The STL Indictments

Qifa Nabki reads the Special Tribunal for Lebanon indictments, just unsealed, so you and I don't have to. After all the noise and shouting, his "Is this all?" reavtion to the evidence is worth noting. But don't just take my word for it: go read his analysis.

Lebanon Dodges a Bullet, for Now

Word that although indictments may be submitted shortly to the pretrial judge of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), no details are likely to be made public for several months while a decision on whether to proceed to trial is considered, has led to sighs of relief in Lebanon, which was bracing for potential conflict if, as reported, senior Hizbullah figures were indicted.

This may just be postponing the inevitable, but it also gives the Lebanese factions time to prepare for the inevitable if it comes, or to lobby for some sort of compromise. It at least delays the confrontation.

Israel on Alert about Lebanon

You can feel the temperature risin' in Lebanon, but Elvis has nothing to do with it. Israel's security cabinet is meeting today over concerns, in the wake of the CBC report leaking parts of the Special Tribunal on Lebanon's findings, Hizbullah might, as Ha'aretz puts it, "try to take over Lebanon."

This is probably just posturing but, combined with worries about a new Lebanese civil war, it reminds us that the STL is playing with fire. It's seeking justice, but even Rafiq Sa‘d Hariri, who would seem to have as much interest as anyone in solving his father's murder, is trying to dial back on the tensions.

Lebanon being Lebanon, he could ask Walid Jumblatt how he coped with his father's murder.

The STL, the CBC, and the Hariri Investigation

By now we've all been primed for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL)'s expected indictment of senior Hizbullah figures in the Hariri assassination. Though that hasn't happened yet, an apparent leak of details of the investigation has now provoked a lot of debate and armchair analysis. I'm not even going to try to summarize the story here, since the report, by CBC News, is lengthy, detailed, and includes charts. (The fact that the current chief of the STL, Daniel Bellemare, is Canadian comes to mind, but the CBC report by Neil Macdonald goes out of its way to note that Bellemare refused to be interviewed by the CBC.) Read the report first, so you'll know what the various blogosphere commenters are talking about.

Qifa Nabki has, of course, been on the case. A first posting here; a longer post raising various questions here; and a post in which reporter Macdonald responds to some of the questions raised.

Qifa also quotes commenter T_DESCO, who has posted analysis quoting earlier reports from the STL to raise questions about Macdonald's report over at Josh Landis' Syria Comment blog.

Of course this kind of point by point criticism of a leaked story suggests the leak itself was planted by someone. All of which reminds us that in a region where every event produces a related conspiracy theory, this one clearly was a conspiracy that involved a lot of people, reached into the Lebanese security services, and perhaps involved some deliberate false flags.

Read both the CBC report and the commentaries. They'll likely preoccupy Lebanese coffeehouse debates until the STL really does unveil its conclusions.

Waiting for the STL

Though no one is certain when, precisely, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon will issue its long anticipated indictments of Hizbullah members for the 2005 assassination of Rafiq Hariri, everyone expects it to be very soon, perhaps imminent. The STL's Outreach Section has been holding a three day media event in The Hague, to explain to the media the context and how to report on international criminal tribunals, which suggests the coin may be about to drop. (Somehow I don't think Nuremberg did media spin [or needed to], but I could be wrong.)

Obviously this was a major subtext of Ahmadinejad's Lebanon excursion, and is a potential grenade in Lebanon's precarious political situation.

The fact of the matter is the STL's investigation has moved dramatically from Syria (everyone's prime suspect originally) to Hizbullah, and thus has become a major issue for Lebanon's largest communal group, the Shi‘a. The "false witnesses" (in quotes because it'd become a cliche now in Lebanon) who pointed the finger at Syria are seen as discrediting the whole STL process.

We're still not 100% sure who killed Kamal Jumblatt, Rashid Karami, Bashir Gemayel or Danny Chamoun, or what happened to Musa al-Sadr (to cover as broad a spectrum of Lebanese as possible politically). Will a clearer answer — assuming they get it right this time, unlike last time — on Rafiq Hariri be for the good, or will it provoke new conflict? Justice is essential (if all too rare in Lebanon: see list just above), but in the present circumstances, I'm not sure it won't carry a high cost. Is anyone?

Hizbullah Presents its Case That Israel Involved in Hariri Assassination

I was a bit flippant in my remarks last week when Hizbullah announced that Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah would present evidence that Israel was involved in the Hariri assassination. I'm no fan of Hizbullah, and while Israel does use targeted assassination, I still don't think Hariri would be high on their list. The original suspect, Syria, and the current suspect, Hizbullah, make more sense.

But to be fair to Nasrallah, much as I personally dislike Hizbullah's goals and ideology, his speech seems to be a serious rhetorical effort to marshal data that can be used to suggest Israel had motive, opportunity, and means. It includes some surprises (Hizbullah claims to have, or to have had the capability to monitor Israeli surveillance video transmissions), and by raising a new candidate for perpetrator, it muddies the waters and diverts attention from the accusations expected from the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL). Israel has said it monitors all of Lebanon and indeed, if Hizbullah was monitoring drone footage for a decade, it could have cherry-picked the footage to suggest a special interest in the waterfront area where Hariri died. (And while many Arab commentators are praising the intercepts as a defeat for Israeli intelligence, don't forget that we learned last year that Iraqi insurgents had hacked the feed of US Predators; Hizbullah is certainly technically more capable than Iraqi insurgents.)

Here is the full transcript of the press conference in Arabic from Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV, and here's a lengthy English summary and paraphrase also by Al-Manar. Naturally, Lebanon blogger Qifa Nabki is on the case; he live-blogged yesterday's speech, and has a commentary up on Foreign Policy's Mideast channel, plus a new post on his blog on the dilemmas facing Sa‘d Hariri. For those with good enough Arabic, the whole thing is on YouTube in 14 parts (though I haven't watched it all), of which here's part one:



Whatever else you may think of the actual case, I believe Nasrallah has played the STL rather well here: You say you have a case against us; well, we have a case against Israel. Nasrallah admits he has no smoking gun. It remains to be seen whether the STL does.

I had not previously commented much about Lebanon's ongoing and unfolding alleged uncovering of a major spy ring. which recently saw the arrest of former General Fayez Karam, who is said to have confessed to spying for Israel since the 1980s. He was more recently a senior official in Michel ‘Aoun's (Hizbullah-allied) Free Patriotic Movement. But Nasrallah pointed to evidence from the arrested spies that he claimed supported his allegations, though their testimony is not yet public.

I'm not convinced, but Nasrallah's speech has shifted Lebanon's internal debate, and that's what he was seeking to do.

Major Summit to Avert "Explosion" in Lebanon?

There's talk of a major Arab summit, including both King ‘Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Bashar al-Asad of Syria, assembling in Beirut Friday to avert a major "explosion" in Lebanon.

This is all about the Special Tribunal on Lebanon (STL), which has been assembling evidence on the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. Over the past year the main finger of suspicion has shifted from the Syrian government to Hizbullah, and that could blow the Lebanese government apart, to the point that even Sa‘d Hariri has been talking about defusing things.

It's a complicated subject, byzantine even by Lebanese standards, but you should read the analyses by Qifa Nabki and the multiple posts by Nick Noe at The Mideastwire Blog, including the text of Hasan Nasrallah's speech. Also I note that the Al-Manar website (Hizbullah TV) is sounding conciliatory rather than confrontational. (They include a photo of Ahmadinejad along with ‘Abdullah, Bashar and the Amir of Qatar, also said to be coming.)

I suspect that if indeed the STL blames Hizbullah, but the Lebanese government soft-pedals the matter, there will be some in the US who will be totally puzzled by why even the Hariris might look the other way rather than provoke a new explosion. (And some will no doubt be outraged.) Part of it is the Lebanese tradition of trying to find consensus, rather than structuring political debate in a zero-sum, two-party game. And one is the degree to which the geopolitical chessboard has has shifted since 2005. In any event, this summit is an interesting development, especially in Saudi-Syrian relations, since they seem to be singing the same tune on this one.

Part of it, too, is a real nervousness that Lebanon, if it were to descend into chaos, could provoke a new Israeli intervention and a spiraling escalation.

Odd Disconnect Between Headline and Photo?

As an editor, I only have to choose four photos a year these days: one for each cover of The Middle East Journal, but having worked in more frequent publications in the past, I'm aware of the danger of having a disconnect between your headline and your photo chosen to illustrate your story. This screen capture from this Ha'aretz story (I'm using a screen cap in case they change the photo or headline) exemplifies the problem:


And then they had a good laugh about it. I know that online reportage requires a lot of quick decisions, but given Ha'aretz' overall political allegiances, I don't think this was intentional.

Bizarro World Canossa?: Hariri's Road to Damascus

UPDATE: Qifa Nabki calls my attention in a comment below about an outbreak of Road to Damascus rhetoric earlier this year. (But I still claim orginality for "Bizarro World Canossa.")

Now that Sa‘d Hariri is Prime Minister of Lebanon, there comes the ironic crux: Prime Ministers of Lebanon traditionally take the Road to Damascus (though not exactly in Saint Paul's sense), and at some point Hariri must too. Although there had been reports that it wouldn't be soon, now we're hearing it might be as early as Sunday. (Both are Naharnet reports, so the situation is shifting.) Qifa Nabki approaches it with a reader poll. Will it exonerate Syria in Rafiq Hariri's death, or are the issues separate and irrelevant, or "Don't Know". Go on over and vote if you like. I wish he, who knows Lebanon so much more than I, had said more, but oh, heck, I guess I can share my 1) pop culture and 2) really obscure academic historian's views of the matter.

Trying to picture what it will be like. My first reaction was a Darth Vader/Luke Skywalker dialogue:

Hariri: You killed my father.
Asad: Luke, I am your father.

But that's a bit puerile, though I'm posting it anyway.

My second immediate thought, though a whole lot more obscure in this age when history has dissolved into "social studies," and people have (mostly at least) stopped arguing over the Investiture Controversy at every bar, was the penitential walk of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV through the Alpine snows to ask forgiveness of Pope Gregory VII in the fortress of Canossa in 1377. When the Pope kept the Emperor waiting three days in the snow before letting him beg forgiveness. (Picture shows the wait.)

The only problem here is this is the Bizarro World version of Canossa. (For my Middle Eastern readers who didn't click the Wikipedia link: it's a Baby Boomer's American popular culture Superman reference. It's probably not in your dictionary. Just know that in Bizarro World, everything is the exact opposite of our world.) In other words, the Pope is asking the Emperor for forgiveness, or, to mix still more metaphors, the liege is coming and shaking hands with the lord who may — and the various investigations remain really Byzantine in their intricacy — have ordered his father killed.

Can you really patch things up with the person who you suspect may have ordered your father killed, short of an intricate plot like Hamlet? (Which, of course, was the exact same plot.) He could, of course, ask Walid Jumblatt for advice, since Walid Bey's father was killed by mysterious forces that looked rather Syrian, but Walid Bey, having bounced back from his neocon binge in the Bush 2 era (making him the only neocon who was a member in good standing with the Socialist International), is in a rapprochement with Syria. (And Michel Aoun might have some really helpful advice on rationalizing your conscience, too.)

And Saint Paul thought he had a rough time on the Road to Damascus.

Oh, and as of this posting, the three words "Bizarro World Canossa" do not appear to have ever appeared on any site indexed by Google. (Though I can't imagine why.) That may be the first time I've pulled that off.