"Hizbullah is Big Problem for Lebanon"
While the situation in Lebanon is still occasionally being reported on by the Western news media, it is frequently only mentioned in passing as part of the greater Sunni-Shiite split or as one of the three major American-Iranian proxy struggles in the Middle East (the other two being Iraq and the Palestinian Territories). Therefore, we here at It's Still News thought it would be interesting to revisit Lebanon since the end of this summer's war and the widespread anti-government demonstrations by Hizbullah and give an update on the story.
At It's Still News, we not only pore over numerous newspapers and blogs to find you the latest updates on forgotten news stories, but occasionally we conduct field interviews as well. So while researching this article, I asked my local Lebanese falafel guy for his assessment of the situation in his home country and according to him, "Hizbullah is still big problem for Lebanon". Well, there you have it. Perhaps we can fill in a few more details, though, as there have been a number of recent developments.
The recent Western news interest in Lebanon started with last summer's war with Israel, which began with the capture of Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah. This week, it has been reported in both Lebanese and Israeli newspapers that the Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, admitted Israeli war plans were made in advance of an anticipated Hizbullah attack. To anyone who actually watched the war progress, and saw the speed with which the Israelis decided to respond, this is not all that surprising. What is perhaps more surprising, as the second article points out, is that given that prior planning took place the war still went so badly for Israel. Perhaps this is why Olmert enjoys a level of domestic support that would make even our own President Bush cry. According to polls, if elections were held today only 3% of Israelis would vote for him. To be fair, that's probably more than the number of write-in votes Mickey Mouse gets in any US election, but I'm guessing not by that much. Of course, the state of Israeli politics right now is a sad affair, but that's a whole other subject.
For almost two months, from December 2, 2006 through January 25, 2007 Hizbullah and allied groups held sit-in protest that nearly shut down all of downtown Beirut in an attempt to force the government to resign or accept greater representation for Shiite groups, thus giving them a veto within the cabinet. I think it is nearly impossible for us to imagine the scale that these protests took on and the length that they continued for (two months of the capital city being completely shut down!), but the picture below gives some idea:
The protests ended in January when violence broke out and a number of people died (amazingly, for the two months before this, there had been nearly entirely no violence). After the violence, Hizbullah finally agreed to remove its supporters from the streets. But while the protests have ended, the political situation has remained precarious. The government has refused to back down and give the Shiite groups a third of the cabinet positions enabling a veto, while the pro-Syrian president Emile Lahoud has claimed that the government in its current form is unconstitutional since it doesn't follow requirements in the Lebanese constitution to represent all the major religious groups. He has even threatened not to step down when his term ends. Through all this, though, negotiations have continued between the two sides and recentl develoments point to a possible breakthrough. What the deal will be in the end is not yet clear, but we will keep following the story and report to you as it happens.
Finally, we end with one recent and related bit of news: it was reported that Ali Reza Asgari, the former deputy defense minister of Iran, disappeared in Turkey this week. He was apparently heavily involved with Iranian support for Hizbullah in Lebanon and has knowledge of Hizbullah, as well as possibly about the Iranian nuclear program. The Iranians first suggested he was kidnapped by the CIA or Mossad, but all evidence now seems to be pointing to him actually defecting to the West. As always, we will keep you posted...