Global News Journal

Trust in Lebanese financier shakes Hezbollah’s image

By Yara Bayoumy

The case of Salah Ezz el-Din, a Shi’ite Lebanese financier who has been accused of embezzlement and alleged to have defrauded Shi’ite investors, including Hezbollah officials, of hundreds of millions of dollars, has Lebanon in a stir.

The overall amount pales in comparison to Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, but in a community of little more than a million Shi’ites, it has meant that many have had their life-savings wiped out.

But what’s more shocking than the amount is the overwhelming trust that his investors still have in him. That is, no doubt, due to Hezbollah’s approval of him.

There are even some Hezbollah officials who invested with him, although the group’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has denied any direct links with Ezz el-Din.

Political sources say the investors, most of whom are from the Hezbollah bastions of southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs, were so willing to part with their money because Hezbollah said Ezz el-Din was a man to be trusted.

Fouad Ajami, one of the investors, told Reuters: “To tell you the truth, people put their money with him because he was wearing the Hezbollah cloak, because he was close to Hezbollah and he duped people into thinking he was someone important in Hezbollah,” he said.

Post card from Lebanon

This is one of a series of post cards by Reuters reporters looking at how the financial crisis is playing out for ordinary people across Europe, Middle East and Africa.

On an Easter break in south Lebanon with visitors from Britain, we see scores of election posters lining the highway ahead of the June 7 parliamentary poll — the first big test of stability here since a Qatari-brokered deal last year calmed an internal crisis that had dragged Lebanon towards renewed civil war. Vague slogans on the slickly produced adverts promise change, democracy, resistance (to Israel) and much else beside. But the election will change little. Power might shift a bit between Lebanon’s dominant alliances — one backed by the West and Saudi Arabia, the other by Syria and Iran. But voters have scant choice as the sectarian power-sharing system allows party leaders to do deals that stitch up most seats in advance.

Election tension might spark low-level clashes, but external factors — a Syrian-Saudi rapprochement, Obama’s overtures to Damascus and Tehran — have helped cool the atmosphere. And the Lebanese, who have so far survived the global downturn thanks to the liquidity and conservative policies of their banks, know any major violence could wreck the lucrative summer tourist season.

On the Beirut-Tyre highway, billboards for beach resorts alternate with Hezbollah banners. The Iranian-backed Shi’ite group does not seem keen to provoke a repeat of its 2006 war with Israel, but no one doubts its military capacity, however well concealed. South of the Litani river, we see only UNIFIL peacekeepers and Lebanese army checkpoints. The calm we enjoyed on our break would of course unravel swiftly if Israel’s confrontation with Iran were to ignite in outright conflict.

Not that all is quiet in Lebanon — four soldiers were ambushed and killed in the Bekaa Valley this week by brothers of a drug baron slain earlier at an army checkpoint, illustrating the fragility of the rule of law, especially in neglected rural hinterlands. We decide to skip the Roman ruins of Baalbek.

Back in Beirut, cranes swing over building sites where Syrian workers toil away as if Lebanon were immune from the world’s economic woes. In fact property prices have lost some froth, but the crisis has been strangely slow to bite. Money sent home by Lebanese working in the Gulf and elsewhere makes up more than a quarter of GDP, but the finance minister says his compatriots are not the first to be fired.

Anti-sectarian law only skin-deep in Lebanon

When Lebanese Interior Minister Ziad Baroud issued a memorandum giving Lebanese citizens the option to remove their sect from civil registry records, it seemed like a step towards removing deeply embedded sectarianism from Lebanon’s social fabric.

The country has been convulsed by bouts of sectarian violence, most notably the 1975-90 civil war, in which 150,000 people were killed, and more recently last May when a power struggle spilled into armed conflict and supporters of Shi’ite Hezbollah briefly took over parts of Sunni western Beirut.

Study the measure a little more closely and some questions emerge. What happens to those wanting to run for seats in parliament, which are distributed according to sect to satisfy Lebanon’s delicate power-sharing balance? What about citizens who have to go to court over personal status issues, which in Lebanon are presided over by courts run by religious sects? Ultimately, they have no choice but to reveal their religious affiliation.    

So it is doubtful that this measure will really remove sectarianism from Lebanon’s moral and social consciousness, especially when you have a political and legal structure in which sectarianism is required to achieve a power-sharing balance to accommodate 17 different religious communities.    

The Lebanese media has covered this issue extensively: ”The change is a step in the right direction but it is not sufficient. The government needs to take the next step and ensure that all Lebanese have access to personal status laws that aren’t religiously based,” said Human Rights Watch’s Nadim Houry. “The Lebanese confessional system is discriminatory and has proven to be a failure,” he told Reuters.    

After all it is still common to come across taxi drivers who refuse to foray into Sunni Muslim western Beirut from Christian eastern Beirut. And some are reluctant to venture into southern Beirut, a Shi’ite Hezbollah stronghold.    

Some Lebanese will even admit to feeling uncomfortable in districts which they are not religiously affiliated to. And while most will poo-poo sectarianism, they will almost always support the political party that is based on their religious affiliation. It is a testament to how ingrained sectarianism is in Lebanon’s culture that it is the subject of office politics, jokes and the main soccer teams are divided on Sunni-Sh’ite lines.   

Twittering from the front-lines

Who remembers the Google Wars website that was doing the viral rounds a few years back – a mildly amusing, non-scientific snapshot of the search-driven, internet world we live in?

It lives on at www.googlebattle.com where you can enter two search terms, say ‘Lennon vs. McCartney’ or ‘Left vs. Right’, and let the internet pick a winner by the number of search hits each word gets.

As we reported here – the virtual world has become a real battleground in the ongoing Gaza conflict – with all sides deploying significant resources.

For Israel – where hasbara or PR has often been frowned upon as unnecessary pandering to international opinion that never turns in Israel’s favour anyway – the second Lebanon war underlined the need for a coherent media and PR strategy coordinated at the centre of government.

The post-mortem of the month-long war with Hezbollah in 2006 – known as the Winograd Commission – recommended a centralised approach to hasbara to avoid spokesmen from different ministries, the army or the police telling different or conflicting stories to a voracious local and international media.

Notwithstanding the fact that the head of the new National Information Directorate did not make it to a scheduled interview with our reporter on the story above  – as my colleague Dan Williams reported here the strategy certainly seems to be working for domestic consumption.

Sources inside the Israeli government have said they are generally happy with the way the strategy has worked internationally as well despite growing international calls for a ceasefire and increasingly angry protests around the world.

Lebanese lovers escape sectarian strait-jacket

Lebanon’s beaches, ski slopes and nightclubs exude glitzy modernity. Its educated elite appears cosmopolitan and sophisticated. But beneath the gloss lie deeply traditional aspects of a society reluctant to shake off a sectarian power-sharing system in which loyalty to one of Lebanon’s 17 religious communities takes precedence over citizenship.

    Nothing illustrates this better than star-crossed lovers.

    Take Laure and Ali, who began dating six years ago after a chance encounter at university in Beirut when they were both 21. She studied political science and now works for an international aid organization. He is a computer and communications engineer.

    Long ago they decided to wed, but there was a snag. Laure is Christian, Ali a Shi’ite Muslim, though they say these identities are just “on paper”. Their families opposed the match across the religious divide, just as they were against the romance from the start.

    “My parents had different arguments, none of them convincing,” recalls Laure. “They said the two families would never get along. They worried what people would say. They said: ‘He’s going to force you to wear a veil, maybe now he’s tolerant, but later he will get more and more into religion’. And then it was the kids, what would the kids be?”

    The objections of Ali’s parents also revolved on social fears, not religious convictions. “If they were very religious, I would understand their point of view. But they are not, so I couldn’t understand their opposition,” he says.

    Laure and Ali could have eloped, as many Lebanese couples in their plight do. Instead they chose a long, uncertain but ultimately successful quest to win over their families.

No mercy for Beirut traffic offender

Lebanon, once a byword for violent anarchy, remains a country where the rule of law is patchy, to put it kindly. But Interior Minister Ziad Baroud, a youthful reform-minded lawyer who was appointed in July as part of a national unity government, is determined to change that, or at least to make a start. He has told the traffic police to do something about the cheerful but sometimes lethal chaos that pervades the roads. 

    Few Lebanese normally bother with seat belts or crash helmets. Speeding with a mobile phone glued to your ear or an infant in your lap comes naturally. Double or triple parking is the norm, lane discipline an alien concept and right of way determined by who gets there first or who drives a bigger vehicle. Scooters fizz everywhere, a law unto themselves. 

    Now Baroud is trying to impose order on all this wild individualism. As I discovered the hard way.

    Leaving home by car the other day, I found my normal route blocked by a truck delivering steel rods to a building site. I had a choice. Turn left, legally, and face a lengthy detour through jammed streets, or turn right for 20 metres the wrong way down a one-way street onto the main road.

    I was in a hurry and in Beirut one-way signs are just part of the urban decor, so for the first time in my two years here (honest), I took the short cut. Only to find myself collared by the long arm of the Lebanese constabulary lurking around the corner. The young traffic cop then swiftly flagged down a sleek black Mercedes which had followed my rash example. He proved impervious to our excuses about the truck obstruction.

    “I have to give you a ticket,” he told the protesting Lebanese driver, “otherwise this foreigner will get a bad impression.”

“Deja vu all over again” in struggling Hungary?

Hungary has negotiated a $25 billion economic rescue package with the IMF, the EU and the World Bank. What else is new? As that non-Hungarian philosopher of gamesmanship Yogi Berra put it, it’s ”like déjà vu all over again”.  

Consider the words of historian Paul Lendvai who wrote: ”Its economy in tatters, Hungary accepts a loan of 250 million gold crowns.” “Fiscal stability was restored, a currency reform was introduced…and after a modest upswing the value of industrial production stood 12 percent higher…”

The date? The 1920s. The lender: The League of Nations. Only the details have changed.

Hungary seems never to have encountered a global financial crisis it didn’t jump into head first.

The shadows that lie behind Beirut’s glitzy façade

In downtown Beirut, resurrected from the rubble of the 1975-90 civil war, one is spoilt for choice of smart restaurants, trendy bars and lively clubs. Performances by sexy Lebanese divas and belly dancers contribute generously to Lebanon’s gross domestic product by attracting Gulf Arab tourists enchanted with Lebanese talent and beauty — not necessarily in that order.

There is isn’t a single international designer who has not found his or her way to Beirut’s elegant boutiques and jewellery shops. On the other hand, Lebanese designers such as Elie Saab are dressing Hollywood stars these days.

On the streets of Beirut one can see the latest Mercedes, Jaguars and BMWs jostling with Maseratis and Ferraris, even before they appear in Europe. Appearances aside, Lebanon has one of the best-educated peoples in the Middle East, with its young men and women having a global reach into the worlds of business, banking and academia.

It was comforting to see downtown Beirut teeming again with tourists enjoying the delights the city can offer. Beaches were packed with Beirutis in bikinis and hotels were overbooked with returning visitors who left during the crisis that erupted between the pro-Iranian opposition led by Lebanon’s influential Shi’ite Hezbollah and the U.S.-backed Sunni-led Lebanese government after the assassination in 2005 of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. This crisis has been put on hold following a Qatari-brokered agreement in May.

Yet underneath the glitzy facade is a country mirroring the real currents of militancy and Sunni-Shi’ite sectarianism unleashed by the Iraq war.

The conflict in Iraq has brought back to the surface the historical Sunni-Shi’ite feud throughout the Middle East. It overthrew a Sunni dictator, brought Iraq’s Shi’ites to power and tipped the balance of power in favour of Shi’ite Iran and its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon.

This, in turn, has incensed Sunni Arab countries and left a bitter legacy across the Arab world, Lebanon in particular which is traditionally a proxy battleground where regional forces settle their disputes.

Long list of enemies in Syria blast

One of the problems with countries like Syria – secretive and authoritarian – is that whenever a bomb goes off or someone is assassinated, the list of possible suspects is extensive.

One can draw up a long list of enemies who could have plotted and carried out Saturday’s rare car bomb attack on a major road near a Syrian state security complex and an intersection leading to a famous Shi’ite Muslim shrine. The blast, which killed 17 people including a brigadier general and his son, poses another test to Syria’s reputation for keeping a tight grip on dissent and maintaining stability in a troubled area. 

High on any list of possible perpetrators are Sunni Salafi jihadis active in Syria now, and who for years were able to cross through the Syrian borders into Iraq to fight U.S. troops. This stopped recently when Damascus tightened its borders following pressure from Iraq and the United States and opted for a policy of detente and moderation starting with indirect peace talks with Israel through Turkish mediation and a diplomatic drive to end its international isolation.

The jihadis, angry at Syria cutting off their routes, relaunching peace talks with the Jewish state and detaining their militants, could have turned their guns against Damascus. And this could have involved a mix of personnel — foreign expertise helping local Islamists.

Another motive for the latest attack could be Sunni-Alawite tensions in Lebanon. Sunni militant groups based in northern Lebanon have been fighting a sectarian war with Lebanon’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam which has close links to Syria, whose ruling elite has been dominated by minority Alawites for over four decades.

Syria said an Islamist suicide bomber was responsible for the attack and that the vehicle had entered Syria from a neighbouring Arab country on Sept 26. It did not name the country but Syria’s Arab neighbours are Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan.

Assad, whose country has dominated Lebanon for three decades and was forced to withdraw its troops after the assassination of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, warned this month of a danger from what he called foreign-backed Sunni extremists in the predominantly Sunni city of Tripoli. He called for a solution to “the rising threat” of Islamist militants in the city.

Is Hezbollah’s gun diplomacy working?

Hezbollah literally rolled out the red carpet to welcome home five prisoners released by Israel in a U.N.-mediated exchange deal. Securing the release of the last five Lebanese held by Israel was a major triumph for the group, which in turn handed over the bodies of two Israeli soldiers captured in a 2006 raid into Israel.

Having achieved a long-held goal, Hezbollah is holding up the exchange as further evidence that its uncompromising, armed approach to dealing with Israel brings results, directly challenging the policies of Arab leaders who have engaged in negotiations or signed peace treaties with the Jewish state. The New York Times called the prisoners’ homecoming a triumph.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, visibly delighted by the prisoner release, addressed the issue during a rare public appearance. He saluted “the true identity of the peoples of our region … the identity of resistance”.

Broadcast into homes across the Arab world by satellite stations, Nasrallah’s rhetoric resonates with viewers who have seen few results from years of talks over the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Spoken by a man widely recognised as the Arab world’s most effective orator, the rhetoric is a challenge to states such as Jordan and Egypt. Both are ruled by U.S.-allied governments that have made peace with Israel and are concerned by the rising influence of Iran, Hezbollah’s main sponsor.

But while Hezbollah’s charismatic leader still wins admiration across the Arab world, his Shi’ite group no longer enjoys the broad respect it once did in fractious Lebanon.

Nearly two years of political conflict with other Lebanese, including the country’s main Sunni leader, have opened deep sectarian wounds. Hezbollah’s brief takeover of Beirut in May increased the concerns of Lebanese critics who were already suspicious of the group’s vast arsenal.