Reply #89: Robert Fisk: Shifting blame to Lebanon may be the method in Assad's madness

[Turborama]

Many Arabs were appalled that Mr Obama would apparently try to make cheap propaganda over the tragedy
Monday, April 25 2011

President Bashar al-Assad's war with his own Syrian people is moving perilously close to Lebanon. Indeed, over the past few days, Lebanese opposition leaders have been voicing their suspicions that the Baathist regime in Damascus – in an attempt to distract attention away from the Syrian popular uprising – is deliberately stirring sectarian tensions in a country which has only just commemorated the 36th anniversary of its own terrifying 15-year civil war, which cost 150,000 lives.

In the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on Friday, rival pro- and anti-Assad demonstrations were held and the Lebanese Government flooded the streets with troops and internal security force members. Tripoli contains a sizeable community of Alawites, the Shia offshoot to which the Assad family belongs, most of them with close family ties to Syria.

Rather more disturbing was that the Shia Hezbollah in Lebanon – the only serious militia in the country and Israel's principal enemy here – accepted Syria's claim that the opposition Lebanese Future Movement MP Jamal Jarrah was involved in what the Assad regime calls the "armed insurgency" in the Syrian cities of Deraa, Latakia, Banias and Aleppo. Syrian television has shown interviews with two extremely frightened men it said had been caught with weapons and one of whom had, it said, confessed to bringing money and guns into Syria on the instructions of Jarrah. The MP and his party have indignantly denied the claim, but a Hezbollah official now says that Jarrah should be brought before Lebanese justice.

So, too, has the Syrian ambassador to Lebanon, Ali Abdul Karim Ali, who visited the Lebanese foreign ministry – obviously on orders from Damascus – to demand that Jarrah be brought to justice. The Future Movement, whose leader, Saad Hariri, remains the caretaker Lebanese Prime Minister in the continued absence of a government in the country, indignantly protested that Ali's move was Syrian interference in the internal affairs of Lebanon. Hezbollah has been busily praising – like its Iranian sponsors – the Egyptian revolution while condemning the demonstrations inside Syria.

Very informative and well worth reading in full: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-shifting-blame-to-lebanon-may-be-the-method-in-assads-madness-2274436.html

:hi: