Poster in Lebanon's Beqaa of Hezbollah 'shaheed' killed in Syrian conflict. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Shelly Kittleson
BEIRUT, Aug 5 2014 (IPS)

Concerns about supporting a national army collaborating with a ‘terrorist organisation’ in Lebanon have in recent times been superseded by threats inherent in growing regional conflict.

The fact that Hezbollah, officially designated as a ‘terrorist organisation’ by both the United States and the European Union, no longer conceals its involvement in the fighting across the Lebanese-Syrian border makes little difference.

When traveling through the eastern Beqaa Valley, posters of Hezbollah ‘shaheed’ (‘martyrs’) of the Syrian conflict vie for space with those of popular Shia imams and the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.The fact that Hezbollah, officially designated as a ‘terrorist organisation’ by both the United States and the European Union, no longer conceals its involvement in the fighting across the Lebanese-Syrian border makes little difference.

In one seen by this IPS correspondent on a recent trip to the area, Nasrallah’s face and that of another Shia political leader flank that of Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad, with the writing ‘’this is what heroes are’’.

On July 26, the ‘Party of God’ announced in a statement that Nasrallah’s nephew, Hamzah Yassin, had been killed performing his ‘’jihadist duty defending holy sites’’, implying he had lost his life fighting in Syria.

The United States and other nations’ support for the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) has long served as a bulwark against excessive volatility in the small but confessionally-diverse Middle Eastern country. At the same time, care has been taken to prevent it from becoming so strong as to pose a threat to its southern neighbour and strong U.S. ally – Israel.

Hezbollah, sworn enemy of the ‘Zionist entity’ (as it refers to Israel), continues to claim that its more powerful arsenal is for its struggle against Israel, even as ever more of its means and men are directed at fighting rebel groups in Syria.

At the same time, it seems to be gaining ever more influence in Lebanon’s policies and military.

Yezid Sayigh, senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, told IPS that Hezbollah ‘‘is believed to have a lot of influence on the military intelligence [directorate] in particular –which would make sense as it is the most sensitive agency and the agency that would, potentially, monitor Hezbollah.’’

On the fact that Hezbollah moves fighters and weapons across the border, Sayigh said that ‘’Hezbollah has a lot of de facto power; it acts autonomously on these issues. They must have some sort of agreement that allows them to bring back their dead and wounded, for example,’’ or ‘’it may be that they move them through corridors no one, including the army, is allowed to enter.’’

Sayigh noted that compared with the LAF, Hezbollah ‘’has heavier, longer-range missiles.’’

However, the LAF will benefit, he said, ‘’if the current development programme goes through’’, because ‘’significant quantities of more up-to-date weaponry, transport systems and so on’’ will be available to them.

In January, Saudi Arabia pledged 3 billion dollars in aid and the International Support Group for Lebanon promised at a Rome conference in June to provide more training, among other support.

However, Hezbollah’s key strategic advantage remains ‘’its superior organisation, intelligence, battlefield management and the close relationship between its political and military leaders,’’ which is what the LAF lacks, according to Sayigh. ‘’It is also thought to have a lot of say in the choice, recruitment and promotion of Shia officers in the army.’’

In relation to border control and weapons smuggling in certain areas by Syrian rebel groups, he noted that ‘’once Hezbollah accepted the deployment of the police in its own strongholds in southern Beirut, it became possible for the army to deploy more extensively along the northern and eastern border, and be somewhat more effective.’’

The effectiveness of the LAF is further weakened by such problems as the soldier-to-general ratio, which according to a paper published earlier this year, stands at just under one general for every 100 soldiers, compared with the U.S. army, which in October 2013 had one general for 1,357 soldiers.

The more efficiently organised non-state actor has instead been called a ‘’jihadist’’ organisation, and describes what its fighters dying in the conflict in Syria are doing as their ‘’jihadist duty’’.

Asked to comment on whether Hezbollah is comparable to Sunni jihadist organisations, Sayigh said that ‘’it is an Islamist organisation’’ but ‘’it has accepted that it cannot construct an Islamic state in Lebanon.’’

Sayigh noted that ‘’to the extent that they are mobilising Shia fighters from Iran or from Iraq to go fight in Syria, we do witness a growing form of Shia jihadism, the idea that people are going to fight in defence of the Shia doctrine, to protect Shia shrines. There is a growing sense of, if you like, Shia jihadism,’’ but ‘’Hezbollah stands out for working within a much more careful political and military framework.’’

He said, however, that ‘’they are increasingly recruiting from outside of their own ranks,’’ showing a ‘’higher level of mobilisation among the Shia community. Whether or not these people get paid is unclear.’’

Mustafa Allouch, head of the Tripoli branch of the Future Party and former MP for the city, said instead that ‘’a lot of money is being paid.’’

‘’It is said that Hezbollah provides 20,000 dollars for a ‘martyr’ buried openly, and 100,000 if the parents agree to bury him without a funeral,’’ he said.

In relation to the United States and its financial support for Lebanon overall, Sayigh said ‘’there seems to have been a strategic decision to continue to cooperate with the Lebanese government, the Lebanese army, and other agencies even when Hezbollah is in a coalition government.’’

‘’The country is fragile and in deep economic trouble,’’ Sayigh pointed out, ‘’and the U.S. decision has been to ‘’avoid overburdening the Lebanese system to breaking point.’’

However, a local employee of a U.N. agency expressed concerns to IPS – on condition of anonymity – that de facto authorisation in many areas comes from Hezbollah and not the government itself.

Nevertheless, the army can point to some achievements in the past few months. In December 2013, LAF was given a mandate to keep order in the northern Lebanese town of Tripoli amid rapidly escalating violence. In a visit to the city in July by IPS, overall calm prevailed and many of the sandbags, tanks and troops deployed earlier in the year were nowhere to be seen.

When asked what the major factor was that led to the calm, Allouch said that ‘’when you have a political agreement to withdraw all gang leaders,’’ citing arrest warrants issued for Alawite community leaders accused of crimes, which led to their escaping across the border to Syria, ‘’you can achieve things. The military is simply imposing what the political agreement was.’’

He noted that, although Hezbollah could be compared in many ways to a ‘’gang’’, there could be no talk of the Lebanese army ‘’confronting Hezbollah militarily’’.

‘’It would end in civil war. And the Lebanese army itself would not hold, given the situation in the region. Hezbollah is not a local issue, it is a regional one.’’

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Syrian refugee schoolchildren being taught in the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Shelly Kittleson
BEIRUT, Aug 1 2014 (IPS)

The Shatila Palestinian camp has no library, nor does adjacent Sabra or Ain El-Hilweh in the south. And, after recent statements by Lebanon’s foreign minister, some fear that the thousands of Syrian refugee children within them will soon have even slimmer chances of learning to read and write.

The United Nations stated earlier last month that Syrian refugees would total over one-third of Lebanon’s population by the end of 2014, and that at least 300,000 refugee children were not enrolled in school.

In early July, Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil said that no assistance should be given to Syrian refugees as “all this aid – be it food, shelter or health care – encourages Syrian refugees to stay in Lebanon, while what we want is to encourage their speedy exit.”“The overcrowded breezeblock camps are filled with school-age children from across the [Lebanese-Syrian] border, suffering from psychosocial disorders, nutritional problems and limited possibilities for enrolling in Lebanese educational institutes

During his time as energy minister in the previous government, Bassil had said that Syrians should be seen as a “threat to the safety, economy and identity of the country.”

Tangled electrical wires droop dangerously low and posters of Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad are prominent alongside those of Palestinian ‘resistance’ leaders and ‘martyrs’ in the Lebanese capital’s camps, where refugees are said to have initially been welcomed.

Lebanon’s security forces do not enter the 12 officially registered Palestinian camps in the country despite withdrawal from a 1969 agreement granting the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) control over them.

Several Syrians told IPS they feel more comfortable there than they would in areas controlled by Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside the Syrian regime and whose political wing is part of the government.

With 10,000-20,000 having arrived since the conflict began, refugees from Syria now outnumber the original inhabitants of Beirut’s Shatila camp, set up in 1949 to shelter stateless Palestinians.

The overcrowded breezeblock camps are filled with school-age children from across the border, suffering from psychosocial disorders, nutritional problems and limited possibilities for enrolling in Lebanese educational institutes.

There than the capacity of the public school system capacity, the most obvious hurdle for refugee children, says Fadi Hallisso, co-founder and general manager of the Syrian-run NGO Basmeh & Zeitooneh which works in the camp, is that Syrian public schools teach in Arabic while their Lebanese counterparts use either French or English.

Destitute or missing parents leading to the need to work or beg to survive, transport costs and war-induced trauma are other factors at play, and the problem is compounded by nutritional deficiencies.

A UNICEF study found earlier this year that severe acute malnutrition had doubled in certain parts of the country between 2012 and 2013. It noted that almost 2,000 children under the age of five were at risk of dying if they did not receive immediate treatment, while even milder states of malnutrition stunt children’s physical and mental growth.

Basmeh & Zeitooneh has set up a school in Shatila for about 300 students using the Lebanese curriculum taught by Syrians and Palestinians, who are paid between 400 and 700 dollars a month, according to Hallisso, “which no Lebanese teacher would be willing to work for.”

The facilities have been newly renovated and are in a building with a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) clinic and dispensary on the second floor.

The organisation is trying to get funding for a small library where the children can come, read, consult reference works, use computers and find a space open to them with generator-powered electricity.

Maria Minkara, who works with Hallisso, told IPS that it would be open to both Palestinian and Syrian schoolchildren and that not a single library exists in the entire area housing tens of thousands of inhabitants.

Many of the children, she noted, live in dark, unhealthy environments, cut off from the power grid with no physical space in which to study. A walk through the crowded camps makes this obvious.

The Joint Christian Committee for Social Service in Lebanon, another organisation working with refugees, recently succeeded in obtaining permission for about 120 Syrian refugee children from its school in the Ain El-Hilweh camp near Sidon to return to Damascus for their 9^th grade and Baccalaureate exams, Executive Director Sylvia Haddad told IPS. Over 83 percent of them passed, she said.

Haddad admitted that several students’ families had refused to allow their children to go back to Syria out of fear of the regime, but said that “’they are regretting that decision very much now.”

Stressing that all politics and religion were kept out of the instruction of refugee children, Haddad said that questions on the curriculum being used by the group were referred to Abu Hassan, a Palestinian inhabitant of the camp who in the manner of militia fighters in the region uses an alias preceded by ‘Abu’ (‘father of’).

Abu Hassan said he had fought in the Palestinian ‘resistance’ in the past but declined to say with which faction, and denied that any pro-regime rhetoric was contained in the textbooks.

Abu Hassan was allowed to accompany the students to Damascus and back, but recent changes in Lebanese law make it harder for Palestinians fleeing Syria to enter Lebanon. Amnesty International published a report last month denouncing the restrictions, which require ‘pre-authorisation’ from the government or a residency permit.

Regulations regarding Syrian refugees also changed at the beginning of June, limiting entry to those coming from areas near the Lebanese border where fighting is under way and stipulating that refugees who cross back into Syria forfeit the right to return.

(Edited by Phil Harris)