Qifa Nabki
Saad Hariri
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
Parsing a Mea Culpa
The big news in Lebanese politics these days is Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri’s exoneration of Syria in the matter of his father’s assassination. Here’s the relevant section of last week’s interview in Al-Sharq al-Awsat: وقال الحريري: «فتحت صفحة جديدة في العلاقة مع سورية منذ تأليف الحكومة». وتابع: «يجب على المرء أن يكون واقعيا في هذه … Continue reading
An Interview with the Special Tribunal for Lebanon
Last week, I interviewed Dr. Fatima el Issawi, spokesperson of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. The full interview is available at Foreign Policy’s Mideast Channel, but I’ve pasted the first exchange below. Much of the responses are of a general “statements of principles” nature, but I think that there are some things to be gleaned … Continue reading
Hariri’s Next Move
Saad al-Hariri has yet to issue a statement about last night’s press conference, since he is apparently out of the country (where he always seems to be whenever Nasrallah issues one of his earth-shaking statements about the tribunal.) Until he returns and provides some indication as to how his government is going to respond to … Continue reading
The Hariri Murder: Hizbullah Presents Its Case Against Israel
I will be live-blogging tomorrow’s speech by Hizbullah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, which is slated to begin at 20:30 Beirut time (17:30 GMT, 13:130 EST). In case you’ve been living under a rock, this speech promises to be one of the most significant political events of the past five years. Hizbullah has announced that it … Continue reading
Qifa Nabki 
And the people say…