Qifa Nabki
Lebanon
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
In Search of an Endgame
Is Prime Minister Hariri’s government about to be toppled? This is the main question on people’s minds in Lebanese policy circles, to gauge from various conversations I had in Washington DC this week. Certainly, all signs in Beirut point to the brewings of a major clash over the government’s support for the U.N. Special Tribunal … Continue reading
Words and Things
Surveying the Lebanese political landscape today, one can’t help but be struck by the disparity in rhetorical competence between the two major political groupings. If there were a fantasy sports game based on Lebanese politics in which a player’s stock was tied to their charisma and oratorical abilities, how many March 14 figures would you … Continue reading
Are the Gloves Coming Off?
A week ago, Jamil al-Sayyed’s threats sounded like the rantings of Uncle Junior: unintelligible, inconsequential, and frankly a little embarrassing to the whole family. `Uqab Saqr (who seems to have become Saad al-Hariri’s unofficial spokesman) dismissed the ex-security chief as a mentally unbalanced has-been, and added that his threats do not reflect the positions of … Continue reading
Qifa Nabki 
And the people say…