muslim constituency, backed by Iran and Syria, and its Christian allies represented by a former Lebanese general.


As is common here, many see the struggle as a proxy battle involving the United States, Israel, Syria and Iran.


[...]Supporters of Siniora's government, critical of Hezbollah's role in starting the war this summer, have gone back and forth over whether they will greet protests with their own demonstrations. They view Hezbollah's campaign as effectively a coup d'etat aimed at derailing the international tribunal and ensuring that Hezbollah retains its weapons.


Still living in the shadow of a 15-year civil war that ended in 1990, many Lebanese worry about the potential for violence if the crisis heads to the streets, where each movement has draped neighborhoods in the iconography and symbolism of its own view of history.

Pretext for War?

Could Bush be pushing for a November surprise? Could this be the pretext for war with Syria and Lebanon that the Neo-cons have been looking for?
Los Angeles Times

In an unusual statement, the Bush administration charged Wednesday that there was "mounting evidence" that Iran, Syria and the militant group Hezbollah were trying to engineer the overthrow of the elected government of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.


American officials said they had evidence that the two countries were trying to help create a new "unity" government that would give greater influence to their Hezbollah allies.


They contended that Syria was also trying to block legislation that directed Lebanese cooperation with an international tribunal investigating the slaying of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Syrian officials have been implicated in the February 2005 attack.


But U.S. officials declined to provide details, saying they could not disclose information from intelligence sources. Sean McCormack, the chief State Department spokesman, said there were "strictures" on what he could say because "we collect a lot of information I can't talk about."


He said Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah recently warned in a speech that "the Siniora government take certain steps or Nasrallah and his compatriots would see that it falls."

Israel Use of Cluster Bombs Appalling

Lebanon will be cleaning up from this war with Israel for decades. One of the worst consequences of the war is the indiscriminate use of cluster bombs by Israel in the last 72 hours of the war, after the cease fire was negotiated. Clearly, Israel desperately seeking to retrieve a lost struggle, they started using cluster artillery shells, hardly precisely placed smart bombs, on civilian targets. Admonishing Hizbullah for using "civilian shields" and believing such practices justified killing the civilians. Since when does two wrongs make a right?
WaPo

Clearing unexploded cluster bombs used by Israel in Lebanon during the month-long war, many of them U.S.-manufactured, could take 10 years, a British-based demining group said on Friday. "We will be clearing unexploded cluster munitions from the rubble of the villages of southern Lebanon for another decade," said Simon Conway, director of Land mine Action. "That is the grim reality," he told reporters in Geneva.


Before the recent war between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas in the south, demining teams were still clearing unexploded cluster munitions from Israel's 1978 and 1982 incursions into Lebanon, according to the advocacy group which is campaigning for an international ban on their use. Such weapons continue to kill and maim civilians, especially children, for years after a conflict, it said. The United Nations estimates that 100,000 cluster bomblets that failed to explode lie in Lebanon, with most landing during the final 72 hours of the war, which ended in an August 14 ceasefire.


U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland has called Israel "completely immoral" for using them in residential areas.

AlterNet calls the use of cluster bombs on civilian targets a "war crime" and notes that TV news in the US provided very little coverage of the cluster bomb use.

Could you imagine the coverage this would get if Hezbollah had done this to Israel? There would be endless coverage, pundits would have a much easier time comparing Hezbollah to Nazi Germany, and the Bush administration would certainly consider this grounds for bombing Iran.

Hizbullah’s Leader: Charismatic, Dangerous

Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah, was a relative unknown just ten years ago. This man has been credited as twice forcing the pullout of the Israeli army. He has been hailed as a hero for all of Islam, and made a Shiite Muslim for the first time in hundreds of years a leader in an all Arab cause, the Palestinian people and the domination of the Israelis on it's neighbors. Suddenly, the Israeli army looks much less effective. Who is this man?
Sheikh Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah at one time lived in South Beirut with his wife Fatima Yassin and five children: Muhammad Hadi, Muhammad Jawad, Zeinab, Muhammad Ali and Muhammad Mahdi. His eldest son Muhammad Hadi was killed by Israeli forces in Jabal al-Rafei in southern Lebanon in September 1997.

Nasrallah, born in 1960, grew up in a neighborhood of squatters and refugees called Sharshabouk, in the Karantina area on the eastern outskirts of Beirut. There was no running water and no electricity. Houses were often crude shacks made from tin sheets and wood. [...]Nasrallah's father ran a small grocery, and his former neighbors recall the father as a devout, trustworthy man. But Nasrallah's mother was the force in the family, according to Syrian filmmaker Nabil Mulhim, who interviewed her for a documentary about the Hizbullah leader: "The strong words and the soft face, those are hers," says Mulhim. "And the self-satisfaction. And the toughness."


The boy's parents scraped their money together to send him to private school. Khalid Mustafa, a former classmate, remembers Nasrallah at the age of 12: "He didn't talk without thinking. He was mature, like a 35-year-old." Nasrallah often wore an oversize coat and pants to school and didn't play soccer or other sports. Most kids could tell he was poor, and gangs of Sunni bullies tyrannized everyone in the neighborhood. "All the Shiites were afraid," says Mustafa.

In 1975, when Lebanon's long civil war began, one of it's first battlegrounds was the slums of Karantina. The family was forced the family to move to their ancestral home in Bassouriyeh, near Tyre, where Hassan Nasrallah terminated his secondary education at the public school of Sour. It was during this time, Nasrallah and his brother joined the Amal Movement, a political group representing Shiites in Lebanon. Later, "in the mid-1970s, he moved to a Shiite Hawza (Islamic Seminary) in the Iraqi city of Najaf to study Qura’anic divine sciences, completing the first stage of his studies in 1978 before being forced to leave by the Iraqi authorities." He returned to Lebanon, where he studied at the school of Amal’s leader Sheikh Abbas al-Musawi, later being selected as Amal's political delegate in Beqaa, and making him a member of the central political office.
After the Israeli invasion in 1982, Nasrallah joined Hezbollah which had been formed by Iranian Revolutionary Guard who came to fight the Israelis along side their Shi'a brothers. The resistance was focused on the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley.

In 1989 Nasrallah, resumed his efforts to become a religious jurisprudent by moving to the sacred Iranian city of Qom to further his studies. Nasrallah believes that Islam holds the solution to the problems of any society, once saying, “With respect to us, briefly, Islam is not a simple religion including only praises and prayers, rather it is a divine message that was designed for humanity, and it can answer any question man might ask concerning his general and private life. Islam is a religion designed for a society that can revolt and build a state.”

Nasrallah never rose high in the scholarly ranks that confer authority on a cleric. "I was mesmerized," remembers a fellow mullah who knew him in Iran but didn't want to be quoted by name criticizing him. "He is more than charismatic if you listen to him—he is mythic. But as soon as you start asking him [theological] questions, you're surprised how little knowledge he has."


Nasrallah's interests were more pragmatic, more political, more rooted in worldly conflict. "He's a very good student of everything to do with Israel: the politicians, the Army," says Timur Goksel, a former senior adviser to the U.N. forces in Lebanon who has met the Hizbullah leader dozens of times. For religious guidance, Nasrallah relied increasingly on the heads of the Iranian revolution: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whom he idolized, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who in 1989 would become Khomeini's successor as Iran's spiritual leader and supreme political authority.

Hizbullah became a rival with Amal, for the leadership of the Shi'a in south Lebanon. The difference between Sunni and Shi'a beliefs revolve around the role and power of the ayatollahs. So disagreements over the ayatollahs role and which to follow led, in 1988, to skirmishes among the militias broke out into open combat and Nasrallah was on Hizbullah's front lines. This conflict was intensely personal because Nasrallah's older brother, who used the nom de guerre Jihad al Husseini, was on the side of Amal.

"He was injured in the fighting with Hizbullah," says Humayed, his face flushing red from the memory. "You can imagine the suffering of the mother and the father. One son on one side and one son on the other side." The fratricidal battles among the Shiites were savage, with reports of corpses being mutilated. "All of Amal against all of Hizbullah," says Humayed.

To this day, the relationship between Nasrallah and his brother is strained and brother now keeps a low profile.
Nasrallah's conduct in the fight against Amal added to his standing within Hizbullah. When, in February 1992, an Israeli "targeted assassination" killed Hizbullah leader Sheik Abbas al-Musawi, and Nasrallah took over as the group's leader at 32 years old.

Within days of Musawi's death and Nasrallah's ascendancy, Hizbullah launched its first Katyusha rocket attacks on Israel. Within weeks, Israel's embassy in Buenos Aires was blown up by a suicide bomber. Although Nasrallah has always denied responsibility not only for that attack but also for a subsequent hit on a Jewish center in Argentina in 1994, those operations are often cited by Israel and the United States as examples of Hizbullah's long reach as a terrorist organization—and of the group's penchant for revenge.

Under Nasrallah's leadership, Hezbollah became a serious opponent of the Israel Defense Forces in Southern Lebanon, managing to improve the organization's military capabilities and increasing the killing rate to approximately two dozen Israeli soldiers per year. Hezbollah's military campaigns of the late 1990s were believed to be one of the main factors that led to the Israeli decision to withdraw from Southern Lebanon in 2000, thus ending 18 years of occupation. Consequently, Nasrallah is widely credited in Lebanon and the Arab world for ending the Israeli occupation in Southern Lebanon, something which has greatly bolstered the party's political standing within Lebanon.


Nasrallah also played a major role in a complex prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hezbollah in 2004, resulting in hundreds of Palestinian and Hezbollah prisoners being freed and bodies returned to Lebanon. The agreement was described across the Arab world as a great victory for Hezbollah with Nasrallah being personally praised for achieving these gains

.
Nasrallah, in part, built his leadership by leading Hizbullah into social and educational programs, softening the enforcement of strict dress codes for women and bans against drinking and playing cards.

By 1993, Nasrallah was meeting with the Maronite Christian patriarch and trying to shore up relations with all the communities in a country barely beginning its recovery from 15 years of sectarian war. Nasrallah, even then, was staking out his position as a national leader.


But the cornerstone of his politics and his power remained resistance to the Israeli occupation of Lebanese land—a struggle that had gained little ground in the years before he took charge. The military strategy developed under his leadership was one of guerrilla warfare, decentralized and working closely with the local population. Very closely. In September 1997, Nasrallah's own son, 18-year-old Hadi, was killed in a clash against the Israelis, who took his body away with them. The next night Nasrallah spoke at a Hizbullah anniversary rally. "We, in the leadership of Hizbullah, do not spare our children and save them for the future," he told the crowd. "We pride ourselves when our sons reach the front line. And stand, heads high, when they fall [as] martyrs."


It took Nasrallah almost a year to win the return of his son's corpse. The Israelis also freed 60 Lebanese prisoners and handed over the remains of 39 other fighters. In exchange, Nasrallah delivered the body of an Israeli naval commando who had been killed in a 1997 Hizbullah ambush. In 2000, to gain the freedom of still more prisoners, Hizbullah ambushed and captured three Israeli soldiers and abducted a retired Israeli colonel who had been lured to Beirut. The negotiations, through a German intermediary, lasted more than three years, eventually winning the release of 400 prisoners—not only Lebanese but Palestinians and other Arabs as well.


When Nasrallah captured two Israeli soldiers this July, he may have thought new negotiations would begin. But he also knew that his war with Israel is what gave him his power and prestige.


When Israel withdrew from South Lebanon in May 2000, Nasrallah found himself for the first time a hero of the Arab world, the first to "defeat" the Israelis. He was recognized as the equal of any of Lebanon's constitutional leaders. Goksel even arranged a meeting for him with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Nasrallah also developed a close relationship with the late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, sometimes meeting him two or three times a week. "You can make business with this guy," the billionaire Hariri would say.

So for Israel to commit itself to containing Hizbullah, they are taking on the leading political organization serving the south Lebanese, an overwhelminingly Shi'a population and 40% of the Lebanese population. Hizbullah functions as the de facto government of south Lebanon and has been adding to it's stature by distributing Iranian money and volunteer labor to the residents of south Lebanon now that the Israelis are withdrawing.

For more Arabs, Islam is the answer

The neocon perspective has always been under heavy influence by Likud party in Israel, partly by reputation due to the what I believe is a mistaken perception that Israel has been highly effective in combating the non-symmetrical warefare of the PLO and Hamas. The truth is that the rules of warfare have changed. The growing effectiveness of hand held weapons combined with the sophisticated propaganda tactics of the PLO, Hizbullah, and Iran, have led to a losing hand for the Neocons in general, the Bush and Olmert Administration in particular. The Neocons have over-estimated the power of the military option and sorely neglected the propaganda and diplomatic efforts. The result is world events and political winds headed in the opposite direction than the Neocons intended. Witness the influence of the Arab on the streets:
International Herald Tribune

"I have more faith in Islam than in my state; I have more faith in Allah than in Hosni Mubarak," Mahmoud said, referring to the president of Egypt. "That is why I am proud to be a Muslim."


The war in Lebanon, and the widespread conviction among Arabs that Hezbollah won that war by bloodying Israel, has fostered and validated those kinds of feelings across Egypt and the region. In interviews on streets and in newspaper commentaries circulated around the Middle East, the prevailing view is that where Arab nations failed to stand up to Israel and the United States, an Islamic movement succeeded.


"The victory that Hezbollah achieved in Lebanon will have earthshaking regional consequences that will have an impact much beyond the borders of Lebanon itself," Yasser Abuhilalah of Al Ghad, a Jordanian daily, wrote in the Tuesday issue.


"The resistance celebrates the victory," read the front-page headline in Al Wafd, an opposition daily in Egypt.


Hezbollah's perceived triumph has propelled, and been propelled by, a wave already washing over the region. Political Islam was widely seen as the antidote to the failures of Arab nationalism, communism, socialism and, most recently, what is seen as the false promise of American-style democracy. It was that wave that helped the banned but tolerated Muslim Brotherhood win 88 seats in Egypt's Parliament last December despite the government's violent efforts to stop voters from getting to the polls. It was that wave that swept Hamas into power in the Palestinian government in January, shocking Hamas itself.


"We need an umbrella," said Mona Mahmoud, 40, Jihan's older sister. "In the '60s, Arabism was the umbrella. We had a cause. Now we lack an umbrella. We feel lost in space. We need to be affiliated to something."


The lesson learned by many Arabs from the war in Lebanon is that an Islamic movement, in this case Hezbollah, restored dignity and honor to a bruised and battered identity. Hezbollah's perceived victory has highlighted, and to many validated, the rise of another unifying ideology, a kind of Arab-Islamic nationalism.


"The losers are going to be the Arab regimes, U.S.A. and Israel," said Fares Braizat of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan. "The secular resistance movements are gone. Now there are the Islamists coming in. So the new nationalism is going to be religious nationalism, and one of the main reasons is dignity. People want their dignity back."


The terms Islamic nationalism and pan-Islamism have a negative connotations in the West, where they are associated with fundamentalism and terrorism. But that is increasingly not the case in Egypt. Under the dual pressures of foreign military attacks in the region and a government widely viewed as corrupt and illegitimate, Islamic groups are seen by many people as incorruptible, disciplined, efficient and caring.


"Hezbollah is a resistance movement that has given us a solution," said Yomana Samaha, a radio talk-show host in Cairo who identified herself as secular and a supporter of separating religion and government.


[...][During the] voting in Egypt's parliamentary elections, a months-long process [...] was marred by police officers who were ordered to block voters from getting to the polls in many districts. The government grew concerned after candidates affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood began winning in record numbers. The government says that the police did not fire live ammunition at citizens, but many people were killed and doctors and witnesses - including Western diplomats - said that the police did fire live rounds into people trying to vote.

Even the conservative spectrum foreign policy experts are bemoaning the outcome. The Belgravia Dispatch has an outstanding post outline his view about the Lebanon debacle. He calls it "The Israeli-Lebanese Denouement: A Tragicomedy of Errors".

Beating Hezbollah ultimately must rely more on what might be described as counter-insurgency tactics, not some Dresden redux. To beat back Hezbollah one must moderate the 40% of Lebanese who are Shi’a, by over time having them pledge their primary allegiance to a strong central government, one that is sharing the economic fruits of Lebanon’s revival with all ethnic groups, so as to ultimately render the social welfare arm of Hezbollah largely irrelevant. Given this, it is manifestly clear that Israel’s reaction to Hezbollah’s provocation should have always been limited to targets south of the Litani River (save the very exceptional target to the north of truly imperative strategic value). This is so that the greatest pain would have been inflicted solely on the perpetrators of the rocket attacks and kidnapping themselves, rather than Lebanon writ large. (One might have thought, for instance, that some of Israel’s best commandos might have been air-dropped at the Litani, worked their way southwards so as to catch Hezbollah by surprise, and in conjunction with the judicious use of airpower, inflicted some significant pain on Hezbollah guerillas acting near the border. This would have been more by way of an intense 7-10 day security operation, serving to create a deterrent effect, and with the Americans fully briefed on the details and moving swiftly to put a cease-fire in place a week or so into the Israeli action).


Instead, of course, Israel fought a month long war (mostly a rather brutal, too often indiscriminate air campaign) that involved the death of hundreds and hundreds of civilians, as well as: 1) imposition of a total naval and air blockade on the entire country, 2) the destruction of a very significant number of roads and bridge networks, 3) an environmental disaster in the Mediterranean Sea of worrisome scope, 4) a massive pummeling to much of Lebanon’s infrastructure causing billions of dollars of damage, not to mention 5) reducing large swaths of southern Beirut neighborhoods to rubble, as well as so many towns in the south, including important population centers like Tyre.


Such a strategy was doomed to failure, as it has had precisely the opposite effect than that Israel had (or should have) intended. The population of Lebanon, including Sunnis and even Christians and Druze, stand today united in their disgust at Israel’s tactics. To be sure, this pervasive anti-Israeli sentiment will diminish some in coming weeks, as internal fissures increasingly rise to the fore instead.


[...]There is also the fact, however old fogey-like and apparently drearily Scowcroftian this may sound, that getting at the real “root causes”, as our rather impressionable Secretary of State is so fond of saying, means addressing the Arab-Israeli conflict on a comprehensive basis. As for Hezbollah, it means talking to the Syrians in serious fashion (that is to say, no more of the “they know what they need to do” woeful cop-out), lest Hezbollah arms coffers simply be replenished by Damascus going forward—even if mostly to Hezbollah assets north of the Litani. Put simply, to speak of getting to the "root causes" of Hezbollah, without broaching the overall Arab-Israeli peace process, or the Syrian and Iranian role, well, it's just a joke.


[...]Nasrallah is undoubtedly the winner in this sad affair, having outlasted the combined might of the Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian armies in a head on struggle with Israel. Israel has been shown to be strategically vulnerable to rockets (to which one might query, what is so important about the Golan when rockets can fly over it?), and Assad and Ahmadinejad have surely taken note of same. The French were somewhat winners, flexing some muscle with boots on the ground in the international force and so having a stronger hand to play going forward (if they aren’t attacked and scared away, that is, as in previous Lebanese deployments).


[...]Condi Rice's unfortunate talk referencing the “birth pangs” of a New Middle East, or presence in Jerusalem amidst the carnage in Qana—well, no one could have really divined better blows to America’s image in the region if they had tried mightily.


[...]And so we had a rather big exercise in futility, a futile little war, as I said, only a tragic one too, with all the blood spilled and damage done. The reality is that Lebanese hearts and minds, certainly Shi'a ones, are going to support Nasrallah even more now, not to mention the many in Cairo and Baghdad and points beyond hailing Nasrallah as a new Nasser. Hezbollah is far further from 'eradication', however absurdly unrealistic a goal that was regardless (particularly given the U.S. and Israeli approaches), than before. What we've just witnessed is a (tragi)comedy of errors, really, featuring incompetence (the bungled Israeli military campaign), fake showmanship (Bush and Olmert finally talking four weeks into the war with Olmert thanking the American President for his help with the UN Resolution, in a butt-covering, farcical coup de theatre par excellence!), historical innocence mixed with hubris (that because Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza and south Lebanon, in her self-interest more than anything else, this would mean no attacks from either quarter--in the absence of an overarching settlement--so that any attack would demand a hugely asymetrical response, the better so as to discipline the recently liberated ingrates), another low ebb for America's repute in the region (the disasterous Rome Conference where the world judged, correctly, that only the U.S., and perhaps Tony Blair, to the ire of his government colleagues and people, were willing to give Israel's ill-fated campaign additional time), and more. One that occured, to boot, in the midst of an Iraq debacle that grows worse by the day, where Iranian influence is increasing in lockstep with America's mushrooming impotence there. The entire sad spectacle must look almost amusing from Teheran.

It's time for a major reassessment of foreign policy direction. An about face may well be a good metaphor. The world of Islam is falling into bin Ladin's hands. Hizbullah has become the new Nassar and the greatest hope of Islam world wide. I can't think of a worse disaster for the US or Israel.

Israelis May Be Spoiling For Another Fight

I will be surprised if the cease fire in Lebanon holds. Israelis are already showing signs of looking for another go. Bellicose comments by Hizbullah, Syria and Iran may have provoked the Israelis to look for another fight. Indeed, it may have already begun.
WaPo

Helicopter-borne Israeli commandos raided a Bekaa Valley stronghold of the Hezbollah militia early Saturday in the first major violation of a six-day-old cease-fire. Hezbollah, which battled the Israeli military for 33 days until a truce took hold Aug. 14, said its fighters encountered the Israeli commandos near the town of Boudai and engaged them in a fierce gun battle, inflicting casualties and driving them off.


The Israeli military, confirming the raid, said its commandos carried out the operation as part of an effort to prevent resupply of Hezbollah with weapons and munitions from Iran and Syria. It said one Israeli officer was killed and two soldiers were wounded, one seriously.

One might ask why would the Israelis be so hungry for another battle? It's because their reputation has been tarnished and their enemies emboldened.
WaPo

From the failure to get food and water to the troops, to complaints of an uncertain war plan and overconfident generals, the Lebanon war is fast being viewed within Israel as a major stumble. Military and political leaders already are trading blame; some are expected to lose their posts. Officers say the mistakes show weakness in the military, the Israel Defense Forces, known as the IDF. Many Israelis worry that the failure of the military to squash the Hezbollah militia will make their country more vulnerable to other enemies.


"For four weeks we failed to defend ourselves against daily bombardments against our cities. This is a failure that never happened before," said Yuval Steinitz, a Likud Party member and former chairman of parliament's defense committee. "This is going to send a bad message."


[...]"The destruction in Beirut and southern Lebanon do create anger, but they also create deterrence," Steinberg said. "Israelis are coping with this. It's not a sense of denial. It would be a mistake if Hezbollah or others look at Israel as a weakened society. Israeli society is very determined to see this through, and prepared to fight another war."

Destroy Lebanon to Make Peace?

Simple solutions make complex problems worse. The Neocon dream of remaking the world in the image of the US national interest rested on the assumption the US Military could intimidate the world into doing it's bidding. The rules of war have changed. We see just how effective the US has been in Iraq and Central Asia. US power and credibility is at it's lowest point in the past 20 years at least.
Intiimidation works only as long you hold a gun to the head of your enemy. The damage done removes credibility and influence for sometimes generations. The US policy has served to create a pool of millions of recruits for Al Qaeda especially in the next generation.
Here, in it's entirety, is a editorial that makes a cohesive proposal for addressing Lebanon. Watch how the Bush Administration ignores these ideas. One can only hope the rest of the Republican party will stand up.
New York Times

WHAT a waste that it took more than 30 days to adopt a United Nations Security Council resolution for a cease-fire in Lebanon. Thirty days during which nothing positive was achieved and a great deal of pain, suffering and damage was inflicted on innocent people.


The loss of innocent civilian life is staggering and the destruction, particularly in Lebanon, is devastating. Human rights organizations and the United Nations have condemned the humanitarian crisis and violations of international humanitarian law.


Yet all the diplomatic clout of the United States was used to prevent a cease-fire, while more military hardware was rushed to the Israeli Army. It was argued that the war had to continue so that the root causes of the conflict could be addressed, but no one explained how destroying Lebanon would achieve that.


And what are these root causes? It is unbelievable that recent events are so regularly traced back only to the abduction of three Israeli soldiers. Few speak of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, or of its Lebanese prisoners, some of whom have been held for more than 20 years. And there is hardly any mention of military occupation and the injustice that has come with it.


Rather than helping in the so-called global war on terror, recent events have benefited the enemies of peace, freedom and democracy. The region is boiling with resentment, anger and despair, feelings that are not leading young Arabs and Palestinians toward the so-called New Middle East.


Nor are these policies helping Israel. Israel’s need for security is real and legitimate, but it will not be secured in any sustainable way at the expense of the equally real and legitimate needs and aspirations of its neighbors. Israel and its neighbors could negotiate an honorable settlement and live in peace and harmony. As often happens in complex conflict situations, however, the parties cannot do it alone. They need outside help but are not getting it.


It is perhaps too early to draw lessons from this month of madness. What is clear, however, is that Hezbollah scored a political victory and its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, has become the most popular figure in the Muslim world. As for Israel, it does not seem to have achieved its stated objectives. Should these trends continue, it is hard to imagine stability coming to the region soon.


So what can be done? The international community should take several steps — some concrete, some conceptual — to address the current crisis.


First, priority must be given to ensuring Lebanon’s unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity and the full implementation of the 1989 Taif accord, which I helped negotiate on behalf of the Arab League. This agreement specifically required that the Lebanese government, like all states, have a monopoly over the possession of weapons and the use of force.


Second, we must recall that Hezbollah came into existence as a consequence of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Like all movements, it has evolved: it was initially a militia and a resistance movement against foreign occupation. It then developed into both a political party and a social organization, providing valuable services to its impoverished community.


Rather than trying to isolate Hezbollah, we should be encouraging it to play a responsible role in the internal dynamics of Lebanon. It would then, in turn, be legitimate to expect Hezbollah to accept the Lebanese state’s exclusive right to possess armaments and use force.


Third, it is something of a paradox to ask Iran and Syria to sever relations with Hezbollah while asking them to use their influence to obtain its compliance with the cease-fire resolution. Would it not be more effective to demand that both countries, as well as all other states in the region and beyond, scrupulously respect Lebanon’s sovereignty and abstain from interfering in its internal affairs?


Fourth, the most valuable contribution Israel can make to lasting peace across its northern border is to withdraw its troops from all the territory it currently occupies, including the Shebaa Farms.


Finally, urgent and sustained attention must be focused on the problem that underlies the unrest in the Middle East: the Palestinian issue. A wealth of United Nations resolutions and other agreements already exist that provide a basis for a just and viable solution to the Middle East conflict.


One approach could be for a team of mediators to be mandated by the Security Council and an international conference (including the Arab League) to take on the formidable task of reviving the pre-existing agreements that work best and then seeing that they are put in place.


If the United States and other key countries could see this conflict through a different lens, there could be a real chance for peace. This would be the best way to signal genuine respect and atonement for the suffering inflicted on so many innocent people for so many years.


Lakhdar Brahimi is a former special adviser to the United Nations Secretary General.