February 16, 2012

Sectarianism in the Eye of the Beholder: Shehadi Responds to Landis

Posted by Qifa Nabki under Lebanon, Syria | Tags: , , , , , |
[59] Comments 

And the hits keep coming. Nadim Shehadi articulates much better than I do the fundamental point of contention with Josh Landis regarding the question of Lebanese and Syrian sectarianism. I’m hoping MESA can be persuaded to host an installment of this very interesting exchange in Denver later this year. See below.

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This is another attempt to divert the debate into a Lebanon vs Syria one and using Lebanon as a ‘bad example’ to in a way justify the situation in Syria. This is similar to the way Joshua uses Lebanon to say that Syria could descend into a civil war like Lebanon, or Iraq for that matter. I am not sure if this fulfils any purpose because we are all agreed now that the regime is in fact gone and there is no need to justify its behaviour.

But I think it is worth going back to Elias’s old theme of sectarianism, the meaning of the concept and the manner in which it is used. This demonstrates a huge gap in thinking between two modes which Joshua puts his finger on as being the process of transformation from dismantled empires to post-colonial states.

One of the most difficult questions in mathematics, economics, politics, electoral law etc… is the method of aggregating from an individual preferences to group preference. In fact the issue is not resolvable. The best illustration of that is the multitudes of electoral systems and laws which are in fact attempts to aggregate from individual to groups. This is probably the bottom line in the debate on sectarianism.

Old Empires recognized groups at the expense of individuals and modern states systems are based on individual preferences or ‘citizen’ at the expense of groups. There are in fact two Turkish models: the Ottoman one and Ataturk’s modern ‘citizenship’ or ‘laicite’ model. The latter is no less oppressive to groups than the former was for individuals. In fact the debate over the relevance of the modern Turkish model to the region ignore the impact the development of this model had on group identities in Turkey: Armenians, Greeks, Arabs, Kurds etc… etc….

The Lebanese model adapts elements of the former Ottoman model to the state, the idea is to to defuse the group representation issue and take it out of the equation in order to allow the space for individuals to act as citizen and think beyond groups towards the state. This at least was the interpretation of Michel Chiha and one can argue till kingdom come about the merits of the system and the extent to which it was either a success or a failure and why.

The main point I would like to make is that crude sectarianism does not really exist on the ground and can be more often found in the eye of the beholder. This is both apparent in the analysis on Syria and the references to Lebanon. In statements like:

It took Lebanese Muslims 15 years to unseat Christian power and it still isn’t complete, seeing as Christians still have an undemocratic 50% of parliament preserved for them and refuse to push for a census.

Let us expand a bit on what this means: in pre-civilwar Lebanon the 99 member parliament was divided between 54 ‘Christians’ and 45 ‘Muslims’ both broadly defined. The post Taif parliament is 64 to 64. Is this how ‘Muslims’ unseated ‘Christian power’? And are Lebanese Muslims still trying to capture the rest of that percentage with Christians still clinging to power and refusing to have a census? Was the Lebanese ‘civil war’ between Muslims and Christians in that crude manner? Is Lebanon still ‘undemocratic’ until there is a census that fine-tunes parliamentary proportions with demographic data?

A statement like the above demonstrates the flaws in a ‘sectarian’ analysis much more than it illustrates the flaws of the power sharing system in Lebanon (and there are many). Joshua’s analysis of Syria suffers from the same flaws. The regime is not ‘Alawite’ etc.. etc… Such an analysis plays on the fears of minorities and as Joshua says manipulates them – and this is probably a good description of how the Syrian regime’s mentality sees Syria now and how it saw Lebanon.

I think a comparison between the Lebanese and Syrian models is useful for an analysis of the future of the region and how states would square the circle between individuals and groups. There is no such thing as a ‘natural’ state or a ‘cohesive’ one either in Europe or in the region and god forbid we should ever try to achieve any, this is what the great European civil war which some people call the 2nd World War was fought about.

In fact it is possible that the colonial powers (bless them), unintentionally did us a huge favour by jumping a step and creating these ‘artificial’ states rather than leaving it to us to follow their example and create them through 400 years of inter-European fighting. If the post-colonial system is being dismantled on the ground, it will probably also gradually wane as an analytical framework too.

QN you owe me a beer or two in Boston and I hope Josh can pass through sometime in April. [QN: Ahlan wa-sahlan. Looking forward to it.]

best

nadim
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February 14, 2012

More on Levantine Sectarianism

Posted by Qifa Nabki under Lebanon | Tags: , , , , |
[20] Comments 

Joshua Landis sent me a response to my post from a few days ago, which I publish below. I think we’re talking past each other in certain ways, but I’ll let the readership sort that out.

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Dear Elias,

Please allow me to respond to your earlier post, entitled “Who is Right on Syria?. You write that I incorrectly place Syria in the larger context of minorities in the region. Let me re-iterate by original argument. The following is what will be published in an article for Middle East Policy in a week or two:

“Let us place the regime in regional perspective. The Asads stand atop the last minoritarian regime in the Levant and thus seem destined to fall in this age of popular revolt. When they do, the postcolonial era will draw to a final close.

Following World War II, minorities took control in every Levant state, thanks to colonial divide-and-rule tactics and the fragmented national community that bedeviled the states of the region. It is estimated that, due to their over-recruitment by the French Mandate authorities, Alawis already by the mid-1950s constituted some 65 percent of all noncommissioned officers in the Syrian military. Within a decade, they took control of the military leadership and, with it, Syria itself.

Unique among the Levant states was Palestine, where the Jewish minority was able to transform itself into the majority at the expense of Palestine’s Muslims. Neither the Christians of Lebanon nor the Sunnis of Iraq were so lucky or ambitious. Nevertheless, both clung to power at the price of dragging their countries into lengthy civil wars. The Lebanese war lasted 15 years; the Iraqi struggle between Shiites and Sunnis, while shorter, has yet to be entirely resolved.

The Alawis of Syria seem determined to repeat this violent plunge to the bottom. It is hard to determine whether this is due to the rapaciousness of a corrupt elite, to the bleak prospects that the Alawi community faces in a post-Asad Syria, or to the weak faith that many in the region place in democracy and power-sharing formulas. Whatever the reason, Syria’s transition away from minority rule is likely to be lengthy and violent.

Even though the Alawis make up a mere 12 percent of the total population, the regime continues to count on support from other minorities, who fear Islamists coming to power, and from important segments of the Sunni population, who fear civil war.

The Asads have been planning for this day of popular insurrection all their lives…..”

You write:

I don’t agree with his larger historical reading of why Lebanon and Iraq had sectarian civil wars in the first place. He finds the origins of those civil conflicts in the colonialist legacy. Broadly speaking, the Europeans came along and created these states that are not really states, and put certain sectarian minorities in charge of them. And the wars that eventually came about were the product of the masses revolting against those minoritarian elites.

That model fits Iraq better than it does Lebanon, whose civil war was the product of many different forces. Yes, there was a movement against Christian political superiority, but it was just one of the many factors that created and prolonged the conflict. Let’s not forget about the roles played by the Israelis, the PLO, the Syrians, Saudis, Americans, and others.

I am not sure if we really disagree. You suggest that I am blaming the sectarian strife in the region on the colonialists. I do only in part because it was the French and British who conquered the Ottoman Empire and had the thankless task of trying to turn a multi-ethnic empire into nation states. If the Russians or Germans had divided up the Ottoman Empire, I think they would have failed as well. This is because no “natural” borders and no “natural” nations existed. This process is not unique to the Middle East. European nations have emerged out of the collapse of multi-ethnic empires only after centuries of nationalist turmoil, ethnic cleansing, and compromise and integration. To a large extent, all nations have had to be constructed, as we all know.

Yes, the French and British tried to divide and rule. What other choice did they have? But the sectarian, regional, and family divisions that they exploited already existed. I do not subscribe to the argument that they were “constructed” by the colonialists. They manipulated but didn’t create them.

My intent was not to blame the present mess on the foreigners but on the difficulties of turning empires into nations, which has always been a violent process.

Of course there are many other reasons besides sectarianism for the Lebanese Civil War, as you rightly point out. There are many other reasons for the Syrian revolt than sectarianism. The regime failed to deliver enough economic growth, limit population expansion, limit corruption, etc. We could go on and on.

My point in underlining the common communal struggles of the Levant states is to argue why I disagree with the many analysts who have been predicting a short battle and early collapse of the regime. It took Lebanese Muslims 15 years to unseat Christian power and it still isn’t complete, seeing as Christians still have an undemocratic 50% of parliament preserved for them and refuse to push for a census. Sunnis in Iraq are still battling to get back power from the majority Shiites, eight years after having been flung flung power, which they so brutally abused. Palestinians are still killing Israelis to get back what they insist is theirs. I am simply underlining how difficult it has been for the various religious communities of the Levant to establish a common national political community, where they can work out their differences through compromise and consensus, rather than barbaric fighting. This is, of course, not unique to the Middle East. Americans are guilty of ethnically cleansing the Indians and stealing their land as well as oppressing black Americans.

I wish this process were “so twentieth century” but I fear it is not. I would argue that Lebanon was not so different from Syria. Yes Syria’s Baathist dictatorship resembles Iraq more than Lebanon’s lop-sided confessional arrangement before the Civil War, but I was not talking about political systems, I was talking about the difficulty in unseating the minorities, which had captured the lion’s share of political power in the Levant states. Didn’t Kamal Jumblat demand democracy and “one man, one vote” on the eve of the civil war, a demand which was not that different from those being made by Syrians today? Of course there are many differences between the two uprisings, but some similarities exist between the Levant societies that can help us understand why the present conflict seems so intractable and will probably be long and bloody. Back in May, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Riad al-Shaqfa stated that Bashar would fall “in the next few months.” The U.S. State Department has called President Asad a “dead man walking.” Israel’s defense minister insisted some time ago that Asad would fall in a matter of weeks.

I was simply trying to point out how absurd such predictions seem if compared to the time-frame for other sectarian power transfers in the Levant.

*

A quick comment from me (Elias/QN): I agree with a lot of what Joshua is saying here, but I think my original point still stands: We have to be careful about conflating Lebanon and Syria when it comes to the question of political sectarianism. Forty-two years of Baathist rule  is a different phenomenon from the situation that prevailed in First Republic Lebanon, and sectarianism has a different salience in these two contexts.

If the presence of minorities  mattered more to political dynamics than other historical factors (like the experience of authoritarianism) then one could imagine a very simplistic response to Josh’s argument: “Well, Syria is 75% Sunni, which is closer to Egypt’s 90% than Lebanon’s mix of Sunnis, Christians, and Shiites…” Obviously, that’s a  naive argument, which is my point. Sectarianism, in and of itself, should not be the primary lens through which we view a post-Assad Syria. It has, and will continue to have, political salience but to read Levantine political history predominantly through this prism risks homogenizing two very different contexts.

But what the hell do I know? I’m a medievalist. The forum is open for comment.

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February 8, 2012

Who is Right on Syria?

Posted by Qifa Nabki under Israel, Lebanon, Syria | Tags: , , , , |
[33] Comments 

Greetings from dissertation-land. I’ve tried my best to keep my head down over the past few weeks, hence the long spell between posts. Since the comment section is stirring with a discussion about the events in Syria, though, I thought I’d throw a quick post up with some of the most interesting bits and pieces from the news from the past few days.

The NY Times had one of its “Room for Debate” roundtables yesterday, with contributions from Rime Allaf, Sharmine Narwani, Andrew Tabler, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Ed Husain.

Nick Noe advocates a bargain with the devil, also in the NYT.

A reporter from Al-Akhbar interviews members of the Free Syrian Army in Lebanon.

Josh Landis speaks with Charlie Rose, Fouad Ajami, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Tom Friedman.

A very quick note about one of Josh Landis’s points, in the above interview. Josh often says that Syria could turn into another Lebanon or Iraq, and I think he’s right, in the sense that we could see a full-blown sectarian war there, depending on which outside powers get involved.

However, I don’t agree with his larger historical reading of why Lebanon and Iraq had sectarian civil wars in the first place. He finds the origins of those civil conflicts in the colonialist legacy. Broadly speaking, the Europeans came along and created these states that are not really states, and put certain sectarian minorities in charge of them. And the wars that eventually came about were the product of the masses revolting against those minoritarian elites.

That model fits Iraq better than it does Lebanon, whose civil war was the product of many different forces. Yes, there was a movement against Christian political superiority, but it was just one of the many factors that created and prolonged the conflict. Let’s not forget about the roles played by the Israelis, the PLO, the Syrians, Saudis, Americans, and others.

This may sound like hair-splitting, but I think it’s important to choose our words carefully when we talk about the prospects of sectarian violence, and how to avoid it. If Syria resembles either of these nightmare scenarios, it would be Saddam’s Iraq, not pre-civil war Lebanon. The preponderance of power held by the state, the large and relatively powerful army facing ragtag (but gradually more organized  and foreign-funded) militias, the legacy of authoritarianism, the Baath party, etc… these are all commonalities shared by Assad’s Syria and Saddam’s Iraq, not 1970s Lebanon.

Lebanon, past and present, is a cautionary tale in many respects. But not, I would argue, for the current situation in Syria.

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November 23, 2011

Hizbullah, Mikati, and the STL Funding Showdown

Posted by Qifa Nabki under Free Patriotic Movement, Hezbollah, Lebanon, March 14, Syria | Tags: , , , , |
[18] Comments 

Ever since Najib Mikati took over as Prime Minister of Lebanon earlier this year, things have gone relatively smoothly. With no opposition in the cabinet, there have been few opportunities for conflict (with the exception of the odd squabble between Michel Aoun and his disgruntled allies).

All that could change next week. The cabinet must finally take up the ticking time bomb that they’ve been avoiding for months (and which was the downfall of Saad Hariri’s government), namely the issue of funding the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL).

For obvious reasons, Hizbullah is opposed to funding the court, as is AMAL. And Michel Aoun, per his usual custom, has played the role of the intransigent rejectionist to the hilt, going so far as to declare: “Even if Hizbullah approves the funding, we’ll vote against it.”

The problem is that it’s not in Hizbullah’s interests, at this stage, to create an international incident over the STL, and this is what may well happen if Lebanon reneges on its obligation to the court. The Americans and Europeans have made it abundantly clear over the past several weeks that there would be dire consequences if Lebanon severs its ties to the STL.

What this means is still  unclear. However, when one combines Lebanon’s recent stance at the Arab League on the Syrian uprising with the prospect of ending its cooperation with the Tribunal, it seems straightforward to assume that Hizbullah’s opponents (in Lebanon and abroad) will seize the opportunity to argue that the Mikati government is nothing more than an extension of the Syrian regime, and should be treated as such by the international community.

Hizbullah would prefer to avoid such a scenario, as they understand that their position on Syria has not done them many favors in Lebanon or the rest of the region. The problem is, even if they wanted to find a solution that would keep the hounds at bay while allowing them to save face by voting against the funding, it’s not clear how they would do so.

As far as I have been able to ascertain from my conversations in Beirut this week, approving the funding requires a simple majority vote in the thirty-member cabinet. At present, Hizbullah and its allies hold eighteen seats, while the remaining twelve are divided between ministers loyal to Mikati, President Sleiman, and Walid Jumblatt. In other words, there is no way to compose the necessary majority to approve the funding without using ministers from the shares of Hizbullah, Amal, or the FPM.

So we’re faced with a situation whereby either one of those three parties has to reverse its policy on the funding, or they all hold a firm line and Lebanon drops the STL like a bad habit. Neither scenario is  ideal, from the current majority’s perspective.

One possible solution that has been floated is that the cabinet passes the hot potato to the Parliament, where  a majority in favor of the funding can be assembled by having Walid Jumblatt vote with his old allies. I’m not sure this is a constitutionally legitimate move, but I’ve been told that it could be the basis for a typically Lebanese fudge.

Whatever happens, we’re sure to see Saad Hariri make a serious push next week at the Tripoli gathering to put as much pressure as possible on Najib Mikati to resign. My sense is that Hizbullah would prefer to keep this government afloat and out of the Syrian cross-fire, but not at the expense of voting for the tribunal themselves. If the parliamentary solution doesn’t work and the cabinet can’t muster the votes, Mikati will probably walk and Hizbullah will let him do so.

In that scenario, we’ll be back to treading water with no government, and things will be… interesting, yet again.

[An earlier version of this post stated that a two-thirds super-majority was required to approve the funding. I'm now being told that a simple majority will do, as there are no new international treaties being signed.]
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November 9, 2011

@yuhaa ‘l-Lubnaniyoun: The Zu`ama Discover Twitter…

Posted by Qifa Nabki under Free Patriotic Movement, Lebanon, March 14, QNMZ | Tags: , , |
[36] Comments 


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October 14, 2011

Tunisia’s Upcoming Elections: Lessons for Lebanon?

Posted by Qifa Nabki under Elections, Lebanon, Reform | Tags: , , , , , |
[70] Comments 

Lebanon's various electoral maps (courtesy of IFES, see report below)

The Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) has published an excellent primer on Tunisia’s upcoming elections. It is succinct, well-written, and will bring you up to speed on all of the most important players, issues, and questions in about twenty minutes. I highly recommend checking it out (download the PDF here).

Speaking of elections, Lebanon’s Interior Minister Marwan Charbel unveiled a new electoral draft law a couple of days ago. It contains several positive elements, such as a 30% gender quota, pre-printed ballots, and an open-list proportional representation system, but disappoints in other ways — several small districts, no independent supervisory commission.

The big debate over the law will focus on the question of how many electoral districts to include. Unless the districts are large, proportional representation will not generate the major benefit that its advocates ascribe to it, namely a diverse representation of political parties. For some background reading on the subject of electoral districting in Lebanon, here is another excellent primer, this one by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (whose work we have highlighted on many occasions).

Thoughts on electoral reform issues are welcome in the comment section.
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October 4, 2011

Qifa Nabki Turns Three, Plus a New Blog on Egypt

Posted by Qifa Nabki under Miscellaneous | Tags: , |
[36] Comments 

This blog began life three years ago with a “conspiracy chronicles” post that seems awfully relevant today. Four hundred posts later (we aim for concision) and with over 22,000 comments (our readers aim for prolixity), things remain interesting, so perhaps I won’t make good on my threat to shut it all down and retire to a life of greater productivity.

To celebrate QN’s toddlerhood, I thought I’d draw your attention to a noteworthy newborn, a blog about Egypt by a friend of mine living in Cairo. Margaret Litvin is a professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at Boston University, and the author of a new book about Arab readings of Hamlet (forthcoming from Princeton University Press next month). She’s in Egypt this fall with her husband and two kids, starting a new book project and blogging about Egyptian politics and culture on the side. I highly recommend you check out her blog, Send Down the Basket.

Those of you waiting for my follow-up post to the Arab revolutions debate we’ve been having, it’s on its way later today or tomorrow. Sharpen your knives.
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September 26, 2011

Lebanon and the Arab Revolutions

Posted by Qifa Nabki under Arab Politics, Lebanon, Syria | Tags: , , , , |
[96] Comments 

Several months ago, I found myself in a group discussion on Facebook about the Arab revolutions. Egypt and Tunisia had recently toppled their dictators, and the freedom train seemed poised to roll into Yemen, Libya, Syria, and beyond.

It escaped no one during this season of political transformation in the Middle East that Lebanon was a strange study in stability. Usually a magnet for civil unrest and ideological fervor, the country felt oddly insulated from the waves of popular dissent that threatened to fashion a new Arab political order in the space of a single year.

True, Beirut had witnessed the odd ragtag anti-sectarianism march, but no sign of the enormous public demonstrations seen in Benghazi or Cairo. This was evidence, so my Facebook interlocutors suggested, of Lebanon’s political immaturity, its parochialism and fractiousness, and perhaps even the artificiality of its claim to nationhood. While the people of Egypt and Tunisia had demonstrated remarkable unity and bravery by standing as one to break their shackles, the Lebanese remained hopelessly mired in a rut of sectarianism and petty divisiveness.

Something about this reading struck me as simple-minded. This is not to say that I subscribed to the chauvinist ‘been-there-done-that’ argument that one regularly encountered among many Lebanese (who gestured gallantly toward the events of March 2005 by way of explaining why Lebanon had no need to partake in any revolutionary activities in 2011).

Rather, what I found problematic about the discussion on Facebook was its assumption that Egypt and Tunisia had reached the finish line in their struggle for democracy and self-determination, when it seemed fairly straightforward that these two countries (like the rest of their regional compatriots, the Lebanese included) were still very much at the starting line.

There’s certainly no question that Lebanon’s politics are crippled by sectarian institutions and the false idol of consensual governance. However, sectarianism is surely not the only flavor of social divisiveness that can undermine democratic processes and institution building. Economic inequalities, ethnic and tribal divisions, religious fundamentalism, etc. represent other major challenges. As inspiring as the events of the last year have been, they hardly represent a litmus test for the viability of a national identity, much less a certificate of sovereignty and self-determination.

I was reminded of this discussion recently by an excellent article in The New York Review of Books, by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley. They argue that the Arab revolutions have been effectively overtaken by the Arab counterrevolution, the primary agents of which include entrenched economic elites, military leaders, former regime operatives, and foreign powers, all of whom are now seeking to shape events in their favor (and are largely succeeding).

The essay is worth a close read, but I thought I’d draw your attention to an excerpt that struck me as relevant to the question of Lebanon’s membership in the Arab Spring club.

“Revolutions devour their children. The spoils go to the resolute, the patient, who know what they are pursuing and how to achieve it. Revolutions almost invariably are short-lived affairs, bursts of energy that destroy much on their pathway, including the people and ideas that inspired them. So it is with the Arab uprising. It will bring about radical changes. It will empower new forces and marginalize others. But the young activists who first rush onto the streets tend to lose out in the skirmishes that follow. Members of the general public might be grateful for what they have done. They often admire them and hold them in high esteem. But they do not feel they are part of them. The usual condition of a revolutionary is to be tossed aside.

“The Arab world’s immediate future will very likely unfold in a complex tussle between the army, remnants of old regimes, and the Islamists, all of them with roots, resources, as well as the ability and willpower to shape events. Regional parties will have influence and international powers will not refrain from involvement. There are many possible outcomes—from restoration of the old order to military takeover, from unruly fragmentation and civil war to creeping Islamization. But the result that many outsiders had hoped for—a victory by the original protesters—is almost certainly foreclosed.“

I am very rarely optimistic about Lebanon’s short-term political prospects. We seem to go from one election to another pinning our hopes on the notion that the next crop of plutocrats will not be as feckless as the last. However, reading over Agha and Malley’s prognosis, I could not help but think that Lebanon’s problems seemed somehow more manageable than its neighbors’.

Consider the fact that of the three major players shaping the future of the post-Arab Spring states, only one (the members of the old political class) possesses any real political muscle in Lebanon. The army enjoys widespread  support but is not a major political and economic force, as it is in places like Egypt and Turkey, or in Iran, where the army controls entire industries and maintains its monopolies with the assistance of the state.

Lebanon has Islamists, but there is no mainstream movement calling for the creation of an Islamic state. A recent Pew Research poll found that only a small minority of Lebanese Muslims (second only to Turkey) were in favor of harsh punishments for adultery, theft, and apostasy.  Meanwhile, it is rare that one meets a Maronite today who believes their country should be a Christian homeland in political and spiritual communion with France.

Finally, even our politicians, as odious as they are, hardly constitute a unitary and hegemonic “regime”. For all of Lebanon’s problems — a weak central authority, political and economic corruption, clericalism, foreign influence, sectarian structures and mindsets, patronage networks, etc. — it remains a multi-polar arena, with all the “self-regulating” mechanisms that such a structure engenders.

Would I trade this brand of dysfunction for the challenges facing reformers in Egypt, Libya, or Syria? I don’t think I would. I’ll take entropy or centrifugality (or whatever physics-inspired euphemism one might use to put a positive spin on our chaotic system) over the deeply rooted political, military, and economic structures of a post-dictatorial regime.

Thoughts?
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August 17, 2011

Co-Locating with PMPs: An Assessment of the STL Indictment

Posted by Qifa Nabki under Hezbollah, Lebanon | Tags: , , , , |
[233] Comments 

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) has unsealed its indictment of Mustafa Badreddine, Salim Ayyash, Hussein Oneissi, and Assad Sabra for the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. You can download a copy of the indictment here (PDF, 12.9 megabytes).

I’ve read the document once through and there’s a great deal to mull over, but here are some preliminary thoughts.

The Evidence

The case against the four men accused of plotting and carrying out the Hariri murder rests almost entirely on telecommunications analysis. As was leaked by a Lebanese security official as early as 2006, the investigation discovered the cell phone networks allegedly used to surveil Hariri and coordinate his assassination.

The central methodological tool of the investigation is “co-location”, which determines on the basis of cell-tower data when and where certain cell phones were used to call each other and other off-network phones. Here’s a basic illustration of the principle:

  1. Phones A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H are activated together on the same day, several weeks before the crime. They only ever make calls to each other, and those calls are made from locations in the vicinity of Hariri’s convoy or along his various routes. In the two hours before the assassination, 33 calls were made between these phones with the last one coming just five minutes before the bomb went off. This is the red network, carried by the hit squad.
  2. When the hit squad members need to communicate with people who are not part of the immediate assassination team, they use other phones.  Cell-tower data shows that these phones are always active in the same locations and at the same times as the red network phones, and they were used to do things like purchasing the vehicle used to carry the bomb.
  3. The hit squad also have their own personal mobile phones (PMP’s) which they use to contact family members and friends, and are ultimately used by the investigation team to determine the identities of their owners.  (Note to self: beware of co-locating with PMPs. Always a bad idea.)

Using this method, the investigation team was able to put together a very detailed chronology for the operation build-up and execution, as well as its aftermath (when the Abu Adass claim of responsibility was made).

Question Marks

The first question that comes to mind is: is this it? After nearly six years of investigation, does the case truly rest solely on telecommunications data? What about witness testimony? Forensics? DNA analysis? Magnifying glasses and trench coats?

Secondly, if signals intelligence does comprise the bulk of it, then what did the UN International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC) do between 2006 and 2010? The first Mehlis report had already identified the hit squad’s cell phone network in late 2005,  and the 2006 article by Georges Malbrunot in Le Figaro revealed that the investigation had used cell phone data to discover new evidence “leading to Hezbollah”. I understand that piecing all of this together must have been a complicated task, but surely it would not have taken five years to do so.

(Let me reiterate that I don’t buy Neil Macdonald’s claim that the UNIIIC only began analyzing telecoms data in late 2007, which was when they supposedly discovered the hit team. As I’ve previously shown, that simply does not add up.)

The last big question is whether the STL has other indictments up its sleeve. Did Badreddine or Ayyash ever communicate with off-network phones tied to political figures? The CBC report claimed to produce documents from the investigation showing networks connected to Hezbollah political figures, but the indictment makes no mention of these.

As I said, there will be much more to comment on the next few days as Lebanon’s professional and amateur pundits pore over the indictment. In the meantime, the floor is open for thoughts and critiques.

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August 8, 2011

Crisis in Syria: A Bloggingheads Diavlog with Michael Young and Elias Muhanna

Posted by Qifa Nabki under Interviews, Lebanon, Syria | Tags: , , , |
[92] Comments 

I recorded a discussion with Michael Young this weekend about the situation in Syria and its impact on Lebanon. You can watch the whole thing at the Bloggingheads website, but be sure to come back and comment.

Michael is the opinion editor of the Daily Star, and the author of a very interesting book about Lebanon called The Ghosts of Martyrs Square, which I discuss here and here.

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