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?