Car bomb kills Lebanese politician

[bemildred]

Source: al Jaazera

A Lebanese Druze politician has been killed and three others injured in a car bomb attack in the Mount Lebanon region, according to a Lebanese army spokesman and a security official.

Saleh Aridi, a member of the Democratic Party, was killed on Wednesday evening in Baysur, a town south-east of the capital Beirut.

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Aridi was a prominent adviser to Talal Arslan, a prominent Druze politician whose Democratic Party has close links to neighbouring Syria.

Arslan is a leading opponent of Walid Jumblatt, de facto leader of the Druze community and head of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP).

Read more: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2008/09/2008910191932791866.html

[Swede]

1. How many factions are vying for control?

This surely can't be Druze on Druze?

[bemildred]

2. Druze on druze was my guess.

But instigating "Druze on druze" would work too. Maybe Jumblatt was getting even. Maybe it was something else. I was mostly taken by the fact that this occurred when everybody is making happy talk about a unity government. It could be intended to sabotage that, or be a private vendetta, or something we don't have a clue about.

[Phx_Dem]

3. anti-syrian druze vs. pro-syrian druze. nt

[happyslug]

4. Druse infighting including parts in Syria and Lebanon

We are discussing the Middle East with borders drawn by Britain and France at the end of WWII. Those borders do NOT reflect the real divisions in that part of the Middle east, just the Political lines draw in the sand.

For example why did Syria enter the first Lebanon Civil War? The Answer was to protect the Christians who were losing the war but who had been the trading partners of the Druse located in what is now Syria. Syrian troops stayed as long as they had the support of the Christians, once that disappeared the Troops were withdrawn (Almost 30 years later, but no one was counting).

What appears to be happening is the Christian have split into two groups. One allied with the Druse and Hezbollah (and Iran and the Druse rulers of Syria, who controls the Mountains and the Interior). The other side backed by Turkey, the US and Israel (Who control the sea-coast). This will continue as long as both Iran and Syria fear a US expansion of its war in Iraq (i.e. some sort of invasion of Iran, with probably a peremptory strike at Syria to establish a secure supply line other then the Persian Gulf). The US is trying to buy support in Lebanon any where it can and has caused splits between those people who the US has been able to buy, and those groups who see the US as a Major threat to the region.

The Christians voters backing Hezbollah against the Lebanon Government last year seems to have been the first taste of this, now it seems to have spread to other groups in the area. The real question is can the US keep it up?

[bemildred]

5. Lebanon leaders call for calm

Lebanon's leaders have called for calm in the wake of the assassination of Saleh Aridi, a Lebanese Druze politician, whose death in a car bombing has threatened to derail efforts at national reconciliation.

Michel Sleiman, the Lebanese president, had ordered the Lebanese army to step up security in the area on Thursday and launch an investigation into the incident.

Aridi's death on Wednesday came less than a week before planned reconciliation talks among rival Lebanese factions.

The attack was thought by politicians to be an effort to rekindle violence between rivals in the sensitive Druze-inhabited mountains, areas controlled by the two main Druse factions - the Lebanese Democratic Party led by Talal Arslan and the Progressive Socialist Party of Walid Jumblatt.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2008/09/200891114183193327.html

[ohio2007]

6. Syrian commandos in seven N. Lebanese villages outside Tripoli

Wednesday's attack is the first deadly car bombing since January, when a security official investigating a series of political killings blamed on Syria was killed.

Aridi is the first opposition politician to be assassinated since a string of politically motivated attacks against members of the parliamentary majority bloc began in late 2004.


http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2008/09/2008910191932791866.html


The source is not as reliable as the al Jazeera source but here it is for = time

September 13, 2008,
Two Syrian commando battalions accompanied by reconnaissance and engineering corps units have crossed into Lebanon in the last 48 hours and taken up positions in seven villages, most of them Allawite Muslim, outside Tripoli, DEBKAfile’s military sources reported Saturday, Sept. 13. They are the vanguard of a large armored force poised on the border.

Damascus has signaled to Washington and Paris: Don’t interfere.
The Syrian incursion coincided with the expected arrival of Russian naval and engineering experts for renovating Tartus, the Syrian port 40 kilometers north of Tripoli, to serve as the Russian fleet’s first permanent Mediterranean base. Bashar Assad clearly feels he can safely embark on a fresh foreign adventure to occupy northern Lebanon without fear of restraint.

According to DEBKAfile’s Washington and Paris sources, the US and French governments knew what was coming. Both had heard Damascus accusing the pro-Western Lebanese majority leader Saad Hariri and Saudi Arabia of sponsoring a bid by Muslim Salafite movements and radicals close to al Qaeda to set up a “Lebanese Kandahar” in Tripoli, in order to keep the Shiite Hizballah out. Israel was in the picture too.




snip
http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/Lebanon/2975711A14590B11C22574C4002D3291?OpenDocument

http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5579

Army Confiscates Arms in Tripoli

http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/story/8DC878266FD39355C22574C4003D3F05?OpenDocument