Ahmad (right), a 19-year-old student of engineering and one of Bab Al-Tabbaneh’s fortunate young people, chatting with a friend. He has been able to go to university, thanks to a grant from the Ruwwad Al Tanmeya NGO. Credit: Oriol Andrés Gallart/IPS

By Oriol Andrés Gallart
TRIPOLI, Lebanon, Jan 10 2015 (IPS)

“People get used to war. During the last battle, children were still coming to play. Can you imagine, a seven-year-old boy running through the bullets just to play video games,” says Mohammad Darwish, a calm man with a curled beard framing his face.

Sitting behind the counter of his cybercafé, located in one of the main streets of the Bab Al-Tabbaneh neighbourhood in this northern Lebanese city, Darwish says that his young customers have resigned themselves to the persistence of armed conflicts.“People get used to war. During the last battle, children were still coming to play. Can you imagine, a seven-year-old boy running through the bullets just to play video games” – Mohammad Darwish, owner of a cybercafé in the Bab Al-Tabbaneh neighbourhood of Tripoli

Despite their age, they are pretty sure that clashes – which have become routine here over the past six years – will erupt again sooner or later. Even when calm reigns, the shelled and bullet-riddled buildings in Tabbaneh stand as a reminder of previous clashes.

The last eruption of violence was in late October 2014. Clashes between the army and local Sunni gunmen paralysed Tripoli for three days and destroyed part of the historic old city, leaving at least eight civilians, 11 soldiers and 22 militants dead. The army now controls Tabbaneh, with soldiers and tanks deployed on every street corner.

Curiously, flags and posters of the Islamic State (IS) can be seen displayed in houses and shops.

“I support IS [Islamic State] and the [Al-Qaeda-affiliated] Jabhat Al-Nusra (JN)”, says 19-year-old unemployed Hassan with a smile, explaining that he thinks IS will give him rights “to have a job, to live peacefully according to Islamic precepts, to move freely.”

Tabbaneh is probably the hardest neighbourhood to grow up in the whole of Tripoli. Despite being the second largest city in Lebanon, barely 80 kilometres north of Beirut, policy neglect by various central governments has left this Sunni-majority city suffering from alarming poverty, unemployment and social exclusion, and Tabbaneh is one of its poorest and most marginalised areas.

Seventy-six percent of Tabbaneh inhabitants live below the poverty line, according to a study on ‘Urban Poverty in Tripoli’, published in 2012 by the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA).

These circumstances, aggravated by the political exploitation of sectarianism within a very conservative society, have fuelled the frequent rounds of violence, mainly between Tabbaneh and the neighbourhood of Jabal Mohsen.

A giant poster on a balcony in Bab Al-Tabbaneh in memory of a young boy killed during clashes in the neighbourhood. Credit: Oriol Andrés Gallart/IPS

Both neighbourhoods are separated just by one street, but while Bab Al-Tabbaneh inhabitants are mostly Sunni (like the main Syrian rebel groups), most of Jabal Mohsen’s inhabitants are Alawites (the same sect as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad).

This sectarianism has determined a rivalry that dates back to the Syrian occupation of Lebanon which began in 1976 and ended in 2005, but which has turned violent again since 2008, and especially since the beginning of Syrian civil war in 2011. During the last three years, more than 20 rounds of fights have broken out in Tripoli, most of them between Tabbaneh and Mohsen militias.

“We fight to defend our people, to achieve peace,” says 19-year-old Khaled, who usually works in a bakery but also belongs to a local militia. But Ahmad, who is of the same age, is sceptical: “People fight because they don’t have money or work.”

Ahmad is studying engineering, thanks to a grant provided by Ruwwad Al Tanmeya, a regional NGO that works in the area through youth activism, civic engagement and education. Because his father served in the army, the state paid the major part of his school fees when he was younger and he was able to study in private schools outside Tabbaneh.

Hoda Al-Rifai, a Ruwwad youth officer, agrees with Ahmad: “Many families don’t have incomes. Whenever the conflict starts, the fighters get paid. And these fighters also give money to children to fulfil specific tasks. They can have three dollars a day and this is better than going to school. Their parents also think this way.”

Stereotypes also contribute to make things hard for Tabbaneh’s youth – including finding a job outside the neighbourhood – and shape their personality, explains Hoda. “When we started, the youth had no self-confidence. The media do not produce an image of these neighbourhoods as areas where you can find brilliant young men, willing to study. They just underline the clashes and all kinds of negatives things.”

“There are no members of JN or IS here,” Darwish tells IPS, adding that many in Tabbaneh see the IS flags as a way of showing dissatisfaction over the government’s alleged abandonment of the Sunni community and specifically of Tabbaneh.

“This is not a religious conflict but political. When politicians want to send a message to each other, they pay for clashes here,” adds Darwish’s 49-year-old aunt, veiled and dressed completely in black. “In this city, you can give 20 dollars to a boy so he starts a war,” explains Darwish.

Nevertheless, various studies have found that only a small percentage of the estimated up to 80,000 Tabbaneh inhabitants take part in combats, and Sarah Al-Charif, Lebanon director of Ruwwad, stresses the immediate improvements observed in Tabbaneh and Mohsen youths who participate in the NGO’s projects.

“They become aware of their shared interests, values and pain,” she says. “They became more open-minded, especially the girls.”

For Sarah, in addition to public investment and job opportunities, any solution must include awareness and education, to which Hoda adds: “First of all, citizens need to understand why the clashes take place.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Egyptian army units block a road in Cairo, Feb. 6, 2011. Credit: IPS/Mohammed Omer

By Emile Nakhleh
WASHINGTON, Dec 3 2014 (IPS)

The acquittal of former Egyptian President Muhammad Hosni Mubarak is not a legal or political surprise. Yet it carries serious ramifications for Arab autocrats who are leading the counterrevolutionary charge, as well as the United States.

The court’s decision, announced Nov. 29 in Cairo, was the last nail in the coffin of the so-called Arab Spring and the Arab upheavals for justice, dignity, and freedom that rocked Egypt and other Arab countries in 2011.If the United States is interested in containing the growth of terrorism in the region, it must ultimately focus on the economic, political, and social root causes that push young Muslim Arabs towards violent extremism.

Chief Judge Mahmud Kamel al-Rashidi, who read the acquittal decision, and his fellow judges on the panel are holdover from the Mubarak era.

The Egyptian judiciary, the Sisi military junta, and the pliant Egyptian media provided the backdrop to the court’s ruling, which indicates how a popular revolution can topple a dictator but not the regime’s entrenched levers of power.

Indeed, no serious observer of Egypt would have been surprised by the decision to acquit Mubarak and his cronies of the charges of killing dozens of peaceful demonstrators at Tahrir Square in January 2011.

Arab autocrats in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and elsewhere have worked feverishly to stamp out all vestiges of the 2011 revolutions. They have used bloody sectarianism and the threat of terrorism to delegitimise popular protests and discredit demands for genuine political reform.

The acquittal put a legal imprimatur on the dictator of Egypt’s campaign to re-write history.

Following the 2013 coupe that toppled President Mohamed Morsi, who is still in jail facing various trumped up charges, Arab dictators cheered on former Field Marshall and current President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, lavishing him with billions of dollars. They parodied his narrative against the voices—secularists and Islamists alike—who cried out for good governance.

Regardless of how weak or solid the prosecution’s case against Mubarak was, the court’s ruling was not about law or legal arguments—from day one it was about politics and counter-revolution.

The unsurprising decision does, however, offer several critical lessons for the region and for the United States.

Removing a dictator is easier than dismantling his regime

Arab authoritarian regimes, whether dynasties or presidential republics, have perfected the art of survival, cronyism, systemic corruption, and control of potential opponents. They have used Islam for their cynical ends, urged the security service to silence the opposition, and encouraged the pliant media to articulate the regime’s narrative.

In order to control the “deep state” regime, Arab dictators in Egypt and elsewhere have created a pro-regime judiciary, dependable and well-financed military and security services, a compliant parliament, a responsive council of ministers, and supple and controlled media.

Autocrats have also ensured crucial loyalty through patronage and threats of retribution; influential elements within the regime see their power and influence as directly linked to the dictator.

The survival of both the dictator and the regime is predicated on the deeply held assumption that power-sharing with the public is detrimental to the regime and anathema to the country’s stability. This assumption has driven politics in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and several other countries since the beginning of the Arab Spring.

In anticipating popular anger about the acquittal decision, Judge Rashidi had the temerity to publicly claim that the decision “had nothing to do with politics.” In reality, however, the decision had everything to do with a pre-ordained decision on the part of the Sisi regime to turn the page on the January 25 revolution.

Dictatorship is a risky form of governance

Authoritarian regimes across the Arab world are expected to welcome Mubarak’s acquittal and the Sisi regime’s decision to move away from the pro-democracy demands that rocked Egypt in January 2011.

Bahrain’s King Hamad, for example, called Mubarak the day the decision was announced to congratulate him, according to the official news agency of the Gulf Arab island nation.

The New York Times has also reported that the Sisi regime is confident that because of the growing disinterest in demonstrations and instability, absolving Mubarak would not rile up the Egyptian public.

If the Sisi regime’s reading of the public mood proves accurate, Arab autocrats would indeed welcome the Egyptian ruling with open arms, believing that popular protests on behalf of democracy and human rights would be, in the words of the Arabic proverb, like a “summer cloud that will soon dissipate.”

However, most students of the region believe Arab dictators’ support of the Sisi regime is shortsighted and devoid of any strategic assessment of the region.

Many regional experts also believe that popular frustration with regime intransigence and repression would lead to radicalisation and increased terrorism.

The rise of Islamic State (ISIS or IS) is the latest example of how popular frustration, especially among Sunni Muslims, could drive a terrorist organization.

This phenomenon sadly has become all too apparent in Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Algeria, and elsewhere. In response to popular resistance, however, the regimes in these countries have simply applied more repression and destruction.

Indeed, Sisi and other Arab autocrats have yet to learn the crucial lesson of the Arab Spring: People cannot be forced to kneel forever.

Blowback from decades of misguided U.S. regional policies

Focused on Sisi’s policies toward his people, Arab autocrats seem less attentive to Washington’s policies in the region than they have been at any time in recent decades.

They judge American regional policies as rudderless and preoccupied with tactical developments.

Arab regimes and publics have heard lofty American speeches in support of democratic values and human rights, and then seen US politicians coddle dictators.

Time after time, autocrats in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Syria have also seen Washington’s tactical policies in the region trump American national values, resulting in less respect for the United States.

Yet while Mubarak’s acquittal might soon fade from the front pages of the Egyptian media, the Arab peoples’ struggle for human rights, bread, dignity, and democracy will continue.

Sisi believes the US still views his country as a critical ally in the region, especially because of its peace treaty with Israel, and therefore would not cut its military aid to Egypt despite its egregious human rights record. Based on this belief, Egypt continues to ignore the consequences of its own destructive policies.

Now might be the right time, however, for Washington to reexamine its own position toward Egypt and reassert its support for human rights and democratic transitions in the Arab world.

If the United States is interested in containing the growth of terrorism in the region, it must ultimately focus on the economic, political, and social root causes that push young Muslim Arabs towards violent extremism.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS-Inter Press Service.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Rwandan soldiers wait in line at the Kigali airport Jan. 19. U.S. forces will transport a total number of 850 Rwandan soldiers and more than 1,000 tons of equipment into the Central African Republic to aid French and African Union operations against militants during this three week-long operation. Credit: U.S. Army Africa photo by Air Force Staff Sgt. Ryan Crane.

By Matthew Newsome
ADDIS ABABA, Feb 4 2014 (IPS)

There are growing concerns that the massive funding crisis for peacekeeping operations in the Central African Republic (CAR) will jeopardise any prospect of restoring stability to the country. 

“The resources being allocated to the crisis are so inadequate to the task. The notion that a few thousand troops – even if they were well-trained and equipped, which is true for the French and some, but certainly not all, of the African contingents – are enough to provide security for an area larger than France itself is risible at best,” Peter Pham, director of the Africa Centre at the Atlantic Council, a research institute for U.S. and European policy approaches to Africa, told IPS. “The notion that a few thousand troops ... are enough to provide security for an area larger than France itself is risible at best.” -- Peter Pham, director of the Africa Centre at the Atlantic Council

As peacekeepers in CAR recaptured the key town of Sibut from rebel fighters on Feb. 2, donor countries made a 315-million-dollar pledge to boost peacekeeping operations in the conflict-ridden country. But this response from the international community has been criticised for being tardy and insufficient to adequately equip the fledgling African Union (AU) mission and fill a security vacuum that has caused 2,000 deaths.

“That’s why the forces have largely limited their activities to Bangui, the country’s capital, and one or two other centres while the countryside has largely been left unsecured,” Pham said.

Last year, inter-religious violence gripped the Central African nation after Michael Djotodia, backed by the Islamist Seleka rebel group, seized power from elected Christian leader Francois Bozizé.

Vicious attacks and counter attacks between Seleka-aligned Muslims and Christian vigilante militias displaced a quarter of the country’s 4.6 million people and plunged the land-locked nation into bloody anarchy.

The new funds offer modest support to the cash-strapped International Support Mission to the Central African Republic (MISCA) – an AU-led operation currently around 5,500-strong supported by 1,600 French troops. But Pham says a poverty of resources for overstretched peacekeeping troops will fail to de-escalate violence spreading throughout the lawless jungle countryside. The impact of the conflict goes beyond CAR as the violence threatens to destabilise the region.

To try and close the funding gap the international community, including Japan, Norway and Luxembourg, pledged 315 million dollars – which is just short of MISCA’s operational budget of 409 million dollars for 2014. The largest single donation came from the Central African Economic Community, which pledged 100 million dollars to the MISCA force.

In addition, the United Nations World Food Programme has requested 95 million dollars from donors to stem a spiralling humanitarian crisis and provide food assistance to the population.

The European Union (EU) donated 61 million dollars, half of which will support MISCA. The other half will be dedicated to the preparation of elections at the earliest date possible to hasten a return to constitutional order. The EU also plans to send 600 troops by March to support the AU force.

“The EU is committed to financially supporting the AU to find military equipment for the troops, MISCA is still establishing its modus operandi and is in urgent need of equipment to support the troops,” Nicholas Westcott, Africa director at the European Union, told IPS.

Although France has requested that the U.N. take over the peacekeeping operation, the AU maintains that MISCA should lead the mission for at least 12 months to allow the regional force to show its military mettle. MISCA comprises soldiers from the Central African countries of Burundi, Rwanda, Chad, Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville.

The appointment of Catherine Samba-Panza, mayor of Bangui, as interim president of the transitional government, has also raised hopes that a return to political process might stem the blood-letting between Christian and Muslim groups. Her election follows the resignation of Djotodia and his prime minister on Jan. 10 due to international pressure.

“The new transitional government does not have more financial capacity than the previous one but, when it comes to the reconstitution of state security forces, it has three advantages. It has more competence within its ranks, it has more legitimacy in the eyes of the Bangui population and it has the backing of the African and French security forces and the Europeans,” Thierry Vircoulon, from the International Crisis Group, told IPS.

The newly-elected interim prime minister, Andre Nzapayeke, attended a donor event at the AU headquarters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and said his country needed “a real Marshall plan” and that “in a period of international economic crisis these pledges have a special value.”

Pham says that if there is to be a lasting solution to the crisis, a non-military campaign for dialogue and reconciliation between sparring factions must be considered as being just as important in ending the orgy of violence as the need to buttress peacekeeping troops with funds and equipment.

“Uncoordinated, atavistic violence of the sort we are seeing in CAR cannot be stopped by military force alone since both the would-be killers and their victims are largely civilians. Rather, it requires massive police forces to prevent multiple small-scale atrocities over a sustained period and, then, an extended period of dialogue and peace building to restore peace in the community,” Pham said.

Over 900,000 people have so far been uprooted from their homes since the conflict in CAR escalated. Close to half a million are in the outskirts of the capital Bangui with 100,000 taking refuge at the airport. Credit: © EU/ECHO/Pierre-Yves Scotto/cc by 2.0

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 30 2014 (IPS)

Reports of horrific revenge killing continued to emerge from the Central African Republic Wednesday, less than 24 hours after the Security Council voted to increase the international troop presence there and levy sanctions against those it suspects of war crimes.

Over 2,000 people have been killed and one million – a quarter of the population – displaced since a coalition of northern, predominantly Muslim rebels calling themselves Seleka (“alliance” in the local Sango language) seized power in March 2013.“Today, two men were killed in the street - one had his head cut off. They were cut to bits." -- Joanne Mariner

Following the deployment of peacekeepers and the resignation of president and former Seleka leader Michel Djotodia earlier this month, the group began a hasty but violent retreat from the capital and several contested rural towns.

Violence against the Christian community was highest in early December, when marauding ex-Seleka elements killed hundreds of civilians. But since then, the 1,600 French and 5,000 African Union peacekeepers have proved unable to fill the security vacuum left in the Seleka’s wake and civilians in areas where fighters had based themselves have come under increasingly vicious attacks from Christian anti-balaka militias seeking revenge.

“The Seleka are the worst thing that could have happened to Muslims in the Central African Republic,” said Joanne Mariner, senior crisis response adviser at Amnesty International, who estimates over 100,000 Muslims have already fled.

“I’ve spoken to hundreds of Muslim civilians and almost every single one tells me that at this point they want to get out of the country,” she told IPS.

On Tuesday, interim president Catherine Samba-Panza told French radio she would request that an official U.N. peacekeeping mission take over from the joint French-African Union mission that the 15-member U.N. Security Council authorised in December, something human rights groups have called for since last year.

But the council again stopped short of sending such a “blue-helmet” mission, authorising only 500 additional European Union troops who will be expected to spell French “Sangari” soldiers guarding 100,000 displaced people camped at Bangui’s airport.

On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch emergency director Peter Bouckaert tweeted a photograph taken at the airport appearing to show a crowd mutilating the corpses of two Muslim men, just 15 yards, he said, from French troops.

Last week, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay warned “the disarmament of ex-Seleka carried out by French forces appears to have left Muslim communities vulnerable to anti-balaka retaliatory attacks.” Other officials have warned of the potential for genocide in the country and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged for a peacekeeping mission with up to 9,000 soldiers. But the Security Council demurred.

Rwandan soldiers wait in line at the Kigali airport Jan. 19. U.S. forces will transport a total number of 850 Rwandan soldiers and more than 1,000 tons of equipment into the Central African Republic to aid French and African Union operations against militants during this three week-long operation. Credit: U.S. Army Africa photo by Air Force Staff Sgt. Ryan Crane.

In recent days, anti-balaka have made regular incursions into Bangui’s two remaining Muslim enclaves, known locally as PK5 and PK12, killing dozens of residents and driving out hundreds. PK12 is a main transit point and Muslims from villages surrounding Bangui have congregated there, awaiting passage to Chad and Cameroon.

Last Friday, 22 civilians were murdered in a convoy on the highway to Cameroon, many hacked to death with machetes.

“In PK5, when people leave that area there are lynchings,” Mariner told IPS from the northwest town of Bozoum. “Today, two men were killed in the street – one had his head cut off. They were cut to bits.”

She added, “Bangui used to be an enormously mixed city. That is completely over.”

In PK13, another traditionally Muslim neighbourhood now emptied of its residents, newcomers have already written their names on abandoned houses and made plans to turn the local mosque into a youth centre.

“You come back in a year and you’ll never know that there were Muslims there,” said Mariner. “Unless there’s real action taken, that’s where the country is going.”

Information is sparse outside of Bangui but the situation is believed to be dire north and northwest the capital, where the peacekeeping presence is light and where anti-balaka have actively pushed Muslims out of their towns.

In the western town of Baoro, the only Muslims left have taken refuge in a local church guarded by peacekeepers. But elsewhere, in towns like Bossembele, Yakole and Boyali, most have fled.

Until the Chadian-backed Seleka began fighting, sporadic violence in the country had never broken so deeply along religious lines.

Disorganised violence

Because the Christian militias are only loosely coordinated at best, negotiations have been impossible in many parts of the country.

“There’s no command and control structure, so even within a single region, they may have five anti-balaka groups vying for power,” said Mariner.

But unlike in the capital, where better organised gangs have access to automatic weapons and grenades, the lightly armed and often young anti-balaka in the countryside travel on foot and are seen fleeing from peacekeepers.

“Obviously you can’t have peacekeepers on every block, but you can have peacekeepers in every town. Even a few peacekeepers make a huge difference,” said Mariner.

“They mostly have hunting rifles, shotguns, you see a lot with bow and arrows, they are no match to real soldiers. And when there are real soldiers they get out of the way. There are attacks that almost certainly could have been avoided had there been peacekeepers in place.”

Mission confusion

The EU contingent will add a third element to an already piecemeal force that has at times appeared overwhelmed.

After the initial Security Council vote in December, observers expressed concern that a streamlined mission – of the kind that had seen moderate successes in Mali against an organised foe – would fail to prevent violence that had devolved into communal, tit-for-tat killings, nor would it address long-term development needs that fostered conflict.

French Ambassador Gerard Araud spoke this week of the need for a full U.N. mission replete with up to 10,000 peacekeepers. But Tuesday’s vote accomplished neither of those goals.

Ainsley Reidy, senior legal advisor at Human Rights Watch, says the international community has a responsibility to bolster the intervention.

“We see protection of the civilian population and accountability for crimes committed by all as the two priority responsibilities of the international community,” said Reidy. “For that reason we continue to remain convinced of the need for the quick deployment of a properly resourced U.N. peacekeeping mission to respond to the scale of the violence.”

Such a mission would augment BINUCA, the small, non-military “peace-building” office already in the country. Groups have for months criticised what they see as a lack of public human rights reporting coming from observers there, a problem they place in the generally disjointed nature of the intervention. Without a unified mandate for all observers and peacekeepers, human rights groups worry accountability and reconciliation will be waylaid.

“We think ultimately there needs to be a fully fledged U.N. mission that addresses both the security needs and can contribute to holding people accountable,” Reidy told IPS.

The December resolution left the door open for the possibility of a larger U.N. peacekeeping mission and would only require an additional vote to initiate a transition. At the time, there was speculation that Security Council members, in particular the United States, were hesitant to budget for another peacekeeping mission at a time when the U.N. has more troops deployed worldwide than ever before. That state of affairs appears unaltered.

In neighbouring South Sudan, where the Security Council voted earlier in December to increase the blue-helmet mission there by 5,000, the transfer of troops has been delayed and thousands have yet to arrive.

“We do know these deployments tend to be slow and can take up to six months,” said Reidy.

“If we take what has happened to civilians between mid-December and mid-January as an indication of how quickly things can happen on the ground in CAR, then six months is too long a time. The U.N. and others can’t afford to drag their feet on this.”

The United States should think twice before intervening military in Syria, says Robert Hunter. Credit: FreedomHouse/CC by 2.0

By Robert E. Hunter
WASHINGTON, Aug 26 2013 (IPS)

President Obama got it right. He was picked by U.S. voters to put the nation’s interests first – not those of any ally, any member of Congress, or the media, even if they clamour for him to “do something” yet do not take responsibility for the consequences if things go wrong, as they have for some time in the Middle East.

Today, the issue raised by U.S. media and some of America’s allies are allegations that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used poison gas to kill or maim thousands of Syrians. The consensus among Western commentators, in and outside of the government, has been built around this proposition, and it may be right.

United Nations inspectors may be able to verify the causes and perpetrators of these deaths and injuries. Let us hope so, before the United States or other countries begin direct military action of any kind that will be crossing the Rubicon.

Perhaps U.S. intelligence knows the facts; again, let us hope so. And let us hope that we do not later discover that intelligence was distorted, as it was before the ill-fated U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the consequences of which are still damaging U.S. interests in the Middle East and eroding the region’s stability.

In addition to being unable to turn back once the United States becomes directly engaged in combat, however limited, is the difficulty of believing that Assad would have been so foolish as to use poison gas, unless Syrian command-and-control is so poor that some military officer ordered its use without Assad’s permission.

If one invokes the concept of cui bono (“to whose benefit?”), those with the most to gain if the United States acted to bring down the current Syrian government would be Syrian rebels or their supporters, including Al Qaeda and its affiliates. Such a move would increase the likelihood of even more killing and perhaps genocide against Syria’s Alawites."It has long been clear that the Syrian conflict is not just about Syria."
-- Robert E. Hunter

But citing the possibility that we are all being misled about who used poison gas – a tactic known as a false flag – does not mean it is true. It does redouble the need for the United States to be certain about who used the gas before taking military action. Obama has gotten this right, too.

So if we become directly involved in the fighting, then what?

This question must always be asked before acting. Sometimes, such as with Pearl Harbour, Hitler’s declaring war on the United States, or pushing Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991, striking back hard for as long as it takes is clearly the right course.

Less clear of a situation was Vietnam. Ugly consequences also ensued from arming and training Osama bin Laden and his ilk to punish the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and, in one of the worst foreign policy blunders in U.S. history, from invading Iraq in 2003.

It has long been clear that the Syrian conflict is not just about Syria. It is also about the balance between Sunni and Shia aspirations throughout the core of the Middle East. Iran, a Shia state, started the ball rolling with its 1979 Islamic revolution. Several U.S. administrations contained the virus of sectarianism, but invading Iraq and toppling its minority Sunni regime got the ball rolling again.

Now Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are bent on toppling the minority Alawite – a mystical offshoot of Shi’ism – regime in Syria. Even if they succeed, the region’s internecine warfare won’t stop there.

Meanwhile, there is a geopolitical struggle for predominance in the region, principally involving Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel. Iran has Shia-dominated Iraq, Assad’s Syria, and Hezbollah as acolytes. Saudi Arabia has the other Gulf Arab states, while Turkey has its regional ambitions extending to Central Asia. And since Israel’s conclusion that its Syrian strategic partner, the Assad family, is doomed, it has thrown in its lot with the Sunni states. But it wants change before Syria is completely dominated by the fundamentalists.

From the U.S. perspective, the regional situation is a mess, and the tipping point that would make things much worse could be direct military intervention in Syria.

It is too late for Obama to take back his ill-considered statement about the use of poison gas being a “red line” in Syria when he was not prepared to go for broke in toppling Assad. It is too late as well for him to reconsider his call for Assad to go, which further stoked the fears of the Alawites that they could be slaughtered.

It is also late for him to tell Gulf Arabs to stop fostering the spread of Islamist fundamentalism of the worst sort throughout the region, from Egypt to Pakistan to Afghanistan, where American troops have died as a result.

It is also late, but let us hope not too late, for a U.S.-led full-court press on the political-diplomatic front to set the terms for a reasonably viable post-Assad Syria rather than sliding into war and unleashing potentially terrible uncertainties. Let us recall what happened in Afghanistan after we stayed on after deposing the Taliban, and in Iraq after 2003. Neither place is in much better shape, if at all, even after the loss of thousands of U.S. lives and trillions in U.S. treasure.

And it is also late, but hopefully not too late, for the Obama administration to engage in strategic thinking about the Middle East; to see the region from North Africa to Southwest Asia as “all of a piece”, and to craft an overall policy towards critical U.S. interests throughout the area.

This week, President Obama should heed the clear wake-up call, resist the call to do something militarily in Syria, and place his bet on vigorous and unrelenting diplomacy for a viable post-Assad Syria and the reassertion of U.S. leadership throughout the region.

*Robert E. Hunter, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, was director of Middle East Affairs on the National Security Council Staff in the Carter Administration and in 2011-12 was Director of Transatlantic Security Studies at the National Defense University.

Excerpt:

Smoke rises from districts in Aleppo, Syria, in December 2012. Credit: Freedom House/CC by 2.0

By Emad Mekay
LOS ALTOS, California, Jun 16 2013 (IPS)

Saudi Arabian religious scholars are leading an increasingly vocal chorus of Islamic preachers who are urging Muslims and Arabs to support Syrian rebels against what they say are atrocities at the hands of Iran-backed Shiite forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

On Friday, the imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Saudi Al-Shoreym, issued a rare appeal to Muslims to provide help “by all means” to Syrian rebels and civilians trapped in the Syria conflict.

Popular Saudi Sheikh Mohammed Al-Erify used his guest sermon in a central mosque in Cairo, Egypt to appeal to thousands of worshippers to back groups fighting the Assad regime and urged his audience to enlist in jihad.

On Thursday, dozens of Islamic religious scholars, mostly from the Gulf, gathered in Cairo to study plans to call for an international appeal for jihad in Syria.

On Jun. 4, Al-Arabiya, a Saudi-financed television channel that is usually liberal, hosted conservative leader Sheikh Youssef Qaradawi, who is based in Doha, Qatar, to urge support for jihad against Hezbollah forces who are fighting alongside Assad’s forces in Syria.

The spike in religious appeals come weeks after the Iran-backed Shiite militias of Hezbollah buffed up its intervention in Syria and forced rebel forces out of the strategically important city of Al-Qusair.

Rebels had held Al-Qusair for months. The city’s fall marked a shift in the balance of power since rebels took up arms in December 2011 and expelled government troops from several cities.

Syrian government-controlled media are reporting that Assad’s forces are advancing towards the rebel stronghold of Homs, while the Iranian news agency Fars said last week that the Syrian army is gaining the upper hand in different parts of Syria.

An internationalised conflict

Calls for jihad by Sunni scholars against Assad, who as an Alawite is a member of a minority branch of Shiite Islam, come as the United States signalled its willingness on Thursday to send arms to rebels in Syria, saying crossed a “red line” by using chemical weapons against his own people.

During the 10-year Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that started in 1979, the United States and Saudi Arabia held similar roles, where Washington supplied weapons to Afghan mujahideen fighters and Saudi Arabia helped with funding and by offering similar religious justifications for fighting the Soviet invaders.

Over the past several weeks, Arab media have been dominated by eyewitness testimonies on the ground of an influx of Iran-inspired Shiite fighters form Iraq, Lebanon and Iran into Syria to buttress the Assad regime, reports that highlight the increasing sectarian tension underlying the conflict.

Sunni Muslim scholars blame Iran and Hezbollah for turning the conflict between the Assad dictatorship and his people into a sectarian war.

The rebellion initially started as peaceful pro-democracy protests in the city of Dera’a, in the early months of the Arab Spring that saw the fall of several other dictators. The protests quickly deteriorated into a war that has cost the lives of close to 93,000 people, according to the United Nations.

Shoreym’s Friday sermon was broadcast live on several pan-Arab television channels. The Saudi preacher is widely respected in many Sunni Muslim countries and his sermons and Quran recitals often heard in public places as well as in households.

In his emotional sermon, Shoreym broke into tears as he recalled the plight of civilians, women and children in Syria.

“Women lost their husbands, the children made [into] refugees and their homes turned into rubble by the forces of aggression and tyranny,” he said. “This makes all of us obligated to lend a hand to help.”

In the past Shoreym has rarely commented on politics, in keeping with the Saudi government’s line to keep Islamic holy sites in Mecca and Madina away from politics as much as possible.

His sermon marked a notable departure from that policy, indicating the seriousness of the situation in Syria.

In Cairo, Al-Erify’s one-hour sermon focused on the need to join jihad. “Modern history has never seen such massacres as those that have been committed by that regime over the past 40 years,” he said.

Al-Erify, a religious preacher with best-selling books and popular TV shows, warned that if the Iran-led Shiite alliance succeeds in Syria they will go after “Muslim children in other countries” and “slaughter them like they did in Syria”.

Erify, Shoreym and Qaradawi’s appeals are the latest in a string of religious edicts, or fatwas, urging people to resist Assad forces in Syria.

On Thursday, dozens of Sunni Islamic scholars, mostly from the Gulf, gathered in Cairo to declare an “urgent appeal for jihad” in Syria and to rally public support for fighters there.

“That conference will have an impact on the ground for sure,” said Gamal Sultan, editor of Al-Mesryoon newspaper in Cairo. “The world imagined that they can sell the Syrian people cheaply to the tyranny of Assad. Religious leaders are out to prove that notion wrong.”

Documenting atrocities

The conference attendees, including Ahmed Al Tayeb, grand sheikh of Al-Azhar, the bastion of Sunni Islam and the seat of its most prestigious religious studies mosque in Egypt, watched a documentary showing Hezbollah and Syrian forces committing atrocities against civilians in conflict areas.

A statement on the website of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, the pan-Islamic non-governmental organisation that ran the conference, said the meeting was designed to “show the real face of Iran, Assad regime and Hezbollah”.

Some of the attendees of the conference later on Friday met with Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi to try to garner his support for the jihad drive. The following day before thousands of supporters and religious leaders in a Cairo stadium, Morsi announced a number of steps against the Syrian regime, including cutting all relations with Damascus.

Social media that were instrumental in launching the Arab Spring are now being used as a vibrant platform both to showcase the Syrian regime’s abuses and to call for jihad against Assad.

Earlier this week, a crude video on Youtube showed young people trying to rescue a young Syrian woman lying in the middle of the road, half-naked and injured after reportedly being raped by pro-Assad forces. One by one, the youths are shot by Assad’s forces as they try to help, and the woman is not believed to have survived.

Facebook pages share gory scenes of children, their throats slit, and masses of bodies, including children, lying under rubble. “While you are sitting flipping through your Facebook, children are dying in Syria,” said one post.

The social media that allowed Egyptian activists to organise the massive rallies that led to Mubarak's ouster now play a less constructive role. Credit: Khaled Moussa al-Omrani/IPS

By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
CAIRO, May 15 2013 (IPS)

More than two years after social media networks helped Egyptian activists organise massive street protests that led to the fall of former President Hosni Mubarak, these networks are now playing a less positive role, often serving as a platform for incitement, rumour-mongering and downright disinformation.

“The same social networks that activists used in unison to bring down Mubarak are now being used to score short-term political goals, manipulate public opinion, and even incite violence,” Adel Abdel-Saddiq, social media expert at the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, told IPS.

During the 18-day Tahrir Square uprising in early 2011, social networking websites, most notably Twitter and Facebook, allowed anti-regime activists to organise mass rallies while also providing platforms for articulating political demands.

“This new form of media proved essential to mobilising hundreds of thousands of protesters in multiple locations simultaneously,” Ammar Ali Hassan, a prominent Egyptian political analyst, told IPS. “It also allowed users to obtain information and news from sources other than official government channels.”

In the more than two years since the uprising, the same social media sites have become regular fixtures of public discourse. Egypt’s Supreme Military Council, for example, which ruled the country from Mubarak’s ouster until the election of President Mohammed Morsi last year, continues to issue official statements and declarations via Facebook."Social media now plays a more destructive role."
-- Adel Abdel-Saddiq

“In the wake of the revolution, Egypt’s politically active class adopted Facebook as its preferred means of communication,” Abdel-Saddiq explained. “The then-ruling military council realised this and began communicating with the public via this new medium, which had proven so instrumental to the demise of the former regime.”

Celebrated as an almost indispensable ingredient of any modern-day popular uprising, social media in post-revolution Egypt has nevertheless begun to reveal a darker side.

The anonymity of social media

“Social media now plays a more destructive role, often being used to provoke anger and hatred and spread unsubstantiated rumour,” said Abdel-Saddiq. “Since the revolution, we’ve seen it used to incite protesters against police, the secular opposition against Islamist groups, and Muslims against Christians and vice versa.”

Abdel-Saddiq went on to recall several instances in which false reports appeared online with the apparent intention of inciting violence.

“Anonymous users have posted reports online, which later proved false, stating that ‘security forces are firing on unarmed protesters’, for example, or that ‘Muslims are attacking Christians’,” he described.

“Once this is done, it’s a simple matter, again with the use of social media networks, to shepherd large numbers of angry protesters to specified venues, thereby creating fertile ground for violent clashes,” Abdel-Saddiq explained.

This phenomenon occurred more than once in the immediate wake of the uprising, when sectarian passions were enflamed by a wave of Muslim-Christian violence, behind which many observers saw the hand of an unseen third party.

“The public soon began to wake up to the fact that false reports on social media were being employed by certain parties – be they counter-revolutionary forces, political rivals or foreign intelligence agencies – to destabilise post-revolution Egypt,” said Abdel-Saddiq.

In a related incident in late 2011, an anonymous Facebook group appeared, purporting to represent “The committee for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice in Egypt.” The page, which sparked widespread fears of the emergence in Egypt of a Saudi Arabia-style “morality police”, bore the logo of Egypt’s Salafist Nour Party.

The party, however, quickly denied any link to the Facebook group, the creators of which remain unknown to this day.

“One of the drawbacks of online social media is that anonymous parties can create fake websites or social media accounts, allowing them to issue false statements on behalf of political figures or groups,” said Hassan.

Media with no oversight

Online video-sharing platforms such as YouTube, meanwhile, have also come to play a less positive role than they did during the uprising, say experts.

“Videos posted online gave the 2011 uprising additional impetus, allowing protesters in different parts of the country to see what was happening elsewhere,” said Abdel-Saddiq. “Nowadays, by contrast, videos posted online are increasingly being used to incite and subvert.”

He cited several incidents in which provocative photos or videos appeared on social media venues, which, after eliciting angry reactions, were later proved entirely false or highly exaggerated. In many cases, he said, such videos “turn out to be older than initially purported and portray entirely unrelated events”.

One such video that appeared in 2011 purporting to show an Egyptian policeman hurling a protester’s prone body onto a rubbish heap, Abdel-Saddiq recounted.

After the video triggered a wave of public outrage against the police – and after major television networks picked up the images – it emerged that the incident had not even taken place in Egypt.

More recently, in early April, a video circulated widely among Egyptian social media users showing a group of Muslim men sexually assaulting a Coptic-Christian woman in Upper Egypt. The video, which appeared at the height of unrelated sectarian tensions in Cairo and Alexandria, initially prompted a storm of popular anger. It later turned out to be from 2009 and was related to an Upper Egyptian tribal vendetta rather than sectarian conflict.

“That was a clear attempt by an unknown party to incite violence between Egypt’s Christians and Muslims,” said Hassan. “Incidents like this have happened so often in the post-revolution period that most social media users now question the source – and production date – of videos appearing online.”

Abdel-Saddiq blames this dangerous state of affairs on the lack of legal oversight of social media platforms in Egypt, where “laws against libel and slander only apply to traditional media – i.e., television, radio and newspapers – but not to the Internet”.

Following upcoming parliamentary polls slated for later this year, he hopes to see the ratification of legislation regulating social media. “But until then,” Abdel-Saddiq said, “we’ll continue to see newfound freedoms of expression, which most Egyptians still aren’t used to, being used irresponsibly and without restraint.”

The recent visit by Abd al-Halim Murad, head of the Bahraini Salafi al-Asalah movement, to Syria to meet with Syrian rebels is an attempt by him and other Gulf Salafis to hijack the Syrian revolution.

Sadly, the Saudi and Bahraini governments have looked the other way as their Sunni Salafis try to penetrate the Syrian opposition in the name of fighting Assad, Alawites, Shia, Hizballah and Iran.

The Assad regime has pursued a sectarian strategy that has resulted in promoting violent “jihadism” in order to bolster his narrative that the opposition to his regime is the work of foreign radical Salafi terrorist groups. Despite Assad’s self-serving claims, violent Salafi activists are nevertheless exploiting instability and lawlessness in some Arab countries, Syria included, to preach their doctrine and force more conservative social practises on their compatriots.

Some Salafis do not believe in peaceful, gradual, political change and are actively working to undermine nascent political systems, including by terrorising and killing minority Shia, Alawites, and Christians.

Radical Salafis have recently committed violent acts in Mali and other Sahel countries in Africa, as well as in Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya. Salafis also have committed violent acts in the name of “jihad” in Egypt, Sinai, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East.

As the Arab Spring touches more countries and as more regimes—for example, in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Sudan and the Palestinian authority—come under pressure from their own citizens, they begin to use sectarianism and promote radical elements within these sects for their own survival and regional posturing. Salafi “jihadists” are more than happy to oblige. Unfortunately, average Muslim citizens bear the brunt of this violence.

Where did modern day Salafism come from?

Since the late 1960s, when King Faisal declared exporting Islam a cardinal principle of Saudi foreign policy, Saudi Arabia has been spreading its brand of Wahhabi-Salafi Islam among Muslim youth worldwide.

At the time, Faisal intended to use Saudi Islam to fight “secular” Arab nationalism, led by Gamal Abd al-Nassir of Egypt, Ba’thism, led by Syria and Iraq, and atheist Communism, led by the Soviet Union.

The Wahhabi-Salafi interpretation of Islam, which has been a Saudi export for half a century, is grounded in the teachings of 13th century Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyya and 18th century Saudi scholar Ibn Abd al-Wahhab. It’s also associated with the conservative Hanbali school of Sunni jurisprudence.

In a nutshell, the Wahhabi-Salafi religious doctrine is intolerant of other religions such as Christians and Jews and of Muslim sects such as the Shia and the Ahmadiyya, which do not adhere to the teachings of Sunni Islam. It also restricts the rights of women as equal members of the family and society and uses the Wahhabi interpretation to quell any criticism of the regime in the name of fighting sedition, or “fitna”.

Even more troubling, Salafis view violence as a legitimate tool to fight the so-called enemies of Islam without the approval of nationally recognised religious authorities. Any self-proclaimed Salafi activist can issue a religious edict, or “fatwa”, to launch a jihad against a perceived enemy, whether Muslim or non-Muslim.

Usama Bin Ladin did just that in the 1990s, which, of course, started an unending cycle of violence and terrorism against Muslims and “infidels” alike, including the United States and other Western countries.

Many of the radical Salafi activists in Mali and other African countries have received their religious educations at Imam Muhammad University in Saudi Arabia, the hotbed of Salafi Islam and one of the most conservative institutions of Islamic education in the world.

The Saudi government and some wealthy Saudi financiers have been spending significant amounts of money on spreading Islam through scholarships, local projects and Islamic NGOs, as well as by building mosques and printing of Korans and other religious texts espousing Wahhabi-Salafism.

Since the early 1970s, Wahhabi-Salafi proselytisation has been carried out by Saudi-created and financed non-governmental organisations, such as the Muslim World League, the International Islamic Relief Organisation, the World Association of Muslim Youth, and al-Haramayn.

Some of these organisations became involved in terrorist activities in Muslim and non-Muslim countries and have since been disbanded by the Saudi government. Many of their leaders have been jailed or killed. Others fled their home countries and forged careers in new terrorist organisations in Yemen, Morocco, Iraq, Somalia, Indonesia, Libya, Mali and elsewhere.

For years, Saudi officials thought that as long as violent “jihad” was waged far away, the regime was safe. That view changed dramatically after May 12, 2003 when terrorists struck in the heart of the Saudi capital.

Wahhabi proselytisation has laid the foundation for today’s Salafi “jihadism” in Africa and in the Arab world. Saudi textbooks are imbued with this interpretation of Islam, which creates a narrow, intolerant, conflict-driven worldview in the minds of youth there.

Unlike the early focus of King Faisal, today’s proselytisers target fellow Muslims, who espouse a different religious interpretation, and other religious groups. The so-called jihadists have killed hundreds of Muslims, which they view as “collateral damage” in the fight against the “near and far enemies” of Islam.

While mainstream Islamic political parties are participants in governments across the Islamic world, and while Washington is beginning to engage Islamic parties as governing partners, radical Salafis are undermining democratic transition and lawful political reform. They oppose democracy as understood worldwide because they view it as man-made and not God’s rule, or “hukm”.

And what to do about it?

The raging violence in Syria and the regime’s clinging to power provide a fertile environment for Salafi groups to establish a foothold in that country. National security and strategic interests of the West and democratic Arab governments dictate that they neutralise and defeat the Salafi project.

As a first step, they must work closely with Syrian rebels to hasten the fall of the Assad regime. This requires arming the rebels with adequate weapons to fight the Assad military machine, especially his tanks, bulldozers and aircraft.

Washington and London must also have a serious conversation with the Saudis about the long-term threat of radical Salafism and the pivotal role Saudi Wahhabi proselytisation plays in nurturing radical Salafi ideology and activities. A positive outcome of this conversation should help in building a post-Arab Spring stable, democratic political order. In fact, such a conversation is long overdue.

For years my colleagues and I briefed senior policymakers about the potential and long-term danger of spreading this narrow-minded, exclusivist, intolerant religious doctrine. Unfortunately, the West’s close economic and security relations with the Saudi regime have prevented any serious dialogue with the Saudis about this nefarious export and insidious ideology.

The writer is the former director of the CIA’s Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program and author of A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World.

Though most Lebanese take great pride in their national education system, deep sectarian rifts in public schools have made it impossible to ignore the political and religious fragmentation of society or its long-term impacts on youth. 

Sectarian rifts have seeped into most public schools in Lebanon. Credit: Mona Alami/IPS

“I do not want to send my daughter to an Islamic school, where she will be forced to wear a veil when she is (just) nine years old. I don’t want that type of lifestyle for her. I would rather scrape every penny I have to send her to a secular school, where she will have the opportunity to mingle with members of other communities,” Dallal, a Shiite resident of south Lebanon, told IPS.

Dallal’s dilemma is not uncommon in Lebanon, where the government officially recognises 18 different sects. Many other mothers living in areas dominated by one of the country’s many religious communities feel the same tension when it comes to their children’s education.

“There is also (segregation) between schools in the north and south, and east and west,” Mona Fayad, professor of psychology at the Lebanese University, told IPS.

Since the end of the 15-year civil war in 1990, different religious groups took root throughout rural areas, dividing society into pockets based on religious affiliation. The only exception is the capital, Beirut, where the historic presence of diverse cultural identities has fostered a higher level of tolerance.

Before 1975 most schools had a diverse student population but during the war, and the exodus of various religious groups, uniformity became the norm in rural public schools. For example, in some Shiite villages in the south, it is not uncommon for students to reach high school without encountering any members of the Sunni community.

Conversely, in Akkar, a bastion of Sunni Islam, Shiites are seen as alien entities and students from the two communities seldom mingle with each other.

“It is not (only) the education system that is at the root of the problem, but the segregation of communities at the school level,” Ali Demashkieh, founder of the NGO Teach For Lebanon, told IPS.

In an attempt to overcome religious hatred generated by years of rivalry among the various Lebanese communities, the 1989 Taif Accord included a special section proclaiming education should be uniform across the country in order to promote national unity. The Accord also called for the creation of a common history textbook for the whole country.

In 1992, a group of educators presented a curriculum they considered suitable for Lebanese of all backgrounds. “The book was published but its distribution to schools was suspended following political disagreements over its content,” Antoine Messara, one of several experts who worked on revamping the education system at the time, told IPS.

Now, over two decades after the end of the civil war, the state still allows Lebanese schools the freedom to use their own history textbooks. Experts like Demashkieh, are concerned that “too much leeway (sometimes) leads to very personal interpretations of history in certain schools”.

Consequently, some institutions are promoting a biased understanding of national history according to their religious affiliation, or the political views of the principal, experts say.

The recent controversy around attempts to scrap the words ‘Cedar Revolution’ from a national middle school history curriculum illustrates the issue. A ministerial committed decided to refer to the revolution, made famous by the one-million strong protests that forced the Syrian army out of Lebanon on Apr. 26 2005, as ‘a wave of demonstrations’, eliciting anger from the country’s politicians who took part in the rallies.

As a result of such disharmony over what constitutes ‘history’, many Lebanese children turn to their family for answers their teachers cannot provide, which worsens the situation.

“Much (historical) knowledge is transmitted through conduits – parents and other family members – and not through schools,” said Messara.

Schools are now also becoming more politicised along religious lines, which is evident in Hezbollah-run institutions, according to researcher Catherine Le Thomas.

“Hezbollah Islamic schools blur the sharp division that is sometimes made between ‘civil society’ and ‘partisan society’. (With) Hezbollah, or a major portion of the Shiite community, this distinction seems to have dissolved. Instead, we observe the establishment of a true ‘resistance society’, supporting the fight against Israel on the outside and promoting the party’s ideals and projects on the inside,” she wrote recently.

Further exacerbating the problem is the fact that Lebanese public schools demand fees for registration and books. In impoverished rural areas, many view religious schools as a more affordable alternative.

“It makes a huge difference for parents if they don’t have to worry about buying books or providing lunch for their children. Also, people who do not send their children to religious schools are perceived as outcasts in small rural societies,” stressed Demashkieh.

He added that many other problems plague the education sector. A 2007 study, for example, showed that primary education completion rates in Lebanon are lower than those in Jordan and Syria, with only 51 percent of students finishing the programme.

Fayad maintains that the education system could act as a powerful tool for fostering national cohesion if public schools integrate to allow students the social interaction necessary to build relationships with peers of other faiths and political backgrounds.

“Religious communities in Lebanon feel they are alone in their painful interpretation of the war,” she concluded. “But all of the 18 communities, with no exception, have felt the same pain.”

(END)