Qifa Nabki | A Lebanese Political Blog

Lebanese President Michel Sleiman just returned from a productive trip to Russia. Apparently, he modified Lebanon’s earlier request for a fleet of MiG-29′s, replacing them with an order for several Mi-24 attack helicopter gunships. A sensible idea, to my mind, given the fact that a MiG-29 can fly the length of Lebanon in 6 minutes, whereas a Mi-24 can actually be used for something relevant to Lebanon’s security needs. See here for a history of the Mi-24′s combat history; the closest American-made equivalent would probably be the UH-60 Blackhawk.

And speaking of the U.S., the Pentagon is planning to outfit the Lebanese Air Force with Hawker-Beechcraft AT-6′s (see above left). Don’t sneer.

Also, I recommend this piece by Mitch Prothero in The National, about the infamous Hezbollah helicopter shooting incident. Apparently, the accident was the result of an ignored warning by the Lebanese Army. Here’s an excerpt, but be sure to read the whole thing.

The army officer also blamed the army’s lack of proper communications equipment.

“We aren’t sophisticated enough on the subtle things, like secure communications lines. Hizbollah has a secure fibre optic network connecting all its major bases. We have telephones. During the [2008] siege of Nahr Bared [refugee camp], we realised that most of our guys were using mobile phones to plan military operations.”

Mr Goksel agrees, arguing that even if given the proper information, a Lebanese soldier might face a choice between relaying the important information over an unsecure line, almost certainly monitored by the Israelis, and doing nothing at all.

“Imagine a young officer learns that Hizbollah says to stay away from a field because they have intelligence that Israel might attack it,” he said. “If that officer only has a telephone that everyone knows the Israelis closely monitor, he’d be committing treason to call his headquarters in Beirut to warn them that Hizbollah thinks an Israeli attack could be coming and to get rid of the choppers. Imagine that choice?”

Finally, Joshua Landis has an interesting round-up of the fall-out of Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah’s meeting with Bashar al-Asad in Damascus.

Click to enlarge

Information International, the polling and research firm that publishes The Monthly, one of my favorite publications  about Lebanese politics and economics, released the results of an interesting survey in January on the subject of abolishing confessionalism in Lebanon.

I was traveling at the time and never had a chance to blog about it, but I’ve put together a graph of some of the most relevant figures. Click the graphic to the right to enlarge it.

Update: This is the full text (PDF) of the article about the poll that was published in as-Safir. It contains additional information about the study, including figures for other sects.

Wouldn’t it be great if Lebanon’s problems could be solved by saying, simply: “There’s an app for that?” Now they can. (Click to enlarge)

Thanks to the wonderfully talented Maya Zankoul for the illustrations. For previous collaborations between Qifa Nabki and Maya, click here.

As Michael Young points out in his column in The Daily Star today, there’s a decent chance that Lebanon will soon find itself in a bit of a tight spot vis-à-vis the proposed UN resolution to sanction Iran.

Apparently, Obama administration officials believe that they can persuade China to get onboard, which would then put the resolution to a vote in the UN Security Council. Lebanon is currently the Arab representative, and Young’s point is that this issue has the potential to severely test the unity of Saad al-Hariri’s young administration:

If Lebanon votes in favor of a sanctions resolution, it will incur the wrath of Hizbullah; if it votes against a resolution, it risks provoking the ire of Arab states who want to see Iran contained, above all Saudi Arabia. And if Lebanon announces beforehand that it will abstain, the decision, if poorly promoted diplomatically, might provoke criticism that it is being wishy-washy, while the permanent Security Council members will be angry not to have the sole Arab representative supporting them. A choice to abstain could also lead to politicization of the vote issue, which would be used as leverage against Hariri and his majority, not least by a Syrian regime that relishes playing on Lebanese contradictions for its own political benefit.

What are Lebanon’s options? The only realistic option is for Beirut to very carefully prepare the ground for regional and international acceptance of a Lebanese abstention. Voting for or against a sanctions resolution will only split the government, and the country, forcing a confrontation that can only be resolved through the compromise of an abstention.

Just because Lebanon is damned-if-it-does, damned-if-it-doesn’t, that don’t mean you can’t vote! See the poll above.

Update: See here for the International Crisis Group’s briefing paper about China’s attitudes regarding the Iranian nuclear issue.

What began as an apparent mistranslation of Ehud Barak’s remarks regarding Israel’s peace negotiations with Syria has snowballed into the clearest possible articulation of a new strategic posture by Syria and Hezbollah towards Israel.

Let’s rewind the tape to last week.

On February 1st, Ehud Barak made some remarks at an IDF gathering, saying something to the effect that if Syria and Israel did not resume peace negotiations in the near future, sooner or later the two countries would find themselves at war. It was a potshot aimed at Netanyahu and his hawkish cohort, who have refused to pick up where Olmert left off with Bashar al-Assad in late 2008.

Two days later, Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid al-Mouallem responded to Barak’s remarks, reading them as a declaration of war:

“One day you threaten Gaza, next day you threaten Lebanon, later Iran and now Syria,” Mouallem said at the news conference with his Spanish counterpart.

“Don’t test, you Israelis, the determination of Syria. You know that war this time would move to your cities. Come to your senses and choose the road of peace. This path is clear,” Mouallem warned.

Of course, we all know what happened next. The following day, Avigdor Lieberman donned his bouncer’s outfit and announced at a business conference that “Assad should know that if he attacks, he will not only lose the war. Neither he nor his family will remain in power.”

And so it goes. Washington has sought to calm the waters, in light of the fact that a new U.S. ambassador to Syria is supposed to be appointed imminently. But Nasrallah’s speech this evening will ensure that the flare-up will continue to be stoked in the press for at least another week or so. Here’s the takeaway:

في لبنان بنية تحتية وفي فلسطين أيضاً، نحن لدينا مطار ونصف وهم لديهم مطارات، نحن لدينا بعض محطات الكهرباء وهم لديهم محطات كبرى، لديهم مصاف للنفط ونحن بعض المصاف، البنية التحتية في اسرائيل أهم من البنية التحتية لدينا، أقول اليوم لهم ما يلي، ويمكنهم التأكد من هذه المعطيات: إذا ضربتم مطار الشهيد رفيق الحريري الدولي في بيروت سنضرب مطار بن غوريون في تل أبيب. إذا ضربتم موانئنا سنقصف موانئكم، وإذا ضربتم مصافي النفط عندنا أو قصفتم مصانعنا سنقصف مصانعكم ومصافي نفطكم. أنا اليوم، في ذكرى السيد عباس والشيخ راغب والحاج عماد أعلن وأقبل هذا التحدي نحن في لبنان شعب ومقاومة وجيش وطني قادرون بقوة لأن نحمي بلدنا ولسنا بحاجة لأحد في هذا العالم ليحمي لبنان

“In Lebanon there is infrastructure, and in [occupied] Palestine as well. We have an airport and they have airports. We have power plants and they have very large ones. They have oil refineries and we do too. The infrastructure in Israel is much more advanced than ours. Today, I hereby tell them the following, and they can be assured of it: If you strike Rafiq al-Hariri International Airport in Beirut, we will strike Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. If you strike our ports, we will strike your ports. And if you strike our refineries or our factories we will strike your factories and your refineries. Today, in the memory of Sayyed Abbas and Shaykh Raghib and al-Hajj Imad, I announce and accept this challenge. We, in Lebanon, as a people and a resistance and a national army are capable [of this] because we protect our country and we don’t need anyone in the world to protect Lebanon.”

There you have it. The rules have officially changed. Prior to 2000, Israel and Hezbollah operated according to an unspoken set of “tit-for-tat” conventions.  The July 2006 war and the Gaza war that followed it changed the rulebook, ushering in the new “Boss Has Gone Mad” strategy, with all of its attendant carnage.

Tonight, Nasrallah articulated Hezbollah’s response. Coupled with al-Mouallem’s vow to take the war to Israel’s cities, it seems we are finally getting an inkling of how a catastrophic war between the three countries might unfold.

Why now? Was this all really prompted by a misunderstanding of Barak’s remarks? I somehow doubt it. Messages between Israel and Syria rarely get lost in translation. More likely, to me, are the following scenarios: (a) Syria is trying to push the peace talks back onto the Obama administration’s radar screen, after more than a year of complete stagnation and frustration on such matters; or (b) Syria may be worried that the U.S. and Israel are getting closer to a strike on Iran, given the recent concordance with Russia, China, and Europe to target the Revolutionary Guards.

Then again, it may simply have been a case of crossed wires. Your thoughts?

Yesterday, Saad al-Hariri pulled his sponsorship of a conference held at Antonine University, in which a speaker quoted an “offensive” statement about Rafiq al-Hariri from a recently-published academic study. What was this offensive remark, you ask? That Rafiq al-Hariri was an efficient and productive leader who also happened to be corrupt, though not as corrupt as most other Lebanese prime ministers. Shocking, I know.

The media is having a field day with this issue. Here’s the news report in Naharnet, and here’s an article in al-Akhbar (thanks KT). In the meantime, why don’t we take a look at the academic study that was the source of the offensive statement (“The dynamics of effective corrupt leadership: Lessons from Rafik Hariri’s political career in Lebanon,” by Mark W. Neal and Richard Tansey.)

The article is thought-provoking, worth reading, and sure to generate controversy. Hariri-haters will dismiss it as a bunch of social-scientific claptrap meant to vindicate one of the most corrupt politicians in the history of the country, while Hariri-lovers (except, of course, for Saad himself, Fouad Saniora, Tarek Mitri, and all of the other Mustaqbal officians who stormed out of the conference) will find themselves nodding along in agreement with the basic argument, which is this:

“This article introduces the notion of “effective corrupt leadership” to distinguish those in public office who engage in corrupt practice, who are more effective, and better for their people, than alternatives. The paper examines a case of such leadership by discussing the career of the late Rafik Hariri, the Lebanese Prime Minister who initiated and achieved the rebuilding of Beirut after the Lebanese civil war between 1975 and 1990. Using the historical case-study method, an examination of Hariri’s activities allows us to appreciate the difficulties of achieving tangible welfare benefits in corrupt circumstances. Notably, the moralizing attacks by Hariri’s rivals show that while achieving and sustaining political powermay require corrupt practice, such practice can ultimately undermine the leader authority and power. This “blifil paradox” demonstrates how difficult it is to lead effectively in corrupt circumstances. Through a discussion of these difficulties and challenges, the article attempts to demonstrate the significance of “effective corrupt leadership”, both in terms of its impact upon people, and its importance for the refinement of our understanding of leadership.”

I’ve written to Leadership Quarterly to get permission to post this article here at QifaNabki.com, so you can feel free to download the entire text guilt-free.

Conspiracy Chronicles series, no. 6

Is the search-and-rescue ship Ocean Alert hunting for the victims of the tragic Ethiopian Airlines crash, or is it prospecting for gold?

So asks this article in al-Akhbar, no doubt prompted by the atmosphere of suspicion that has enveloped the post-crash drama. My sources tell me that everyone has a pet conspiracy theory. Here are some of the more outlandish ones:

(a) The plane was carrying 50 of the richest Lebanese Shiite businessmen and was blown up by some kind of salafist terror group.

(b) The plane was brought down by the Mossad in order to take out a wealthy Hezbollah financier.

(c) The plane was carrying some huge amount of gold, which is now being stolen by professional foreign prospectors on the ocean floor.

We apparently still don’t know the cause of the crash, but hopefully this bout of ridiculous conspiracy theorizing will come to an end soon. For those of you who would like to keep theorizing and are technically-inclined, check out the movement of the ship Ocean Alert during the past few weeks (thanks Toufoul).

Update: For even more conspiracy theories surrounding the crash, see this article in French Slate (thanks Tajaddod Youth).

Update 2: Michael Young joins in.

This must be the best National News Agency headline ever:

أفاد المندوب الأمني للوكالة الوطنية للاعلام، أن شخصا من آل زعيتر أطلق قذيفتين صاروخيتين في الهواء، في حي الشراونة في بعلبك، بعدما فشل في اختطاف فتاة

“A member from the Zoaiter family fired two RPGs in the air in Baalbek’s Sharawneh neighborhood after he failed to kidnap a girl.”

I love these guys. Anybody else would just shrug his shoulders if he failed to kidnap a girl. But not the Zoaiter boys. They don’t repress their rage; they express it in a healthy cathartic exercise involving shoulder-launched anti-tank weapons.

And “kidnap”? Really? I think that’s a little bit much. What it sounds like to me is that this guy asked a girl out on a date, and she told him to get lost. So he put a bag over her head and tried to stuff her in the trunk of his car, but she kneed him in the groin and fled. I’d hardly call that attempted kidnapping. As a friend wrote to me this morning, “In my day, we called it ‘a-courting’…”

I’m waiting for some enterprising graduate student to write a dissertation on the place of RPGs in the tribal customs of the Bekaa valley. Getting married? Graduating from high school? Celebrating a golden anniversary? An RPG makes everything just a little bit more meaningful.

It’s a little bit cheeky to have another post on the meaninglessness of proposed electoral reforms when we just got done discussing lowering the voting age, but I think this is worth discussing. ElectionGuerilla makes the point succinctly:

It’s helpful if we recognize that many of the arguments related to the debate on electoral reform stem purely from… political self-interest. As much as anything, the issue of expat voting shows this.

The argument is that expat voting would ensure ‘sectarian balance’.

First: Numbers. The voter register already includes all the citizens who have the right to vote, whether they are resident here or not. No new expat voters will be added unless Lebanon changes its citizenship laws.

Second: Impact. Under the current electoral system, or any new system that uses ‘regional districts, I would argue that expat voting – like lowering the voting age – will have limited confessional impact on the results. Christian expats will cast ballots for the districts where they are already registered and, in most cases, will have the chance only to vote for Christian MPs; something similar applies to Muslim expats. There are only a few areas that are sufficiently ‘multi-confessional’ that expat voting (like voting age) could conceivably make a confessional difference.

In fact, the major impact of allowing expat voting is that it would probably increase voter turnout in districts where a sizeable proportion of the electorate lives overseas. And this is the key: increasing voter turnout has a major impact on the “intra-confessional” politics of Lebanon. The reason why LF wants expat voting is not just that they simply want Christians to vote: they believe that expat voting allows their party to have a better chance of winning more votes than their opponents in Christian districts. That’s also why Kateab want it. That’s also why FPM wants it. And that’s also why Amal, Hezbollah and Future MPs – also parties with large constituencies overseas – supported the idea when it was debated in parliament in 2008.

Experiences of expat voting around the world shows that it is established or radicalized parties who benefit most from it, rather than independent or non-affiliated candidates, whose popularity usually rests on their local reputation in a community. This is especially the case if the parties have organized structures overseas, as do all Lebanese parties.

That doesn’t mean I think expat voting is a bad idea. I support it, especially if it ensure all Lebanese citizens get the right to vote. It’s just that i’d prefer to see some more logic and honesty in the wider political debate and not just on this blog.

Meanwhile, another reader, Ghassan Karam, points to an important feature of the proposed law to allow expats to vote: the fact that they will be required to vote in person at embassies and consulates:

المادة 104:

يحق لكل لبناني غير مقيم على الأراضي اللبنانية أن يمارس حق الاقتراع في السفارات والقنصليات اللبنانية وفقاً لأحكام هذا القانون، شرط أن يكون اسمه وارداً في القوائم الانتخابية وأن لا يكون ثمة مانع قانوني يحول دون حقه في الاقتراع.

المادة 110:

يجري الاقتراع في الخارج قبل عشرة أيام على الأكثر من الموعد المعين للإنتخابات في لبنان، حسب الدوائر الإنتخابية المعنية، بواسطة ظروف مصمَّغة غير شفافة من نموذج واحد تعتمدها وزارة الداخلية والبلديات وممهورة بخاتمها.

تفتح صناديق الاقتراع من الساعة السابعة صباحاً وحتى الساعة العاشرة ليلاً.

يوقع رئيس القلم الظرف ويسلمه إلى الناخب بعد أن يتحقق من هويته وورود إسمه على القائمة الإنتخابية.

يقترع الناخب بواسطة بطاقة الهوية اللبنانية أو جواز سفره اللبناني العادي الصالح.

يلزم الناخب بدخول المعزل ويضع في الظرف ورقة واحدة تشتمل على أسماء المرشحين الذين يريد انتخابهم ويضع بيده الظرف في صندوق الاقتراع.

يثبت اقتراع الناخب بتوقيعه أو بوضع بصمته وتوقيع أحد أعضاء قلم الاقتراع بجانب إسمه على لائحة الشطب الخاصة بكل عملية إنتخابية.

In the case of the United States, this will mean that if you don’t live in Washington, New York, or Los Angeles, you’ll have to travel to one of those cities to cast a vote. (Which, given the traffic in Lebanon these days, may not take as long as traveling to your ‘ancestral village’ from Beirut).

Click to zoom.

So, as is well-known, many Christians in Lebanon are worried about lowering the voting age to 18, because they think that this will swell the ranks of Muslim voters in a disproportionate way. Or so say Abu Michel and Abu Samir…

However, an informed reader of Qifa Nabki has made an astute intervention that busts the myth. ElectionGuerilla writes:

It’s time to look closer at the numbers quoted in the Matt Nash/NOW Lebanon article that you refer to. I presume the numbers it uses are based on the the Ministry of the Interior’s 2009 voter register data, although it isn’t clear where the MOI’s data on the 18+ year olds come from.

But assuming that it’s good data, the article only details the increase in each confessional group. As this perspective shows a 8-9% increase in the number of Sunni/Shia voters, perhaps this article is being used as a ’semi-scare story’ to encourage Christians to block lowering the voting age, using the hoary old argument that they want it balanced by expat voting. (Haven’t they seen that the 2008 law guarantees that registered expat citizens will vote in the next parliamentary elections?)

A far more relevant consideration would be whether lowering the voting age has a significant impact on the electorate as a whole. And here, using the data from this article, there’s a very different picture.

* Sunnis go from 27.1% of all voters to 27.5% – an increase of 0.4%

* Shia go from 26.5% to 27.1% – a increase of 0.6%

* Maronites drop from 21.7% to 21.3% – a fall of 0.4%

and so on.

The overall ‘change’ is that the proportion of Muslim voters rises from 60% to 61% while the proportion of Christian voters falls from 40% to 39%. Hardly “a deluge of new voters [that] would upset Lebanon’s sectarian balance”.

The article also does not consider the ‘electoral impact’ of these changes, perhaps because it would be negligible. The new Shia or Sunni voters will mostly vote in electoral districts or municipalities where their families are already registered. Can anyone think of where any of last year’s election results would have been different had 18 year olds been able to vote?

In other words, despite what Abu Michel and Abu Samir think, lowering the voting age would make a negligible difference on the overall voting populations of each sect. The graph above expresses the change visually.

And before I forget, make sure to read Josh Hersh’s excellent article about Salah Ezzedine, the Lebanese Bernie Madoff whose Ponzi scheme impoverished many people, and even embarrassed Hezbollah.