Lebanon tries once more to fight its sectarian demons

It is election season in Lebanon, and as usual it is a time of petty electoral politics, back-room deals, oversized egos, shameless sectarian agitation, political manipulation, imaginative (and sometimes disgraceful) campaign advertising, outright vote buying and, sadly, foolish violence. And this deplorable if all too predictable state of affairs is the backdrop to a fierce battle for Lebanon’s future.

@body arnhem:The June 7 elections will reflect a new balance of power rather than deal a deadly blow to either camp: Lebanese politics never delivers complete victory or defeat, just unsatisfying accommodations after violent showdowns. These elections, though, may set the country on a new if hesitant trajectory.

Can the pro-independence March 14 movement emerge victorious against the March 8 coalition dominated by the Syrian and Iranian-backed Hizbollah? Will the outcome of the elections be determined by a conscious choice between the merits of the Hong Kong model versus those of the Hanoi model? Or will petty concerns supplant the contest between the arguably tenuous hope of a liberal society and the suicidal entrenchment of a culture of resistance?

Since the withdrawal of the Syrian forces in 2005 Lebanon has teetered on the brink of disaster. Though the March 14 movement won the 2005 elections, the lack of domestic consensus, expressed through occasional violence, and a campaign of intimidation and assassination that targeted its cadre have tested the country’s resilience. The resulting political paralysis has shattered the two clashing myths of Hizbollah’s muqawama and the parliamentarian majority’s Cedar Revolution.

To be sure, the March 14 movement has failed to demonstrate either competence or creativity. Busy with political intrigue and physical survival, its former warlords and feudal leaders have failed to articulate an agenda of modern governance, losing many moderates in the process. The best illustration of this disappointment is the withdrawal of Nassib Lahoud from a hotly contested race. Though no electoral heavyweight, the former MP and vehement critic of Syrian rule had become March 14’s liberal conscience. Instead, these leaders, in particular the Christian ones, have imposed flavourless if obedient candidates at the expense of better qualified but less partisan ones.

The divisions within the March 14 alliance have also accentuated in recent times. The firebrand Druze leader Walid Jumblatt was recently recorded disparaging his Sunni and Christian allies, causing considerable damage and distrust within the coalition. The spirit of the Independence Intifada is not dead, though. The memory of Syrian occupation and the unwillingness to be held hostage to regional interests still motivate huge segments of the population. For them, the Hizbollah alternative has little attraction when it clashes so evidently with their cosmopolitan if chaotic outlook.

For their part, Hizbollah and its allies, who dragged the country into a war in 2006 and a mini-civil war in 2008, boast of being on the right side of history, with the announced if delusional triumph of Iran and Syria. Their hope is that shifting regional dynamics, declining western support for March 14 and an aggressive presence on the ground will stir the electorate their way.

Hizbollah has certainly become a powerful player, with a skilled leadership, outstanding organisation and a carefully crafted image as a modern party. It was once fashionable to argue that its political involvement would eventually moderate its positions and shift its focus internally. This fallacy, propagated by naive academics, is exposed by Naim Qassem, the party’s second-in-command. “Hizbollah’s path,” he says, “goes beyond the electoral battle, and it crosses domestic boundaries to regional ones. Our enemy [Israel] understands one language, which is the language of resistance.”

So much for a peaceful settlement with Israel that would allow Lebanon to deal with its more pressing domestic troubles. For Hizbollah, these elections are primarily an opportunity to demonstrate its strength, gain a political cover for the muqawama and secure the power to make unilateral decisions of war and peace, not to initiate a proper takeover of Lebanon’s institutions.

Indeed, Hizbollah’s clout won’t dramatically expand through these elections, but it certainly hopes that its Christian allies, especially the former warlord Michel Aoun, will gain enough seats to secure a parliamentarian majority. One tactic is to spread an insidious sectarian message: only an alliance of minorities can fend off the looming (if vastly and deliberately inflated) fundamentalist Sunni threat, Aoun and Hizbollah claim. The more this theory gains ground, the worse off Lebanon will be.

This battle promises to be frighteningly exciting. Both sides are already predicting overwhelming victory, but the winning margin this time will be no more than four to five seats out of 128. With the Sunni, Shiite and Druze communities solidly mobilised behind their leaders, there will be few surprises. Once again, with the battleground districts all situated in Christian-dominated regions, the notoriously fragmented Christian community will be the ultimate decider. Much will depend on Aoun’s fortunes. He rode high in 2005, but his alliance with Hizbollah, which gave the Shiite movement cross-confessional cover, and his dictatorial manner may come at a price. Aoun’s expected downfall, however, may not occur should sectarian passions capture the hearts of the Christian community.

There is no glory in this fight, but nor is there moral or political equivalence. Granted, there is an equal amount of confessionalism, corruption and nepotism on both sides. But one criteria sets the March 8 camp apart: the possession of weapons and the willingness to use violence for political purposes. Can Lebanon ever escape its sectarian demons and decide on the future it wants?




Emile Hokayem’s father, Nabil Hokayem, is an independent candidate running for the Maronite seat in the district of Batroun

A Lebanese diva shines at the Palace

“You couldn’t say she’s less than a diva. She’s very special to everyone,” explained Bilal, one of the hordes of concertgoers who poured into the lobby of the Emirates Palace auditorium a clear hour ahead of this charity engagement. “As soon as you’re saying Magida el Roumi... it’s like you’re saying Andrea Bocelli or Pavarotti.” And yet, in the West, she’s scarcely known at all.

Here’s a primer. El Roumi came to prominence in the early Seventies when she won a Lebanese TV talent show. From the start of her professional singing career, she offered a potent blend of classical and pop styles, delivered with a stirring side order of nationalism. Poets wrote for her, most notably the Syrian love-lyricist Nizar Qabbani; the greatest Arabic songwriters and arrangers shaped her sinuous, disco-inflected sound. And to match that dramatic music was a stormy life story: divorce, bereavement, a turn to the consolations of faith, a comeback. Such careers seem drawn from some mystic well of universal archetypes – the chanteuse with a thousand faces.

Yet, the capacity audience at the Emirates Palace had come to see just one. And at first sight, it isn’t clear why el Roumi should command such adoration. She’s shy, oddly reticent. As she slipped out in front of her 30-piece band, she seemed almost apologetic. The crowd stood and applauded and she floated her way through the thunderous Ya Bladna, demurely acknowledging the pounding handclaps, at times offering the ghost of a shimmy, her arms hanging limp by her sides. Her voice was unforced, conversational.

During her next number, something of the strange mutability of her sound became apparent: slinky bossa nova rhythms and a wonderfully twangy pop-orchestra electric guitar gave way to rattling, skeletal percussion. Strings swooped and darted like something from an Isaac Hayes soul epic. And el Roumi’s voice began to lift in shuddering melismas, falling away with infinite world-weariness.

During Ghanni Lel Hob, her Seventies roots were revealed in further detail. The band locked into what was unmistakably a disco beat. A wah-wah guitar percolated away beneath bongos, and el Roumi’s voice climbed to a racking intensity. Though still almost motionless, her onstage persona had shifted slightly: chorus followed crashing, tear-stained chorus, and she hovered between Dancing Queen excess and the stalking grandeur of fado.

Throughout the show, her sharp band negotiated the swerves and tempo-changes of her material with aplomb. A sextet of sad-eyed, tuxedoed backing singers provided a funereal backdrop for the increasingly animated star – funereal, that is, until three of them locked arms and began a synchronised jig across the stage, tumbling to and fro like sailors on a pitching deck.

At one point, a fez was delivered to the star. She put it on for a number which exhibited as well as anything the strange breadth of her style. A sparkling jazz melody laid over a near-dubbish rhythm section gave way to one of the singer’s Olympian choruses, surging like something out of the Elvis comeback special. Then – a great and inexplicable touch – an African woodblock melody floated in.

More startling still was her sudden blast of operatic singing in Amb Bihlamak, a piercing, imploring aria. She rolled it out for the encore, too, draped in the Lebanese flag, laden with flowers, the audience standing and clapping along. It was madly incongruous, moving, in short, fabulous and all that connotes. No, you couldn’t say she’s less than a diva.

Language acts

In her new film, the Lebanese director Danielle Arbid explores the Arabic vocabulary of intimacy. Kaelen Wilson-Goldie reports.

In 2005, the programmers of a French radio station approached the filmmaker Danielle Arbid and offered her two hours of Sunday evening airtime to do whatever she liked. So Arbid called up several of her friends in Beirut and recorded them talking in detail about their sex lives. She manipulated the anonymous recordings into a seamless, stylised barrage of explicit stories, confessions, reflections and observations rendered in colourful language and crude slang. The show went out on Radio France Culture, and Arbid got 10 scathing letters from angry listeners in response. “All French and one Lebanese who was listening by mistake,” she says.

Three years later, Arbid ends this anecdote with a triumphant smile. She has since taken her radio footage and turned it into an elusively beautiful yet unabashedly bawdy 20-minute film, which, after screenings in Beirut, Locarno and in the French city of La Rochelle (where it was projected onto the ceiling of a church at midnight), is now being hotly pursued by film festivals on three continents.

Arbid belongs to a generation of Lebanese filmmakers that includes Ziad Doueir (West Beirut), Nadine Labaki (Caramel), Philippe Aractingi (Bosta and Under the Bombs), Ghassan Salhab (The Last Man) and the team of Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige (A Perfect Day and I Want to See). In terms of subject matter, there is a lot of overlap among them. They have all made films whose subject is the civil war, the disappeared and the destruction of Beirut (by war, reconstruction and other means). They share a tendency to produce short, cinematic love letters to the city’s resilient visual culture, and an affection for the visual codes and rhythms of art-house cinema.

All of these filmmakers, Arbid included, struggle to negotiate between Lebanon and the rest of the world to make films in a place where there is little audience and less funding. But her work makes clear that Arbid’s relationship with the country of her birth is more tortured than that of her peers. Her films do not simply expose a wound – whether it is the tear ripped between Lebanon and France, East and West, past and present, memory and amnesia or masculine and feminine. They dig into it and extract from it something both playful and productive.

Arbid’s sense of playfulness is not actually lighthearted. The game she sets up in film after film is a dangerous one. She deals not with the fun of play but the terror of escape, the act of a prisoner plotting a jailbreak into the unknown. It is probably no coincidence that the main characters in both of Arbid’s features flee from different forms of confinement. Escaping, rebelling, breaking rules – these are crucial, necessary acts in Arbid’s cinema. They are its oxygen and, one suspects, hers.

Arbid, who is 38, was born in Lebanon and moved to France when she was 17. She studied literature and worked as a journalist for five years. She wanted to be like Hunter S Thompson, but ended up writing hard news and hated the rigid, formulaic storytelling of the genre. So she quit, wrote a screenplay, won a competition and began making films. She has produced 10 films in 10 years, and her work has been the subject of four festival retrospectives – not bad for a director under the age of 40.

Arbid has screened both of her features in Cannes, and her documentaries and shorts have won a slew of awards. But she has met a hostile reception from critics and audiences at every turn, in part because her films refuse to be what they appear.

Her 2004 debut feature, In the Battlefields, seems at first a sweet fable about innocent children during the Lebanese civil war but turns out to be an evocative study of adolescent sexuality and young women coming into their own through the bursts of rebellion that follow bouts of humiliation. “I like this period between 12 and 18,” Arbid says. “When you could go crazy; when you are not an adult and not a child.”

In the film, one young girl, Lina, befriends another, Siham. But Lina is the daughter of a middle-class Lebanese family while Siham, slightly older, is a Syrian maid. Siham leads a wild life outside of her place of employment, a few floors up from Lina’s apartment. She brings Lina along on her adventures, until Lina discovers that Siham plans to run away to marry her boyfriend and snitches. Siham gets locked up and never forgives Lina for the transgression. The film scholar Lina Khatib, in her new book Lebanese Cinema: Imagining the Civil War and Beyond, reads the film as a treatise on the deep class divisions in Lebanon. It is also a study of the rite of passage that is getting dropped, ditched or left behind, and the act of throwing off burdens both social and cultural.

Arbid’s second feature, Un Homme Perdu, from 2007, tracks the story of a man who goes missing from Lebanon in 1985. He turns up as a day labourer in Syria many years later and then, after spitting on his employer and taking off, encounters a photographer on the Jordanian border. As the two men travel together, the photographer, whose character is based on Antoine d’Agata (a Magnum photographer with a cult following in France), attempts to wrench open the man’s story. He pulls the man into brothels and pushes him into street fights. He tries to break the man down so he will confess who he is and what he has done. He does not succeed, but he manages to return the man, against his will, to his life in Lebanon. Reunited with his wife and reinstalled in an atmosphere of domestic bliss, the man smoulders in silent anger. And as soon as he can, he runs, leaving the photographer with nothing but images to illustrate their unfulfilled adventure.

Like In the Battlefields, Un Homme Perdu could have been an earnest account of the need for remembrance and reconciliation in postwar Lebanon. But Arbid’s film suggests that uncovering the truth isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, and that obsessive engagement with the dark episodes in Lebanon’s tumultuous history might ultimately be a dead end. In place of meaningful redemption or a tidy resolution, she emphasises the assertions of power, cruelty and desire at play in the relationship between the two men.

But critics were preoccupied by the film’s explicit content, and slammed Arbid for having the audacity to take on a figure as large as d’Agata, arguing that she should stick to her home turf in war-torn Lebanon and leave France’s artists alone. Variety called Un Homme Perdu a “pointless exercise” and “a big step back” for Arbid, and blasted its “typically Gallic mix of erotica and existentialism.” But Arbid considers such criticisms a kind of chauvinism: “If I had been a man making Un Homme Perdu, it would have been OK” for western critics, Arbid says. “The Arab critics, I knew why they hated it. It wasn’t for this purpose, me being a girl. For them, it was just out of the question to make this film at all, boy or girl.” Out of the question, presumably, because Arbid filmed in brothels on Arab soil.

In the end, the film was neither well reviewed nor widely seen. But Arbid has pressed on to two new projects: her third feature, which she will begin shooting next year, an adaptation of an American novel, Salt Water, transposed to France – and This Smell of Sex, the film featuring her France Culture radio footage, whose explicit language and exuberant lewdness will probably infuriate Arbid’s Arab critics even further.

But for all its prurient content, the film’s real subject may be language – Arbid captures the graphic precision and expressive imagery used to describe these physical intimacy in Arabic. Seen in the context of Arbid’s other work, This Smell of Sex continues a fascination with language that the filmmaker has been exploring for years in an open-ended series of videos called Conversations de Salon, which feature older women (including her mother and her aunts) speaking about the lives, their prescription drug habits, their husbands and their sons. The works open a window onto a particular class of Lebanese women that some viewers find them claustrophobic and unbearable (others find them revealing and amusing).

“I’ve always been interested in the Arabic language,” says Arbid. “I’ve been in France for 20 years but when I come back to Lebanon I like very much to speak Arabic. I love to hear how my mother’s friends ‘image’ things. The whole thing becomes an image and they lie and they use the language in a great way, whereas in France they don’t do this. People here always tell me in Arabic how they [have sex]. You know, my friends and I, we speak about this. I have friends in Dahiyeh [Beirut’s southern suburbs] and they always tell me lewd things. They slang the language, they change it, and it’s very inventive.”

“So I decided to record it. Maybe because I wasn’t filming them, I knew they wouldn’t censor themselves. Because when you speak about this, you have to be precise. And in a way, I like joining this to the idea of the Arab world, where sex is out, where it doesn’t exist, where it exists behind the image, where it is blacked out.”

But transforming disembodied voices into a film was no small challenge. “When I did this in 2005, I thought I wanted to make a film out of it but I didn’t have the idea of how to illustrate the words with images. When you have a text like this and you put erotic things on screen, it isn’t good. I tried lots of things, but it wasn’t there. So I had to wait two or three years for the idea to come.”

Each year, the Né à Beyrouth Festival of Lebanese Film (which Arbic has helped organize for the past six years) holds a special screening of found Super 8 footage discovered and donated by filmmakers and members of the public. One day, Arbid was reviewing the reels and watched a home movie that had been found in an old, abandoned Beirut marketplace. It features a young woman posing innocently, for a camera in her bedroom.

“I liked it very much,” says Arbid. “It’s amateur, unknown, but it’s definitely Beirut. I zoomed it and sped it up. It was already very good but I worked on it and it became the film.”

Arbid asked the singer Yasmine Hamdan to do the music, and she improvised on old Arabic love songs, which are full of rich, sensual metaphors to begin with. As a result, This Smell of Sex consists of voices, images and songs sliding in and out of the audience’s range of perception. Arbid added an introduction, a fictional voice-over narration in the style of a promotional tourism spot on Radio Monte Carlo circa 1960, about the magical city of Beirut, a playground for the easy-going and the adventurous. Arbid’s film suggests, in extremely subtle ways, that this idea of Beirut as a hothouse for licentious behaviour never died, despite the Lebanese capital’s subsequent plunge into patterns of self-destruction.

“It’s very joyful,” Arbid says. “It has nothing to do with secrets or shame or things that people are not supposed to say. It’s not sad. It’s very dirty and very funny.”

“I wouldn’t have done it if there were [only men and] no [women] speaking. I don’t believe in the sexual exoticism of the Arab world. When I show the film in Europe, people don’t tell me: ‘They’re exotic.’ People tell me: ‘They’re like us.’ I don’t want people to go see the film and say to themselves: ‘Let’s see how the animals speak about sex.’ I’m attacked here, but really they should pay me, because I show people as they are, I show them as human beings.”



Kaelen Wilson-Goldie reports from Beirut for The National.

Librarianship in Lebanon in the Post–Civil War Period

Abstract:
This paper describes how Lebanese librarian coped with the impact of the civil war (1975–1991), and their post–war efforts to rebuild the library infrastructure. Despite damage from bombing, triple–digit inflation, and staff shortages, many libraries functioned throughout the conflict. The American University of Beirut opened for business every day, although badly damaged, and is now moving vigorously to rebuild and renew services. Some new staff have been hired, and an archives department has been established. Automation is underway. Beirut University College, not severely damaged in the war, has taken up new projects, such as indexing of special collections and continuing education for librarians. At the Lebanese University, open only intermittently during the war, there is now a systematic approach to collection processing in the education faculty library. New initiatives are being taken also in the national archives, and by the Lebanese Library Association. Despite the serious impact of the war, the library community in Lebanon is focused on regeneration and progress.

Nineteen–seventy–five was a year of promise for librarianship in Lebanon. The Lebanese University was in the process of building a central library on its new integrated campus; a program in library science was created at the Faculty of Information and Documentation of the Lebanese University, which was upgraded from the Institute of Information and Journalism; and the Lebanese Libraries Association (LLA) began publishing its Newsletter. It was also the year of the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War. The tragic events of the decade and a half that followed severely disrupted the country’s institutional life, and libraries were not spared. Bombardments damaged and destroyed library buildings and collections; triple–digit inflation effectively cut library budgets; widespread emigration led to a shortage of trained librarians. Despite these many difficulties, the Lebanese library community managed to sustain itself through the years of war, and now that peace has come to Lebanon, it is looking not only to rebuild what was lost, but also to move forward with new initiatives.

While the general conditions of the war were shared, each institution lived the war in its own way. It is instructive to see how they coped with war conditions, and what their plans are now in the postwar period. As an example of a university library one may look to the American University of Beirut (AUB). AUB was established in 1866. Its primary language of instruction is English, and it has a student body of approximately 5,000. It has four libraries: main (Jafet Library), medical (Saab Library), Science and Agriculture, and Engineering and Architecture. With approximately half a million volumes, AUB is the largest library collection in the country.

According to Nawal Naamani, chief of circulation, the highest priority throughout the war was to keep all library functions operating at some level, even if at times very much reduced. The AUB libraries opened every day, regardless of conditions. Ms. Naamani recalls at times entering the stacks with a flashlight in order to retrieve books for students when the electricity did not work. She said also that in order to support the educational program of the University (both coursework and research), maintaining acquisitions was a particularly high priority, especially in the sciences where it is vital for materials to be up to date. With mail service to Lebanon often cut for long periods, this was at times very difficult, but she feels that they were successful in their acquisitions program and that there are now no serious gaps in the collections. Nevertheless, Ms. Naamani commented that it was often advantageous to receive offers of books or serials on exchange from foreign libraries making orders for microfilms of AUB theses or serials, as this enabled them to obtain books that they might have been unable to obtain in the past and which went out of print. Further complicating matters, the AUB libraries lost much of their staff during the war. According to Helen Bikhazi, university librarian, the staff of the AUB libraries now numbers 10 professional librarians and 52 support staff (excluding the medical school library), less than 60 percent of pre–1975 staffing levels.

In addition to serving its student body and faculty, the AUB libraries have also taken on a wider responsibility to the community at large. Already before the war AUB libraries were open to all those affiliated with an academic institution, whether Lebanese or foreign. This policy was maintained throughout the war, although it was necessary to discontinue borrowing privileges for non–AUB affiliates. (It was, however, sometimes difficult for non–AUB affiliates to gain entry to the AUB campus due to tight security.) This open–door library policy was particularly important in light of the fact that the bulk of the collections of the National Library were stolen in 1975.

This policy of maintaining full library services received a difficult test with the November 8, 1991, bomb that destroyed College Hall and seriously damaged Jafet Library, which was located directly behind it. Though none of the collections in the stacks were harmed, the reading room and other public services areas were destroyed, as well as many offices. Today the library operates in the middle of reconstruction, the noise a constant surrounding refrain. Reading rooms were set up in two nearby buildings, with a small reading room set up in Jafet Library for periodicals and non–circulating monographs. Circulation records had to be retrieved from the rubble and reconstructed, a time–consuming process. It is anticipated that the building will be completely finished within a year.

The characteristics of these collections make preservation a high priority. The manuscript collection is being microfilmed in its entirety, to avoid unnecessary handling by researchers, and to avoid any possibility of loss of these unique items. The microfilm lab at AUB is the only one in a library in Lebanon at the present, although commercial microfilming facilities exist. AUB has for that reason at times microfilmed materials for other libraries, in exchange for a copy of the microfilm. This practice has had to be curtailed, as some of the microfilming equipment was damaged in the 1991 bombing, making it necessary to concentrate on AUB needs. Beyond these microfilming projects, efforts are being made to see that materials are housed and stored under the proper conditions to ensure their long life.

Another AUB project in the planning stages is automation; an automation librarian has been hired for the purpose. The AUB libraries were planning for automation in 1988, but had to drop it from consideration due to the resumption of fighting during the constitutional crisis. Only the medical library underwent automation, as this was necessary for the AUB medical school to keep its accreditation. A major consideration in automation planning is the fact that the AUB libraries have considerable holdings in non–Roman script languages, with Arabic naturally being a particular priority.

Beirut University College (BUC) provides an example of a college library. BUC, formerly known as Beirut College for Women, was founded in 1924. Its language of instruction is English and it has a student body of approximately 4,000. BUC is primarily an undergraduate institution, but it does have several master’s programs. The programs in education, business, and arts are particular areas of strength for BUC. BUC also has a library science program administered by library staff. BUC is served by the Stoltzfus Library, whose collections are primarily in English. Stoltzfus Library contains two special collections of note: its Documentation Center of the Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World, and its Children’s Library. The former contains books and serials in women’s studies, as well as clippings files. The Children’s Library serves both as a forum for projects of BUC’s education students and as a public library for children. During the summer, the library is used in conjunction with a summer camp program for children sponsored by BUC.

While the Stoltzfus Library did suffer a hit in 1983, there was only minor damage to the building and collections. BUC’s major problem during the war was budget freezes. There was therefore a very careful attempt to work with faculty to assure that the book budget was allocated as wisely as possible. Department chairs give approval to book selections, while the library director, Aida Naaman, stays abreast of the literature in order to advise the faculty of available titles. Gifts have unfortunately not been a very important component in the library’s collection building. While gifts of books relevant to the BUC academic program and published in the past decade are very much welcomed, gifts have tended to be of older books. Gifts not retained are passed to the BUC branch in Saida, as its library is still in the early stages of collection building. Aida Hajjar, the acquisitions assistant, pointed out that computer books, to support BUC’s new master's program in computer science, are particularly costly and must be acquired by purchase. Art books represent another expensive acquisitions area.

With a small staff of seven, of which two are professional librarians, allocating staff resources is also an important consideration. The UC library has made judicious use of student talent to provide additional services. Student projects in the library science program, for example, are oriented to be not only instructive, but also of benefit to the library, and thereby the BUC community. For example, library students have created comprehensive catalogs of the library’s periodicals and audiovisual materials. A library student prepared an index to the collection’s theatre periodicals, of use to BUC’s active theater program. Non–library students have enriched the library as well, for example by creating clippings files for the Women’s Studies Documentation Center.

Despite the constraints on their time, the staff of the BUC library have devoted efforts to the promotion of librarianship in Lebanon. Aida Naaman explained that BUC has a strong tradition of service to the community, and that the library has a commitment to contributing to these activities. For example, library staff periodically conduct short courses in library education. This past summer, they conducted a cataloging workshop for children’s librarians under the auspices of the Red Cross. The previous summer, two workshops were held with open admission, one on general library services, and one on record–keeping for archives.

The case of the library of the School of Education of the Lebanese University is an example of a university faculty library. The Lebanese University was founded in 1953 by the Lebanese government; its language of instruction is Arabic. The University has no central library; each faculty (department) has its own facility. The library of the School of Education was formerly the largest of these faculty libraries, with approximately 40,000 volumes. In 1982, during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the library was destroyed by fire and its entire collection was lost. As soon as was possible, two professors were sent to Egypt and France to buy books for a core collection, and in 1984 the Library was re–established in another building. The library now occupies two rooms, one for monographs and one for periodicals. There are two more rooms available for the library when there is a need to expand. The librarian, Maha Shehade, explained that the library unfortunately was only able to open intermittently during the war, making it difficult to proceed with collection processing. Now that the library is open on a regular basis, it is possible to approach collection processing in a systematic manner. The library’s collections now number approximately 10,000 volumes. These books are supplied to the library by the administration of the Faculty of Education, either purchased by the administration on the request of faculty or received as gifts; library staff are not involved in acquisitions activities. It is hoped that now that the faculty has resumed its publications program, the library will receive more publications on exchange.Books are registered by staff on arrival, and are shelved by accession number. There are subject listings, but as these are out of date, students require the assistance of library staff to locate the books they need. A cataloging and automation project is now underway, using a personal computer supplied by the faculty and CDS/ISIS software provided by the Arab League. Descriptive cataloging is done in Arabic or Roman script, depending on the language of the work, with subject access provided via keyword descriptors in French taken from UNESCO’s Education Thesaurus and the French index of the Arab League’s trilingual thesaurus, JAMIA. Hala Zein El–Abidin, the library’s cataloger, explained that initially it had been intended to classify according to the Dewey system. It was later decided to retain the accessions number as the call number, at least for the time being, as she was the only staff member trained in classification and that doing classification would slow down the work flow. As the collection was completely uncataloged, it was felt that it was more important to proceed with cataloging as quickly as possible. It is anticipated that the cataloging project will be completed in two to three years. As the cataloging project proceeds, paper indexes will periodically be generated from the database. Eventually it is hoped that it will be possible to provide online access to the database by students.

Libraries in educational institutions are not the only ones where new initiatives are being taken. A case in point is the Lebanese National Archives Center. The archives were created in 1978 to serve as a repository for the documents of all Lebanese government institutions. According to Riad Tabbarah, head of the archives’ board of directors (and dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at AUB), the collection of government documents was systematic until 1982. At that time, the war conditions brought a halt to all regular operations. What began then was the second stage of the center’s life, with the salvage by archives staff of materials from government buildings. This included 40 paintings of the 19th–century formerly hung in the National Library, as well as the remaining manuscripts from the National Library’s collections. The archives also received gifts, such as the 5,000 slides of the historic Lebanese postcard collection compiled by Fouad Debbas, deposited as insurance against the possible destruction of the collection of postcards. The archives now house such items as a collection of 16mm Pathe–Gaumont newsreels of Lebanon, and a collection of first issues of the world Arabic press, among other materials.

The archives are now entering into a third stage of their existence. Early in 1993, a board of directors was created to oversee the future of the archives. Their focus has been on the preservation of the collections. The first step, now underway, is to catalog and rehouse the materials. Some restoration work was done right away; for example, a Lebanese artist undertook the repairs of paintings that had been slashed. In the main, however, the work so far has been to assure the short–term security of the collections. As that is well in hand, the next step is to address the long–term preservation issues. Of particular concern are the audiovisual materials, which pose special long–term preservation problems. The regular government documents collections of the archives also need attention. Segments of the collection have already been microfilmed, but some of this microfilm is not legible and needs to be redone.

Possible cooperation with institutions outside of Lebanon to preserve the archives collection is being explored. Dr. Tabbarah pointed out that cooperation is being sought both in the area of technical assistance and of funding. At the same time, an effort is being made to raise public awareness in Lebanon of these collections; an exhibition containing a selection of the archives’ collections was therefore planned for November 1993 to bring attention to the archives’ materials.

The Lebanese Library Association (LLA), which had been dormant for a long period during the war, is also undergoing a revival. Its main project at present is a survey of Lebanese libraries, documentation centers, and archives, which will be published. According to Linda Sadaka, secretary of the LLA and head of the gifts and exchange section of AUB’s Jafet Library, the goal is to get a picture of the state of Lebanese libraries, as a base for planning. The original impetus for the survey was a request by UNESCO to LLA for information on the Lebanese library situation in order to evaluate requests for grants by certain libraries in Lebanon. The data collection has been carried out largely by students of the Faculty of Information and Documentation of the Lebanese University, and the project has been financed by UNESCO.

While clearly the war has had a serious negative impact on librarianship in Lebanon, the focus in the library community is on regeneration and progress. It is to be hoped that the situation in Lebanon will remain stable to allow long–term planning to be done.

About the Author

Elizabeth Vernon is a technical services librarian in the Judaica Division, Area Studies Department, Harvard College Library. She has an M.A. in Middle Eastern studies from Harvard University, and an M.L.S. from Simmons College. She is author of Jewish Studies Courses at American and Canadian Universities, and several articles related to Judaica and Middle Eastern librarianship. Ms. Vernon has lectured on preservation issues before the Lebanese Librarians’ Association and at the Tunisian Institute for Documentation.

© 1994, Elizabeth Vernon.

Local magazine wins recognition at Asian Publishing Awards

Beirut -- BEIRUT: AcademiX Middle East, the three-year-old English-language magazine published in Lebanon and distributed throughout Arab countries, won the content generation category at the Asian Publishing Awards, during the Asian Publishing Convention held in Singapore on August 15. "AcademiX's editorial purpose and mission and its relevancy to the interest of its target audience was the most deserving publication," the judges said. Each issue of AcademiX contains a 22-page pullout career guide dedicated to a specific university major, detailing the academic path required to obtain a different degree and including a list of universities worldwide offering the relevant degree.

"It's a great honor to have received this award, especially at a time when we are planning to launch AcademiX in several new markets along with a trilingual online version [English, Arabic and French] including content for subscribers," said Dima Raouda Casutt, founder of Usoos Productions and publisher of AcademiX. - The Daily Star

Only if You Are a Tourist

was taken by happiness I had not felt in years; a restaurant on a hill, an open night from the mountain to the edge of the sea; and that remote lit spot known as Beirut. The place was packed with Arab tourists; their eyes revealing their joy as if they were scared of having their Lebanese summer stolen from them or of being prevented from embracing an Arab oasis so old that there is no need or excuse to test or certify its Arab character.

Lebanon seemed so glamorous indeed. This had nothing to do with Fakhreddin al-Maani, Gibran Khalil Gibran and Amin al-Rayhani; the bridge between the East and the West; the fact that the alphabet sailed from Byblos; the Baalbek fortress; the pioneers of the Renaissance; or the first migrants who sailed the seas carrying their backpacks and building empires as they sang old folk songs.

I must admit. My interests were far fewer; my ambitions far narrower; my preoccupations far smaller. After all, I am just an ordinary citizen. History did not select me for a saving mission; no one assigned me to install torches at dangerous corners; no one appointed me as the custodian of the compass. Moreover, experience has taught me to be scared; scared of those who claim delegation from the sectarian community, from the nation, or from history or the motherland; scared of those who confiscate the voices of people and claim that they are nothing but candles; scared of nations that constantly need blood and martyrs as the fish need water.

I said to myself that an ordinary citizen has the right to spend a happy night despite Georgia's recklessness, Russia's gluttony, the retreat of America's prestige, the wolves let loose in the jungle of regions, the "government of national revenge," and the fact that the deputy prime minister, deprived of a roof and an office, is not empowered to facilitate spiteful missions required by the politics of reconciliation and partnership. An ordinary citizen has the right to spend a happy night despite the Doha Agreement cooked in hot sauce and the horrors of the debates over the ministerial statement; despite the tears which citizens shed as they mourned the absence of big men such as Saeb Salam, Kamal Jumblatt, Raymond Eddeh, Bahij Takieddin, and Nasri Maalouf; despite the electoral law; despite the rights of regions, sects, confessions and alleys; despite the talk about hegemony, victory, revenge and marginalization; and despite the preoccupation with the issue of the missing in a missing country that seems to be so hard to be found.

I was glad to find a seat at a restaurant on a hill. I was relieved as I wondered how the hill survived the quarries crushing the mountains; how the nearby trees survived the hands of those who hate greenery and prefer burnt forests begging for local and Cypriot firefighting planes. I was happy because the roads were open and the Labor Union did not implement its threats of escalation. I like the Labor Union with its innocent statements that smell of burning tires.

Nothing more than a calm night is needed. Forget Baal Muhsin and Bab el-Tebbeneh; the lines of demarcation inside the council of ministers; and the appointments scandal. God forbid! The names of senior officers are now in the nominations market. Their names are subject to unusual testing; a reading of names, orientations, friendships, and enmities. This is just outrageous! What army has its commander selected in this manner? What prestige will it have? Lebanon is indeed exposed, far more than we had thought or anticipated; things are far worse than the worst pessimists had described.

Tonight, the borders of the nation are the borders of the table. Harmony is a real salad bowl and has nothing to do with harmony inside the government. The lettuce gloats next to the cucumber which remains better than the national choices made so far. The carrots are slim, and the cucumber is homegrown at the nearby garden. The mints happily lean over the arugula; in a while, the stubborn mountainous tomato will whine as it is slaughtered under the garlic, sumac and oil.

Such a tasteful nation! Tabbouleh is an experience of coexistence between parsley, bulgur, tomatoes, onions and oil. Arranging this coexistence is the task of the wise. Unbalanced quantities ruin the experience and unilateralism poison it. A third plus one makes it flavorless. Tabbouleh is with the right quantities or it simply cannot be. Like the salad, the kebbeh can be eaten raw or once grilled at the fire of the resistance. The beauty of the Lebanese cuisine lies in its diversity: hommos, shanklish, homegrown cheese, fried pastries, sausages and basterma, not to mention the eggplant and the variety of pickles. Forcing the Lebanese table to wear a unified dress is harmful to national health.

Envy is a shameful feeling. One, however, has to admit it sometimes. I envied the Arab tourists at the adjacent table. The tabbouleh does not remind them of the ingredients of coexistence; nor does the variety of plates remind them of the multiplicity of sects and confessions. The colors of vegetables and fruits do not take them back to March 8 and March 14. The summer ends tomorrow and they will be leaving. They will leave the Lebanese alone with the "government of national revenge" and the scent of turbulences and elections. The Lebanese disintegration is at its peak. The gates are wide open for all kinds of adventures and adventurers, for the suicides and the suicidal. This is a tasteful country, but only if you are a tourist.

Saudi writer criticizes Shi'i-Sunni understandings in Lebanon

Text of report by Saudi-owned leading pan-Arab daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat website on 22 August

[Article by Tariq al-Humayd: "Will the Sunnis and the Shi'is Be Reconciled?"]

The above question is superficial, is it not? What is more superficial than this question is the so-called document of understanding signed between the Shi'is and the Sunnis in Lebanon, which took place between the Iranian Hezbollah in Lebanon and some representatives of the Salafi groups there.

The Sunni-Shi'i document of understanding is not a religious effort by the Ulema of the nation [religious scholars] in order to protect Islam and Muslims from the conflict between the sons of the two sects, even if all the previously-exerted efforts have failed. The document is an attempt to polish the image of the sons of Velayat-e Faqih, specifically the Iranian Hezbollah.

The recent statements by the Muslim Brotherhood, who deny any role in signing this document, seem as an attempt to promote the Iranian Hezbollah, and to make it acceptable. The contents of the interview by our newspaper with Dr Abd-al-Sattar al-Mulayji, the leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, are eye-catching. He says that the aim of the agreement signed by the Iranian Hezbollah and the Salafis in Lebanon is that [Hezbollah leader Hasan] Nasrallah's party is preparing itself for an upcoming battle against Israel, and it wants to "shelter itself from the evil of these people," i.e. the Salafis.

The question here is: Are "these people," i.e. the Salafis, the ones who carried out the conquest of Beirut, occupied it, and tortured its Sunnis on 7 May? Will "these people" forget that Hasan Nasrallah came out publicly to take pride in being a member of the Velayat-e Faqih party?

The least that can be said about the Sunni-Shi'i document of understanding is that it is a wretched attempt to polish the image of Hasan Nasrallah and the Iranians behind him in the eyes of the Sunni street. Unfortunately, this polishing attempt is taking place with the participation of the Muslim Brotherhood and its branches, such as Hamas, as well as the participation of affiliates of Damascus, some of whom are known, and some others who have not yet been exposed.

The Syrians have an interest in calming down the situation in Tripoli now, and if the battles that erupted and calmed down between the Sunnis and the [pro-Syrian] Alawis continued, their fire might reach Damascus, while Syria does not want a confrontation with Hezbollah now.

Therefore, the Sunni-Shi'i document of understanding is an exposed attempt to restore the glitter to the image of Hasan Nasrallah and his Iranian party, and an attempt to avoid the Sunni mine in Lebanon and in the region, a mine that constitutes now a real fear for Hasan Nasrallah and his Iranian party.

Moreover, this document is a strong indicator of all the efforts undertaken by Iran and by Syria to split the ranks of the Sunnis in Beirut. These efforts are helped by the statements of the Muslim Brotherhood, who has not condemned the occupation of Beirut by the Iranian Hezbollah.

Regardless of the existence of a centuries-old, historical conflict between the Sunnis and the Shi'is, sectarian grouping, as opposed to the concepts of the state and citizenship, is totally unacceptable. On the other hand, the attempt to polish the image of the Iranian Hezbollah, which occupied the Sunni part of Beirut by the force of weapons, is also unacceptable and shameful, because the aggressor should not be rewarded!

It is well known that the political dispute in Lebanon has deteriorated politically and militarily to the worst extent. However, as the situation reached this level of this game of the so-called understanding between the Sunnis and the Shi'is at a time when we all know that the Iranian Hezbollah relies on the legitimacy provided by arms, it is a new Iranian conspiracy against the Arab region, specifically the Sunnis.

Source: Al-Sharq al-Awsat website, London, in Arabic 22 Aug 08

Major events in Syria-Lebanon history

1920: France, the colonial power in Syria and Lebanon, declares a Lebanese state with its current borders, adding to it regions that were part of the Ottoman province of Syria.

1943: France grants independence to Lebanon. Syria becomes independent three years later, refusing to establish diplomatic ties with Lebanon.

1976: Syrian forces move into Lebanon as peacekeepers after the country is engulfed in civil war but are drawn into the conflict.

1982: Israel invades Lebanon to drive out Palestinian guerrillas, clashes with Syrian forces.

1990: Lebanon's 15-year civil war ends with Syrian forces defeating opponents, controlling large parts of the country and installing allied governments in Beirut.

2000: Bashar Assad becomes president of Syria, succeeding his late father, Hafez Assad. Israel withdraws from south Lebanon, and pressure increases on Syria to leave.

2005: Lebanon's former prime minister Rafik Hariri is assassinated and Syria is blamed. Damascus denies involvement, but amid sweeping street protests, is forced to withdraw its forces. It keeps a grip on the country through Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group it supports alongside its ally, Iran.

2006: Hezbollah and Israel fight to a standstill in a 34-day war.

2008: Israel and Syria launch indirect peace talks.

2008: Syria agrees to establish diplomatic relations with Lebanon but is likely to continue to exercise influence through Hezbollah, now a partner in the Lebanese Cabinet.

Rock music will bring peace and end oppression!

Beirut -- BEIRUT: "Maybe 10 bands and 100,000 watts could change the face of Israel/Palestine where ten years of failed negotiations and ten times as long of violence could not."

These are idealistic words for a university professor well-versed on the complexities of the Middle East. Mark Levine, part-time rock star and professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of California-Irvine is not only convinced that music can change the world, he is a partisan in the effort.

There is noting new in Levine's advocating music's power to transform societies, break down social and cultural barriers and promote individual freedom. Rarely though has it been as convincingly argued in the context of the Middle East and North Africa than in his new book "Heavy Metal Islam."

Part road-trip memoir, part ad copy for Arab bands who tend to fly under the Western critical radar, Levine's book is a journey through the heart of the musical counter-cultural of six "Muslim" countries - from Morocco to Pakistan - five dictatorships, one under military occupation.

Levine sees heavy-metal rock music and its hip-hop rival as offering a new form of resistance to oppression and repression found within these societies.

He sees heavy metal as a powerful force through which young Muslims can vent their anger over the corruption, violence and instability in their respective homelands.

Levine recalls how, while performing the U2 chart-topper "With or Without You" in Beirut with the Kordz, he had a revelation about the power of music.

"As I watched the reaction of an audience full of Lebanese ... the idea of rock 'n' roll helping to move a country away from violence and authoritarianism and toward greater tolerance, peace and democracy seemed not just plausible but natural."

Levine's idealism about the power of heavy-metal music in promoting positive change is unabashed. Levine sees a growing youth culture that is connecting with the wider world, undermining repressive authority and oppressive traditions.

In Iran, where Levine says the regime has all but destroyed any public sphere and creative expression, he describes how metal heads rehearse in basements and distribute their music online for fear of being arrested or beaten by the Basij, who act as guardians of public morality.

One Iranian rocker, who performed at one of the only heavy metal concerts allowed to use vocals, tells the story of a metal event at a local university.

"At one gig," he begins, "... we managed to play for 40 minutes before the Basij tried to force us to stop. They weren't supposed to enter the university. So they drove up to the front and started roaring their motorcycles, and the manager of the place begged us to stop."

With the aid of religious authorities, Egypt arrested nearly 100 metal fans in 1997 for "worshipping satan" and being "Zionist inspired vampires."

In Morocco, a country often represented as a reform success story, metal heads have paid an equally high price for their musical tastes. In 2003, 14 young metal musicians were convicted of being "satanists who recruited for an international cult of devil-worship" and for "shaking the foundations of Islam."

In Lebanon, the most-liberal "Muslim country" Levine visited, rock activists are less concerned about oppressive public morality and police repression than they are frustrated in their inability to promote more unity among a diverse population.

Despite these setbacks and hardships, heavy metal has been gaining ground in the Middle East in recent years with festivals from Dubai to Morocco gradually becoming more acceptable to governments and religious establishments.

Levine even alludes to the corporatization of metal and rap music that may be taking place at the expense of creativity.

As in North America, MENA metal and rap walk a fine line between upholding their underground counter-culture credentials and the threat of homogeneity posed by increasing legitimization and a wider audience.

"Heavy Metal Islam" slips when overstating the revolutionary potential of rap and rock. Both genres are far from protest music, often embracing egotism, crime, violence and death.

Therapeutic as they may be for some listeners whose "lives are heavy metal," as one musician says, the lyrics and lifestyles the music promotes, are hardly anthems for democratic change. This may be why lyrics are rarely cited in the book.

To criticize these musicians or genres for their lack of revolutionary credentials, though, is to miss the point. Music does not have to be conscious of itself to be a tool for change - self-awareness being an uncommon characteristic of tools.

Musical expression is, arguably, about pushing the limits of freedom and challenging orthodoxies. Little Richard's lyrics were not calls for radical change in post-World War II US, as such, but one manifestation of that change.

"Heavy Metal Islam," then, is a preliminary glance into how genres of sub-culture are slowly pushing to find space for individual expression in tradition-laden societies.

Levine fails to account for the fact that the rise of heavy metal music in the MENA region can be seen as a new form of cultural imperialism. Otherwise a vehement anti-imperialist, the author makes little mention of the threat of globalization to traditional societies and their local musical, or other cultural, production.

Though he refers to globalization as a "Janus-faced" phenomenon, allowing greater economic marginalization of some and greater openness for others, he fails to deal directly with the Westernization of music in the Muslim world.

This isn't a surprise, perhaps, give that Levine is an active metal booster and, for that matter, an uncritical partisan for political groups less obviously opposed to it.

He falls into a trite oversimplification of Lebanese society, for instance, lamenting the polarization of youth culture between one attracted to the divisiveness of violence and another seeking unity and reconciliation through music.

"If these two poles of youth culture can't find some common ground," he opines, "pulling everyone between them just a little closer in the process, Lebanon is doomed."
Rock music will bring peace and end oppression!; Mark Levine's 'Heavy Metal Islam' is about as critical as an advertisement can get


It is an unfortunate but not fatal flaw in a book whose strength lies more in anecdote than analysis. Indeed, where there is analysis, it appears out of place and trite.

Levine's book accomplishes its simple, self-appointed task: to exhibit the potential for music to transform societies and bring people closer together through artistic expression.

Given the media's emphasis on the differences between the Middle East and the West, "Heavy Metal Islam" is a refreshing, much needed call to keep searching for common ground.

Mark Levine's "Heavy Metal Islam," 2008, 296 pages, is published in paperback by Three Rivers Press.

After 30 years, Imam Sadr's message of unity lives on

Beirut -- BEIRUT: When Amal representative Hassan Zeineddine introduced March-14 allied parliamentarian Ghassan Tueni on Tuesday at an exhibition commemorating the 30th anniversary of the disappearance of Imam Musa Sadr, it was a moment that might have made the missing cleric proud.

Reaching out across sectarian and political lines was what Sadr, who founded Amal, was all about, according to organizers of the exhibition. The Iranian-born Lebanese Shiite cleric, who disappeared during a trip to Libya in 1978, was a strong proponent of Lebanese national unity and a fervent opponent of war.

These were the traits that Tueni - who was a friend of Sadr - remembered during his brief address. He recalled his fondest memories of Sadr in the 1970s, when the two would travel together and talk for hours.

Tragedies both countrywide and personal have befallen Lebanon since those days. There was, of course, 15 years of civil war. And in 2005, Tueni, who is the publisher of the Lebanese daily An-Nahar, lost his son Gebran Tueni to a car-bomb assassination. None of that history lessened the elder Tueni's memories of Sadr. "[Sadr] was a kind man and he had many humanitarian qualities," Tueni said. "He was also a tough man."

Those characteristics were also emphasized throughout the multimedia exhibition, which a group representing graduates of Lebanese universities organized with the support of the Tourism Ministry and under the patronage of Speaker Nabih Berri.

Art works repeatedly called attention to Sadr's legendary commitment to interfaith dialogue. A model of Noah's Ark held a copy of the Quran alongside the Bible. The boat's sail framed a portrait of the missing imam. "He is the captain," explained Rabab Moustafa, a volunteer curator at the exhibition and recent Lebanese University graduate. "This piece shows that we have to have unity. You can't have a country by yourself."

Other works on display highlighted Sadr's writings, speeches and political activities. There was a gigantic version of the last letter the imam sent from Libya, and a copy of the speech he delivered in Kabbouchiyeh Church in Beirut in 1975, on the eve of the Lebanese Civil War. In it, he called for all Lebanese from every region to come together to preserve peace. It was a highly unusual moment, especially in those times of sectarian tension: a Muslim religious man preaching before a Christian congregation and calling for unity. But his dreams of peace unraveled a few months later with the start of the 1975-1990 Civil War.

"He was like Ghandi - a man of peace," Moustafa said.

Elsewhere, three-dimensional dioramas - all the work of student artists - depicted Sadr at various stages in his life. Photos showed him meeting with politicians and religious representatives from every side of the torturously complicated Civil War. In addition to practically every Lebanese notable of the day, they included Syrian president Hafez Assad and Egyptian president Gamal Abdel-Nasser.

In 1978, Sadr visited Libya to meet with Moammar Gadhafi's government, and vanished under suspicious circumstances. No reliable information has ever emerged about his fate. If alive, he would be 80 years old.

"We don't know if he is alive or dead - but we hope he will come back," Moustafa said as Sadr's voice played over the sound system. "We need him in these days."

Gulf News: Sa'ad Hariri 'ignoring interests of country'.

Dubai: A Lebanese Sunni group on Thursday accused Parliamentary majority leader, Sa'ad Hariri, of exerting illegitimate pressure on other political and community groups in the country to freeze reconciliation efforts with Hezbollah.

Speaking to Gulf News, Shaikh Bilal Saeed Sha'ban, Secretary General of the Islamic Unity Movement (Tawhid) in Lebanon, blamed Hariri for hijacking the decision of the Sunni community for political reasons while ignoring the interests of civil peace in the country.

"Whether intentionally or unintentionally, Hariri is serving the US interests of further dividing the region to rule it," he said.

In a telephone interview, Shaikh Sha'ban said the freezing of the agreement between the groups of Salafi Muslims and Hezbollah signed on Monday was due to security and community pressures because it was concluded without consulting the Mustaqbal stream and its leader Hariri.

He said claims about tensions in the Sunni street against Shiites are not realistic.

"Hariri wants to be the sole representative of Sunnis in such a reconciliation agreement which has resulted in a freezing of the agreement," he said.

Sha'ban said the agreement signed by Dr Hassan Al Shahal, Chief of the Faith, Justice and Philanthropy Society and representatives from Hezbollah was rejected by Hariri because it meant that he was not the sole leader of Sunnis in Lebanon.

Sha'ban said the Al Tawheed movement was not represented in the agreement, which he described as a great effort to avert a sectarian divide on the eve of parliamentary elections.

Lebanese political factions started preparations for the next parliamentary election due to be conducted next year shortly after signing the Doha agreement in May, which paved the way to elect Michel Sulaiman to fill the post of president which remained vacant for more than six months. The election is crucial for the Hariri group to maintain their majority in parliament.

Sha'ban said Hariri's move is not in the interest of the country's sectarian peace and might result in a deadly confrontation in the future.

"In my opinion, winning an extra seat in parliament is not more important than civil peace."

"Although the Al Tawheed movement did not sign the agreement, we think every effort to ease tension is welcomed. Some regional and international powers including the US are not willing to see Sunni patching up with Shiites in Lebanon and elsewhere.

Sha'ban did not explain why he did not sign the agreement, but said he would support its spirit even if those who signed it decided earlier this week decided to freeze it.

He said Hariri could not impose his will and election tactics on others.

"Sunnis in Lebanon have not voted for a single leader and Hariri should understand that unless he respects the interests of other leaders; he will not be able to speak on behalf of Sunnis," Sha'ban said.

Sha'ban said 400 of his movement are currently in custody in Lebanon for no reason but to satisfy the US.

"We are fed up with this two-faced approach used by the US to set off sectarian conflict in the region. We Sunnis cannot play into the hands of the US and if Hariri has a different view he should stop imposing it on others," Sha'ban added.

In my opinion, winning an extra seat in parliament is not more important than civil peace."

Islam's secret army?

Hizb-ut Tahrir, the transnational party whose declared goal is to establish an Islamic superstate, is causing growing concern in capital cities around the world, as Ed Blanche reports from Beirut.

FOR YEARS, WESTERN governments paid little heed to an Islamic organisation called Hizb-ut Tahrir (HT, or Party of Liberation) dedicated to setting up a worldwide caliphate, restoring the religious and political authority through which the Ottoman sultans ruled an empire that stretched from Europe to Asia for more than 500 years.

Even though this secretive, highly disciplined Sunni Muslim organisation espouses overthrowing the governments of Arab and Asian states, as does Osama bin Laden, who also calls for the return of a caliphate based on Islamic religious Shari'ah law, HT was not seen as a particular threat in the West. But these days, bolstered by the belief that following 9/11 the West has declared war on Islam, the transnational party is increasingly seen in many quarters as the ideological vanguard of radical Sunni Islam.

Hizb-ut Tahrir professes to be non-violent, but its doctrine is virulently anti-western. It openly calls for the elimination of Israel, its adherents "to kill Jews", the "peaceful" overthrow of pro-western "puppet regimes" in the Middle East and the expulsion of all western interests from the region. It envisions achieving these goals through mass action, but eschews involvement in regional politics.

Some former members and sympathisers have been arrested in several countries in recent months on terrorism-related charges. This has raised fears that the party's hardliners have become impatient with what many have perceived as its gradualist approach and long-term strategy. That is a concept that has little appeal for the growing number of young, dispossessed Muslims radicalised by events since 9/11. Some of HT's members have been linked to Al Qaeda, and western governments are becoming increasingly alarmed.

Zeyno Baran, director of the International Security and Energy Programmes at the Nixon Centre, a rightwing think-tank in Washington DC, has branded the party "a conveyor belt for terrorists. It indoctrinates individuals with radical ideology, priming them for recruitment by more extreme organisations where they can take part in actual operations."

Hardline US right-wing institutions such as the Nixon Centre and the Heritage Foundation are demanding a crackdown on HT, but authorities in Britain and other western states fear that banning the party will simply drive it underground, making it more difficult to monitor.

"HT is regarded with some confusion by western analysts because while its goals of recreating a caliphate and then converting the world to Islam by force if necessary are almost indistinguishable from bin Laden's, its methods are entirely different," according to James Brandon, an expert on Islam, in a recent assessment for the Jamestown Foundation, a US think-tank that specialises in monitoring Islamist terrorism.

"Although HT members sincerely believe that the caliphate will be recreated soon, HT's real significance is likely to be its increasingly important role in radicalising and Islamising the Middle East. For example, HT's ideologies also fuel the increasingly common view that the present conflict between western democracies and Islamists is not a resolvable dispute over land, territory and temporal politics, but is rather an inevitable clash of civilisations, cultures and religions."

Hizb-ut Tahrir was founded as a secret society in 1952 in what was then Jordanian-ruled East Jerusalem by Sheikh Taqiuddin an-Nabhani, a Palestinian judge of the Shari'ah Appeal Court.

He had studied at the prestigious Al Azhar University in Cairo and joined the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928 and the forerunner of modern radical Islamic groups. But he broke with the Brotherhood when it moved towards cooperation with the secular authorities in Cairo. While the Brotherhood became a potent opposition force in Syria and Egypt, HT took a more subversive path.

Nabhani died in 1979 and Abad Al Qadim Zalum, a Jordanian religious scholar who had also studied at Al Azhar, took over as leader and remained so until his death in 2003. The current leader is Sheikh Ata Abu Rashta, a Palestinian-Jordanian scholar about whom little is known. He is believed to live in secret in Lebanon, one of the few Arab states that tolerate HT

Nabhani's writings remain HT's guiding principles--they pour scorn on "depraved democracies" imposed on Muslims by the West and advocate "a single state over the entire Muslim world". One of Nabhani's most important texts says it is obligatory to militarily overthrow "every single Muslim government, then forcibly unite them into one military state even if it means killing millions of people".

According to Pepe Escobar, a writer who has travelled extensively in the Muslim world, Nabhani "clearly equates Islam with a permanent global revolution. Leon Trotsky meets the Holy Koran." Escobar says that while the HT "is far from being the same thing as Al Qaeda it's fair to say that it is not so far apart from the worldview of Al Qaeda."

HT's followers are "willing to wait 1,000 years to annex the West to a caliphate," Escobar says. "But recent pamphlets confiscated in Tajikistan already detect a change in tone. Apart from declaring the US a global threat that can only be cured by the caliphate, they are more viscerally anti-American, calling for a jihad against the West."

Long considered by western governments to be a quirky and ineffective organisation with a Utopian objective, Hizb-ut Tahrir has metamorphosed into an increasingly popular movement, highly organised and disciplined, with media-savvy national leaderships that have considerable autonomy.

The party is outlawed in most Muslim states, including the former Soviet republics in Central Asia--one of HT's key target zones--and in Russia and Germany. But its membership has swelled in the post-9/11 turbulence amid growing anti-US sentiment in the Muslim world, with the spread of its ideology accelerated by the Internet, a communications tool used to great effect by Al Qaeda.

According to the Jamestown Foundation, "During the last five years, several branches became large enough and strong enough to transition from their covert gestational phase to a publicly active stage, including those in Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Malaysia, Palestine, Pakistan, Turkey and Bangladesh."

HT claims to be active now in at least 45 countries from Asia to the US, where it appears to be gathering momentum since its first cells were established in the 1980s. Its radical ideology is becoming increasingly popular in Arab countries and has established itself as an influential Islamist opposition group in many regions, including Central Asia and Europe.

It is well established in the UK particularly since the July 2005 suicide bombings on London's transport system in which more than 50 people were killed. These concerns are now being echoed in mainland Europe, where there are growing fears that proliferating Al Qaeda cells among the continent's large Muslim communities are bound to strike at some point.

In Denmark, where Hizb-ut Tahrir remains legal, counter-terrorism officials say a growing number of Muslims are being drawn to the party. These officials say that the party has played a key role in radicalising disgruntled young Muslims, but because it functions primarily as an ideological organisation rather than a paramilitary one, it is allowed to operate. However, officials warn that it is pushing the limits of Denmark's liberal free-speech laws to an extent that could trigger government action.

Despite the party's expansion and emergence from its traditional secrecy, much about the party's inner workings remain obscure. Its global membership is not known, but some estimates put it as high as one million. The extent to which its various branches coordinate is also not clear, nor is how the organisation is financed.

Traditionally HT has been strong in Europe and Central Asia, but in the last two or three years the party has gained popularity across the Arab world, despite being illegal in most states. It has become noticeably stronger in Palestine, putting tens of thousands of supporters at rallies across the West Bank. This reflects the growing disaffection with the fundamentalist Hamas movement and the Muslim Brotherhood and their failure to reinvigorate the much-battered Palestinian society, as well as a more general drift towards HT's caliphate ambitions and a Muslim revival.

The party is also believed to be gathering converts among Palestinians in refugee camps in Lebanon, where the army took four months to crush Sunni extremists in the Nahr Al Bared camp outside the northern port city of Tripoli in 2007. Hundreds of people were killed. More arrests have been reported in Syria, where the regime ruthlessly crushed the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1980s, as well as in Egypt, Tunisia and Sudan.

In Morocco, 14 HT members, mostly well-educated men, were arrested in October 2006 and most were convicted of forming unauthorised associations. Forty HT members are believed to be imprisoned in Jordan, where the party has claimed to have inroads into the Hashemite kingdom's military and civil service.

Brandon notes that HT has apparently "failed to gain significant traction in countries like Egypt or Oman whose people are reluctant to see their distinctive historical, ethnic and cultural identities submerged within a caliphate. HT has also floundered in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states where political discourse is often simplistic and clan-based. Gulf citizens recognise that a caliphate would force them to share their oil wealth with the rest of the Muslim world."

But if Hizb-ut Tahrir is failing to win mass support in the wealthy Gulf states, it has made inroads elsewhere. In August 2007, more than 80,000 members filled a stadium in Jakarta, capital of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim state, to call for the return of the caliphate. It was the party's biggest ever public event. In Pakistan, where HT was established in 2000, the party has accumulated considerable strength and was banned after 9/11 for alleged links to extremist groups.

High-level defectors

SOME OF HT'S LEADING lights have begun to abandon the party because they have come to question its ideology and purpose. Maajid Nawaz, a British university student from a Pakistani family who have lived near London for three generations, and who himself was one of HT's leaders in the UK, denounced the party in a high-profile defection in September 2007.

Nawaz had been an HT member for 12 years and had been seen as a future leader of the highly active British branch. He claimed the organisation "spearheaded the radicalisation of the 1990s and cultivated an atmosphere of anger" and said that its ideology inevitably leads to violence. He felt, he said, "duty-bound to redress the phenomenon of politically inspired theological interpretations".

Nawaz, a key recruiter, says he helped establish Hizb-ut Tahrir in Pakistan in 1999-2000. The party sent him to Egypt in September 2001; ostensibly his mission was to study Arabic but in fact it was to proselytise. He was arrested in Alexandria in April 2002 and spent four years in prison. It was there, he says, that jailed Islamic scholars taught him that HT's ideology ran counter to the true meaning of Islam.

In April 2008, Nawaz and another senior defector, Ed Husain, announced the formation of the Quilliam Foundation, a think-tank named after a 19th century English convert to Islam and dedicated to combating radical Islamist ideologies. Husain said it would promote "pluralistic values free from cultural baggage of the Indian sub-continent and the political burdens of the Arab world".

Ras Beirut: model of coexistence for all of Lebanon?; Area remains unique for its tolerance

Beirut -- BEIRUT: Ras Beirut remains the socially most-diverse, arguably the most-urban, part of the Lebanese capital. Though it isn't immune to sectarian tension, it is still hoped in certain circles that Ras Beirut - where intellectual discussion and social activism are its daily bread - will provide a prototype for a post-sectarian Lebanon.

Lebanese liberals have long found a model worth emulating in this part of the city. In 1973, before Lebanon's 1975-1990 Civil War began in earnest, sociologist Samir Khalaf published his study "Hamra of Beirut," which found in this Ras Beirut neighborhood a model for Lebanese civil society.

In the wake of changes wrought by civil wars of the 1970s and '80s, and the so-called reconstruction period of the 1990s, a great deal of nostalgia has been churned up for the promise this neighborhood somehow came to embody.

This was the impetus behind Mahmoud Hojeij's 2006 documentary "Wish you Were Here, Memories of Ras Beirut," which looks back at what the area was like during its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s.

According to Hojeij's film, and numerous discussions with people that have lived in Ras Beirut, the area has always been characterized by the diversity of its people. While this diversity may have hanged more on its erstwhile mix of international students and residents, the area remains unique today for its ability to accommodate and tolerate various sects.

The American University of Beirut (AUB) remains a focal point of Ras Beirut. During the 1960s and '70s, when Lebanon was flourishing economically and attracting many foreign workers of various descriptions, AUB was considered the most prestigious university in the Middle East.

Cynthia Myntti, nowadays project leader for the university's Mubadarat al-Jiwar (Neighborhood Initiative), studied at AUB in the 1970s. Ras Beirut, she says, is a place of alwan (colors). She remarks that a friend of hers wants to move to the area from Achrafieh because there it is lawn wahid (of one color).

"AUB was an international institution in the 1970s," Myntii said. "My classmates came from Syria, Turkey, Cyprus and Afghanistan, among other places. I studied with Ahsraf Ghani, who went on to serve as Afghanistan's finance minister. This made student concerns more international, while nowadays the student body is mainly Lebanese and concerns are much more focused on local politics and issues."

During Israel's July 2006 war on Lebanon, a lot of displaced people from the South were housed in Ras Beirut, Myntti said, because "this was the neighborhood that tolerated them."

While Lebanon became more confessionally segregated after the Civil War, Ras Beirut has been able to maintain its diversity.

Lebanese journalist Celina Nasser said she moved to Ras Beirut from the southwest Beirut quarter of Tariq al-Jadideh because she felt the area was much more tolerant.

"Tariq al-Jadideh is a Sunni stronghold, and as a Shiite I felt out of place during the summer 2006 war," Nasser said. "I also felt that the thinking there was very conservative, and was conscious of how I dressed. So I moved to Hamra where all sects blend in, and the thinking is much more open."

Arab nationalism was at its peak in the 1960s and '70s, as was Lebanese sympathy for the Palestinian cause. Student activism and demonstrations were a regular part of Ras Beirut life.

Views are mixed on whether students and people of Lebanon are as active today.

Nasser said the March 8 and March 14 rallies in 2005 offered proof that people are still active, and have a voice. But, she said, "people these days don't seem to have their own views, and instead act upon the directions of a certain politician or party."

For Myntti, students are more apathetic. "A lot of Lebanese students are raised abroad and are more familiar with the streets of Paris than of Lebanon, so they have multiple identities and concerns."

The consensus, however, was that students and people have turned their concerns inward and when they do demonstrate it is for local causes.

Rosalyn Ghubril, a 24-year-old resident of Lebanon and former student of AUB and the Lebanese American University (LAU) in Ras Beirut, said: "I see people, more than students, demonstrating, especially when prices of goods go up. Students, instead, get into fights when it comes to politics."

A major concern for Ghubril, and other academics, is how student elections have become sectarian.

"To be elected as a student you have to belong to a sect," observed Bilal Orfali, the AUB summer Arabic program director, "and this has caused fights during the last three years of elections. Instead of focusing on how to improve university life, students are concerned with the parties to which each person belongs."

Ras Beirut remains the most diverse area but it is not immune to sectarian tension.

Faysal's restaurant, now McDonald's on Bliss Street, and Café Modca were hang outs where intellectuals in the 1960s and '70s went to discuss how to make a difference. Today, Ta Marbouta, Cafe Younes and Lina's are among the places where "artists" and "intellectuals" are said to gather.

Evidently, though, much has changed in terms of what it means to be an intellectual in Lebanon today.

A literary critic, Myntti said by way of example, reviewed her husband's recently published volume poetry for Al-Hayat newspaper. "While working as a part-time literary critic, he is also a cashier at the AUB hospital, and through this he is able to get free-health insurance, and send his children to study at AUB for free. That is the reality of intellectuals today. Life has become too expensive to be a full-time intellectual."

Abdulrahman Shamseddine, an Arabic language tutor at AUB and historian, said intellectuals have indirectly become sectarian. "Most intellectuals are leftist-thinkers, and they want to take a political stand," he said. "So, without realizing, some are indirectly affiliating themselves with a sect or political party. Perhaps they should have stepped away from taking a political stand."

Looking to test out the theory, we went along to Ta marbouta, and there we did find an interesting array of thinkers - we met Celina Nasser, a rap singer called Kareembo, and a former political activist.

The former activist, who preferred to remain anonymous, said he stepped away from his affiliation to a political movement, because he didn't see that it was achieving any concrete change.

He also preferred not to label himself as an intellectual because, for him, its modern connotations are negative. "There is a gap between intellectuals and society," he said. "Intellectuals think they are more superior."

Given the challenges, what hope is there for the future? In Lebanon, even the word "future" (to say nothing of "truth") has political connotations, with the ruling party having appropriated the word in designating itself the Future Movement.

Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud was one to watch, in Myntti's view. "He is a 37-year-old lawyer and human-rights activist, and is pushing for electoral reform."

Nasser is less convinced. "I've interviewed Baroud and he is interesting," she said. "But when people enter politics they do disappoint me in the end."

Shamseddine believes change should come from religious leaders, saying they "should distance religion from politics."

The erstwhile political activist sees Arab unity as a way forward. "Europe has become united," he observed, "and there are similar movements elsewhere in the world. A small country like Lebanon should be united."

For his part, Kareembo sees rap music as a way of uniting Lebanon's 18 religious sects. "Music has no boundaries," he asserted. "It talks to everyone."

Perhaps hope lies in the fact that people are still talking about, and thinking of, solutions. If Lebanon needs a model of co-existence, maybe it need only look at the streets of Ras Beirut.

AUB project looks to play bigger role in West Beirut

BEIRUT: Mubadarat al-Jiwar is a project that involves making the American University of Beirut (AUB) a more active player in the local community.

It began in October 2007, and has a number of goals, one of which is to look at the university's purchasing policy and its business objectives.

"AUB wants to make sure most of its beneficiaries are local. For example, it is a scandal that the cafeteria is run by an international company, rather than a local catering company," project leader Cynthia Myntti said.

The program will also look to create more green spaces in Ras Beirut, and this involves AUB students of architecture, urban planning and landscape design.

One of their projects has been to redesign the university's surrounding wall to create a backspace to the city, views through the wall and exhibition spaces.

Students were going to exhibit their research designs in May 2008, but after conflict broke out, they rescheduled it for October.

"This project is about being a better neighbor and sharing more of what the AUB has to offer," Myntti said. For example, the city water and wells are made up of salty sea water, and the AUB can share its technical knowledge on how plants can be grown using salty water.

AUB is also actively reorienting its research objectives to solve local problems, rather than being theoretical.

The civil engineering department is studying how Ras Beirut's streets can be made more pedestrian friendly and how congestion can be eased.

The long-term goal of the project is to create more partnerships with local businesses and institutions with a particular view to creating more affordable housing for middle-income earners.

"If this doesn't happen, the neighborhood will be overtaken by luxury, high-rise buildings. The area will become gentrified," Myntti said.

A full professor earns $70,000 and cannot afford an apartment in Ras Beirut with the cost of rent today.

The project aims to stabilize this situation, and preserve Ras Beirut's diversity. - Nadine Marroushi

Lebanese prime minister to visit Iraq "in next few days"; Al-Iraqiyah roundup

Iraqi government-controlled Al-Iraqiyah TV highlights in its 1500 gmt and 1700 gmt newscasts on 18 August Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's condemnation of the "terrorist incident" that targeted citizens in Al-A'zamiyah and reactions to Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih's visit to Iran. It also carried reports on the security "successes" in various Iraqi cities.

- "The seventh session of the Council of Undersecretaries was held at the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers under the chairmanship of the secretary general of the Council of Ministers and with the attendance of a number of undersecretaries. During the session, the conferees discussed the proposals for and amendments to the consumer protection law presented by the Trade Ministry and listened to the interpositions of a number of undersecretaries regarding the law. It was recommended that all notes be captured and incorporated into the law. In addition, the conferees listened to the proposal of forming a higher national committee for removing landmines, which was presented by the Environment Ministry, and discussed the committee's organizational structure and bylaw."

- "Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Labid Abbawi said that Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora will visit Iraq in the next few days. Abbawi added that Siniora, who will be accompanied by a large delegation, will discuss with Iraqi officials several issues of mutual concerns."

- "Politicians and media figures asserted that there are clear indications of the independence of the Iraqi Government's political decision. Speaking to Al-Iraqiyah today, they said that the Iraqi officials' visits to the neighbouring countries and signing of agreements that serve the interests of the Iraqis are clear indications of this independence."

An unidentified Iraqi politician is shown commenting of Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih's visit to Iran. He says: "The visit derives its importance from two facts. First, the complicated situation Iran is facing. Secondly, what is Iraq's position towards the crisis? Is Iraq capable of taking an independent position and making an independent diplomatic and political decision? The Iraqi official proved that it [Iraq] can."

Another unidentified politician is shown saying: "I view this visit as an Iraqi endeavour to create a positive regional environment that would enhance security and stability. Moreover, Iraq's movement towards reconstruction and building requires cooperation with all sides, foremost of which are the neighbouring countries and Iran in particular."

- "Speaking exclusively to Al-Iraqiyah, Major General Qasim Ata, spokesman for the Law Enforcement Plan, said that the third batch of the Iraqis currently residing in Egypt will return home next Sunday. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered that the returning Iraqis be brought home on board of the plane designated for his trips."

Source: Al-Iraqiyah TV, Baghdad, in Arabic 1500-1700 gmt 18 Aug 08

Lebanon Salafi figure denies "deep divisions among Sunnis" on Hezbollah deal

Dubai-based, Saudi private capital-funded pan-Arab news channel Al-Arabiya TV interviews live at 1716 gmt on 18 August Dr Hasan al-Shahhal, head of the Faith, Justice, and Charity Society who today signed a memorandum of understanding with Hezbollah on behalf of the Salafi trend, to comment on statements by Shaykh Da'i-al-Islam al-Shahhal, the founder of the Salafi trend in Lebanon, in which he dismissed the memorandum as "an attempt to divide Sunnis and Salafis."

On whether there are "deep divisions among Sunnis in Lebanon," Al-Shahhal, speaking over the phone from Tripoli, says: "There are no deep divisions, no, there is a misunderstanding between us and my cousin [Da'i-al-Islam]. We saw it fit to quickly sign such a memorandum of understanding so that we may help entrench civil peace in the country and ward off sedition because we fear that if we are late to act, then Lebanon might, God forbid, turn into another Iraq amid these horrible security conditions."

Asked if the signing itself has not "created a rift in the Sunni street," Al-Shahhal wishes that Da'i-al-Islam had chosen to comment on the repercussions of the memorandum instead of the memorandum itself.

Source: Al-Arabiya TV, Dubai, in Arabic 1716 gmt 18 Aug 08

Lebanese Nasrallah speaks on war anniversary, Israeli "threats"

Beirut Al-Manar Television in Arabic at 1810 gmt on 14 August begins to carry live a speech by Hezbollah Secretary-General Hasan Nasrallah on the second anniversary of the end of the war of July-August 2006, or what Hezbollah calls the "Divine Victory".

At the beginning of the speech, and before talking about the war anniversary, Nasrallah offers his condolences to the families of the Lebanese soldiers and civilians who were killed in a bombing in Tripoli on 13 August. He says: "This crime, which was carried out yesterday as Lebanon prepares for entering a new phase on more than one domestic and regional level, is a crime that must be condemned by all Lebanese. It must be an incentive for all of us to leave the state of tension, friction, dispute and nervousness, to the phase of cooperation to immunize our country against all dangers and threats."

Speaking about the second "Divine Victory" anniversary, Nasrallah expresses gratitude and respect for those who were killed, wounded, or harmed during the war. He also thanks other countries that supported Lebanon during that war. He says as the time passes, there have been new revelations about the huge military and security capabilities used by Israel and the volume of international and regional "collusion" with Israel. On the other hand, he says the war reflected the capabilities of Lebanese people. He says what happened during that war was a "true miracle" and a "divine victory" against the strongest army in the region, supported by the "strongest and most vicious tyrants of the world."

He says the second anniversary shows that the repercussions of the war are still continuing, both regionally and within Israel. On the effects of the war on Israel, Nasrallah says: "The repercussions continue within the enemy entity and its army, in which the majority, if not the entire first line of commanders and generals have been either dismissed or have resigned. It exported some of those failed general, such as General Gal Hirsch, who went to Georgia. That miserable government entrusted him with establishing, training, and rehabilitating the Georgian Special Forces. Georgia, which relied on Israeli experts and Israeli weapons in confronting Russia, is facing the failure it has learned from failed generals. By the way, what happened in Georgia these days is a lesson for all of those who accept to be pushed by America into adventures, uncalculated wars, and hopeless confrontations. At the end, America abandons them, and simply issues a statement as a lip service, for its interests are above anything else."

At 1820 gmt, Nasrallah comments on Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Baraq's assertions that Israel's failure in 2006 was because of the lack of combat expertise among the command that waged that war. He sarcastically reminds Baraq that the Lebanese resistance imposed on him a "humiliating withdrawal" from southern Lebanon in 2000, and did not allow him to make any political or security gains. He says as the political repercussions of that war in Israel continue, "the political life of the entire political and military crew that led the battle has ended."

On the regional level, Nasrallah says that after the war, the 'New Middle East' plan was frozen, but now two years after the war the project seems to have been put off for a long time to come. He says he no longer hears US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talk about the New Middle East, which he says could have inevitably led to the division of some Arab and Islamic countries. He says also as a result of the war on the regional level "Israel stands confused at the gates of Gaza, accepts the calm, wagers on the siege, and admits the failure to confront the rockets of the Palestinian resistance."

On Israel's position on Syria, Nasrallah says: "Israel itself is moving from the threats of war against Syria to adopting the strategy of negotiations with it anew and working on breaking its relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran and the resistance movements."

He says: "Israel is standing horrified and hesitant in front of the Islamic Republic of Iran, not knowing whether to move forward or backward."

He says another result of the war was strengthening the "culture of resistance."

On Iraq, Nasrallah praises the "true resistance," which he says does not kill innocent civilians, as happened today when suicide bombers attacked Shi'i pilgrims in Karbala. He says those who commit such acts are "criminal groups that have nothing with the project of resistance in Iraq." He notes growing support for the resistance in Iraq, saying that the July war was a basic factor for the increased support for the "resistance" in Iraq.

At 1832, gmt Nasrallah begins to speak about the return of Lebanese prisoners from Israel, noting that he will not talk about some aspects of the swap deal with Israel until the DNA tests on "four martyrs," including Dalal al-Mughrabi and Yahya Skaff, are completed. He says he will hold a "special news conference" in the next few days to talk about this file and the file of missing Lebanese and other prisoners.

Nasrallah then begins to talk about the formation of a new government in Lebanon. He says the new government issued a policy statement which was "fair to the resistance and disappointed the enemy."

At 1835 gmt Nasrallah says at this point he will stop talking about the repercussions of the war and will talk about current issues.

He begins to speak about Israeli officials' talk about Hezbollah's growing power. He says this talk increased after the exchange of prisoners. He says he will comment on this issue in view of its importance for Lebanon and the region. He says: "Definitely, nobody expects me to stand up now to say that we have a new weapon or that we do not have a new weapon. This is not our habit." He says Hezbollah speaks about its weapons only as part of managing the conflict with Israel. He says in the 2006 war Israel was surprised by the weapons owned by Hezbollah, adding: "Therefore, we are not interested in denying or in confirming. If the Israelis threaten us we will not be afraid and rush to deny. We will neither deny nor confirm." He says the Israeli clamour about Hezbollah's weapons is part of the campaign aiming at disarming Hezbollah.

He declares: "All the Lebanese should be alert to this point: Disarming the resistance in Lebanon is a declared Israeli objective. I am not divulging special or secret information; this is being declared on TV, satellite channels, and the news media. The Israelis talk about this daily and make threats about it too." Nasrallah says the Israeli clamour about Hezbollah weapons aims at discouraging Hezbollah from developing its weapons, putting pressure on the Lebanese national dialogue, exaggerating Hezbollah power to acquire more US and Western support.

He says: "Yes, we should confront this clamour strongly. Lebanon or anybody in Lebanon must not yield to this extortion and uproar." He says if the Lebanese are united, the Israelis cannot do anything against Lebanon.

Speaking about Israeli threats to target Hezbollah, Nasrallah says: "I tell the Zionists that we are not afraid of you, and we were never afraid of you. You can say whatever you want and do whatever you want. We know that you plan for new assassinations against the leaders of the resistance, but this will not push us back. In the past, you killed [Hezbollah leader] Shaykh Raghib [Harb]; you killed [former Hezbollah Secretary General] Sayyid Abbas [Al-Musawi], and many other leaders of the resistance. You also killed dear commander Al-Hajj Imad Mughniyah." He adds: "We will remain steadfast here. I tell you that we will work day and night and our main concern is to make Lebanon stronger with its state, army, people, and resistance and to have the upper hand, God willing. As for you, the Zionists, your threats, which are part of your language and not ours, I say: Go to hell."

Commenting on the Lebanese national dialogue, Nasrallah says: "We stress the need to prepare for national dialogue and hold it as soon as possible. In my speech on the reception of the freed prisoners I said that we insist more than others, and more than before, on the need to discuss and decide on this strategy so that all of us would know how to defend our country in light of all future challenges. Besides, we should take into consideration the rightful calls by a number of political forces on the need to represent the main and essential forces in this crucial national dialogue."

Nasrallah goes on to say: "In this context, we stress our full readiness and openness to a scientific, quiet, and purposeful discussion of a national defence strategy that achieves the aspired national targets. However, we also call for discussing other crucial issues that are not less important than the defence strategy, and we informed the president's representative of this." He explains that the first issue that needs to be discussed is "a national strategy to rebuild the just and strong state that reassures all parties on right and clear bases, and this does not mean a call for amending Al-Ta'if Agreement," adding that "we need a real national dialogue."

Nasrallah then urges the government to address the economic situation in Lebanon and the living conditions of the Lebanese people. He also warns of an "economic disaster" that he says could lead to the "total collapse in Lebanon."

Commenting on the Syrian-Lebanese relations and the Lebanese president's recent meeting with the Syrian president, Nasrallah says: "This visit marks a new phase and indicates a qualitative development in relations between Lebanon and Syria. We hope that none will hinder or complicate these endeavours. Based on my knowledge and years of experience about this issue, I strongly believe that the positive atmosphere will handle pending issues between the two countries in a way that serves the interest of the two countries."

He also speaks about the parliamentary deliberations while discussing the Lebanese policy statement. He says: "We listened to the acute attacks against the resistance and the weapon of resistance. I have always called for calm, and I reiterate the call for calm. I also urged my brothers to remain patient and not to get out of control despite the harshness of what is being said. I also call on everybody to remain patient and disposed despite the harshness of what is being said. At the same time, I stress to everybody that media campaigns against the resistance and its weapon, making accusations against it, and distorting its image will not do any good and cannot undermine the will and determination of the resistance." He adds: "The only thing that these campaigns can do is raise the level of tension in the street, which Lebanon no longer needs. Lebanon needs calm. I tell them to learn a lesson from all previous events. The 33-day aggression by the strongest army in the region and with international support - and despite the fierceness of that war - did not weaken the resistance, its men, its followers, or its weapon. On the contrary, this made it stronger. The enemy speaks everyday about the growing strength of the resistance. Hence, a few angry speeches will not change the scene. I say this to my brothers who get angry and to those who make angry speeches. All of this noise inside the country or in the region will go in vain. The resistance is a very deep-rooted programme. It is a conscious and calculated programme that is based on strong foundations, as well intellectual, cultural, political, national, psychological, emotional, and civilized bases. I do not believe that such small moves can make any change in the course of the resistance. Let us put aside whatever arouses the people and let us deal with the new phase with a sense of responsibility."

Nasrallah reaffirms the existence of a national unity government in Lebanon, urging all parties to seize the opportunity and "chances of success." He later urges the government to work responsibly and seriously on all files. He adds: "I reiterate Hezbollah's readiness for real and true cooperation with the government and all ministries in a way that serves the national interests of our country and our people. I also urge political forces to ease this tension and resort to calm dialogue, discussion, and criticism."

Nasrallah concludes his speech at 1904 gmt.

Source: Al-Manar Television, Beirut, in Arabic 1810 gmt 14 Aug 08