Qifa Nabki
Qifa Nabki
Lebanon in 2020
One of the themes that came up repeatedly during Interior Minister Ziad Baroud’s panel discussion in Washington last month was the need for better strategic planning to address the myriad political, economic, social, environmental, and security-related challenges facing the country. I found myself wondering, as I left his talk, where Lebanon would be in, say, … Continue reading
Master and Pupil
At some point in 2006, I recall asking a friend of mine what he thought of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had recently been elected President of Iran. This friend (known to readers of this blog as “Abbas“) is a Lebanese Shiite living in Beirut, and a devoted partisan of Hizbullah. The conversation went something like this: … Continue reading
Who’s Afraid of a False Witness?
The “false witness” issue has gone from being a conspiratorial throw-away line in one of Nasrallah’s early summer speeches, to a full-blown scandal involving several arrest warrants from the Syrian judiciary, and threats by Lebanese opposition parties to boycott cabinet sessions until the issue is resolved. Who is to blame for this fiasco? While it … Continue reading
An Interview with Thanassis Cambanis
A friend of mine, Thanassis Cambanis, has a new book out about Hizbullah. Between 2000 and 2007, Thanassis worked as a reporter for the Boston Globe, and served as the paper’s Iraq bureau chief from 2003-05 and Middle East bureau chief from 2005-07. He’s also worked for The New York Times and various other media … Continue reading
Israel and the Hariri Assassination: An Equal-Opportunity Scapegoat?
Tha’ir Ghandour has an interesting exclusive interview in today’s Al-Akhbar newspaper with an unnamed “security source close to Saad al-Hariri”. (There’s an English summary of the story here.) The gist of the source’s testimony is the following: In 2006, the Lebanese intelligence services uncovered evidence of the involvement of certain Hizbullah members in the Hariri … Continue reading
Qifa Nabki 
And the people say…