Aftermath of the Midan bombing that left 26 dead and dozens more wounded

January 2012:

Crossing over the Lebanese border into Syria was anticlimactic. The lines of people waiting to have their papers checked did not look markedly shorter than during my two previous visits, both having taken place well before popular Arab revolts broke out across the Middle East.

Even security checks — looking into the trunk of our car and the kinds of questions asked by immigration personnel — appeared, if anything, less probing than my earlier experiences.

But two things caught my notice. Posters vilifying certain media networks — Al Jazeera, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya, and the BBC — dotted the walls of the border crossing. One to the right of the counter for “foreigners” hovered over the head of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) crew in line in front of me. Ah, I thought — the rumors that foreign journalists are now trickling into Syria may be accurate.

The second noteworthy detail was the whispers among border personnel that a busload of Syrian soldiers being transported from their barracks had been bombed by a roadside IED — near Zabadani, a town now claimed by the armed opposition. I have no confirmation of this.

I was worried about my stay in Damascus in the Christian quarter of the Old City. Just four days earlier, on a Friday, a suicide bomber had detonated explosives in a crowded area in Midan — inside the capital — apparently targeting a bus of policemen, although the casualties were mostly civilians.

I was keen to see if there were tangible ramifications of this act of terror in the heart of Damascus — 10 months into the protests, the city is still largely viewed as being supportive of the government. Damascus counts. No uprising will be complete unless this city of 2.6 million shifts that balance. The capitol will eventually have to be a battlefield for any revolt to succeed, even if only a political one.

Syria is icy cold this time of year, which may account for some of the empty streets that are normally bustling with humanity. But the Friday after the suicide bombing, the streets were noticeably devoid of people, cars were minimal — the city, quiet. Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, is usually spent with family, so it wasn’t altogether clear if the stillness was due to the previous week’s violence.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s voice greeted us on the radio as my friend and I drove into the country a few days earlier. He was delivering his fifth speech since protests broke out in March last year. It was long-winded and my companion translated every so often. I waited impatiently for these tidbits which lasted well after we were sipping tea in a Damascus hotel lobby — guests and conference attendees crowding around the TV screens to pass their judgments.

Later that day I met with the first on my list of regime opponents, most of whom had served prison terms at some point in their lives. I will write in more detail about these men and women later, but they varied from those who desired an overhaul of the regime while keeping Assad’s presidency intact, to those who would not consider dialogue with any part of the existing government. There were some commonalities. All rejected any foreign military intervention and the militarization of the protests. The majority were scathing about the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and external opposition groups like the Syrian National Council (SNC), so liberally quoted by the Western media as the definitive voice of the Syrian “opposition.”

“Their decisions are made in America and Turkey,” said one regime critic about the foreign-based Syrian opposition. “I want decisions made in Syria.”

Another one parried: “The external opposition are not an effective part of the opposition. They don’t participate in any political parties here. We want to change the system in a safe way — we don’t want to pay a higher price than necessary. We want national cohesion, we don’t want a collapse of the economy and we don’t want to lose our sovereignty.”

Most of these domestic-based opposition figures I met were disparaging about international sanctions too: “Life is very expensive for the Syrian people now and (the sanctions) will take the country into a vicious cycle of poverty and violence and harm the democratic transition,” says Louay Hussein, leader of the Building the Syrian State movement, who spent seven years in prison during his 20s.

“Sanctions will not affect the authorities, but will affect the people,” claims retired political economist Aref Dalila, an organizer of the 2000-1 Damascus Spring (a period of unusual political and social openness in Syria immediately following Hafez al Assad’s death) who was released from a seven-year prison term in 2008. “People are already paying a high cost – prices have risen dramatically, factories have shut down, imports have decreased by around half and unemployment has risen, especially in the tourism sector.”

Too true. I was the only guest staying in the charming 17th century converted Damascene house nestled along narrow cobblestone streets in Damascus’ Old City. The famed boutique hotel with intricately painted ceilings and carved mother-of-pearl-encrusted wooden doors is usually impossible to book.

The only apparent benefit of sanctions was that I could sit in my pajamas for my morning tea and croissant in the hotel’s petite courtyard, unencumbered by chiding looks from other guests or staff. There was one woman manning the place during the day, replaced by a gentleman in the evening. My second night there, he called me at 3 am when I had not yet returned to the hotel to check on my safety: “I was worried,” he said, “you know, because of what’s going on.”

Worried they may be, but that didn’t stop reportedly tens of thousands of Syrians flooding into Ummayyad Square – named after the Ummayyad Caliphate whose capital was Damascus – in support of their president earlier that day. A makeshift stage was erected in front of the imposing al-Assad Library, where supporters chanted pro-regime slogans and condemned the machinations of foreign leaders against the Syrian state. Qatar’s Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan were particularly singled out for derision.

The masses were in for a surprise though. Assad himself, accompanied by his wife Asma and two of their children, swung by to speak to the jubilant crowd – and some said also to quell long-circulating rumors that his family had fled Syria.

I had heard about this rally the night before from the young pro-Assad son of an anti-regime woman who had seen notices on Facebook. That surprised me – Facebook was not available, except via proxy websites, during my last visit. It had been re-introduced to Syrians in February 2011, the year of the Arab revolts.

I went to the square with low expectations. News reports in the West rarely cover pro-regime gatherings, and almost always suggest that participants are forced to attend, are engaging out of fear, or are bused in by the government – sometimes even paid to join the throngs.

I only managed to reach the square after the president’s departure, when many had already departed, and some were still trickling out of the square. Still, crowds lingered to chant pro-Assad songs, dance the traditional “dabke” and wave flags – including Hezbollah ones to mark support for the Resistance. They were women and men, young and old, religious and secular, soldiers and civilians, well-heeled and not – certainly, none looked “forced” to participate in the gathering.

VIDEO OF RALLY IN UMMAYYAD SQUARE

By comparison, take a look at this YouTube video of the same square ostensibly filmed during Assad’s speech. The square looks almost empty and it appears his voice has been added into the footage to suggest a low turnout even at the rally’s peak. I didn’t get to the square until after Assad’s departure, but even then, you can see the stark difference in crowd size between the two video clips – a testament to the ferocity of the media battle for narratives over Syria these days.

The celebrations went on long after my frozen hands decided to seek refuge indoors. An earlier meeting had been postponed because of road blocks around the square that cut off access to many parts of the city, so I met up instead with Ammar Ismail, persona non grata in the Western hemisphere and an online activist in the cyberwar over Syrian narratives.

Ismail leads a frenzied online presence via his web-based Damascus News Network (DNN) available on Facebook. Through video footage, pictures and articles, the social media site offers counter-narratives to Western-dominated ones on Syria, but Ismail, a self-proclaimed nationalist, is often critical of the regime too.

He claims a news article referring to him as the “head of the Syrian Electronic Army” caught the notice of the European Union, which accuses Ismail of hacking websites on behalf of the Syrian government – allegedly because “its IP addresses indicate that it is collocated in facilities which belong to the Syrian government,” according to a CNN Article. He was one of a handful of Syrian nationals whose assets were frozen by the EU in November – no hackers or cyberwarriors on the opposition side received similar punishment. A recent small venture to encourage cooperation between the Italian and Syrian textile industries suffered, and Ismail had to shutter the business.

In the past few days, Ismail has been forced to relocate his young family as a precaution against death threats. His son will have to be home-schooled for a while, he says, exclaiming: “how does my right to exercise freedom of speech become an issue for the EU?” Ismail plans to file legal proceedings against the European Union shortly.

Damascus is bizarrely open for a city that has been the target of opposition groups intent on splintering the regime by first swaying the capitol from its pro-regime bent. The internet is bustling with competing narratives, the airways open to the vilified foreign media networks accused by Assad’s government of fueling and propagandizing the protests.

Walk into a Damascene café or business and you are likely to see television screens broadcasting the pro-regime Addounia network or state-sponsored Al Ekhbariya Soriyah alongside the much-maligned Al Jazeera or US-backed Al Hurra. It almost seems like the regime is saying “bring us your worst – we have little to fear.”

A world away, in Homs, Deraa, Idlib, Douma, Zabadani and other Syrian hot spots the battle for narratives is harder fought, in cities and towns where people are reported to be dying in the dozens each day. I had a trip planned to some of these places – one that did not materialize after France 2 cameraman Gilles Jacquier was killed by a projectile whilst on a government-accompanied tour of Homs. But although I felt as though I might actually be safer in the immediate aftermath of Jacquier’s death, some apparently thought otherwise.

This Syrian conflict has layers and layers that we have not yet peeled within the pages of our sanctified newspapers and online repartees. I have seen very little verifiable professional reportage from the main areas of conflict. Most of the “storyline” is taking place in capital cities where competing governments appear determined to decide Syria’s future. The Syrian people are just fodder for their cannons – I am not sure their lives are even considered, as long as their bodies, alive or dead, lying on streets or plumping up rallies/protests, provide these storylines to feed into their vying narratives.

Damascus is inexpensive. The food – even in hole-in-the-wall cafes – is better than in most cities out for a quick tourist buck. The people are hospitable, even chivalrous. You feel safe walking the streets and talking to strangers. Today, people discuss politics in the open – that is surely a step up for the authoritarian state. The mood though, is cautious, worried and even angry. But the rage swings both ways – there are those to the right of the regime who are threatening to take up their own arms if the Syrian government does not protect them against opposition gunmen. While there appears to be a domestic stalemate today, that could easily turn if sectarian battles escalate. I have seen gruesome still photos of casualties that don’t inform me if the victim is Sunni, Christian, Kurd, Druze or Alawite, but the sheer volume of these photos and footage suggests to me that some in Syria now think nothing of making snuff films to further their narratives. Is the shooting soldier really a member of the regular armed forces or someone donning a uniform to make it appear so? Is the bearded guy with the weapon really a militarized gunman or is that a trick of the regime?

The answers may be a long time coming, but one thing is certain: there are efforts underway by both sides to sway public opinion, and that effort is not by any means limited to those inside Syria. What do the majority of Syrians want? That is still the million dollar question, and the answer appears to shift with each major development – sometimes with optimism, usually with pessimism. If I were to wager on the outcome of this crisis though, I would firmly place my bets on the Syrian people ousting these interventions and reaching their own national consensus on a democratic transition that ensures sovereignty. If civil war is to be averted, there are only a few options out of this conflict after all – and the one that offers the least chaos is the one most likely to appeal to the Syrian majority.

Published earlier in Al Akhbar English.

Visit the author’s blog: Mideast Shuffle

Become a Facebook fan of the author

Since the first public protests broke out in Syria last March, the narratives about the Syrian crisis have stayed fairly true to the theme of all the Arab Revolts. An authoritarian ruler out to crush peaceful opposition to his regime opens fire on civilians and the number of protestors skyrockets as the body count mounts…

But we are now entering the tenth month of this particular violent revolt – even Libya with its full-fledged civil war didn’t take so long. So what gives?

According to the Texas-based geopolitical risk analysis group Stratfor which released an eyebrow-raising piece on Syrian opposition propaganda efforts last week, “most of the opposition’s more serious claims have turned out to be grossly exaggerated or simply untrue, thereby revealing more about the opposition’s weaknesses than the level of instability inside the Syrian regime.”

This is important for two reasons. Firstly, it may be the first time a mainstream US-based intelligence-gathering firm openly questions the existing narrative on Syria. Secondly, Stratfor’s findings begs the question: what are we basing our policy initiatives on if our underlying assumptions are inaccurate?

How unstable is Syria, really? How widespread is opposition to the regime of Bashar al-Assad? The death-toll that has us riveted with disgust – today, the highest daily death rate yet – how accurate are those numbers? Who do they include and are they verifiable? Are local activists even capable of distinguishing between a dead pro-regime civilian and a dead anti-regime civilian – especially now that both sides are armed and firing?

I cannot begin to dispute those numbers and details, so I will not try. But I will ask the question: where are all the “facts” coming from?

Inherent Bias in Syrian Data?
The problem with information that originates from opposition groups is that there is a clear interest in disseminating “beneficial” data and underplaying “damaging” statistics. And that dynamic applies to the government too – which is why we take Syrian regime pronouncements with a grain of salt.

You don’t see the Syrian opposition taking an active role in publicizing the slaughter of rank-and-file soldiers, for instance – except to claim these forces are being shot for deserting the army. Twitter is abuzz right now with news that more than 70 of today’s 100+ dead are “deserters.”

Nor do you hear about the numbers of pro-regime civilians killed by the armed opposition – some of them allegedly while “demonstrating” in support of the Syrian regime.

Now, this does not mean that the Syrian opposition lies outright to gain sympathy and foreign support – mostly because the “opposition” is not homogenous and comes in different shapes, sizes and flavors.

But Strafor clearly questions the intent of some of these groups based on very recent evidence of disinformation campaigns:

The Stratfor article focuses primarily on opposition efforts to create the impression in the past few weeks that there is a significant split within President Assad’s own clan and within his Alawite minority sect, members of which man the top jobs in the country’s armed forces and key government positions.

Among these high-profile gaffs are a December 10 report alleging that “Syrian Deputy Defense Minister and former chief of military intelligence Asef Shawkat had been killed by his aide and former General Security Directorate chief, Gen. Ali Mamlouk.”

Stratfor posits that the unfounded “image of two senior-ranking Sunni members of the regime drawing guns on each other” helps to create ” a compelling narrative” for groups that wish “to undermine the perception that al Assad’s inner circle is united in the effort to suppress the opposition and save the regime.”

In yet another example, a December 9 statement published in the Saudi-owned Asharq al Awsat by the previously-unknown “Alawite League of Coordinating Committees” which claims to represent the Alawite community in Syria, “rejected any attempt to hold the Alawite sect responsible for the ‘barbarism’ of the al Assad regime.” Stratfor says the planted story gives “the impression that the Alawite community is fracturing and that the al Assad regime is facing a serious loss of support within its own minority sect.”

The US-based analysts then cite their own Syrian opposition source who “acknowledged that this group was in fact an invention of the Sunni opposition in Syria.”

On the same day, more mainstream opposition groups including the Syrian National Council (SNC), the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights began disseminating “claims that regime forces besieged Homs and imposed a 72-hour deadline for Syrian defectors to surrender themselves and their weapons or face a potential massacre.”

That news made international headlines – Homs has been the raging center of anti-regime dissent after all, with death tolls that appear to be well above those of other hotspots. Stratfor’s investigation, however, found “no signs of a massacre,” and warns that “opposition forces have an interest in portraying an impending massacre, hoping to mimic the conditions that propelled a foreign military intervention in Libya.”

The article then goes on to suggest that any suggestions of massacres are unlikely because the Syrian “regime has calibrated its crackdowns to avoid just such a scenario. Regime forces,” Stratfor argues, “have been careful to avoid the high casualty numbers that could lead to an intervention based on humanitarian grounds.”

And so on and so forth.

Wrongful Narratives Muddy The Waters
Stratfor identifies some clear objectives that drive propaganda efforts by Syrian opposition groups:

- Convincing Syrians inside Syria (going beyond the Sunni majority to include the minorities that have so far largely backed the regime) that the regime is splitting and therefore no longer worth supporting.

- Convincing external stakeholders, such as the United States, Turkey and France, that the regime is splitting and is prepared to commit massacres to put down the unrest, along the lines of what the regime carried out in 1982 in Hama.

- Convincing both Syrians and external stakeholders that the collapse of the al Assad regime will not result in the level of instability that has plagued Iraq for nearly a decade, or in the rise of Islamist militias, as appears to be happening in Libya. To this end, the FSA has emphasized its defensive operations and the defense of civilians to avoid being branded as militants. Meanwhile, the political opposition has stressed that it wants to keep state structures intact, so as to avoid the Iraq scenario of having to rebuild the state from scratch amid a sectarian war.

Stratfor points out that opposition groups have made headway in getting their messages out to the mainstream western media, and that these outlets regularly “quote casualty totals provided by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, without the ability to verify the information.” But the article also warns that “the lack of coordination among various opposition outlets and the unreliability of the reports threaten to undermine the credibility of the opposition as a whole.”

Syria today signed the Arab League protocol that will make way for a fact-finding mission. Provided that this important process does not get hijacked by regional politics – an unlikely scenario even with the best of intentions – we may start to see verifiable information about what is taking place inside the country.

Without facts, the Syrian story does not stand a chance in overcoming the enmity and rancor felt by both sides. False narratives, even heartfelt ones, will only keep conflict buzzing. Kudos to Stratfor for underlining the importance of information transparency.

Follow the author on Twitter

The ongoing diplomatic tug of war between Syria and the Arab League took an unexpected turn Monday with rumors of a potential breakthrough. A positive outcome would signal a major political – not procedural – change of heart at the Arab League, whose earlier dealings with Syria showed little room for compromise.

Last week, the Arab League broke with its own Charter for the second time this year, voting to impose far-reaching economic sanctions on member-state Syria – eight months after backing a no-fly zone over member-state Libya.

The Charter, which was written in the early post-colonial period, placed great stock in the inviolability of a “a state’s independence, sovereignty, or territorial integrity.”

Article V of the League’s Charter clearly stipulates:

“Any resort to force in order to resolve disputes between two or more member-states of the League is prohibited. If there should arise among them a difference which does not concern a state’s independence, sovereignty, or territorial integrity, and if the parties to the dispute have recourse to the Council for the settlement of this difference, the decision of the Council shall then be enforceable and obligatory.”

A recently-departed senior Arab League official told me: “We have taken strong measures before only in relation to foreign policy issues or disputes between Arab countries. But on these last two occasions, this is a historic departure in relation to the practice of the Arab League. For the first time measures were taken against an Arab country because of its internal situation – the way a government is treating its own people.”

He continued: “When people are dying I don’t care about reconciling this with the Charter – that’s my priority. If there are legal issues that contravene, I’m happy to bend them.”

So sweet. But then I snap out of my reverie and think instead of the tens of thousands of civilians slaughtered in member-state Somalia this year alone, with nary a peep from the Arab League. Or of the League’s non-intervention in member-states Yemen and Bahrain, where protests continue to this day.

The official admitted: “I think the position taken by the Arab countries in relation with Bahrain is a very sad one – we should have been more firm.” On Yemen however, his response was curious: “Yemen – it is being handled by the GCC, and doesn’t need the Arab League’s help right now.”

The GCC as Regional Arbiters?
The six nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman – which consist entirely of hereditary monarchies leading autocratic governments – have indeed been very proactive in dealing with the Arab Revolts, albeit almost exclusively with their own survival in mind.

Earlier this year, it was a bold Saudi Arabia that roared back against protesting Arabs, backing dictators and offering cash and cover to roll back these revolutions. The “Counter-Revolutionary Saudis” scorned the Americans for not supporting ousted dictators in Tunisia and Egypt – then commandeered efforts to guide and squash protests in Yemen and Bahrain.

Even Qatar and Oman, the two GCC nations with comparatively independent policy positions in the region, quickly shed that flexibility once the Arab Revolts hit home in the Persian Gulf.

Qatar, in particular, stands out as the one Arab nation to have formulated a proactive plan to deal with these revolts. It has thrown money, clout and military force behind ensuring desirable outcomes. So far its goal appears to be two-fold: backing Islamists to replace secular regimes, and thwarting the influence of all other competing regional power centers while it goes about its plans.

And unlike Saudi Arabia, its long-term rival in the Persian Gulf, the tiny emirate kingdom is not trying to thwart change at all. Rather, it is proactively leading a selective strategy to remake the wider Middle East in its own image.

Via its Al-Jazeera satellite news channel and its own brand of shuttle diplomacy, Doha has fanned the flames of revolt in Tunisia and Egypt, led the charge on NATO intervention in Libya, backed a quieter strategy to allow minimal, incremental change in it own backyard with Yemen and Bahrain, and has done everything in its power to unseat Syria Bashar al Assad from the word “go.”

Consider this: The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – now effectively helming Syria issues at the Arab League – spent seven months negotiating an exit for the despotic Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh

But the same players refused to spend even seven days on Syria.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov notes the discrepancy too: “All states, including those who have demanded to take some action against Syria, have taken a totally different approach towards Yemen, where negotiations on a peaceful plan proposed by the GCC have lasted for months,” he said, warning “an ultimatum that some states, including Arab League members, have been trying to resort to, cannot resolve the problem.”

The Arab League’s Syria “Game?”
When Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem contacted Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi a few months back, it was “to try to gain some time to find a way out of this crisis,” according to a Syrian source.

A senior Arab League official who would not speak on the record, claims that the Syria initiative was steered away from its original form by “some of the ministers who didn’t like the direction and started dictating certain ideas that they knew Syria would not accept.”

Qatar, whose Prime/Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al-Thani chairs the Arab League’s committee on Syria, could have produced a more constructive outcome, if it wished. Instead, says the official, the “Protocol” to create a League observer delegation was forwarded with an ultimatum “in a short time, which we have never experienced in the history of diplomacy at the Arab League. Why not do this right? This is needed not only for Syria – why not a plan for everywhere in the region?”

“The whole process was meant to gain a refusal, to move to the second stage of this game,” warns the official. What is this next stage? Al-Thani himself may have offered that answer when he hinted that the League could itself seek international intervention “if the Syrians do not take us seriously.”

Nobody is guiding the Arab League’s actions today more than this one-man Qatari tsunami. The Arabic-language press was agog with the tongue-lashing Al-Thani delivered his Algerian counterpart at a Syria-related meeting on November 12:

“Stop defending Syria because when your turn comes you may need us!” he allegedly roared at Algerian Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci when the latter registered an objection.

Yet the Qatari PM managed to feign regret in public when he announced last weekend: “Today, we are very sad to hold such a meeting as the Syrian government has not signed the observer mission.”

But here’s the rub. Syria had already agreed in principle to the Arab League’s plans, contingent on some amendments that would preserve its sovereignty. The League refused, claiming that these would “affect the core of the document and would radically change the nature of the mission.”

But is that true? Would Syria’s amendments sink the project as some League members alleged?

Much ado has been made about Syria’s amendments in Arab League statements, but other than a brief reference to a couple of provisions the Arabic-language press, these have not been made public until now.

Below is a more comprehensive outline of Syria’s counter proposal obtained from a well-connected, non-Syrian source. There is little in the document that could not have been negotiated to accommodate both Syria’s desire to maintain sovereignty in this process and the Arab League’s determination to carry out its mission:

Syria’s Amendments to the Arab League Monitoring Mission

November 2011

Clause I

“An independent Mission is to be formed, composed of Arab military and civilian personnel nominated by Arab states and organizations involved in human rights and the provision of protection to civilians, to be sent to the Syrian Arab Republic. It will be known as the Arab League Monitoring Mission and operate within its framework. It is assigned with monitoring implementation of the Arab plan for resolving the Syrian crisis and providing protection to Syrian civilians.”

Syrian amendment:

“An independent Mission is to be formed, composed of Arab military and civilian personnel nominated by Arab states, to be sent to the Syrian Arab Republic. It will be known as the Arab League Monitoring Mission and operate within its framework. It is assigned with monitoring implementation of the clauses of the Arab plan for resolving the current crisis in Syria. The Syrian side will be provided with a list comprising the names, status, ranks and nationalities of the Mission’s members. “

Clause II

“The Mission will start work immediately after Syria signs this Protocol. It will initially dispatch a delegation consisting of the Head of the Mission and an adequate number of monitors (between 30 and 50), supported by an appropriate number of administrative staff and sufficient security personnel to provide personal protection to members of the Mission.”

Syrian amendment:

“The Mission will start work immediately after Syria signs this Protocol. It will initially dispatch a delegation consisting of the Head of the Mission and an adequate number of monitors, supported by an appropriate number of administrative staff.”

Clause II – Subclause

“The number of monitors will be determined by the Head of the Mission, in consultation with the Secretary-General, in accordance with his assessment of the Mission’s requirements to perform its task of monitoring the Syrian government’s compliance with its commitments to protecting civilians in the fullest manner. The Secretary-General may call on technical assistance and observers from Arab, Islamic and friendly states in carrying out the tasks assigned to the Mission.”

Syrian amendment:

“The number of monitors will be determined by the Head of the Mission, in consultation with the Secretary-General and in coordination with Syria, in accordance with his assessment of the Mission’s requirements in performing its task of monitoring the Syrian government’s compliance with its commitments in the fullest manner. The Secretary-General may call on technical assistance and observers from Arab states in carrying out the tasks assigned to the Mission.”

Clause III, Subclause 3

“To verify the release of those detained due to the current events.”

Syrian amendment:

“To verify the phased release of those detained due to the current events who were not involved in crimes of murder or acts of sabotage.”

Clause III, Subclause 4

“To confirm the withdrawal and evacuation of military and armed forces from cities and residential areas which witnessed, or are witnessing, demonstrations and protests.”

Syrian amendment:

“To confirm the withdrawal and evacuation of military and armed forces from cities and residential areas.”

Clause III, Subclause 7

“The Mission will have full freedom of movement, and the freedom to make whatever visits or contacts it considers appropriate, in relation to matters pertaining to its tasks and modus operandi with regard to the provision of protection for civilians.”

Syrian amendment:

“The Mission will have full freedom of movement, and the freedom to make whatever visits or contacts it considers appropriate, in relation to matters pertaining to its tasks and modus operandi, in coordination with the Syrian side.”

Clause IV, Subclause 2

“Access and freedom of movement will be granted to all members of the Mission to all parts of the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic at the times specified by the Mission.”

Syrian amendment:

“Access and freedom of movement will be granted to all members of the Mission in coordination with the Syrian side.”

Clause IV, Subclause 5

“To guarantee that no person, or member of their family, will be punished, harassed or compromised — in any form whatsoever — as a result of having contact with the Mission or providing it with testimony or information.”

Syrian amendment:

“To guarantee that no person will be punished or subjected to pressure — in any form whatsoever — as a result of having contact with the Mission or providing it with testimony or information.”

In addition, the Syrian government wanted the following two points added to the Protocol:

1.”This protocol is valid for two months from the date of signature, renewable with the consent of both sides”
2. “The Syrian government will not incur any financial costs as a result of the Mission performing its task.”

The League needs to start as it means to continue. Consistent, lawful and devoid of double standards.

We are witnessing a dangerous willingness among the global political elite to circumvent rule of law, territorial integrity and sovereignty to jostle for positioning in the emerging Middle East order. Tolerating aerial bombardment of civilians by foreign forces and dragging the body of a deposed head of state through the streets are an indication of creeping lawlessness – much of which appears to be tacitly accepted by the “international community.”

This is unquestionably a new era in the Arab League. The organization is being thrust into a regional decision making role – without any history of competence or effectiveness – during a time when the Arab world is experiencing seismic shifts. Is the Arab League capable of rising to this challenge? Or will it remain an institution that rubber-stamps the policies of its most powerful members?

A version of this article was first published on Al Akhbar English

Follow the author on Twitter

Become a Facebook fan of the author

For Middle East watchers, the revelation that a major head of state called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “liar” is, well, not exactly news. French president Nicholas Sarkozy needs to get in line behind the many other politicians who have thrown up their arms over Netanyahu’s unusual – even for politics – propensity for duplicity.

Former Clinton White House Spokesman Joe Lockhart, in his book “The Truth About Camp David” calls the Israeli prime minister, “one of the most obnoxious individuals you’re going to come into – just a liar and a cheat. He could open his mouth and you could have no confidence that anything that came out of it was the truth.”

The latest brouhaha over Netanyahu’s character emerged at the G-20 meeting in Cannes last week, when reporters unintentionally caught three minutes of candid conversation between Sarkozy and US President Barack Obama. Here is the conversation according to the New York Times:

“I cannot stand him,” Mr. Sarkozy was quoted as saying. “He is a liar.”
Mr. Obama is reported to have replied, “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!”

My reaction was two-fold. Firstly, why does the president of the United States have to “deal” with Netanyahu “every day?” Israel’s strategic value to the United States has never been less apparent at a time when its pariah value is on the rise globally. In 2010, this thinking entered the political mainstream when CENTCOM’s then- commander General David Petraeus and US Vice President Joe Biden publicly suggested that the Jewish state may even be a liability in certain vital policy areas.

Nobody underlines the liability of our alliance with Israel better than Chas Freeman – Obama’s choice to head the National Intelligence Council – who was very publicly opposed by the Israel lobby during his nomination process. During a Nixon Center speech in July 2010, Freeman explained:

“[Israel] is so estranged from everyone else in the Middle East that no neighboring country will accept flight plans that originate in or transit it. Israel is therefore useless in terms of support for American power projection. It has no allies other than us. It has developed no friends. Israeli participation in our military operations would preclude the cooperation of many others… The need to protect Israel from mounting international indignation about its behavior continues to do grave damage to our global and regional standing. It has severely impaired our ties with the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims. These costs to our international influence, credibility, and leadership are, I think, far more serious than the economic and other burdens of the relationship.”

But Obama isn’t the only US president to bemoan the constant need to coddle both Israel and its irritating prime minister, in particular. Scroll back to Bill Clinton’s presidency, which coincided with Netanyahu’s first gig as head of state…

According to ex-special envoy to the Middle East Aaron David Miller, Clinton was so agitated by Netanyahu during their first meeting in 1996, he exploded: “Who the fuck does he think he is? Who’s the fucking superpower here?”

Barely a year later, Clinton had to personally wrest from Netanyahu an antidote for the toxin used by Israeli agents in their assassination attempt on Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal. “I cannot deal with this man. He is impossible,” Clinton allegedly said in reference to Netanyahu, who initially lied about his involvement in the murder plot.

But these cannot possibly compare to Netanyahu’s big “gotcha” moment where he is caught on camera telling a settler family that he deliberately deceived his partners in peace over the Oslo Accords:

Woman: The Oslo Accords are a disaster.

Netanyahu: Yes. You know that and I knew that…The people [nation] has to know…
What were the Oslo Accords? The Oslo Accords, which the Knesset signed, I was asked, before the elections: “Will you act according to them?” and I answered: “yes, subject to mutuality and limiting the retreats.” “But how do you intend to limit the retreats?” “I’ll give such interpretation to the Accords that will make it possible for me to stop this galloping to the ’67 [armistice] lines. How did we do it?

Narrator: The Oslo Accords stated at the time that Israel would gradually hand over territories to the Palestinians in three different pulses, unless the territories in question had settlements or military sites. This is where Netanyahu found a loophole.

Netanyahu: No one said what defined military sites. Defined military sites, I said, were security zones. As far as I’m concerned, the Jordan Valley is a defined military site.

Woman: Right [laughs]…The Beit She’an Valley.

Netanyahu: How can you tell. How can you tell? But then the question came up of just who would define what Defined Military Sites were. I received a letter – to my and to Arafat, at the same time – which said that Israel, and only Israel, would be the one to define what those are, the location of those military sites and their size. Now, they did not want to give me that letter, so I did not give the Hebron Agreement. I stopped the government meeting, I said: “I’m not signing.” Only when the letter came, in the course of the meeting, to my and to Arafat, only then did I sign the Hebron Agreement. Or rather, ratify it, it had already been signed. Why does this matter? Because at that moment I actually stopped the Oslo Accord.”

Is this why Bill Clinton in September admitted that it was Netanyahu, and not the Palestinians, who killed the peace process?

I have to admit a personal interest in Netanyahu’s lies, the subject of one of my very first Huffington Post pieces in 2009: “Netanyahu’s Shame and the Fiction He Weaves.” I have met the man and caught him in a lie back in the early 90s when he was still a deputy in the foreign ministry – this one was about Soviet immigrants and East Jerusalem settlements. One notices this man over other politicians: Netanyahu is smarmy through and through – Ariel Sharon felt avuncular in comparison.

But let’s go back to to the Sarkozy-Obama conversation for a moment. While Mideast veterans are well-versed in the duplicitous shenanigans of Israel’s current prime minister, the general public is probably not. This was an important admission by two staunch allies of Israel. It is not just Netanyahu they cover for – he is just a symptom of a long-ingrained habit of providing cover for Israel’s many, many myths, narratives and fairytales.

“This was a swamp, we made it a garden. There were no inhabitants here before the Jews arrived. Palestinians are terrorists, they teach their children to become suicide bombers, they have no value for life,” etc. The big one today is that although Israel tries, Palestinians don’t want peace. Columbia University’s Joseph Massad exposes these systemic untruths in a prescient article published recently on Al Jazeera – a must-read for anyone genuinely interested in Israel’s fact-building industry.

But here’s my second reaction. If Netanyahu lies and our leaders know it, why should we believe anything he says about Israel’s intentions for peace, Iran’s nuclear aspirations, Hamas terrorism, or anything else for that matter?

The guy’s a liar. Time to take away his platform.

Analysts and pundits have spent the past two weeks puzzling over the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate a Saudi diplomat in Washington – in part because of a complete lack of either motive or benefit for the Islamic Republic. Iran, reputed to place much stock in cost-benefit analyses in its geopolitical calculations, clearly fails to gain materially or politically from any part of the allegations thus far. So what gives?

Instead of scrutinizing the “whys” of Iran’s involvement, it may be more illuminating to examine Washington’s motivation in advancing this bit of political theater. The criminal charges were followed by high-profile statements and sanctioned leaks from the White House, the US Departments of State, Justice, Treasury, Defense, the FBI and CIA, all well orchestrated for maximum impact. The U.S. government then sought to persuade the global community via the UN Security Council and “phone calls to many capitals” of the gravity of the charges.

Such fanfare went beyond the service of prosecuting a single crime. More likely, the charges being leveled at Iran came in the service of “public diplomacy” – an attempt to establish a broad narrative that serves a policy decision.

While pushing the narrative of an Iranian “bogeyman” is not unusual in US policy circles, what may be new is the urgent emphasis on this storyline in the aftermath of Arab uprisings throughout the Middle East.

Bring in the “Red Team”

In March, as the Arab Revolts swept through the Middle East and North Africa, the US military’s combatant command center (CENTCOM) for military operations in twenty countries – including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Jordan – held a “Red Team” exercise to examine a narrative that perpetually pits Arabs and Iranians against each other.

CENTCOM’s Red Team was formed in 2006 to “think outside the box, offer contrarian thinking…sharpen the reasoning and force intellectual rigor” on critical issues for the benefit of senior military officials, a spokesman explained to me last year.

According to a source involved in the March drill, these are some of the specific premises and questions included in CENTCOM’s “Arabs versus Iran” exercise: (Note: The Red Team refers to Iranians as “Persians”)

• Premise: “The Arab-Persian dynamic is a divide.  History, religion, language and culture simply pose too many obstacles to overcome.”
• Premise: “A general Arab inferiority complex relative to Persians means that many Arabs are fearful of Persian expansion and hegemony throughout the Middle East.  In their minds, the Persian Empire has never gone away and it is more self-sufficient than most Arab states.”
•  Premise: “Barring a “clash of civilizations” – i.e., a modern crusades, Islam vs Judeo-Christians, warfare between the West/Israel vs Arabs/Persians – there does not appear to be a scenario where Arabs and Persians will join forces against the US/West.”
•  Question: “Is it appropriate to frame the discussion as Arab-Persian or is Sunni-Shia a more appropriate framework?”
•  Question: “Assuming a schism, what could unite Arabs and Persians, even temporarily?”

These narratives assume two things: that the division between Iranians and Arabs is a fact and that the greater unity of the two groups in the wake of the Arab uprisings is a potential threat to U.S. interests. Hence the worried question:  What could unite them, even temporarily?

Does the goal then become to ensure a state of chronic hostility between Iranians and Arabs?

Spokesman Maj. T.G. Taylor told Salon that CENTCOM planners “postulate multiple scenarios and potential outcomes to better anticipate and understand the nature of a complex and diverse region.  It is through this prudent military planning and cultural research that we are able to evaluate how to best protect U.S. and partner interests while reducing the risk of miscalculation stemming from ethnic and national differences.”

There is no disputing the region is rife with fault lines that divide populations.  I call the three biggest the Stink Bombs of the Middle East: Sunni versus Shia, Arabs versus Iran, Islamists versus secularists.  While there may be some natural tension between these groups, since the 1979 Iranian revolution there has been a marked increase in narratives that create fear of Shiites, Iranians and Islamists for geopolitical advantage.  And U.S. allies in the region — Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, Bahrain, Yemen — have been at the forefront of these efforts.

“… is Sunni-Shia a more appropriate framework? Arabs are afraid of Persian hegemony …  Islam vs Judeo-Christians …”

Such  themes have been embedded in superficial narratives of the Middle East that recur in our media.  The Red Team exercise was not particularly exceptional in many respects. But two things are highly unusual about this drill: the timing and its sponsor. The question baffles: Why did the U.S. military decide to shine a spotlight on the Arabs vs. Iran narrative three months into the uprisings sweeping through the Arab world?

Why not a broader, more urgent evaluation of how to realign U.S. interests with emerging democratic actors in the region?

The balance of power shifts

At the time of the Red Team exercise, peaceful, political protest had swept away pro-American regimes in Tunisia and Egypt and reached a critical mass in Bahrain and Yemen. The former is home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. The latter is an operational center for al-Qaida and a recent proxy battleground for Saudi-Iranian tensions.

Viewing the Arab uprisings through an Iranian lens offered a possible advantage for the United States. Arab public polls consistently favor Iran when it is contrasted with the United States, but not nearly as much when it is compared to other Arab regimes, even unpopular ones.  This tendency has long provided opponents of Iran to sow discord in the Arab world– even before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, but especially afterward. Narratives about expansionist, aggressive aspirations of the Iranian Shia have been sown far and wide in the largely Saudi-controlled Arab media, even though there has not been a serious conflict between Iranians and Arabs since the Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988.

A testimony to the power of propaganda and the knowledge deficit it encourages, mistrust between Iran and many Arab nations has simmered on low boil ever since. As Washington seeks to manage its losses and assert some control over future developments in the region, this narrative tool becomes a cost-effective way to wrest back some of its primacy by defining a new Middle East and drawing others into those  assumptions.

The Pentagon is actively seeking to understand, influence and control these platforms and the messages they transmit. In July, the technology arm of the Department of Defense, DARPA, announced a $42 million program to enable the U.S. military to “detect, classify, measure and track the formation, development and spread of ideas and concepts (memes)” within social media.

Manufacturing narratives

Promoting the narrative that casts Iran as a regional threat to Arab nations serves several urgent interests today: It justifies the upcoming sale of more than $120 billion in weapons to Arab governments, and works toward preventing Iran from gaining a further foothold in Iraq once U.S. troops complete their withdrawal in December.

But the Arab uprisings have interfered with Washington’s story. Saudi Arabia, Iran’s main rival and the U.S’s closest Arab ally, has sent troops into Bahrain to violently quell protests, has offered sanctuary to embattled dictators and is subsidizing many of the remaining autocratic Arab regimes throughout the region.

Counter-revolutionary Saudi Arabia’s substantial treasury insures its perspective will be heard in Washington. The Saudis will pay for more than half — $67 billion — of the total value of the region’s controversial arms purchases. The monarchy is also developing an elite 35,000-man force to “protect the kingdom’s oil riches and future nuclear sites,” to be overseen by none other than CENTCOM.

The Arab revolts pose a threat to such business. In recent months, the Obama administration has been hard-pressed to gain approval for even a mere $53 million slice of its weapons sale to Bahrain, which has been censured internationally for its suppression of peaceful protests.  Withstanding pressures from Congress and human rights groups, a State Department official last week finally announced the approval of the sale.

As these Arab uprisings continue to dismantle the regional status quo – for better or for worse – it appears the United States is acting not in accordance with its declared values, but is instead allowing financial and hegemonic calculations to drive foreign policy. Narratives manufactured to support myopic interests over fundamental values cast a long shadow over our ability to play a leading role in global affairs.  We don’t reason, we spin.  And, in the case of this newly vulnerable Middle East, nobody is more proficient in the business of keeping conflict humming.
This article was first published at Salon.com

I have been staring incredulously at my TV screen these past few hours as the story of Iran’s alleged assassination attempt of a Saudi diplomat in Washington unfolds in dramatic increments.

Reporters keep repeating the theme “like out of a Hollywood script” as they eke out increasingly unlikely details about this “terror” plot.

My immediate thoughts? Ah. So this is how Washington intends to overrule objections to its $120 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other Arab dictatorships of the Persian Gulf.

Forget Hollywood. If I channeled the worst of Washington’s Mideast policymakers, past and present – say, a John Bolton and a Dennis Ross – I could have written this story myself. A modern-day Wag the Dog if you will – the 1997 Dustin Hoffman/Robert De Niro black comedy in which a Hollywood producer helps Washington fabricate a war-on-celluloid in order to divert attention from a presidential sex scandal.

It so happens that I am in the midst of writing a revealing piece about a US military effort to test narratives about what unites and divides Arabs and Iranians. (Watch my blog for this in the next few days)

The most interesting aspect of this military-sponsored exercise is the timing – it took place less than three months after the onset of the Arab revolts that swept the Mideast.

Very quickly after the uprisings began, it became obvious that Iran stood to gain a geopolitical advantage if pro-US despots fell and Arab populations turned against the status quo which has long favored Washington goals: Israeli regional hegemony, unfettered access to cheap oil, the marginalization of political Islam…and now, the sale of hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons to the US’s remaining autocratic allies.

It also very quickly became apparent that selling the $120 billion worth of armaments – half of which are intended for the Saudis (Saudi Arabia: $67 billion, UAE: $35-40 billion, Oman: $12 billion, Kuwait: $7 billion) – to repressive regimes was going to be extremely difficult in the face of our public stances on democracy and human rights.

Weapons sales would be particularly hard to defend in the case of Saudi Arabia, by far the most repressive regime in the wider Middle East and North Africa, and ironically, America’s closest Arab ally.

Saudi Arabia’s position in the region today is so poor that it holds the distinction of being labeled the “Counter-revolution” state for its aggressive attempts to roll back these popular revolts. The Saudis spirited away to safety Tunisian dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali after his ousting, fought with Washington over its dwindling support of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak, rolled troops into Bahrain to violently quell protests, poured money into the coffers of corrupt monarchs from Jordan to Morocco, and are backing the immensely unpopular Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh against all odds.

So, how could the US fulfill those previously-approved weapon sales to Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf-Cooperation Council (GCC) autocracies without taking a global bashing?

Easy stuff: manufacture an “Iranian” threat and make the image-challenged Saudis look like victims desperately in need of protection.

Washington excels at divide-and-rule narratives, and leads its Mideast allies in sowing discord between Shia and Sunni, Arabs and Iranians and Islamists and secularists. Our favourite bogeyman bar none is the “Iranian, Shiite, Islamist” one, and we parade it around to great effect when we need an extra card to bulldoze through any reasoned policy challenges.

This “news” story on the alleged Iranian plot to kill a Saudi official is no different. But let’s collectively decide to scrutinize this one in a way we never did with the Iraq WMD allegations or the yellowcake uranium fabrication.

Tonight I found myself anticipating details of the case before the news anchor had even announced them. Where would Ross-Bolton, I thought, go with this story? The ideal scenario would be to create narratives quickly and decisively and flood the media marketplace with those impressions.

The goal: 1) to swing popular Arab opinion away from Iran and its allies, thereby influencing the direction of the Arab Revolts, and 2) to stack domestic and international opinion in favor of the pending US arms deals.

Ross-Bolton would have thoroughly approved of the details of this assassination plot. Firstly, it takes place in the United States and not the logistically-simpler Middle East, which provides rational cover for Washington to lead a new international jihad against the Iranians.

Secondly, it features the bizarre Mexico connection, an immediately obvious attempt to draw in Hezbollah, which we allege is involved in “terrorist” operations and drug smuggling south of our border – when actually, we are just trying to find a way to halt financial contributions from wealthy Lebanese-origin Latin Americans to Hezbollah, a group that also offers widespread social services to many Lebanese civilians – hospitals, schools, infrastructure and the like. US policymakers must be exceedingly frustrated that nobody actually buys these stories – Israel, Canada, the US and the Netherlands are still the only nations to categorize the Lebanese resistance group as a terrorist organization.

And finally, a Ross-Bolton personal touch: the assassination plot apparently also includes discussion of blowing up the Israeli embassy in Washington, gaining both sympathy points for the Jewish state at a time when it is becoming a pariah, and ensuring that the mindlessly pro-Israel US Congress will jump on board any and all efforts to nail the Iranians and reward the Saudis.

No questions asked.

Anyway, do enjoy the drama and keep an eye on how this spins out. Prepare for those “difficult” arms sales to breeze through. I will shortly publish my piece on the US military’s efforts to shine a spotlight on Arab-Iranian divisions – I think it will provide the requisite backdrop to explain why we find ourselves watching Hollywood at the top of the news hour today.

Follow the author on Twitter

Become a Facebook fan of the author

Typing away the truth?

I recently spoke with a friend who has been in and around Washington’s Mideast foreign policy establishment for three decades. “I have never seen policymakers so confused,” this political insider told me in regard to US plans in the region.

The old paradigms of supporting Israel unconditionally, marginalizing political Islam and propping up dictators we whitewash as “moderates” do not hold when the region is experiencing such fundamental shifts. Especially when our policies were such dismal failures before the Arab Awakening even hit our television screens.

So it is disheartening to see so many analysts, reporters and commentators still transfixed with old narratives – none of which serve to encourage the innovative policy reassessments needed to deal with this spanking new world.

Two recent examples:

Plumbing New Depths in Support of Israel
“In 2003, France and Germany’s decision not to allow coalition troops to use their territory in the effort to depose Saddam Hussein in Iraq not only was a blow to their alliance with the US, but set in motion circumstances that ultimately helped create the insurgency.”

For the record, I don’t blame France and Germany for jumpstarting a legitimate insurgency against occupying US forces. But Jonathan S. Tobin, writing in Commentary last week, did just that. Except, instead of invoking France and Germany – also close US allies who refused to participate in our misguided Iraqi adventure – Tobin was writing about “Turkey.”

Sounds just as stupid with “Turkey” in there, now doesn’t it?

The backdrop to Tobin’s bizarre conclusion is the recent emergence of a more assertive Turkey on the global stage, which – like other emerging powers – gently nudged aside the United States from its post-Cold War role as the sole arbiter of All Things. While Washington remained cautiously watchful of Turkey’s new direction, all attempts at diplomatic neutrality came to a screeching halt when Ankara dared to criticize Israel for its brutal assault on the Gaza Strip in 2009 and for its 2010 killing of nine activists on the Turkish-origin Mavi Marmara flotilla ship headed for Gaza.

As the war of words escalated between the two countries, our no-space-between-us-and-Israel clause in The Contract kicked in and we got nasty. Washington pundits began to question Turkey’s strategic importance to the US and started dropping the dreaded “Islamist” moniker in all references to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP-led government. Punishing Turkey took many forms – including approving in committee a contentious congressional resolution declaring the 1915 Armenian massacre a “genocide” and boycotting the 2010 Anatolian Eagle military exercises with the longtime NATO ally.

Turkey gained a brief reprieve when the Arab Awakening swept through the Middle East and Ankara became an important Muslim ally in ushering through support for NATO air cover of Libya and challenging the Syrian government’s treatment of protestors. Turkey threw its NATO allies a further bone by agreeing to host a US-allocated early warning radar on its soil as part of a plan to deter ballistic missile threats.

But new hostilities between Turkey and an ever-intractable Israel threaten to once again light a fire under the Jewish state’s supporters in the United States. Ignoring Ankara’s vast strategic value to Washington, commentators like Tobin are grasping at straws to once more strike some blows against Israel’s latest nemesis.

A NATO member since 1952; the world’s 16th largest economy; second largest standing armed force in NATO with over one million soldiers; a founding member of the United Nations, OECD and the G-20 major economies…

Just imagine – Turkey being blamed for Iraq’s insurgency. Wow…just wow.

Sadly, this is the kind of extrapolation in political reasoning that has made this truly a mad, mad, mad world. Welcome to punditry in Washington, DC.

Rehashing Old Stories To Reinforce a New Narrative
Then from out of the blue comes this Christian Science Monitor headline: “A Stunning Shift of Iran’s Image in the Arab World.” The article, which summarizes the results of a 2011 poll by Zogby International, points out that the Arab perception of Iran has taken a massive tumble in the last year.

Except that this is a story that made the rounds two months ago – most major papers carried this news in some form in July. Why dredge up the poll results as a headliner in September?

Both Washington and Tehran are maneouvering hard to position the shifting Mideast landscape as favorable to their respective regional agendas. Iranians maintain that the ousting of mostly pro-US dictators will bolster popular resistance to American machinations in the region – scoring points for the Islamic Republic, which is widely viewed as leading that charge. The US claims that the opposite is true, particularly if the Syrian regime falls and removes a vital Arab ally from the Iranian sphere of influence.

From a wholly American perspective, this “Iran vs Arabs” narrative is essential to distract newly-liberated Arab populations from the fact that their dictatorships were partly made-in-America – and actual poll numbers supporting this rhetoric are pure manna from the heavens.

The Iran vs Arabs narrative (and its offshoot, Shia vs Sunni) is so valuable to Washington that the US Military “Red Teamed” this very subject shortly after Arabs began ousting their dictators.

But let’s take a look at what has NOT been reported about this golden survey. At the bottom of its summary of findings, the poll clearly offers up a disclaimer:

Note: In previous polls, when Arabs were asked questions about Iran or its nuclear program, and the U.S. and its threats of sanctions or military action were a part of the question, Arabs would indicate strong support for Iran and its defiance on nuclear issues. The more negative attitudes toward Iran reflected here may be accounted for by the fact that in this survey Arabs are being asked to state their attitudes toward Iran without reference to the U.S. and/or that Iran’s regional behavior has succeeded in alienating Arab opinion.

That’s a huge “and/or” right there. The very same pollsters in 2010 conducted a survey concluding that Arabs overwhelmingly supported Iran’s nuclear program, even if it was not for peaceful purposes. The difference lies in the framing of the question:

In 2010, the poll asked: “There is international pressure for Iran to curtail its nuclear program. What is your opinion?” Respondents had a choice between “Iran has a right to its nuclear program” or “Iran should be pressured to stop its nuclear program.” Seventy-seven percent voted in favor of the former, with only 20% opting to nix nukes.

The critical language here is that the question is framed in the context of “international pressure.” Arabs are overwhelmingly rejecting this foreign intervention, rather than necessarily advocating on Iran’s behalf. In the 2011 poll, however, there was no reference to external meddling, and the questions were set up to produce a rather obvious response:

Which of the following statements comes closest to your views?

Statement A. “The Middle East would be safer if it were a nuclear free zone.”
Statement B. “The Middle East would be safer if Iran were a nuclear power.”

Cough, cough.

Media reports of this “stunning” 2011 poll fail to observe that respondents — all of whom come from countries whose governments are strongly allied with the U.S. (Lebanon excluded) – overwhelmingly favour Iran over the United States in the single survey question that allows a comparison.

Now that detail may have been relevant.

Who is at Fault? The Media or us?
These two examples represent a infinitesimal slice of the US media’s daily infractions in covering the Middle East. Both news reports and commentary pieces prove unreliable sources of information because of the lack of nuanced reporting from the region and a tendency to cleave to Washington’s highly-politicized narratives.

US policies, therefore, rarely get challenged in any meaningful way. Even after glaring failures like the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, nuclear negotiations with Iran, false WMD intelligence about Iraq, an unsuccessful “War on Terror,” etc., US MediaBots faithfully report from the perspective of the same misguided American politicians and special interest groups.

I’m often warned about “getting too deep into the weeds” in my commentary and analysis of Middle East geopolitics. Translation: too much detail about events so far away will turn off American readers. Sadly, this kind of thinking only encourages our preference to explain the region through “soundbites” – albeit only those that fit our limited frames of reference.

I think Washington prefers it this way. And most of us are too lazy to question the premise, let alone demand some answers.

Follow the author on Twitter

Visit the author on the Huffington Post

Become a Facebook fan of the author

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), the UN Security Council-initiated investigation into the February 14, 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, formally unveiled its indictment of four alleged Hezbollah “supporters” last week.

There was nothing new in this document. Almost all details had been leaked to various media outlets at separate intervals since 2009.

But it is a compelling read nonetheless. There is no longer any need for conjecture, supposition or doubt – the heart of the case against the accused is now spelled out in black and white.

A Case Built Entirely on Telecommunications Data
The Tribunal’s case appears to be built on a simple premise: the “co-location” of cellular phones – traceable to the accused four – that coincide heavily with Hariri’s whereabouts and crucial parts of the murder plot in the six weeks prior to his death.

Using Call Data Records (CDRs) – which track incoming and outgoing calls, time, date, duration, and importantly, the location from which calls are made (identifiable by the nearby “cell towers” that carry a mobile phone call) – the STL identified a covert network of mobile phones called the “Red Network” used in the planning of the assassination.

The Tribunal reveals that CDR analysis links the Red Network to four other colour-coded cell phone networks, some of which are non-covert, i.e. the Personal Mobile Phones (PMPs) of the indictees. In short, what this means is that the suspected covert phone networks (Red, Blue and Green) were very frequently making calls from the same areas as the personal mobile phones of the four accused men.

Indeed, the intricate details and frequency of the various phone call-overlaps between the covert Hariri-tracking networks and the personal phones of the indictees make this appear to be a slam-dunk case. How could any of this be coincidence? In the two hours before the assassination, there were 33 calls along Hariri’s route within the Red Network alone, co-located with the PMPs of the suspects.

Not So Fast…
But there isn’t a literate soul in Lebanon who does not know that the country’s telecommunications networks are highly infiltrated – whether by competing domestic political operatives or by foreign entities. For its part, the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah – with which the indictees are allegedly affiliated – has spent much of the past year explaining in painstaking detail the hazards of relying on telecom data that is readily penetrable by the state’s enemies.

This narrative has been backed by Lebanese officials, convicted “spies” and outed employees of telecom companies.

But how does this impact the STL’s meticulous circumstantial case?

On the one hand, Hezbollah supporters may very well have assassinated Rafiq Hariri – whether through direct orders from the resistance group’s leadership or in conjunction with other individuals or governments.

On the other hand, the telecommunication analysis provided by the Tribunal could instead represent an intricately planned and executed effort to frame Hezbollah.

It could go something like this:

Assume for a moment that there was in fact a genuine Hezbollah surveillance operation to track the whereabouts of Hariri. This, in itself, is not unusual by Lebanese standards – it is widely assumed in the Middle East that political camps engage in this kind of monitoring activities of key figures. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last summer even televised intercepted Israeli video footage tracking Hariri’s various routes to and from Beirut in the time period leading up to his death. No biggie, right?

Caveat: In this scenario, the Hezbollah operatives use their personal mobile phones during their surveillance ops. They have no covert phones as suggested by the Tribunal’s colour-coded networks theory. In fact, the colour-coded networks and their history of phone calls don’t even really exist – they have been entirely fabricated and then cleverly co-located with the Hezbollah PMPs by an unknown entity that hacked into cell tower data logs.

Or assume instead that the assassination plot is entirely accurate as outlined by the STL. There were indeed colour-coded covert networks led by the Red Network to carry out the dirty deed – only no Hezbollah operatives were involved.

Caveat: In this scenario, an unknown entity has simply co-located targeted Hezbollah-supporter PMPs with the colour-coded Networks to make it seem as though there is a connection with these individuals.

Crazy Conspiracy Theories?
Now why stretch the possibilities of things when the truth is probably the most easily accessible of all the scenarios. Hezbollah did it. Plain and simple.

To suggest otherwise would mean that a conspiring “entity” would have to obtain the deepest access into Lebanese telecommunications networks at one or – more likely – several points along the data logging trail of a mobile phone call. They would have to be able to intercept data and alter or forge it, and then, importantly, remove all traces of the intervention.

But here’s where “unlikely” crashes into “bizarre.” In the past year, several employees of the state-owned Lebanese telecommunications operator Alpha have been arrested for providing foreign entities with access into their networks.

Charbel Qazzi, an Alpha department manager is under investigation for providing Israeli agents with passwords to access his company’s networks and cell towers from outside Lebanon. Tarek Rabaa, an Alpha network engineer, has reportedly confessed to providing foreign intelligence agents with maps of Lebanese telecom networks, network settings and details of product components used in cell towers – information relevant to Lebanon’s other state-owned MTC telecom company too. Critically, Rabaa has admitted to – at the specific request of his contact agent – blocking the purchase of more secure Chinese-made Huawei equipment, while recommending the procurement of products that are more easily compromised.

According to leading Lebanese daily Al Akhbar which published the phone numbers redacted in the Tribunal’s indictment, all cell phones in the covert Red and Green Networks are Alpha numbers, with the other networks a mix of Alpha and MTC phones.

A 2011 Rand Report commissioned by the US Air Force confirms that in the six years following it’s 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon, Israel was actively tracking Hezbollah’s cellular footprints: “Among other things, those organizations (Mossad and AMAN) carefully tracked various Hezbollah leaders by their given names, noms de guerre, addresses, cellular telephone numbers and radio call signs.”

But this is of little surprise to industry watchers. As recently as last October, the general assembly of the world’s leading industry standards organization, the 124-nation International Telecommunications Union (ITU), passed a resolution condemning past and present acts of “piracy, interference and interruption, and sedition by Israel against Lebanon’s fixed and cellular telephone networks.”

Nobody doubts Israel’s capacity to carry out this telecom sleight of hand – technology warfare is an entrenched part of the nation’s military strategies. This task would lie somewhere between the relatively facile telephone hacking of the News of the World reporters and the infinitely more complex Stuxnet attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, in which Israel is a prime suspect.

And the fact is that Hezbollah is an early adherent to the concept of cyberwarfare. The resistance group have built their own nationwide fiber optics network to block enemy eavesdropping, and have demonstrated their own ability to intercept covert Israeli data communications. To imagine that they then used traceable mobile phones to execute the murder of the century is a real stretch. Even journalists in Beirut use multiple SIM cards and remove batteries from cell phones to escape basic tracking and monitoring activities.

Rafiq Hariri and Hassan Nasrallah

M-O-T-I-V-E
Last year, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah made it very clear – in response to Tribunal leaks about potential suspects being Hezbollah-related – that there are “no rogue elements” in the organization. Which would suggest that if there is any Hezbollah linkage to Hariri’s murder, orders would have had to come from the top.

The question is: why would Hezbollah’s leadership want to kill Hariri?

When investigating crimes of this nature, one looks to identify suspects by examining modus operandi and motive as well as a slew of other likely give-aways. The kind of over-the-top detonation of explosives by a suicide bomber in a crowded public place packed with civilians is simply not Hezbollah’s style, whatever our media purports to allege about this organization – even Western diplomats in Beirut agree with this.

On the critical issue of “motive” however, there is even more head scratching that goes on here. Usually, the narrative that assigns motive for this crime to Hezbollah goes something like this: Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, a close ally of Hezbollah, was at loggerheads with Hariri, had threatened him several times, and was furious at the former Lebanese PM for allegedly spearheading UN Security Council Resolution 1559 which created the basis for removing Syrian troops from Lebanese territory. Except that this narrative ignores the fact that Hezbollah is nobody’s hitsquad – again, our media’s oft-misleading conjecture aside – and has a Lebanese agenda quite separate from Assad’s grand plans for Syria.

A very interesting tidbit that has quietly emerged in the years since Hariri’s assassination reveals that, in spite of public adversarial agendas, a growing camaraderie had blossomed between Nasrallah and the former Lebanese prime minister in the six months before his untimely demise. During these talks, the men had apparently come to an understanding about Hezbollah’s retention of its weapons arsenal, further removing a motive for murder.

In a shocking video leak of the Security Council-backed investigative Commission’s interview of former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri – son of the slain Rafiq – the younger Hariri throws a cog in the “motives” wheel by revealing to investigators that his father and Nasrallah had “opened a door” recently: “My father trusted Hassan Nasrallah a lot and he thought he could work with him…he thought that Hassan Nasrallah was a man of his word.”

The secret weekly meetings between the two men took place in Dahiyeh, the heavily Shia suburb of southern Beirut, and Hezbollah assumed sole responsibility for Hariri’s safety during these clandestine visits. This would have been a huge leap of faith for someone as security conscious as Hariri, who travelled with a large contingency of bodyguards in armour-plated vehicles equipped with signal-jamming devices.

And it would certainly have provided Hezbollah with ample opportunity to do away with Hariri in a less provocative manner, if the group was so inclined.

Motive? Another way to look at this might be to ask who would most fear a fast friendship developing between Lebanon’s most popular Shiite and Sunni leaders?

All the telecommunications analysis in the world will not convince a large part of the Lebanese population that the data is “clean.” Perhaps it is unfortunate that the STL’s case happens to be based on what is viewed as a highly compromised sector and, as the indictment reads, “built in large part on circumstantial evidence.”

In the final analysis, after invasions, occupations and a wretched civil war, Lebanon will most likely resist being torn apart again over evidence this flimsy.

A version of this article first appeared on Al Jazeera’s English website on August 31, 2011

Note: The Arabic “Irhal,” which means “Leave” or “Go away,” is the most powerful slogan of the Arab Awakening that has emerged through much of the Middle East and North Africa since January 2011. It has been chanted against dictators in street protests in every Arab nation facing popular discontent.

The Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei yesterday demanded the immediate departure of Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa amidst growing international criticism of mass human rights violations in Bahrain.

Iran announced it is taking the lead in pushing through a binding resolution by the 118-member state Non Allied Movement (NAM) to sanction the import of oil products and pearls from the Bahraini island state and has leveraged its web of global relationships to sanction members of the Khalifa family and their closest financial and political allies in order to squeeze the nation’s economy and hasten the demise of the ruling clan.

For his part, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad revealed a joint initiative by the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guard (IRRG) and the country’s armed forces to position Shahab and Fajr missiles in Iraq and Syria, and to train opposition forces in all six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states to mount defensive and offensive strategies to undermine the Bahraini regime.

Sounds familiar? Hint: Yee-haw.

Irhal Amreeka
As popular, street-based movements to force domestic reforms sweep through the Arab world, the only fixed criteria in this widespread social “experiment” is the dogged interventions of the United States and its allies.

From Tunisia to Bahrain to Syria to Yemen to Egypt to Libya, US footprints mar the otherwise indigenous Arab political sandstorms hurling through the region.

Noble initiatives to hasten much-needed political reform and economic stimulus would be welcomed with open arms by most Arabs. But the United States has shown little interest in these developmental essentials, instead focusing entirely on a strategic holy trinity:

1) Unfettered access to cheap oil
2) Advancing Israeli hegemony over its Arab neighbors
3) Regime-change in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Why is this ham-fisted shortlist the only driver of our Mideast foreign policy? The core of our problem is that the halls of policymaking in Washington are filled with ideologues, not area specialists. Our decision makers therefore follow political agendas — usually attached with an umbilical cord to pro-Israel interest groups – and not nuanced diplomatic imperatives that could foster positive relations based on universal values and respect for national sovereignty.

Irhal Amreeka
There is not one thing on this list that seeks to promote a better life for Arabs. In fact, in order to achieve its goals cost-effectively and efficiently, Washington must dig into the bag of old colonial dirty tricks:

1) Nurturing and establishing an elite class/regime to administer US interests. There is no better recent example of this than the creation of the Palestinian Authority, but one could just as well look to the regimes of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan to understand why we are still stuck repeating the Washington-born narratives that characterizes these nations as the “Moderate Arab States.”

2) Divide-and-rule. The US and its “moderate” allies are frequently caught fanning the flames of what I call the Arab world’s three “Stinkbombs” — Islamism versus secularism, Shia versus Sunni, and Arabs versus Iranians.

3) Weaponizing our loyalists. The US’s regional allies are provided with everything they need to quell domestic discontent and deter the imaginary Iranian “expansionism” without posing any military threat to Israel.

4) Create dependencies. The goal here is to ensure that regional states are never economically self-sufficient and remain active marketplaces for US goods and services. Washington also leverages its global political clout to train local regimes to seek its good favors and not challenge US hegemonic interests.

Washington will vote against the establishment of a Palestinian state shortly, even though its 20-year-old “peace process” distraction promised just that. Washington has over $100 Billion in arms sales pending with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) monarchies, some of which have used weapons against their own populations. Washington has sought to piggyback Arab revolutions to lessen their impact (Egypt) or force its own regional agenda (Syria). Washington has spearheaded an international tribunal to legally define Hezbollah as a terrorist organization — the only Arab forces to have ever forced an end to an illegal Israeli occupation. Washington has used economic sanctions to force strategic regime change in Iraq, Syria, Gaza and Iran — “collective punishment” sanctions that have and will kill hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Muslims.

How exactly is any Arab progress and democracy expected to emerge from more of the same old shenanigans?

Irhal Amreeka
In order for Arabs to reach the goal of genuine representative government and viable economic reform, the US needs to be drop-kicked out of the Middle East. That means halting all our weapons sales to despots. That means, barring emergency humanitarian aid, ceasing all our military and financial assistance in the region.

And we should shut up too. So much of the Middle East’s political discourse is infested with language created in Washington, that it is hard to separate truth from our fictions sometimes:

Ask yourself why we blindly followed a 20-year peace “process” which by its very nature suggests something that is ongoing, instead of a peace “solution?” Ask why we think it is kosher to financially and militarily support a colonial-settler state like Israel whose very existence is dependent on the elimination of indigenous peoples? Why did we start calling the Libyans “rebels” while they were still only “protesting” in the streets? Why is Iran a “threat?” Why is Saudi Arabia “moderate?” Why do we tacitly accept killing hundreds of thousands of “them” when a mere handful of their outcasts killed 2,750 of “us?”

If the Arab Street is not shouting “Irhal Amreeka” today, I can assure you that this moment looms not far ahead — even in a soon-to-be-liberated Libya. Let us not credit a “Libyan victory” to ourselves — we could not even dare to lead this effort because of who we are and what we do. Doubt not that we will try our level best to pollute their new government – or alter it if it has independent designs.

But Libyans this week had a harsh reminder of our treachery. A recently-released WikiLeaks cable discloses that until protests erupted in the African state earlier this year, we were working overtime to try to sell arms to Ghaddafi and cement that cozy relationship.

Ugh. How do they stomach us?

On February 11, the day that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down after 30 years in power, Wael Ghonim, the young Google executive who had been a pivotal youth figure in Egypt’s uprising, sent a telling Tweet: “Dear Western Governments, You’ve been silent for 30 years supporting the regime that was oppressing us. Please don’t get involved now.”

Divide and rule. Sow discord. Reward corruption. Ignore human rights abuses and gender inequalities among our allies. Militarize the region. Defend the vile despots. The list is endless.

Question: Why do we think that peace, progress and prosperity in the Arab world will foster regional contempt for us?

Answer: Because we are worthy of it.

You would think Rupert Murdoch had enough troubles on his hands. You might even imagine that the evidence of illegal doings hemorrhaging from his now-defunct News of the World tabloid would urge him – at least temporarily – to slam the brakes on journalistic hackery throughout his media empire.

Instead, last Friday, Murdoch’s UK flagship paper, The Times of London, published a highly implausible piece alleging that Syria has transferred Scuds to Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah – and quoting only the anonymous and increasingly ubiquitous “western sources,” “intelligence sources” and “Israeli sources” that seem to accompany all Middle East news items guaranteed to eventually be debunked by history.

This story is already dead in the water, attesting to its fundamental lack of credibility. The United Nations Security Council would be passing a resolution right about now if the article had any legs to it – especially in light of its trigger-happy readiness to churn out resolutions on Syria and Lebanon in recent years.

But the question remains – why do Murdoch and others with editorial agendas manage to get away with planting propaganda pieces disguised as news?

I have not linked to the Times article because it is behind a pay wall, but these are the highlights of the piece by Richard Beeston, Nicholas Blanford and Sheera Frenkel entitled “Assad Builds Secret “Missile City” As He Arms Hezbollah With Long-Range Scuds:”

With the help of experts from Iran and North Korea, Damascus is pressing ahead with its development of sophisticated missiles at a secret site nicknamed “missile city” built into Jebel Taqsis, a mountain near the opposition stronghold of Hama…The missile programme is allegedly run by the Scientific Studies and Research Centre in Damascus, an organisation that is already on a US sanctions list….The Times reported last year that Hezbollah had taken delivery of two advanced Scud-D surface-to-surface missiles with a range of 700km (430 miles). Since then the Syrians have handed over eight more of the ballistic weapons, which have been assembled with the help of North Korean experts…

The article then goes on to claim:

Sources close to Hezbollah told The Times that the flow of weapons entering the Bekaa Valley from Syria accelerated in March when protests erupted against the Assad regime. One Hezbollah fighter joked that the scale of the arms shipments into Lebanon was so great that “we don’t know where to put it all”. Another said it was only a contingency measure. “We can send it all back when things calm down in Syria” he said.

Sources, Sources, Sources
I can tell you with near certainty that an actual “Hezbollah fighter” would not be caught dead talking about the group’s alleged weapons with a reporter. In the course of my research, I have met at length with an array of Hezbollah officials, including their former southern chief Sheikh Nabil Kaouk. The group never provides information about their military capabilities, weapons systems, troop numbers or whereabouts unless publically stated by their officials, and that, usually, as a pre-emptive decision to further a deterrence stance.

Information about Hezbollah’s military capabilities are on a need to know basis only, and it is doubtful that even the organization’s most prominent public figures in Lebanon – the non-military faces of the group – know anything of value about weapons caches or positions, let alone a mere “fighter” or “sources close to Hezbollah.”

One of the article’s authors Nicholas Blanford – Beirut correspondent for The Times – in his well-received 2009 book Killing Mr. Lebanon doesn’t even manage to get past the first few pages without referring to Hezbollah’s legendary “veil of secrecy.”

In this, Blanford is spot on. The idea that a Hezbollah fighter – whose very life depends on the element of surprise in any battle with Israel – would reveal information about weapons to a journalist, of all people, is akin to suggesting that a veteran Navy Seal soused to the gills in a bar in Faluja would wax poetic about the “secret” location of a sophisticated new cache of American arms to a bunch of bearded strangers.

What galls most, however, is that the Times article provides not a single on-the-record source on news of this significance. I understand fully that journalists are sometimes faced with publishing pieces with no source on record – that is the nature of the information business, where many sources will not risk jobs, careers and lives to lend their names to a story. But usually the rule of thumb is to use anonymous information when it is not evidently self-serving.

To publish a piece that maligns Western foes Syria and Hezbollah using exclusively Western and Israeli diplomatic and intelligence sources cannot reasonably be viewed as much more than propaganda. The quotes by a “Hezbollah fighter” and “sources close to Hezbollah” excepted, of course. Those strain credulity for anyone with more than a passing knowledge of the highly-disciplined and tight-lipped organization.

As a consequence, the Times article reads like an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) press release, and there have been plenty of those detailing unprovable or patently false Hezbollah-weapons stories over the years.

The large, dated and difficult-to-conceal Scud Missile System

While Peres’ claims were reported widely in the international media, Syria rejected all charges and Hezbollah played the Israeli game of refusing to confirm or deny anything. Then came a slow but steady stream of denials from an array of international observers – albeit, quietly.

First up was UN Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) Commander General Alberto Asarta Cuevas:

“We have around 12,000 soldiers and three Lebanese army brigades in a small area. We haven’t seen a thing,” said Asarta Cuevas. “Scud missiles are big. I’m sure there are no Scuds because it is very difficult to hide them,” he added.

A NATO-nation diplomat opined in private that accusations of Hezbollah arming itself with Scuds seemed a tad opportunistic and was likely meant to inflame passions: “The use of the term ‘Scud’ is misleading. The word makes you think of Saddam Hussein 20 years ago lobbing missiles into Tel Aviv. It’s a juicy visual. This is wrong.”

Noting that Scuds are “three generations” old missile technology, the diplomat responded to my queries about whether Israel had ever served up any evidence of this alleged weapons transfer by saying point-blank:

“Nobody has seen any Scuds. There is no evidence of any Scuds. Has Israel ever shown any satellite pictures of Scuds to us? No. Has anyone ever seen a picture of a Scud being transported to Lebanon? No.”

Then, earlier this year, France’s ex-Defense Minister Herve Morin dropped an on-the-record bombshell when he questioned Israel’s Scud claims during a trip to the Jewish state:

“I asked a number of times to receive evidence to back up Israel’s claims,” said Morin, who left his post in November 2010. “They never presented proof, which raises question marks about the claims to begin with.”

Israel, lie?

This cannot be. Tel Aviv has been super-efficient in stepping up to help. They are being wonderfully open about this stuff – I have found Scud references in every single major US paper – and in Europe too. The Jewish state has even provided maps – down to the exact house – that indicate where Lebanese women-and-children-commandos have stashed these weapons. Kudos go to the IDF too for creating user-friendly video games – or, as they like to call it, “3D animated clips” – that “illustrate how Hezbollah has turned over 100 villages in South Lebanon into military bases.”

Eyes on The Ground
The 12,000-troop-strong UNIFIL assists the Lebanese Army – which has primary responsibility for law and security – in keeping the area between the Litani River and the UN-designated “Blue Line” free of unauthorized weapons. These UN forces conduct approximately 350 patrols of the area every day.

UNIFIL’s Senior Political Advisor Milos Strugar admitted to me last year: “There is no evidence of Scuds in the south,” but noted that UNIFIL “do not search private homes or properties unless there is credible evidence of a violation of UN Resolution 1701.” He refers, of course, to the UN Security Council resolution that put an end to Israel’s 2006 attack on Lebanon which killed around 1,200 Lebanese civilians – mostly women and children – and left about one million cluster bombs behind to ostensibly kill some more.

So I asked an ex-Lebanese Army General what he thought about the Israeli maps and “3-D animated” footage of Hezbollah’s top-secret arms caches marked with terribly convenient “X”s.

The General rolled his eyes when he saw my IDF print outs from Google and YouTube.

“This is a joke and it’s not a funny joke at all,” he said quite somberly. “If these maps were real, they would be very precious information – you wouldn’t publish it on the internet and television like this…the IDF would keep it for the right moment. To surprise Hezbollah and bomb them.”

Then he made a very good point. “If the IDF was serious, they should have given these maps to UNIFIL. And if they had told UNIFIL, then Ban-Ki Moon would have gone on TV and declared that Hezbollah violated the rules and we found weapons between people’s homes.”

“Look,” continued the General: “based on the 2006 war experience, Hezbollah did not place weapons among civilians – they were outside the towns and went undetected by the Israelis,” he said directing me to the Winograd Commission as he wrapped things up.

Well, you just have to Google the Winograd Commission – Israel’s own investigation into the failings of their 2006 Lebanon invasion – to see what he meant. It turns out that Israel initiated a full-scale war without amassing any decent information about its enemy, their weapons and tactics. (Helpful hint: Every time the Commission mentions “lack of preparedness” you can assume a gross deficiency in military intelligence.)

Is that why Israel was so keen to share ALL its top-secret information about its enemy with us now? To show us that they are finally “in the know?” That they are Top Dog in The Levant again?

Some Answers
Nobody has seen any sign of any Scuds in Lebanon – then or now – this much is clear. And except for a few incidents of weapons and explosives found in the south by UNIFIL since 2006 – most dating from before the last war – there is thus far no evidence of any unauthorized weaponry there.

Furthermore, “western diplomats” in Beirut today “remain skeptical about any movements in the absence of any evidence backing up these allegations,” giving credence to the fact that foreign nations have little actual knowledge of Hezbollah’s alleged weapons, let alone the massive transfers of hard-to-hide large weaponry ferreted out of a desperate Syria as suggested by the Times article. One diplomat notes, “it remains true that no one has seen anything, but we are unlikely to.”

The only consistent finding is a relentless narrative by Israel that Hezbollah is armed to the teeth, using civilians as “human shields,” and is on the verge of attacking the Jewish state.

Hebrew-language newspaper Maariv last summer reported that Israeli finance officials were using Hezbollah to justify exhorbitant defense budget demands. Ben Caspit wrote on July 11, 2010:

“It’s interesting how every time the military budget is on the table, they release from the stocks Hezbollah’s missile array and expose sensitive classified material.”

There are other reasons to keep these narratives going as well. Israel has to justify $3 billion in mainly military assistance from the United States at a time when the US is burdened by its biggest federal deficit in history, with no apparent way to make it up. Bogeymen are de rigeur in such circumstances.

Planting Fake Weapons Stories to Justify Carnage
I had the privilege of joining The Independent’s Lebanon-based veteran reporter Robert Fisk for lunch overlooking the Beirut seafront last summer. Fisk, who has spent more than 30 years covering conflicts in this remarkably resilient country, has stories up his sleeve that make your eyes pop.

I asked him about Scuds, weapons and why Israel would publish internet maps of Hezbollah armaments hidden among civilian populations.

“The Israelis are making excuses for the next war crimes,” he said without missing a beat. “The Scuds don’t exist, they’re not here. I’ve seen the (IDF) pictures – garbage. There’s nothing in those houses.”

Human Rights Watch’s extensive report on Israel’s 2006 attack on Lebanon entitled Fatal Strikes: Israel’s Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon, covers at length the Jewish state’s unproven allegations that Hezbollah stashes weapons among civilian populations – charges that Israel continues to repeat despite evidence to the contrary.

The group’s Executive Director Kenneth Roth concludes: “The pattern of attacks shows the Israeli military’s disturbing disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians. Our research shows that Israel’s claim that Hezbollah fighters are hiding among civilians does not explain, let alone justify, Israel’s indiscriminate warfare…In the many cases of civilian deaths examined by Human Rights Watch, the location of Hezbollah troops and arms had nothing to do with the deaths because there was no Hezbollah around.”

Instead the Report clearly states:

“Human Rights Watch did not find evidence that the deployment of Hezbollah forces in Lebanon routinely or widely violated the laws of war, as repeatedly alleged by Israel. We did not find, for example, that Hezbollah routinely located its rockets inside or near civilian homes. Rather, we found strong evidence that Hezbollah had stored most of its rockets in bunkers and weapon storage facilities located in uninhabited fields and valleys. Similarly, while we found that Hezbollah fighters launched rockets from villages on some occasions, and may have committed shielding, a war crime, when it purposefully and repeatedly fired rockets from the vicinity of UN observer posts with the possible intent of deterring Israeli counterfire, we did not find evidence that Hezbollah otherwise fired its rockets from populated areas. The available evidence indicates that in the vast majority of cases Hezbollah fighters left populated civilian areas as soon as the fighting started and fired the majority of their rockets from pre-prepared positions in largely unpopulated valleys and fields outside villages.”

So what does all this have to do with Rupert Murdoch, other than the fact that he owns the newspaper that printed this drivel? Fisk’s prescient, recent column explains his own decision to exit The Times because Murdoch had “turned The Times into a tame, pro-Tory, pro-Israeli paper shorn of all editorial independence” that often parroted official Israeli policy.

Says Andrew Neil, former editor of the Sunday Times: “He (Murdoch) picks the editors that will take the kind of view of these things that he has and these editors know what is expected of them when the big issues come and they fall into line.”

At a time when the Middle East is reeling from destabilizing forces – for better or for worse – reporters and politicians both inside and outside the region need to check their every utterance. Murdoch’s media empire has displayed a startling disregard for journalistic integrity that has rocked the British political establishment and threatens to impact his operations across the Atlantic too.

But wiretapping members of the British royal family does not come close to agitating for conflict in a highly volatile region at a delicate moment in its history.

News-as-entertainment needs to call it a day. There are real lives at stake here.