Northern Lebanon Burning

Another in THC's occasional series on the sites listed on our blogroll (see, also How Can You Be So Obtuse, Coyote Blog and Megan McArdle).

Michael Totten writes a blog about the Middle East on the World Affairs Journal website.  He doesn't write abstract geopolitical essays and he is not an academic.  He's an American who in the aftermath of 911 decided to spend more time on the ground in the region to figure out what was really happening.  He started by going to Lebanon in 2004 during the run-up to the Cedar Revolution of 2005 (Cedar Revolution Rally) which was aborted by the takeover of effective control of the country by Hezbollah, Syria's ally, in 2008.(Michael Totten)

Out of the reporting came an excellent book, The Road To Fatima Gate, which I cannot recommend too highly.  Totten manages to get interviews with all the key factional players in Lebanon and has been remarkably accurate in his assessments of them and their motivations.  His reputation has grown over the years and he's done excellent reporting from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and other places.  He speaks directly with moderates, reformers, Christians, Islamists and the Moslem Brotherhood and provides better insights than you get from newspapers and other magazine.

His most recent post, Northern Lebanon Burning, is about how the ongoing civil war in Syria (which has effectively controlled Lebanon for most of the period since the 1980s, a takeover supported by the George HW Bush Administration in order to get Hafez Assad's to join the coalition against Saddam Hussein in the First Gulf War (1990-1)) is spilling over into the northern region of Lebanon and the convoluted politics and positioning behind what's occurring there which is often not what it seems at first glimpse.  Here's an excerpt: 

“The fighting between Sunnis and Alawites looks pretty gruesome,” I said. “Is this city as dangerous as it appears from a distance?”

“It's very dangerous,” he said. “This morning some shop owners came here and screamed that no one comes to Tripoli anymore. We have no security. The security institutions are protecting the fighters on both sides. They're not protecting civilians. This is a fact.”

It sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. Factions within the Lebanese army really are protecting both the Sunni and Alawite militias. Partly this is because the army is just as divided along sectarian lines as the country is, but mostly it’s because many of the army officers are still loyal to Assad and to Hezbollah. That still hasn’t changed since Syria’s occupation of Lebanon when the Assad family and their henchmen sabotaged the Lebanese army and bent it to their will. When Hezbollah invaded Beirut in 2008, maintaining control over pieces of Lebanon’s army was on its list of demands.

Even so, it still sounds ridiculous. Why on earth would Assad’s people protect an anti-Syrian, anti-Alawite, and anti-Hezbollah Sunni militia?"

 To find out the answer, read the whole article.