From Beirut to the Beltway

Living with demons

Trouble is brewing in the fake paradise that is the new Lebanese cabinet. Hizbullah wants the ministerial statement to bestow legitimacy upon its weapons. Yesterday, the militia reared its ugly head again to threaten actions similar to the May 7th attack on Beirut, if the cabinet does not give the “resistance” its right to bear arms outside the state’s authority. We used force to protect our weapons, Mohammad Raad warned, and we'll do it again.

Who knows what compromise they will reach. A Qatari delegation has arrived in the country to mediate, so expect a miracle or two, minus the excitement that accompanied the Doha agreement.

Meanwhile, the demons of yesteryear are having a feast in the country, having been successfully unleashed by Hizbullah's time machine.   

The first consequence was the neutralization of March 14's official slayer, Jumblatt, who has seemingly mellowed just in time for the elections. As-Safir even predicted, perhaps falsely, that he would be leaving March 14 "through the gate of Palestine and Arabism". Suddenly, the anti-Syrian stance that created bonds that otherwise would not have existed, has ceased to provide him with motivation to go forward in his mission to transform the status quo.

Jumblatt's battle now is for coexistence with the demons, some internal, some external in the form of Hizbullah, whom he once aggravated so badly they began to implode. The flip-flopper or the pragmatist, however you want to see him, is now trying to go out of his way to reconcile the “resistance” with March 14’s stated agenda.

The problem with Jumblatt’s position is that it gives more to Hizbullah than to his own group, which is now suffering the Druze leader’s return to championing "Arabism" and the Palestinian cause. Jumblatt, expressing frustration with the US role in Lebanon, has been dealing in contradictions. He said the March 14 revolution will not extend to the Arab world if not coupled with the Palestinian cause. In the last three years, he said, "we forgot the Palestinian cause and at times acted outside our core Arab principles".

With the July 2006 war and the destruction that befell Lebanon terrifying examples of what those Arab principles could bring, it is disheartening to see Jumblatt creating a middle ground by distancing himself from his allies and hearkening back to expired slogans that he knows are only good for elections, or in a wider Arab context, maintaining despotism. His man Wael Abou Faour may have found a name for Jumblatt's new pursuit, Democratic Arabism, but this doesn't make his boss's stance any less… unfortunate.

March 14’s challenge has always been to disengage Lebanon from the regional conflicts, and from the mentality that led the country, as well as the region, to the current situation, creating and conferring legitimacy upon parasitic groups such as Hizbullah. One needs not be a disbeliever in the rights of Palestinians to self determination to qualify as a Lebanese nationalist. Jumblatt's late realization that Lebanese nationalism, as reborn after March 14th 2005, needs to be connected to Palestine, is a sad testimony that the man admired by many for his anti-Syrian and anti-Hizbullah stances has succumbed to his own demons. So what we have now, is this justification, as offered by Abou Faour:

In response to a question on Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) leader Walid Jumblatt’s recent political stance, Abou Faour said the PSP was “fighting the battle of democratic Arabism.”

“We were not calling for sovereignty in order to isolate Lebanon. But if anyone imagines that MP Walid Jumblatt will abandon his history, they would be totally wrong,” he noted.

“We will not beg for any alliance or any position. We had our independent position within March 14 coalition, and we believe that we should provide new open horizons and directions. This is the conviction of the March 14 alliance, as well as that of Walid Jumblatt,” he added.

Abou Faour also said that the Lebanese people should reach an agreement on national issues.

To quote Hazem Al Amin in a recent Now Lebanon editorial, Walid Jumblatt is not qualified to lead March 14. He has too many skeletons in his closet, and his status as a sectarian zaim always comes first. But then, most of the March 14 leaders are defined by the same criteria.

It’s not easy to share your house with demons. It’s even more difficult to wage battles against them, knowing that the end of the day, there is only one house, and that those demons can walk in and out of your soul at their convenience.

Ghosts

Seeing Jumblatt posing with Kantar increased my disgust with Lebanese politics, and added days of absence from this blog. Kantar is the ghost not only from Jumblatt's past, but from ours: back when some idolized the few who "infiltrated" the enemy, and killed in the name of resistance. Kantar may not have been the best of them, and indeed, he may have given others a bad image by allegedly killing a child.  But seeing him there, resurrected, was like a slap in the face: We are stuck.

Jumblatt may have tried to absorb a potential competitor by posing with him in a parade, but Hizbullah's "liberation" action had a more profound and lasting effect. When your entire raison d'etre is being questioned, the best thing you can do is inject the populace with something from the past. Remind them of their own past, the common enemy, and prove that you were on the right path.

I am sure March 14 had its justification for partaking in the national circus that accompanied the so called liberation of the prisoners. They may have even thought they scored against their opponents. But did they see how this event completely emasculated them? Hizbullah had done all the work. If they truly felt that strongly about Kantar and the other prisoners, Siniora and his government should have made some effort towards their release, as opposed to letting Hizbullah run the show, dictate the conditions and win legitimacy.

Israelis are horrified that "moderate" Lebanese would celebrate "child killers". I am horrified for different reasons, because to me, both sides have killed children. I am horrified that after two years of fighting Hizbullah and calling it a militia, we now let them prove their point and weaken our own argument against their weapons. Worse, we let them tell us that we're prisoners of a battle they only picked up after we traded in the cause for a seat in a Syrian card game. We let them tell us: you reap what you sow, and here is the ghost of a past that you can never escape, no matter how pretty your post-Hariri assassination rhetoric is.

With Sanine allegedly falling under the control of Hizbullah and Jumblatt's ghosts, Lebanon seems destined for another round of delusion, mixed in with pointless fighting by March 14.

I think the time has come for March 14 to call it quits as a group that has become an oppressive force, and for the dissenting voices to rise against the machine which Hizbullah has learned how to manipulate. Those who believe the rhetoric they fed us over the past two years need to stand up for what they preached, or forever shut up, or be silenced. Hopefully by voters.

Can you divorce a country?

Probably not. Lebanon follows you everywhere you go. Whatever position you occupy in your adopted country, you will always be the Lebanese. Wherever you go in this world, and especially if your adopted country did not bestow its nationality on you, you will always be the one with the Lebanese passport: a recipe for humiliation for you and your family.

My trip to Lebanon began with humiliation and psychological torture at the hands of US border agents. I am not one to complain about the US, for God knows I am grateful for what this country gave me, and continues to give me. But what a shame that a government agency consistently violates its own written rules, and discriminates based on the national origin of its residents, and treats children like terrorists.

My son Kais, who, as I wrote once, was born free, is one month short of turning two. He has always been the kind of boy who loves other people, shakes hands with everyone he sees, and throws smiles and winks at strangers. One day, he accompanied his family to Dulles airport, where a TSA agent asked his father to step aside and leave the family behind for a "double search". Reason: Lebanese passport, and a boarding pass stamped with SSS.

TSA rule: you do not separate families.
TSA agent: it's either you, or the entire family.

It was AK's choice to not subject his entire family to a procedure he has gotten used to. But Kais, seeing that his mother had her hands full with an infant, three carry-ons, and a stroller, wanted to be with his dada.

Little did he know that he and his father would be led to a glass-enclosed area, in the middle of a crowd of passengers taking their shoes and belts off. Kais could see his mother through the glass, and couldn't understand why strangers are going through his baby food, his diaper bag, and emptying his sippy cup. One agent came close to where he stood with his father. He flung open the glass door, giving Kais the hope that he and his dad will finally reunite with his mommy and "baby". That wasn't the case. The agent slammed the door in Kais' face, after stealing his boarding pass.

My boy was crying, unable to fathom why he had to be put in a glass cage in the middle of a jungle of people.

Soon, the agent would lead them even farther from "baby" and "mommy". There, the man in charge of security saw it appropriate to ask the toddler to stand over the two footprints, not made to fit baby feet, extend his arms, and endure thorough frisking. His father is trying to console him. It's OK that a stranger is searching him for explosives, treating him like a suspect, even though he did not bear the SSS mark, only his father did. The agent then moves to the father. Kais finds it even more horrific that someone is touching his hero and protector. "No", he screams. It's hysterical crying, mixed in with the coldness of people looking like monsters.

The agent then realizes the suspected terrorist and his son had no bags.  He goes over to the mother, asks her to pick a bag to be double-searched. She hands over her husband's computer bag. It's a treat to the agent. It's horrifying to Kais, who sees some of his toys being handled by a complete stranger, while he is being prevented to run to his mother.

The rest of the trip was even more traumatic. Kais now is clingy, anti-social, and will not go anywhere without his entire family by his side. This could be part of his development. The experience at Dulles sure helped accelerate it.

Kais, I tried to hide this world from you. I am sorry I could not protect you from it. Maybe it is for your own good that you get to know it now for what it is.

This country did not become safer after this episode. Maybe this is the price to pay, some will argue. But maybe it isn't. There's a lot of stupidity directed at the United States, but there is also a lot of the same within its borders. People who frisk children are united in shortsightedness with people who view a national dress as a terrorism symbol. These people deserve the bigotry award along with those who attack a presidential candidate for the name and religion of his father.

I am hoping that Kais will grow up to be whatever he wishes to be, including, who knows, a president of this country. Until that happens, I hope the people whom he would want to serve see him as an equal human being, not the bearer of evil genes.

I have written a lot about Beirut, less about the Beltway. After this last visit, I felt like the Beirut story has ended without me having anything to do with the ending. That's life for you, not exactly a film, no matter how much you try to imagine that it is.

I feel the need for change more than any time before. This blog needs to be liberated. I have allowed it to sink far too deep into the abyss of Lebanese politics. Soon, and this might not happen tomorrow, something new will this way come.

Hizbullah's British wing and that swap deal

With nearly everyone in Lebanon thrilled (or pretending to be) about Hizbullah's "victory" (to quote Siniora) in securing the release of Lebanese prisoners in Israel, it was no wonder that the same duplicitous and insincere logic would spread to the British government, which is moving to declare Hizbullah's "military wing" as a terrorist organization.

Britain on Wednesday moved to ban the military wing of Hezbollah, adding it to its list of designated terrorist groups, the Home Office said.

"This means that it will be a criminal offence to belong to, fundraise and encourage support for the military wing of the organization," Junior Home Office Minister Tony McNulty said in a statement.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith laid an order in parliament that would proscribe Hezbollah's entire military wing.

If approved by parliament, the order would substitute the existing proscription against the External Security Organization, which the British government considers as Hezbollah's “terrorist wing.”

“Hezbollah's military wing is providing active support to militants in Iraq who are responsible for attacks both on coalition forces and on Iraqi civilians, including providing training in the use of deadly roadside bombs,” McNulty said.

“Hezbollah's military wing also provides support to Palestinian terrorist groups in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It is because of this support for terrorism in Iraq and the Occupied Palestinian Territories that the government has taken this action.”

He also noted that the proscription of Hezbollah's military wing will not affect the legitimate political, social and humanitarian role Hezbollah plays in Lebanon, “but it sends out a clear message that we condemn Hezbollah's violence and support for terrorism.” (Now Lebanon/AFP)

With Hizbullah itself not viewing itself as consisting of independent "wings", insisting that it's defined by its weapons and by its "resistance", it is mind boggling that the Home Office would try to impose its own political structure on an organization that has never played a "legitimate" political role in Lebanon. When Hizbullah, the "legitimate" political entity imagined by Britain, occupies downtown Beirut and drags the country to civil war, does this make it less of a terrorist organization and more like Britain's Labour party?

But then, why blame the Brits. Here's Siniora himself ascribing victory to Hizbullah.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora said on Tuesday that a prisoner swap between Israel and Hezbollah was a "huge failure" for the Jewish state and a victory for the Shiite militant group.

"The release of the prisoners thanks to the German mediator... is a huge failure for the policies of Israel," a statement from Siniora's office said.

"The success of Hezbollah in the negotiations led by a third party is a national success for the party and for the struggle of the Lebanese because it secured national goals which Israel always refused to respect."

Brilliant. Here's a Now Lebanon editorial reminding Siniora and the British government, of what Hizbullah is really about. Not that they don't know... and here lies the tragedy.

The prisoner swap is not the whole deal, just the final clause. Conveniently forgotten are the reams of gory appendices in a much larger and bloodier contract written out almost exactly two years ago, with all of Lebanon as collateral. Indeed, the full audit is still ongoing.

How much is the Resistance’s pledge worth? Add to the two Israeli bodies the bodies of 1,200 Lebanese civilians, nearly 400 of them children under the age of 13, sacrificed by Hezbollah to secure Kantar’s return. Add to that the 4,400 wounded civilians, of whom almost 700 are permanently disabled. Add to that those killed and wounded, most of them children, by the cluster bombs still littering large swaths of South Lebanon. Add to that the billions of dollars in destroyed homes, infrastructure and livelihoods.

In the final tally, Kantar – whose alleged taste for violence far exceeds the remit of the typical heroic freedom fighter – is a very expensive man. For make no mistake, his release is the sole profit weighed against the thousands of Lebanese dead and wounded. The four other Lebanese prisoners to be released were themselves captured on his account during the July War, and the number and names of the Palestinians to be freed are entirely at Israel’s discretion.

So Kantar will be freed, and Hezbollah’s word is once again proven to be Lebanon’s bond. We hope and pray that any Lebanese prisoners still held in Israeli jails come at a cheaper price in the future. If each is as expensive as Mr. Kantar has been, they may find themselves heroically repatriated to a desolate wasteland.