Michael Young in Ottawa: Mixing narratives on Lebanon and the 'Arab Spring'

Summary from video:

Lebanon in 2005 wasn’t probably spark for the Arab spring but there are ingredients that are the same from what we are seeing in other Arab countries now and before 2011.

What happened in 2005?  Iraqi elections, Lebanon’s Beirut Spring.  No one mentions now these two events when speaking about Arab Spring.  But many of the features of these two events are present in the Arab Spring.

In 2005, ten and hundred thousands occupy Martyr Square demanding the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, the resignation of the government and the security apparatus. Syria was a key actor in the assassination of Rafik Hariri.

Syrians pulled out of Lebanon after 29 years of continuous presence.  Lebanon earned this.  It wasn’t a revolution, it was an emancipatory movement.

Those who went to Martyr Square represented all walks of Lebanese society except the Shias.

In investigating this moment Young finds in it 4 major salient issues:

1.     Use of public space

2.     Demand for overhaul of instruments of repression

3.     Role of foreign intervention

4.     Aftermath

These 4 salient issues can be found in current Arab revolutions.

1.     Use of public space: The need to secure a public space with symbolic and geographic relevance, under the eyes of media.  In the case of Lebanon, Martyr Square was an easy location, green line, place of reconciliation and the place where Hariri was buried.  It is next to the old city that Hariri built and to An-Nahar newspaper building.  The public will come to visit the tomb of Hariri.  The security cannot prevent them from doing so.  They assemble after the visit and the place becomes difficult to clear, under the watch of the media.  There was a replication of this in Arab revolutions: Tahrir, Pearl roundabout, different and rival squares in Yemen, a whole city in Libya, Benghazi, where a rival government was established.  In Syria revolts proliferated in many cities but took hold in Hama, Homs and Kurdish area.  Public space occupation becomes a tent city and who occupies a tent city?  Young people.  Idealistic, convinced of their position.  It is in this context that frustration is high.

2.     Instruments of repression:  In 2005, senior security chiefs were removed by the government under popular pressure. It doesn’t happen often that security personnel leave office under pressure from street.  When Jamil el Sayyed  was removed, Young called Qasir to congratulate him because of his editorials against the security apparatus but Qassir was assassinated 15 days later and Young is convinced that the two events are connected, the removal of El-Sayyed and the death of Qassir.

Security apparatuses are difficult to change or remove.   Lebanese protesters in 2005 played the differences and the competition between different tools of repression, security apparatus and army, playing on the nationalism of the Lebanese army who avoided attacking protesters.  The army also was playing it both ways, implementing order but not firing on crowd.   The value of any revolution in the aftermath is by the severity order is imposed.

In Egypt and Tunisia the army didn’t fire on the crowd. 

In Libya, it is the balance of power between two armies that was responsible for order.  No accountable security force in Libya, same in Syria, it is the balance of power.

3.     Foreign intervention (outside intervention).  Lebanon didn’t get its due in 2005.  Chirac was for foreign intervention but Bush came late to it.  The trend in the Arab world was against foreign intervention, not against Hezbollah and Syria.  Lebanon's revolution was seen as Bourgeois revolt (Prada revolution).  Those who could protest were relatively rich and educated.  Liberals in the west were more pro-March 8 because they felt the movement was more popular.  In the Arab world today, foreign intervention is being accepted in Libya, in Syria.  Now it’s OK.  It is not what it used to be for Iraq and Lebanon back in 2005, there is no more opposition in the Arab world to foreign intervention.    We shouldn’t underestimate the role narratives play in the acceptance of foreign intervention.  In the narrative, you have to make people (natives) part of the foreign intervention, mix narratives, and inside one meant for the outside, hence the importance of placards in English, and an outside one meant for the  inside.  Make people on both sides want to be part of it.  In Lebanon narratives played an important role.  Here Young mentions the ad agency role in Lebanon's revolution.  Symbolism and colours created a narrative that was both mobilising on the inside and easy for western audience to understand what was going on.  

Lebanese understood how the west wanted them to be!

There is symbolism in Tahrir, in Benghazi.

One thing that became important in Lebanon is the STL functioning under a Canadian prosecutor.  It is the first time the UN investigates in other countries and it will be replicated.  Young said he was disappointed with the STL, accused Brammertz who he called the second prosecutor of derailing the investigation, but says that there might still be possibilities for other indictments, Syria.

4.     Aftermath.  In Lebanon: parliamentary elections, political acrimony, 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war, domestic conflict leading to almost armed conflict.

The aftermath tend to shape the perception of the revolution.  It is a mistake to interpret things with such an absolutism and only from the point of view of the aftermath.  The outcome shouldn’t delegitimize the initial impulse if it fails.   Such delegitimisations go like this: ‘if Islamists win, then revolution is undemocratic’  This is currently the problem at the center of Arab revolts. It is a shame to adopt these interpretations because they fall into Arab dictators argument ‘either them or us’.  ‘I am not religious, but Islamists are legitimate, they’re 60% in Tunisia’.  We shouldn’t assume that if Islamists do well then the initial revolt failed.  Instruments of repression are important in the aftermath.  The aftermath won’t be like the Canadian system but at least could have some accountability.  The accountability of the instruments of repression is a question that the west has to ask (and answer?)

Conclusion of the talk:  there is a recurring pattern between 2005 and 2011.  2011 is the second impulse.  We can find some authenticity in this recurring pattern.  Lebanon in 2005 is as authentic as Iraq in 2005 as Tahrir in 2011.

Authenticity bestowed from outside, the tag of inauthenticity for Lebanon in 2005 was made by Arab world.

There are 20' questions at the end of the video.  Questions and answers are interesting.

Is the Hariri family financing Al Qaida and are the neocons profiting from the operation?

Enough of the Hariris, their Saudi mentors, and their neocon 'friends'. Since Rafiq Hariri died, Lebanon is on the brink of civil war again. The political heir, Saad Hariri, has been, like his father, pressuring the international community into accomplishing his political goals in Lebanon, at the expenses of the stability of the country. With his wealth, his closeness to the Saudi reigning family and, by extension, with the world class neocons including the newly elected French president Nicolas Sarkozy and his foreign affairs minister Bernard Kouchner (a doctor who supported the Iraq war), and his friendship with Chirac, former French president, Hariri has been pulling all the strings in order to establish a permanent vassalization of Lebanon to the west with himself as the self appointed viceroy. My husband calls him Harmani. When we visited Lebanon in 2005 it was after a victorious parliamentary election for Hariri won in the wave of indignation about his father's assassination. He was on all posters, sometimes under his father's picture (Lebanon is the only country where dead people can campaign in elections), sometimes standing with a smile, a well trimmed beard, a hand in his pocket (which we all know is anything but empty) and a cellphone in another hand. My husband asked who was on the poster and I told him. We laughed when he confided that he thought that this might have been an ad for Armani. Since then we call him Harmani. But now is not the time to laugh. Now is the time to cry. Lebanon is on the brink of civil war again, thanks, among other things, to this little corrupt rich brat and his overambitious father.
Now is also the time for some less narrower perspective from what we read in the press on what is going on in lebanon now. And as always these perspectives cannot be found easily in the mainstream press, especially when it comes to matters related to the middle east.

Alain Gresh writes on his blog:

More than one party can be interested in taking profit from the actual instability in Lebanon. Syria, without doubt. But also the actual Lebanese government trying to force the international community into adopting an authoritarian UN security council resolution imposing on Lebanon an international tribunal on the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, despite a clear hostility to this kind of tribunal from the Lebanese opposition. The actual Israeli government as well as the US also have interest in destabilising Lebanon. However, contrary to what is generally written in the press, what is hapenning in lebanon now is not a confrontation between the Lebanese people with the backing of the international community, and Syria and its « agents ». There is a multilayered confrontation in Lebanon. One of these layers is the division of the country between two distinct political camps with equal importance. On one side we have the Sanyura government backed by Hariri and the Sunnis, the Lebanese forces and half the Christian community, and the Druzes. On the other side we have the Shias with the Amal and Hezbollah movements, as well as the Free Patriotic Movement of Michel Aoun with half the Christian community. Is France making a good choice by taking sides in this conflict ? Bernard Kouchner, Sarkozy's foreign minister, and notable French neocon, is today in Beyrouth to support the Lebanese people and the Sanyura government while it is the Palestinian people who are being bombed. For what ? For a bank robbery that turned ugly ? Or for what to come in Lebanon ?

Bien des gens ont intérêt à l’instabilité au Liban. Le gouvernement syrien sans doute, mais aussi la majorité libanaise actuelle (qui cherche à pousser la communauté internationale à une résolution autoritaire pour créer un tribunal international sur l’assassinat de Rafic Hariri), le gouvernement israélien, les Etats-Unis, etc. Mais, contrairement à ce qui s’écrit généralement, ce qui se passe dans ce pays n’est pas un affrontement entre, d’un côté, le peuple libanais allié à la communauté internationale et de l’autre la Syrie avec ses « agents ». Se superposent plusieurs affrontements, dont le premier divise le Liban lui-même en deux camps d’à peu près égale importance. En privilégiant l’un des deux, la France fait-elle le bon choix ?

Nidal, at Loubnan Ya Loubnan, has an interesting perspective. Nidal's perspective shows the ideological and practical links between the different parties interested in Lebanon's descent into chaos. One can fairly say that these parties are organised in a loose network of interests in which the main puppeteers of the unfolding tragedy are the Hariri family closely linked to the Saudis, and by extension to the neocons. Nidal shows also how the Hariri family is financing Muslim Sunni extremists in Lebanon and worse, their migrations into Lebanon. One can fairly assume that we have here a paradigm for both the mobility and the survival of global sunni jihad relying entirely on local respectable sources of money totally immune to scrutiny and close to the neocons.

Nidal starts with an article written today by the Lebanese and Hariri paid journalist Michael Young in which Young tries to refute Seymour Hersh's assertions of March 2007 about the financing and the support provided by Hariri and the Lebanese government to Sunni extremist groups in Lebanon in order to counter the influence of Hezbollah. In his article, Young explains that if the Hariri family did in fact paid for a bail out of prison for members of Jund-Al-Sham, who later joined Fatah El-Islam already implemented in Nahr El-Bared in Northern Lebanon, it was to buy peace in the south. However, this assertion, claims Nidal, which Lebanese consider as normal political dealings, has the potential to open to us a window on how the Hariri family does Politics in Lebanon.

What is interesting about Jund Al-Sham is that this organisation, who is on the Russian list of terrorist organisations but not on the US list, has claimed responsibility for the Hariri assassination but this was discarded by the Mehlis commission who operated entirely under the mentorship of Hariri. Jund Al-Sham has nonetheless claimed responsibility for three of the fourteen carbombs investigated by the Mehlis commission. Jund Al-Sham has also claimed responsibility for the 2006 bombing fo the US embassy in Damascus and for the killing of a Hezbollah member in 2004. Moreover, two of its members who infiltrated the Ain El Hilweh camp in south Lebanon, were arrested by the Lebanese army in June 2006 for the murder of two members of the Islamic Jihad in south Lebanon. One of them confessed working for the Mossad. The army seized at his house documents proving that some members of this extremist organisation have actually trained in Israel. Hussein Khattab, brother to prominent sheikh Jamal Khattab suspected of organising recruitement fro Al Qaida Iraq, was also arrested in June 2006 by the Lebanese army on the charge of directing a spy netwrok for Irsael in palestinian refugee camps in southern Lebanon. There was very little information in the news about this incident.

Knowing all this, how the Hariri family, as Michael Young claims, could have given money to members of Jund El-Sham ? Michael Young seems to considerthis as a gaffe. I think we should consider this as a serious financing for extremists groups with the goal of destabilising Lebanon opening wide the doors for foreign intervention as in Iraq. It is more than time to hold this family, who claims to have reconstructed Lebanon and who is now pushing the whole country into civil war and destruction, accountable.

One of the many links between Fatah El-Islam, Fatah organisation in Palestinian camps, and the Hariri family, the last two being the actual and semi-official allies of the US administration in its 'war on terror'.

And between assassinations, denials and justifications the march 14th movement and the Hariri clan are confirming in a way their ties to Sunni extremist groups related to Al Qaida. Here is two more:
Ahmad Fatfat, minister of sports and interior minister by interim during the Israeli agression on Lebanon.
Bahiyya Hariri, sister of Rafiq and aunt of Saad (the chief of the actual parliamentary majority in Lebanon and major fund provider) deputy member of the Lebanese parliament.
Assassination of Abu Jandal by Lebanese Security Forces (special army of Sanyura and Hariri.

Fatah El-Islam's alleged bank robbery: nothing more than a scheduled visit gone awry at the cashier to collect the regular amount send by Hariri. They discovered that the payments were stopped and helped themselves.


A very important and remaining question is how the lebanese army, which is under the authority of the president (who is opposed to the Hariri family), was drawn into this fight ? The answer is here. This answer also explains why the Hezbollah is supporting the army. Hassan Nasrallah will be speaking to Lebanese on Friday evening to explain his party's position. Stay tuned.

Now, the US in all that ? As Always in the Frontline when it comes to fighting Al Qaida.

Please read these short notes from prominent blogger Angry Arab, with links:

Lebanese government asks the US for 280 millions in military aid to fight 200 members of Fatah El-Islam.

Six US cargo flights with ammunitions are scheduled to land in Lebanon over the next two days.

US assistant secretary of state David Welsh met with Lebanese army chief last week.

Interview

There is a wealth of information in this interview on Nahr El-Bared's conflict of Angry Arab blogger As'ad Abu Khalil by Ali Abunimah from Electronic Intifada.