[News] US-backed parties have infiltrated Lebanon’s protests, pushing the country toward war amid economic collapse

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/11/us-parties-lebanon-protests-pushing-country-war-roadblocks/#more-17767 



  US-backed parties have infiltrated Lebanon’s protests, pushing the
  country toward war amid economic collapse

*By joining the roadblocks around Beirut, protesters allowed themselves 
to be used by US-allied parties playing a dangerous game that has the 
potential to explode into open warfare*


      *By Rania Khalek*

*/This is the second installment of a two-part report. Read part one 
here 
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/01/us-working-lebanon-corruption-protests-hezbollah/#more-17277>./*

The US is desperate to ride the revolutionary wave in Lebanon, hoping it 
can fracture a governing coalition that includes Hezbollah, a top target 
of the Trump administration and its friends from Tel Aviv to Riyadh. To 
this end, political figures Washington has cultivated and parties the US 
backs have penetrated the protest movement that has swept the country 
and are now on the frontlines of blockades obstructing roads around the 
country.

In the first part of this report 
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/01/us-working-lebanon-corruption-protests-hezbollah/#more-17277>, 
I surveyed the role of the US in weaponizing NGO’s and civil society 
activists to co-opt the nationwide anti-corruption protests. In this 
installment, we will see how the influence of the US and its Gulf allies 
also extends to feudal lords and warlords from Samir Geagea to Walid 
Joumblatt to Saad Hariri, and how it is being used to destabilize the 
country.

When this seemingly conflicting cast of actors began lending its support 
to the anti-corruption protests, many common Lebanese citizens began to 
look upon the demonstrations with a jaundiced eye, precisely because 
these political figures are living embodiments of the corruption that 
spurred the protests in the first place.

By joining the roadblocks around Beirut, the protesters have 
inadvertently allowed themselves to be used by these US-allied parties. 
Whether they know it or not, the media-friendly artists and students at 
the ring road in downtown Beirut have given cover to the Lebanese Forces 
roadblocks in the north and the PSP and Future Party roadblocks in the 
south.

Lebanese citizens in the majority Shia south have expressed outrage at 
the roadblocks. They have been especially frustrated with those in the 
town of Khaldeh, south of Beirut, because they made it difficult for 
residents of the south to drive up to Beirut.

The blockades only deepened the divide between the protest movement and 
Hezbollah’s working class base. Lebanon lacks the infrastructure for 
public transportation, so road closures infringe on everyone’s freedom 
of movement and leave no alternatives for getting to work. No one 
despises the road closures more than taxi drivers.

On more than one occasion angry youths associated with Amal, who are 
typically working class and poor, have physically attacked the middle 
class ring road protesters due to the inconvenience caused by the 
closure and out of anger over insults to their revered symbols.

They may have also been dispatched by Amal’s leadership to send a 
message to protesters, as they have repeatedly attacked and burned down 
their tents. Although Hezbollah was not associated with these acts of 
violence, youths nevertheless waved Hezbollah flags as a show of muscle 
and defiance. Some of the ring road protesters are Lebanese Forces 
supporters, so the two sides have at times further provoked each other 
with intentionally provocative chants.

Each time clashes like these have broken out, Western media has wrongly 
identified <https://apnews.com/a599c7dca9d04ed4a80675088343707b>the Amal 
attackers as Hezbollah supporters or have erased Amal’s involvement when 
both party’s supporters participate in intimidation tactics. Hezbollah 
supporters now worry that their reputation will suffer if Amal makes 
good on its threats to attack the protesters.

There is also a clear class antagonism that many protesters are 
reluctant to admit. The protesters in downtown Beirut are mostly middle 
class while Hezbollah and Amal’s base are poor and working class.

There does not appear to have been any attempts on the part of the 
downtown Beirut elements to reach out to Hezbollah or Amal’s base of 
support. Instead, when these youths have attacked the protest 
encampment, the demonstrators have often condescendingly called them 
animals and thugs who fail to appreciate their sacrifice. Naturally, 
this middle class savior complex has only compounded the sense of 
alienation between the two sides.

Car accidents and several scuffles have also taken place at the 
roadblocks, including one that turned deadly. A man called Alaa Abou 
Fakher, a Choueifat Municipality official and member of the PSP, was 
shot and killed 
<http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2019/Nov-14/495549-alaa-abou-fakher-to-be-laid-to-rest-thursday.ashx>under 
suspicious circumstances by a member of the army following a verbal 
altercation over the roadblock in Khaldeh. He is believed to have helped 
organize the roadblock.

The man who shot him was the driver of a relative and member of Mount 
Lebanon army intelligence. They “knew each other well,” according to 
local media reports. In conspiracy-riven Lebanon, many privately 
speculated that Joumblatt had him killed.

As tensions escalate, suspicion and conspiratorial speculation have 
become prevalent. No one believes the official story about anything. A 
week after his death, massive billboards of Abou Fakher were erected in 
downtown Beirut calling him “the martyr of Lebanon and the revolution 
against the oppressors.” There is speculation that Joumblatt himself 
paid for these billboards.

At Nahr El Kalb, Lebanese Forces supporters began erecting a cement wall 
inside a tunnel to block the highway as they did during the civil war. 
This sparked panic that a new civil conflict was about to erupt.

The roadblocks are organized and coordinated through WhatsApp groups. 
They ebb and flow depending on the latest outrage of the day. As of this 
writing, the roadblocks have ceased, but that could and will likely 
change tomorrow or perhaps next week. When these roadblocks receive 
coverage, those behind them are always referred to as “protesters” but 
their political affiliations are almost invariably omitted, as are their 
acts of flagrant intimidation.

What earns one the title of protester in the media is all about 
political affiliation. FPM, Hezbollah and Amal supporters are routinely 
castigated by their opponents as thugs and hooligans while the protests 
in their support are dismissed as marginal. For example, when some 
20,000 FPM supporters drove to Baabda with several convoys that took up 
some five to ten kilometers of the highway to show their support for the 
President who is the leader of their party, local media mocked and 
dismissed them.

When an FPM supporter shot in the air at protesters comprised of 
Lebanese Forces supporters who had been blocking the highway in Jal el 
Dib, his political affiliation was reported and he was branded a thug. 
Yet the political affiliation of those blocking the highway has scarcely 
ever been disclosed in media accounts. They are simply referred to 
simply as protesters.

In private quarters, it is well known which parties are blocking which 
roads, but scarcely anyone dares to speak the truth publicly because of 
the fear of delegitimizing the movement as a whole. By refusing to name 
the bad actors, members of the movement are essentially opening up the 
protests as cover for the dangerous game carried out by the political 
parties doing the blocking.

None of these parties want a war, yet they are using the threat of a war 
to pressure their adversaries – especially Hezbollah and FPM – into 
making concessions. It is brinksmanship at its most cynical.

And it is likely being encouraged by the US, which makes no secret of 
its ambition to reverse the political gains made by Hezbollah and its 
partners in the 2018 elections. Perhaps all the street pressure will 
translate into concessions. But there is also the chance it could lead 
to an all-out war.

And then there is the role of the army and army intelligence. In 
Lebanon, everyone is vying for power.

Joseph Aoun, the head of the Lebanese army, has ambitions for the 
presidency. It is widely rumored that he has not spoken to President 
Michel Aoun in weeks. The tension between the two highlights another 
friction point that the US has sought to exploit.

The Lebanese army is trained and equipped by the US 
<https://lb.usembassy.gov/fact-sheet-u-s-lebanon-military-assistance-and-defense-cooperation/>and 
dependent on Washington and the EU for its survival. Over 32,000 members 
of the Lebanese army have received training from the US and 80 percent 
of the army’s equipment comes from the US. The belief in the US – as 
argued recently by the former US ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman 
<https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/11/01/with-lebanon-making-fragile-progress-now-is-the-wrong-time-to-pull-u-s-assistance/>– 
is that by empowering the Lebanese Army, Hezbollah will become obsolete.

When Trump’s national security council announced a hold on $105 million 
in aid to the Lebanese army, hawkish pro-Israel Democratic lawmakers 
Eliot Engel and Ted Deutch urged the administration to reconsider. “As 
Hezbollah grows in sophistication and capability, it is critical the LAF 
[Lebanese Armed Forces] continues to grow and serve as the sole 
legitimate defender of Lebanese sovereignty and security,” they argued 
in a letter 
<https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/_cache/files/1/d/1d24fcaa-be96-4fba-aac4-ddbe7ff7628d/5F2FEC146CE4D8D6AEDB3F158E778C73.11-8-19---chairman-engel-deutch-letter-to-omb-nsc-re-lebanon-fmf.pdf>to 
the White House that clearly signaled their desire to isolate Hezbollah.

On December 2, the Trump administration ceded to the pressure and 
released <https://apnews.com/ed82bdb9355544cabc43f2aa5a0de7e9> the 
military aid package.

*In the South, Hezbollah and Amal clash*

Western and Gulf media have attempted to portray the protests as an 
uprising against Hezbollah 
<https://www.france24.com/en/20191022-lebanon-s-hezbollah-under-rare-street-pressure>, 
losing themselves in an anti-Iran fantasy. There may be some elements of 
the protests that have chanted against Hezbollah and their weapons, but 
they reflect a small minority. Despite all outside attempts to co-opt 
the movement, the protests remain solidly focused on opposing corruption 
and the government as a whole.

Meanwhile, the international media has continued to erase the Hezbollah 
supporters who were crucial to the first two days of protests. The 
Western press has also ignored the ever-present chants against Israel 
<https://twitter.com/raniakhalek/status/1193192694912364545?s=21>and 
burning of American and Israeli flags.

When Amal supporters from a nearby Shia neighborhood beat up protesters 
in downtown Beirut for blocking the main road, Western media falsely 
identified them as Hezbollah 
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-29/bloody-fistfights-at-beirut-roadblocks-raise-pressure-on-hariri>.

And when clashes broke out in Nabatiyeh, a town in southern Lebanon that 
is dominated by Hezbollah and Amal, Western and local media zeroed in on 
the violence. Local protesters, with communists among them, had been 
violently cleared out by local municipal police, including supporters of 
Hezbollah and Amal.

Hezbollah and the Lebanese Communist Party (LCP) have a notoriously 
antagonistic history. Some in the LCP blame Hezbollah for being 
complicit in the government’s corruption and they were outraged when 
Hezbollah supporters in the municipal police attacked their comrades in 
the Nabatiyeh protests. Hezbollah supporters maintain that LCP holds a 
grudge against them for fighting the communists and absorbing much of 
their Shia base during the 1980s.

With this background of conflict, it is no surprise that the LCP has 
been harshly critical of Hezbollah throughout the protests, as have many 
leftist groups.

This bickering has been exploited by the Western press and Gulf-funded 
outlets, which also celebrated the resignations at Al Akhbar 
<https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2019/11/4/pro-hezbollah-newspaper-hit-with-resignations-for-its-pro-government-line>, 
one of the most widely read newspapers in Lebanon and a rare outlet that 
is explicitly pro-resistance and anti-imperialist.

The disproportionate focus on these rifts obscured the reality of 
southern Lebanon, where tensions have been brewing between Amal and 
Hezbollah. Amal and Hezbollah were rivals in the civil war. These two 
forces have already engaged in a conflict referred to as “the war of the 
brothers”  – its name inspired by Shia families in the South turning 
against one another according to their members’ allegiance to Amal and 
Hezbollah.

Hezbollah has been compelled to maintain a peaceful alliance with Amal 
in spite of the rampant corruption of its rival’s leadership. It is 
determined to avoid another Shia civil war and maintain a powerful 
coalition in the government. Meanwhile, Amal leader Nabih Berri, a civil 
war-era warlord who has been speaker of the parliament since the end of 
the civil war, has enriched himself on the back of his community. Many 
Shias are angry about Berri’s corruption and during the protests openly 
chanted against him and his wife Randa.

Berri has also demonstrated his willingness to side with the US and 
Israel against Hezbollah, at least behind the scenes and for purely 
opportunistic reasons. According to Wikileaks cables 
<https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06BEIRUT2407_a.html>, during 
Israel’s 2006 war on Lebanon, Berri told the US ambassador at the time 
that the war’s potential to weaken Hezbollah was a positive development 
and he decried how few Hezbollah fighters Israel had managed to kill.

Fear of Amal, hatred of corrupt leadership, and lack of ideology

In Tyre, protesters tore down Berri’s posters and torched the Tyre Rest 
House Resort, which they believe is owned by Randa Berri, though Nabih 
Berri denied it 
<http://nna-leb.gov.lb/en/show-news/108760/nna-leb.gov.lb/en>. When I 
visited Tyre two weeks later, hundreds of new posters of Berri had been 
erected that read, “the guarantor of Lebanon” and “we are all with you 
[Berri].”

The posters surrounded the small protest encampment located in a 
roundabout on the beach road. The protest was part art fair, part 
concert for families, with liberals and a few leftists filling the 
ranks. Demonstrators were careful not to name leaders like Berri in 
their chants and when interviewed, they often spoke in vague terms out 
of fear of Amal. Later in the night, Amal members provoked the 
protesters in a familiar attempt at intimidation.

Scenes like this are playing out in smaller towns too.

Residents of the southern town of Machghara say Amal is taking names of 
protesters, deterring many from participating. As in Tyre, Amal 
emblazoned posters of Berri and new Amal flags around the streets to 
intimidate.

At the protest in Tyre, blaring music made it difficult to have a 
meaningful conversation with any activists. But I managed to interview a 
few organizers, none of whom liked one another.

One woman rushed to me after I interviewed a protest organizer to insist 
to me, “He’s not a legitimate protester. He left when the Sayyad [Hassan 
Nasrallah] told people to leave. So he has no right to speak for the 
movement.” Everyone I spoke to at the Tyre protest was supportive of 
Hezbollah as a resistance organization to Israel. All they wanted, they 
said, was a secular government that could provide basic services – 
hardly a rebellion against Hezbollah.

If there is anti-Hezbollah sentiment to be found, it would be in 
Tripoli, Lebanon’s second largest city and the site of ongoing sectarian 
violence. It is also one of the poorest areas of Lebanon. Yet in 
Tripoli’s Al-Nour Square, no one seemed to be protesting Hezbollah. Like 
virtually everyone else around the country, they were railing against 
economic inequality.

The overwhelming majority of people at this protest were unemployed. And 
they had erected an odd mix of banners: one outlining the values of the 
protest (nonviolent, nonsectarian, etc), another listing important sites 
in the city, and then one by families of Islamist prisoners demanding 
the release of their loved ones.

Of the dozens of people I spoke to, only one mentioned Hezbollah. “Part 
of the problem is we [Sunnis] don’t have anyone but Hariri, and he 
doesn’t have guns like Hezbollah and Amal. We have nothing,” said an 
unemployed 28-year-old father of three. There was also a great deal of 
praise for Turkey’s President Erdogan, but this is nothing out of the 
ordinary for conservative Tripoli.

It seemed that everyone in this protest had a complaint about the high 
cost of living and inability to provide for their families or pay for 
necessary medical procedures. Unlike the protesters in downtown Beirut 
who insisted on having a leaderless movement, people in Tripoli were 
desperate for a charismatic leader. And while they yearned a fresh face 
to vote for, they had no one in mind.

When asked if they would vote for any of the alternative groups involved 
in the protests, they responded in the negative. One of the demands of 
the protests has been early elections. But it is unlikely that early 
elections would produce results much different than those in the 2018 
elections, in which the civil society alliance of alternative parties 
won only one seat in parliament, which ultimately went to a woman in Sabaa.

There was little political organizing to be found in these protest 
camps, except perhaps for the LCP holding a discussion in a nearby 
garden about the importance of opening up public spaces. Otherwise, 
people just sat around chatting about the revolution, waiting to be 
organized.

As the festivities filled up, vendors whipped out cotton candy, the 
music started pumping, and a protest instantly transformed into a 
nighttime carnival. The almost instant depoliticization of the event 
made me wonder who exactly was behind the music.

Scenes like these help explain why protesters tend to be so short on 
political education. They are desperate for a better life but there are 
few organizations with the capacity and resources to organize them on a 
massive scale, especially in a leftist direction that highlights the 
root causes of their plight: neoliberalism and imperialism. A man in the 
protest ranks highlighted the problem when he exclaimed to me, “Please 
someone save us, even if it’s America. I don’t care.”


      Cooperation and integration versus the West’s recipe for
      fragmentation

The Lebanese economy is facing imminent collapse. Unemployment is 
spreading, prices are spiking and the street price of the Lebanese lira 
continues to devalue. There is little that can be done to avoid the 
collapse, which has been thirty years in the making.

The implosion of the Lebanese economy is spilling over into Syria 
<https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-11-29/syria-latest-financial-crisis>, 
which was already teetering on the edge of economic collapse due to 
eight years of war, government mismanagement and US sanctions designed 
to collapse the country. Syria was relying on Lebanon as its access 
point to purchase goods for imports. Now that too is gone. Lebanon’s 
economic crisis is also affecting Syrian elites who placed their money 
in Lebanese banks during the war and cannot access it now due to the 
collapse of the banking sector.

One solution being floated for Lebanon’s economic woes is greater 
cooperation and economic integration with Syria. Syria, unlike Lebanon, 
has the capacity to produce with thousands of factories and a labor 
force. Lebanon produces nothing but has the ability to market and 
distribute without being hindered by international sanctions. 
Unfortunately none of this is on the reform agenda of the protests.

Iraq, too, could be a market for Lebanese dairy and agricultural 
products, which would transit through Syria if the Americans ever 
unblocked the Tanf crossing between Syria and Iraq. Hezbollah’s leader, 
Hassan Nasrallah, has mentioned this in his speeches. The solution for 
Lebanon and its neighbors is cooperation and integration, not further 
fragmentation as is promoted by the West.

One figure involved in the protest who is pushing the idea of regional 
economic integration with Syria is Charbel Nahas, secretary general of 
the political party Citizens In A State (CIAS). While CIAS refrains from 
identifying itself as left or right, it is clear from its platform that 
the party has a leftist progressive bent. CIAS has influenced some of 
the protest discourse but not when it comes to Syria, which is viewed 
negatively by the dominant forces on the ground in the protests.

The Lebanese Communist Party, for its part, is advocating 
nationalization of the banks and the cancelation of the public debt as 
well as other debts, though this too is not a part of the mainstream 
discourse.

Meanwhile, the US has been scheming to exploit Lebanon’s economic 
desperation against Hezbollah.

After Hariri’s resignation, the Washington Institute for Near East 
Policy (WINEP), a pro-Israel think tank, hosted a panel discussion 
<https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/the-lebanon-protests-views-from-beirut-and-policy-implications> on 
the protests sweeping Lebanon. The event was moderated by WINEP fellow 
Hanin Ghaddar, a native of Lebanon who has devoted her career to 
lobbying against Hezbollah. She was elated by Hariri’s resignation.

Among the panelists was Makram Rabah, a lecturer at the American 
University of Beirut and consultant with Quantum Communications, a 
marketing firm that played a crucial role in the so-called Cedar 
Revolution in 2005 that ousted the Syrian army from Lebanon and birthed 
the pro-American anti-Hezbollah March 14 coalition.

Rabah was joined by Lokman Slim, who runs Hayya Bina, a Western-backed 
NGO that has partnered with an array of US government-funded entities, 
including the National Democratic Institute 
<https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08BEIRUT579_a.html>, a subsidiary of 
the National Endowment for Democracy and partner of the US Institute for 
Peace <https://www.usip.org/recent-grant-program-award-recipients>, 
which were both founded under Reagan to push regime change in adversary 
countries under the cover of “democracy promotion.”

“The USG has been working quietly with Slim for some time” according 
to Wikileaks cables 
<https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08BEIRUT488_a.html>, which also 
showcased Hayya Bina’s close coordination with the US embassy 
<https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08BEIRUT579_a.html>.

Through Hayya Bina, Slim runs the website Shiawatch.org 
<http://www.shiawatch.com/>, which supposedly monitors the malign 
activities of Shia groups the US doesn’t like. It’s difficult to imagine 
Western support for a website called JewWatch, but anti-Shia bigotry has 
been normalized by Western governments as a tool against Iran.

The WINEP panelists emphasized the need for the US to harness the 
protests against Hezbollah.

Mike Pompeo expressed his support for the protests, claiming that 
protesters “want Hezbollah and Iran out of their country 
<https://twitter.com/walid970721/status/1201768186783420416?s=21>.” 
Hezbollah is Lebanese, so Pompeo’s declaration was essentially a call 
for expelling Lebanese people the US does not like from their native 
country.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also threw his support 
<https://twitter.com/hadinasrallah/status/1202348322025037824?s=21> behind 
the protests, framing them as a movement against Hezbollah.

Statements like these encapsulated the danger the protests pose against 
an imminent economic collapse. So far, American involvement has been 
minimal and the protests have remained focused on the organic concerns 
of ordinary Lebanese citizens. But if the US chooses to escalate its 
involvement, the situation could take a nasty turn.


Rania Khalek is an independent journalist living in Beirut, Lebanon. She 
is the co-host of the Unauthorized Disclosure 
<https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/unauthorized-disclosure/id824470090?mt=2> 
podcast.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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