Qifa Nabki
Syria
Podcast on Lebanon and Syria
I recorded a podcast about Lebanon and Syria with Karl Morand of Middle East Week a couple days ago. You can listen to it here. In other news, the Daily Beast is reporting that the U.N. has reversed its decision not to build camps for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, and is now proposing a dozen large camps housing … Continue reading
Hizbullah & Grendizer
A friend of mine, one Abdul Rahman C., published this amusing post on his Facebook wall today. I reproduce it here with his permission. I remember watching Grendizer episodes as a kid, but never thought about its political influence upon my brain. (I always assumed that the cartoon with more obvious resonances with Lebanese politics … Continue reading
Operation Strange Bedfellows
The last ten years have witnessed some of the strangest contortions in Middle Eastern political history. Tracking the maneuvers and realignments of Lebanese, Syrian, Qatari, Turkish, Palestinian, Saudi, and Israeli leaders as they navigated the shoals of SALSRA, the STL, the Doha Accord, the July War, the Iraq War, the Turkish flotilla incident, Operation Cast … Continue reading
Hizbullah Celebrates the Fall of al-Qusayr
I was about to publish a post this morning about the different scenarios of a post-conflict Syria and their implications for Hizbullah, but someone sent me this photo and I couldn’t resist posting it. What we have here is the scene of a couple Hizbullah volunteers handing out candies in celebration of the fact that … Continue reading
Hizbullah and Rational Choice
“What matters is not what the Gentiles will say, but what the Jews will do.” — David Ben Gurion When Hizbullah’s Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah admitted last week that his party was militarily involved in the Syrian conflict, the news seemed to deepen the cognitive dissonance initially caused by Nasrallah’s vocal support for the Syrian … Continue reading
Qifa Nabki 
And the people say…