LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
DECEMBER 25/2006Bible Reading of the day
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 1,39-45.
During those days Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, "Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled."Free Opinions
Thank you Mr. Harper, You are the right man for the right job.-Elias Bejjani-World Forum -Dec 25, 2006
Syrian Complexities-By: Hazem Saghieh25.12.06 Vanishing Christians of the Mideast-Houston Chronicle 25.12.06
Hezbollah: A return to Islamic glory-Yemen Times 25.12.06
A Bad Year for Empire: Jim Lobe-Antiwar.com 25.12.06
Iran hails its Lebanese agent Nasrallah as "popular Arab figure"-Persian Journal 25.12.06Latest news from Miscellaneous Scources for December 25/06
Saniora: 'No Need for Concern and Tension'-Naharnet, Lebanon
Israeli Hails UN Sanctions On Iran-All Headline News
Iran refuses to cease uranium enrichment AP
Road Map Launched to Deal with Lebanon Crisis; Ismail-Naharnet
Mousa mission 'a failure due to foreign influence'-Gulf News
Arab chief pleads for Lebanon talks-Taipei Times
Situation, serious in Lebanon -- AL envoy-Kuwait News Agency
Beirut street protests enter fourth week-Financial Times
Italy's PM Prodi meets with rival Lebanon leaders-Ya Libnan
Italian PM Prodi visits UNIFIL troops in Lebanon-Jerusalem Post
Lebanon's slow slide from Hope to Deadlock-Ya Libnan
Lebanon PM, Hezbollah spar over failure-Houston Chronicle
Moussa cautiously hopeful about mediation on Lebanese ...People's Daily Online
Harper gearing for early election-Winnipeg Free Press, Canada
Hezbollah: A return to Islamic glory-Yemen Times, Yemen
Lebanon PM, Hezbollah spar over failure-San Jose Mercury News, CA
Bush signs anti-Hamas law-Andhra Cafe, India
LEBANON: Poor data limits aid work-Reuters
Lebanon struggles to break ties with the past-Newsday
Blair's big chance-The Age
Iran to compensate over role in bombings-Gulf News
Lebanese President Addresses Nation-Playfuls.com
Canadian woman missing after recovering two daughters in ...International Herald TribuneSyrian Complexities
Hazem Saghieh Al-Hayat - 24/12/06//
Before the Baker-Hamilton report came out and with the outbreak of speculations about the ' US dialogue with Syria', Damascus, its friends and followers cheered. Schadenfreude was self-evident: here Washington is obliged to speak to us. At the same time they concealed other facts, one of which is that Israel , too, showed the same willingness. They also said nothing about Baker's conditions on Damascus, and the non-binding nature of the report.
The latter, at least relating to Syria-Lebanon, is praiseworthy. Syria's eventual retrieval of the Golan Heights is a good thing. If such retrieval leads to Syria's turning away from Lebanon , it will definitely mean another realization of right. The spirit of the report, if it really works, is in stark contrast to the arrogant policy of disregard, which characterized the administrations of George Bush, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. Such disregard has incurred a heavy price on the Arabs, the Americans and the Israelis.
Hence, there is a basket of potential gains endorsed by two other facts:
- That Syria , in contrast to its ally, Iran, agrees to the principles of 'land for peace' and the 'establishment of two States living side by side on the land of historical Palestine '.
- And that Syria, through its war against the Israelis via Hezbollah, gained relative benefits whose cost was paid by Lebanon and the Lebanese. Thus, the summer war may be considered, with regards to Damascus (and Tehran), as a mini-October War, which may be considered as a good starter to launch negotiations.
But the questions, which are desired to be covered up, are bigger and more complicated than these simple introductions.
Does Syria really want the Golan Heights, which would entail losing the 'case', including Lebanon?
We know that the regime in Damascus, given its military and minoritarian nature, only feeds on 'issues'. The normalization of public life and compatibility with the logic of international relations threatens the regime with death and atrophy. If it is possible to blame electoral considerations and chauvinistic inclinations for preventing four Israeli prime ministers from returning 100% of the Golan Heights, through indirect negotiations between 1991 and 2000, something in Syria prevented receiving 98% of the Golan Heights.
This 'something', which increased the doubts about what we now know, after the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, is that the Damascus regime used the conflict with the Fouad Siniora government and the aligned forces to expand its base. It also increases the doubts about our long-held conception of the Syrian regime as an oriental despotic regime whose policies are not affected by its economic crises. The economy, according to those who studied the Baathi power, was the most hated and neglected issue by Hafez al-Assad during his three-decade reign. This, in turn, did not prevent the deification of the late President!
Moreover, the cost of a settlement with the aforementioned regime is something that the 'West' cannot pay, unless the settlement means offering Lebanon to Syria , with an instant replay of the scenario between 1991 and 2004. If we put this settlement aside, we will again be faced with the nature of the regime: the formative crisis of modern Syria, which plunged the country into successive coups, wars and the 1958 unification (with Egypt ), was 'solved' only through the massive centralization of power in 1970 under Hafez al-Assad.
This 'savior' regime, which was established three years after the loss of the Golan Heights (in fact, winning the 'Cause' of the Golan Heights and the liberation), can not co-exist with a small neighbor that receives political refugees from Syria and allows for the freedom of the press. Such characteristics are considered a 'conspiracy against Damascus', which raises one of the most complex problems: if it is true that democracy in Syria is not on the agenda, which in all cases is not the business of the Lebanese or anyone else, it is true, in turn, that the military regime in Damascus does not accept less than changing the regime in Beirut. That is to say, the 'Arabism of Lebanon', according to the Syrian interpretation, which is the condition for the survival of this regime, would mean deterring the Lebanese from developing their system into a democratic one.
If we add the developments that have been taking place since the assassination of Prime Minister Hariri, including setting up the International Tribunal, which has become a main issue of domestic policies of Lebanon and Syria, as in the regional policies, we will be fully aware of the fact that Baker might not be able to remedy what has been damaged throughout years and decades.Road Map Launched to Deal with Lebanon Crisis; Ismail
Arab league presidential envoy Osman Ismail said a road map had been set up to deal with the situation in Lebanon during the holiday season, the daily An Nahar reported Sunday.The daily said Ismail told the Saudi network Al-Arabiya Saturday evening that contacts were focusing on choosing the "neutral" minister so as to facilitate the formation of a new government which would end the ongoing Lebanon crisis.
Ismail said, however, that another thorny issue remains -- that of the international tribunal agreement on which it should coincide with choosing the neutral minister. That would set the stage to agreeing on a package of solutions covering also the Donor's meeting in Paris scheduled for January 25 as well as early presidential elections in February, according to Ismail. As for early parliamentary elections, Ismail said, they should follow the adoption of a new electoral law under the new president who assumes power after President Emile Lahoud's term expires Nov. 22, 2007. Ismail and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa on Saturday wrapped up the second phase of their mediation with pro- and anti-government factions, vowing to continue efforts after the Christmas, New Year and Adha holidays. Beirut, 24 Dec 06, 09:24 Published: 24/12/2006 12:00 AM (UAE)
Mousa mission 'a failure due to foreign influence'
By Duraid Al Baik, Foreign Editor
Doha: The Arab League's mediation initiative has failed in Lebanon because of foreign influence on the Fouad Siniora government, according to a senior Hezbollah official. The declaration by Haj Hassan Hudruj, member of Hezbollah's Political Bureau, came as Arab League chief Amr Mousa pleaded for dialogue among Lebanese leaders as he wrapped up a new round of shuttle diplomacy between the government and the opposition.
Hudruj told Gulf News that his party would go ahead with its demonstrations to achieve its goals. He said Mousa's mission had failed because of changes in the proposals agreed upon in the first round of mediation. Hudruj said the government had agreed with Mousa earlier on two points: the formation of a power-sharing government and the proposal on the controversial international tribunal investigating former premier Rafik Hariri's killing.
Hudruj said Mousa, in his latest mission, had reneged on the formula agreed upon to form the Cabinet, and was sceptical that the UN tribunal could intimidate the Lebanese legal system. "We need to define the extent the international court can delve into regarding the Hariri inquiry," he said.
Lack of dialogue Mousa, however, declined to call his latest effort a failure but said that leading figures within the power-sharing regime needed to start talking to each other. "Contacts between Lebanese leaders do not exist," he told a Beirut press conference, according to Reuters.
Saniora: 'No Need for Concern and Tension'
In an address to the Lebanese on Christmas Eve, Prime Minister Fouad Saniora stressed that "there is no need for concern and tension."
"There will be no return to the era of (Syrian) hegemony or any other hegemony," Saniora said in a televised address Saturday evening.
"We shall not compromise on the security of the Lebanese people," Saniora added.
He said: "I reassure you that we will remain committed to the constitution and legitimacy and our hand will always be stretched to everyone." Beirut, 24 Dec 06, 10:35
Road Map Launched to Deal with Lebanon Crisis; Ismail
Arab league presidential envoy Osman Ismail said a road map had been set up to deal with the situation in Lebanon during the holiday season, the daily An Nahar reported Sunday. The daily said Ismail told the Saudi network Al-Arabiya Saturday evening that contacts were focusing on choosing the "neutral" minister so as to facilitate the formation of a new government which would end the ongoing Lebanon crisis.
Ismail said, however, that another thorny issue remains -- that of the international tribunal agreement on which it should coincide with choosing the neutral minister. That would set the stage to agreeing on a package of solutions covering also the Donor's meeting in Paris scheduled for January 25 as well as early presidential elections in February, according to Ismail. As for early parliamentary elections, Ismail said, they should follow the adoption of a new electoral law under the new president who assumes power after President Emile Lahoud's term expires Nov. 22, 2007. Ismail and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa on Saturday wrapped up the second phase of their mediation with pro- and anti-government factions, vowing to continue efforts after the Christmas, New Year and Adha holidays. Beirut, 24 Dec 06, 09:24
U.S.: Iran Arming, Financing Hizbullah, Hamas, other Terrorists
The United States wants world powers to impose more sanctions on Iran, accusing it of arming and financing Hizbullah and Hamas, the State Department's number three diplomat said. "We don't think this resolution is enough in itself. We want the international community to take further action," U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns said after the Security Council slapped the first-ever U.N. sanctions on Iran, targeting its nuclear and ballistic missile programs in response to its refusal to halt sensitive nuclear fuel work.
"We would like to see more vigorous national and multilateral action against Iran, stronger sanctions -- and not just U.N. Security Council sanctions but outside the Council -- and we would like to see countries to stop doing business as usual with Iran," Burns stressed in a conference call.
"We are certainly not going to put all of our eggs in the U.N. basket. We are going to try to convince countries -- especially the European Union countries, Japan -- to consider some of the financial measures that we have undertaken," added Burns.
Burns mentioned "the campaign we have launched to convince some of the international lending institutions and private banks that they should shut down lending to Iran. "Iran has begun to launder its money through some of these financial institutions without the knowledge of the institutions to arm and finance Hizbullah and Hamas and other terrorist organizations. It is interesting that Credit Suisse, Credit Lyonnais and HSBC have all stopped lending to Iran in the last few months," said Burns.(AFP) Beirut, 23 Dec 06, 20:53
Israeli Hails U.N. Sanctions On Iran
December 24, 2006
Ryan R. Jones - All Headline News Middle East Correspondent
Jerusalem, Israel (AHN) - Israel has hailed the U.N. Security Council's decision on Saturday to impose sanctions on Iran as a welcome first step toward preventing the Islamic Republic from obtaining nuclear weapons.
In a unanimous vote, the Security Council ordered all nations to ban the supply of materials and technology that could contribute to Iran's nuclear program. The resolution also placed an asset freeze on companies and individuals already involved in the nuclear program.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev told the AP that the decision sends "a clear message to the Iranian leadership that Iran's nuclear program is totally unacceptable and the community of nations will act to prevent the Iranian regime from obtaining nuclear weapons."
Unnamed government sources said the decision was significant "because it is the first time, 17 months after the Iranians began their overt enrichment program, that the international community has taken concrete steps against it."
Jerusalem views a nuclear Iran as an existential threat, following repeated declarations by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Israel should be annihilated. For its part, Iran rejected the U.N. decision as an illegal imposition on its right to pursue nuclear energy.
Chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani told Iran's IRNA news agency that the "resolution against Iran is not an important document."
The international community "should realize that this move will not have much result and Iran will give a deserving reply to it," added Larijani.
Washington warned Iran against taking such a defiant stand. "We will not hesitate to return to this body to seek further action should Iran fail to comply," said U.S. Ambassador Alejandro Wolff in his statement to the Security Council.
Iran refuses to cease uranium enrichment
By NASSER KARIMI, Associated Press Writer
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran vowed Sunday to push forward efforts to enrich uranium and to change its relations with the international nuclear watchdog after the U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions designed to stop the country's disputed nuclear program. Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the Security Council would regret voting in favor of the sanctions, saying he was sorry the West lost its chance to make amends with Iran. "I am sorry for you who lost the opportunity for friendship with the nation of Iran. You yourself know that you cannot damage the nation of Iran an iota," the state-run news agency, IRNA, quoted Ahmadinejad as saying. Ahmadinejad also said the United Nations must accept Iran's nuclear program and warned that sanctions would not harm his country.
"You have to accept that Iran has the technology of producing nuclear fuel. And it will celebrate it in coming anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution in February," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying. Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said Iran pledged to change its relationship with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Association. "We are not obliged and it is not expected that cooperation with the IAEA continues at the same former level," Hosseini told reporters. He did not provide details about what would change.
Iran's parliament on Sunday voted to urge the country's administration to revise its cooperation with the IAEA but did not set a timeline or provide further details. Many legislators chanted "Death to America" after the vote. "The government should seriously and strongly continue the important issue of peaceful nuclear technology with prudence and foresight. It should never accept such illogical pressures," more than 200 legislators said in a statement read on state-run radio.
The U.N. Security Council resolution — the result of two months of tough negotiation — orders all countries to stop supplying Iran with materials and technology that could contribute to its nuclear and missile programs. It also freezes the Iranian assets of 10 key companies and 12 individuals related to those programs. If Iran refuses to comply, the council warned it would adopt further nonmilitary sanctions, but the resolution emphasized the importance of diplomacy in seeking guarantees "that Iran's nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes." Iran insists its nuclear program is intended to produce energy, but the Americans and Europeans suspect its ultimate goal is the production of weapons.
Ahmadinejad also downplayed the resolution, saying it would be the Security Council that regretted it, not Iran.
"This will not damage the nation of Iran, but its issuers will soon regret this superficial and nil act," he said, speaking to a group of war veterans from the 1980-88 Iran- Iraq war at the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
The United States has said it hopes the resolution will clear the way for tougher measures by individual countries, particularly Russia.
The Bush administration had pushed for tougher penalties. But Russia and China, which both have strong commercial ties to Tehran, balked.
To get their votes, the resolution dropped a ban on international travel by Iranian officials involved in nuclear and missile development and specified the banned items and technologies. It says the council will review Iran's actions in light of a report from the head of the IAEA, requested within 60 days, on whether the country has suspended uranium enrichment and complied with other IAEA demands.
It also says sanctions will end when the board of the IAEA confirms that Iran has complied with all its obligations.
The six countries trying to get Iran to curb its nuclear program — Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the United States — offered Tehran a package of economic and political incentives if it agreed to suspend uranium enrichment. But Iran refused and rejected an Aug. 31 council deadline to freeze enrichment. Earlier Sunday, Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said the resolution made his country more "decisive in realizing our nuclear aims." "From Sunday morning, we will begin activities at Natanz — site of 3,000-centrifuge machines — and we will drive it with full speed. It will be our immediate response to the resolution," Iran's Kayhan newspaper quoted Larijani as saying. Iran first showed its ability to enrich uranium in February, when it produced a small batch of low-enriched uranium using a first set of 164 centrifuges at its pilot complex in Natanz.
Iran has said it intends to move toward large-scale uranium enrichment involving 3,000 centrifuges by late 2006, and then expand the program to 54,000 centrifuges, which spin uranium gas into enriched material to produce nuclear fuel.
DEBKAfile Exclusive: Bashar Asad propositions Israel in hope of getting his family off the hook of an international trial in the Hariri case
December 19, 2006,
According to Al Arabiya television, quoting Western sources, the latest Syrian president’s overture came in a personal letter fired off to Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert offering talks without pre-conditions.
Olmert has received no such letter. DEBKAfile Middle East sources disclose that a group of British, German, Spanish and American low-grade volunteer middlemen, most former intelligence officials and academics, is pushing with all its might to develop a track for bypassing President George W. Bush by pushing Syria and Israel into talks. The logic behind this initiative is that while such talks are going on, it will be hard for the international community including the UN to say: Stop: the Asads must stand trial for assassination and terrorism. And if the talks are successful, they might confer enough respectability on the Syrian ruler to make the Bush administration overcome its opposition to engaging Damascus.
Syria’s first lady Asmah Asad is also very active in these exchanges.
DEBKAfile’s sources stress that they have covered nowhere as much ground as indicated by the statements and leaks from Damascus. Reports that the Syrian ruler has no preconditions for talks are inaccurate. This concession would apply only to any informal contacts prior to formal negotiations, a stage known in diplomatic parlance as Track 2. Neither has Asad ever promised to stop sending arms to Hizballah. He only told the Western middlemen, the presumed sources of the al Arabiya leak, that Syria does not control Hizballah but does have influence with Hamas.
A good example of Track 2 was the first contacts between Israeli, Palestinian and European academics, without their governments’ sanction, which ultimately led up to the 1993 Oslo Accords. In the present case of Syria, Track 2 has brought together non-official persons from different countries, veterans of the government or military, and academics, who are close to their own governments and intelligence agencies. Many have established or joined think tanks, consultancies, workshops, forums and centers of one kind or another in their areas of interest.
DEBKAfile’s sources name the live wires behind Asad’s latest peace offensive:
Alastair Crook , the ex-British MI6 agent who set up the British clandestine network in the Palestinian Authority in the time of Yasser Arafat. Crook, who has lost some of his important connections in British intelligence, is working hard to get Hamas internationally recognized.
Asma Asad’s British family connections , through which the Syrian president conveyed his consent to Track 2 getting underway, provided British prime minister Tony Blair was informed of and consented to the process. However Asma and her relatives failed to win this consent. This led to the suspension of the intensive burst of official, high-level communications which Damascus and London exchanged in September and October. A Blair visit to Damascus before year’s end was then very much on the cards.
Asad wanted Blair aboard the initiative as the most senior Western statesman able to rescue his close family from having to stand in the dock of an international tribunal at the Rafiq Hariri assassination trial. Blair sidestepped this role.
Mark Perry , an American who is a former adviser to Yasser Arafat, works with Alastair Crook in the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum, which fosters dialogue between policy-makers and Hizballah.
, Spanish foreign minister and another European, who took a number of tentative steps but sparked no responsive chord in Damascus.
A group of German businessmen and former intelligence officials with strong connections in Damascus.
Iran hails its Lebanese agent Nasrallah as "popular Arab figure"
Dec 22, 2006
Hezbollah, Sayed Hassan Nasrollah is the most 'popular Arab figure' in the world while America and the fake Zionist regime are the most hated powers, mullah said. Jannati predicts the future of Lebanon as bright and said that if the Arab countries want not to be detested in front of the eyes of the world's nations, they should not get close to America and the Zionist regime. Mullah pointed to December 15 elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran and said that the presence of millions of people in the elections made the world acquinted with true democracy. Jannati added that the Iranian nation with its broad presence in the elections showed to the world bullies that the democracy to which they only give lip service, practically exists in the Islamic Republic.
© Iranian.ws
The Silent Exodus/Vanishing Christians of the Mideast
By GREGORY KATZ
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle Middle East Bureau
A THREE-PART SERIES-Dec. 24, 2006, 1:46AM
AIN EBEL, LEBANON — This Christian village near the Israeli border looks tranquil, but the undulating hills and silver-tinted olive groves mask a beehive of Hezbollah military activity that brought the town under Israeli attack this past summer.
Brahim Barakat, a gas station owner, said the 34-day conflict convinced him and the town's other Christians that they have no future in Lebanon, where policy is increasingly set by the militant Islamic group Hezbollah, which is trying to destabilize the elected national government. They are ready to abandon their fig trees and move out. "Our church is older than Hezbollah," said Barakat, sounding beaten down at 56. "Our history is here. Jesus Christ walked here. But we are caught between Hezbollah and Israel. We are lost here. If 80 percent of the Christians in Lebanon are trying to leave, here the figure is 100 percent because of the war." The vicious battle between Hezbollah and Israel this summer has joined the long list of religion-based conflicts and feuds ripping the peoples of the Middle East apart. Most of the Christians who lived in Ain Ebel already have gone, scattered like seeds tossed by a tempest.
Some have resettled in other parts of Lebanon, trying to eke out a living, but many have abandoned their country altogether, adding to the huge number of Lebanese Christians who have gone to the United States, Canada, Australia and other countries for a fresh start.
The flight of Lebanese Christians is one symptom of a larger malady: the wholesale departure of Christians from the Middle East.
This silent exodus is reshaping the region's cultural mosaic, eating away at its diversity by slowly removing Christians from the birthplace of Jesus Christ. Their voice is being muted as Islam becomes more strident. The Islamic holy book, the Quran, preaches respect for other religions, but the growing popularity of radical Islam, which casts Christians and Jews as infidels, has convinced many Christians they will soon be unwelcome, said Anthony O'Mahony, a London professor who has written several books on Christianity in the Middle East.
"We may be seeing the end of a historic Christian presence," he said. "Islam has profoundly displaced the indigenous religions, Christianity and Judaism. We're seeing another stage of the Islamicization of the region. You start to see the Middle East purely in Muslim terms, dominating the whole region."
Precise figures are elusive, in part because governments in the region do not carry out sensitive surveys listing religious affiliation, but historians believe that at least 2 million of the region's Christians have left the Middle East in the past 30 years. Sharp declines have been observed in Lebanon and the West Bank over the past three decades.
Seeking safety
In Lebanon, the civil war that started in 1975 spurred hundreds of thousands of Christians to seek safety abroad. Christians are now a minority in a country where they used to be the largest religious group. A measure of stability returned to Lebanon when fighting ended in 1990, but that was shattered this summer. The conflict with Israel killed more than 1,000 people and caused an estimated $4 billion in damage to the country's infrastructure.
Hezbollah, a private Islamic militia funded primarily by Iran, started the fighting when its forces crossed into Israel to ambush Israeli troops. The militia's leading cleric, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, launched the attack without any input from Lebanon's elected coalition government, which includes many Christians, including the president, Emile Lahoud. The conflict stoked fears among Christians and some Muslims that the militant movement spreading throughout the region may transform Lebanon into an Iranian-style Islamic republic.
"This last war made the Christians lose hope," said Guita Hourani, a Lebanese Christian who is associate director of the Lebanese Emigration Research Center. "Hezbollah refuses to disarm, and they have a political plan and an ideology that does not fit with what Christians and most Lebanese want, which is a functioning democracy that is pluralistic and open. Space for freedom of expression and freedom of faith is being closed off."
Lebanese Christians were able to talk about their concerns before the war, but now they are afraid to speak freely, she said.
"People are fearing for the future and trying to get out," she said. "This war is going to impact the emigration of Christians more than anything we have seen. If other countries open their doors, there will be an exodus."
Civil war looming?
The November assassination of Christian leader Pierre Gemayel and the push by Hezbollah to oust the government aggravated the situation, raising the specter of renewed civil war between the country's Muslim and Christian populations. These problems are reflected throughout the Middle East. Circumstances differ in each country the Christians are quitting, but the results are the same. Christians are voting with their feet, leaving the lands where Jesus once walked.
'A savage polarization'
The latest catastrophe for Middle Eastern Christians is in Iraq. One of the region's oldest Christian communities is under fire as sectarian fighting increases and the country's new political leaders veer toward a religious-based Islamic government. "The Iraqi Christians are increasingly targeted, and many churches have been threatened, so they are joining the larger exodus from Egypt, from Palestine, from Lebanon," said Fawaz Gerges, author of Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy and director of the Middle Eastern studies program at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. "This means disaster for the Middle East. Christians serve as a bridge between the Muslim world and the Judeo-Christian world, and if you rid the Middle East of its bridge you are punching a big hole in the idea of coexistence." The rise in fundamentalist Islam is one of many factors causing Christians to leave. They also are departing in search of educational and employment opportunities and, in the case of Palestinian Christians, because of conflicts with Israel.
In the region where the three great world religions began, Jews, Christians and Muslims are living more separately than ever. Their religious doctrines call for tolerance, but in practice they are drawing apart.
"There has been a savage polarization," said William Dalrymple, author of From the Holy Mountain and other works about Christians in the Middle East.
"In this pulling-apart of a very rich tapestry, the Christians have by and large left the Middle East to places less heavy with history, places like Australia, Sweden and Detroit." Middle Eastern Christians who stay are often caught in the middle. Many Muslims assume Christians are pro-Western because they share a Christian bond with the West. At the same time, many Westerners are suspicious of them because of their Arab roots.
Christians also leave because they have a better chance to advance in more peaceful and affluent countries. Some can emigrate relatively easily because of family ties in the West. Many already speak English, making it easier to get jobs or places in good schools.
The emigration has changed the makeup of Lebanon, where Christians were in the majority when the country achieved independence in 1943. Now they are a shrinking minority. In the highland villages of the Mount Lebanon range, where Christians have lived in the bracing mountain air for centuries, most young adults already have departed. The majority of the residents are either older than 60 or younger than 18, said Filamina Farhat, a weary resident of Kfar Sghab (pronounced Far-Zab) who has seen the community dwindle in her 66 years.
Her village, surrounded by fertile land that produces delicious cherries and pears, is in the Christian heartland of Lebanon. The mountains are dotted with shrines to the saints, but the town¹s roads are named after the cities in Australia where most of the former residents now reside. It is jarring to see a "Perth Road" in the middle of Lebanon, but it reflects that more of the town's residents live overseas than in the town. "We have more than 17,000 people from this village living in Australia, and 3,000 in America, and only about 700 people living here," Farhat said. "The young people became educated and left. What choice do they have? They can't make a living here. "I'm sad because we work very, very hard to work the land and educate them, and then they leave."
Hermits continue tradition
Her part of the country holds special significance for Lebanon's Maronite Christians, who make up the largest denomination in the country. It was in the misty, craggy, inaccessible mountains that the Maronites first sought refuge when they were persecuted in neighboring Syria 13 centuries ago.
The Maronite Patriarch keeps his summer headquarters nearby, on the cliff high above the Valley of the Saints, where a few religious hermits continue a Maronite tradition by living in caves. Still, this rich heritage is not enough to keep young people here, said George Tannous, a student.
"We are four brothers, and the whole family is trying to leave — my parents, too," said Tannous, a 17-year-old with burning brown eyes who is determined to study engineering and architecture abroad. The family's hopes are riding on an uncle in Australia who is trying to arrange a visa that would allow them to settle there. "Here there is nothing, no jobs, no money, no chances," he said. "You can't get a car or get married. Ninety-nine percent of my friends want to leave. I would go anywhere. You can't stay here or your life stops."
The only time the depopulated mountain villages of Lebanon fill up is in summer, when many prodigal sons return from abroad to pay their respects to their parents. They usually bring their own children with hopes that family bonds will deepen.
The émigrés often carry money to help with village projects and to keep their parents in good financial shape through the wet, cold winter.
Many Christian villages are in relatively good shape, with new stone houses and lovingly renovated older ones, even though most of the young people have departed. Émigrés are paying for this work and providing money for church projects, schools, health clinics and other facilities that raise the quality of life.
The financial figures are astounding. Lebanese expatriates send back an estimated $3.4 billion each year, more than is brought in by foreign investment in Lebanon or by tourism. They are contributing even more this year to help rebuild areas destroyed during the fighting.
Monsignor Francis Baissari, the Maronite bishop for Kfar Sghab and 29 other villages, said church officials turn to the expatriate community whenever they want funding for something new.
"If we want to build a new church or a new school, we start with the idea, and we ask the expatriates for help," he said. "We have about 1 million Maronites here but about 15 million around the world. What can we do? We are exporting people because they need to work."
In some families, the desire of the younger generation to leave Lebanon behind has led to clashes with parents and grandparents who traditionally decide family affairs even when their unmarried children are in their 20s and 30s.
At the height of the fighting this summer, the Mandalian family was divided over whether to move to Canada, where they have cousins. They live in Bourj Hammoud, an Armenian enclave on the outskirts of Beirut, but they moved into the mountains to get away from the bombing.
Still, Jack Mandalian's two daughters — Talar, 26, and Lucy, 24 — were terrified. Talar decided she should move to Montreal, where she could put her university degree in graphic design to good use, and Lucy said she would follow when she had finished her university courses next year.
The young women were determined to join the flight of Armenian Christians that has shrunk their numbers from about 225,000 two decades ago to roughly 65,000 today. Their plan was that the whole family would move to Canada over time. But then their father put his foot down.
His ancestors had fled the Armenian genocide in eastern Turkey, and he was not going to flee again. And there was no question of his daughters leaving on their own. The family had to stick together. Anything else was unthinkable.
"They wouldn't give me their blessing, so I have no choice," said Talar Mandalian. "I'm staying here in Lebanon."
It is easy to understand why they decided to stay. Few places are as beautiful as Lebanon, a small country blessed with a Mediterranean climate and rugged, snowcapped mountains. The red wine is delicious, the skiing a joy. But the country¹s people bear deep psychological scars.
'We cannot forget'
Christians are not blameless. In the pleasant village of Kfar Matta, with scented mountain air and green shade trees, residents say they will not let the Christians move back in because Christian militia forces led a massacre against townspeople in 1983.
The fighting was part of "The War of the Mountain," which pitted Christian forces against the Druze, an independent religious group that shares some of its core beliefs with Islam. "As long as we are alive, we cannot forget," said Hani Al Gharib, a Druze resident who insists the Christians must stay out. "They came in and killed my father; they shot him in the mouth. They killed my cousins, they killed our young people. We lost 109 people. The only way there can be reconciliation is if we kill 109 of their people." Christian militia fighters also have been blamed for the notorious 1982 massacre of hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps on the outskirts of Beirut.
Christians and Druze lived in harmony for centuries, but Kfar Matta, like many communities in the Middle East, has become a place where only one religious group dwells. There was an impressive stone church, but it was dynamited and lies in ruins.
At the same time, some towns that were once exclusively Christian are changing as Muslims buy property put on the market by Christian families who are emigrating. This has caused some friction as Christians find their sphere of influence shrinking.
In the prosperous village of Bishmizzine, Christians initially banded together to buy all the properties put up for sale to prevent Muslims from moving in. The strategy worked at first, but it became too expensive over time. Now Muslims have bought up about 15 percent of the village, town officials say.
Fawzi Moufarij, mayor of Bishmizzine, said he is trying to maintain friendly relations between the town's Christians and Muslims now that the effort to keep Muslims out has failed. "We wish we could have bought all the properties," he said. "The original people of this village are being replaced by Muslims. They want to be a major power here, and there have been some incidents, some fights. Mostly we are getting along. But Christians are deeply concerned about the future. We don't know where we are heading."
The mayor has grown accustomed to seeing people he has known all his life pick up stakes and disappear, sometimes forever.
"It¹s very sad," he said. "It¹s a village of ghosts."
gregory.katz@chron.com
Hezbollah: A return to Islamic glory
By: Hassan Al-Haifi
In the long history of the Arabs, a former Deputy Secretary in the Foreign Ministry of the United Kingdom, Anthony Nutting, in his Short History of the Arabs, written in the 1960s, was more optimistic about the Arabs than the Arabs themselves. After the book went through a rapid dissertation on the ups and downs of the Arab Nation, especially from the time of the Prophet Mohammed (PBAUH) to the tumultuous period when the book was written, he commented towards the end of the chapter on the Palestine problem, that notwithstanding the pathetic state of the Arabs then (and now), the Arabs are bound to rebound and take their prominent place among world cultures and nations. He, of course , was not ready to note that the Prophet Mohammed (PBAUH), over 15 centuries ago stated that without Islam, the Arabs will have no place in history and that the Prophet’s long forgotten prophesy is indeed true: Islam arose as a strange phenomenon and will return as a strange phenomenon and that the Arabs cannot expect any great place in the world without Islam. Ironically, non-Arab Moslems recognize this even better than the Arabs.
This observer notes the very warm greetings whenever I met non-Arab Moslems or whenever visiting non-Arab Moslem lands. Even in the lonely island of Rhodes, I remember walking through the old Moslem quarter of the Island and a Moslem shopkeeper signaled to me and three Arab friends (a fellow Yemeni, Bahraini, United Arab Emirati), to come to his artifacts store. He showed us evidence that he was a Moslem and that he was so glad to meet the people whom he regards as the vanguard of the Moslem Nation (Note this laws long before the distorted Wahhabis and their followers ran amok in this world). Then he showed us a picture of his young son, who he said was going to study the Qur’an secretly, because at that time Islam was anathema to the staunchly devout Greek Orthodox constituency of Greece (that has recently changed somewhat as Greece became a constitutional monarchy). This same affinity was accorded to this observer when I perchance met a Moslem Bosnian professor in the university I attended in the United States (twenty years before Milosevic sent his barbaric thugs to Srebrenicia and the other Bosnian cities, the populations of which were slaughtered by Krakaditch and Mladitch and their barbarian thugs).
Thus it should not be difficult to understand why indeed there were more demonstrations of support for the indefatigable Hassan Nasr-Allah and his Hezbollah fighters in non-Arab Moslem states than the Arab world, where the leaders of the latter have forgotten their history, their nation, their heritage and themselves. In fact Arab leaders did their best to suppress any show of support for their Lebanese and Palestinian brothers at arms or in prison in Lebanon and Palestine respectively. Perhaps, President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen is the only Arab leader, who without hesitation expressed his full support for the cause of liberation being fought by the likes of Nasr-Allah (Hezbollah leader) and Hemenia (Hamas), and he underscored this support by donating all the contributions he has received (US $ 5 million) for his bid for re-election as President of Yemen to the Palestinians and Lebanese to alleviate some of the sufferings they are going through as the Zionist thugs in Tel-Aviv annihilate them or strangle them to death.
Back to the Battlefield and the Mainstream Media:
As if Qana II (an earlier massacre by the Israelis during the same week when 55 innocent civilians mostly children were burned or torn apart) was not enough for the Israeli bullies, they went this week and really showed their horrendous taste for terror and blood and scored another massacre by carrying out another indiscriminate barbaric slaughter in the Al-Qa’a area of Lebanon killing at least 33 innocent civilians, most of whom were vegetable packers as far away from Hezbollah as anyone can get in Lebanon. They are neither members of the Shiite community, from which the grass roots followers of Hezbollah come from, nor associated with any active political or para-military association.
So, to carry on with their deceptive cover-ups, the Israelis insist that instead of tomatoes, these innocent workers were packing Katyushas with dynamite! Ironically, this never received “Breaking News” status in CNN and probably the other mainstream US media. In fact, at the same time this massacre occurred, CNN briefly made a note of it and miraculously reduced the number of dead to 20, although in his initial report on the incident Brent Sadler (CNN Beirut Bureau Chief) has said they were 33. In its bid to be objective, the BBC insisted that the number of dead were 28, although it was unequivocally reported by all the official people at the remote site where the massacre occurred that the number of dead victims was 33!
Hassan Al-Haifi has been a Yemeni political economist and journalist for more than 20 years.
A Bad Year for Empire
by Jim Lobe
For those who believed that the precise and overwhelming demonstration of U.S. military power in Afghanistan and Iraq would "shock and awe" the rest of the world – and particularly Washington's foes and aspiring rivals – into accepting its benevolent hegemony, 2006 was not a good year.
Not only has Washington become ever more bogged down – at the current rate of nearly three billion dollars and 20 soldiers' lives a week – in an increasingly fragmented and violent Iraq whose de facto civil war threatens to draw in its neighbors, but a resurgent Taliban has exposed the fragility of what gains have been made in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led military campaign ousted the group five years ago.
In neighboring Pakistan, the U.S.-backed government of President Pervez Musharraf has withdrawn its forces from tribal areas along the Afghan border, effectively handing control of the region to pro-Taliban forces believed to be sheltering al-Qaeda.
In Lebanon, a pro-Western government, the product of last year's U.S.-backed "Cedar Revolution," finds itself under siege from a Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah which appears to have emerged from last summer's war with Israel stronger and more confident than ever.
Meanwhile, North Korea ended its longstanding moratorium on testing its ballistic missiles on the Fourth of July, thus making its own rather defiant contribution to the fireworks traditionally associated with Washington's Independence Day celebrations. Apparently dissatisfied with Washington's appreciation, Pyongyang conducted its first nuclear test four months later.
Similarly, Iran, the other surviving member of Bush's "Axis of Evil," announced last April that it successfully enriched uranium and subsequently shrugged off U.S. and European demands that it freeze its program, even as it hosted a succession of leaders from the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad and offered Washington help in stabilizing Iraq provided that it dropped its "arrogant" attitude.
An increasingly assertive and energy-rich Russia has also become noticeably more defiant over the past year, challenging with growing success Washington's post-9/11 military encroachment in the Caucasus and Central Asia and effectively reversing two of the three U.S.-backed "color revolutions" – in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan – in its near abroad.
The looming succession battle in Turkmenistan, whose natural gas endowments and strategic perch next to both Iran and Afghanistan make it a very desirable piece of real estate, will likely intensify this latest version of "Great Game."
By collaborating with China in both the U.N. Security Council and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Moscow has also challenged the unipolarists' notion that Washington's overwhelming global military dominance would not provoke the creation of countervailing coalitions designed to contain its power.
Even in Africa, defying the U.S. came at little cost. Sudan, accused by Bush himself for two years of committing genocide in Darfur, maneuvered Washington into backing a clearly unworkable peace accord and then, when it fell apart, not only rejected repeated U.S. demands to permit deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping force to the region, but also helped spread the conflict into neighboring Chad and Central African Republic.
In nearby Somalia, meanwhile, covert U.S. support for a coalition of warlords, who had kept the country in a permanent state of insecurity for more than a decade, backfired big-time last summer when an Islamic militia that Washington accuses of being linked to al-Qaeda chased them out of the country. As the year ends, the U.S. is effectively backing Ethiopia's deployment of thousands of troops in support of the disintegrating interim government in Baidoa, permitting the Islamists' to rally nationalist opinion for a war that analysts fear could burst beyond Somalia's borders.
In Latin America, Washington averted the worst – the victory of leftwing presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexican elections last summer. Nonetheless, clumsy U.S. efforts to influence elections over the past year in Bolivia and Nicaragua proved counter-productive, as candidates backed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who appears to delight in nothing more than provoking Bush, won in both countries, as well as in Ecuador.
Coupled with Chávez' own sweeping victory earlier this month, the year's elections results in Latin America appear to have confirmed a left-wing populist and anti-U.S. trend – the so-called "pink tide" – which, along with the recent disclosures regarding ties between right-wing paramilitaries and the government of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, poses serious threats to Washington's multi-billion-dollar anti-drug effort in the Andes.
Elections elsewhere also proved disappointing to Washington's unipolar ambitions, none more so than last January's victory, despite last-minute efforts by Washington bolster Fatah, of Hamas in the Palestinian territories.
Not only did the election set back prospects for resuming a credible Israeli-Palestinian peace process, but Bush's reaction – to isolate rather than engage the winner, and, more recently, to actively seek its ouster – made clear that Washington's "freedom agenda" for the Middle East was largely rhetorical, except when aimed against hostile states like Syria or Iran.
Indeed, Hamas' victory and the growing strength and popularity of Islamist parties throughout the Arab world brought to a screeching halt U.S. pressure on friendly authoritarian governments, notably Sunni-led Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan, to implement democratic reform. Meanwhile, the administration has tried to rope them into an alliance with Israel against what Jordan's King Abdullah has referred to as the ascendant "Shia Crescent" of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah.
Of course, the most important revolt against the Bush administration's Washington's globocop aspirations took place here at home last month when voters handed Democrats control of both houses of Congress in mid-term elections in which Iraq and foreign policy, by virtually all accounts, played the decisive role. While the warhawks predictably claimed that the results reflected more the public's lack of confidence in the way Bush had carried out policy than on the policy itself, a battery of polls in both the run-up to the election and immediately afterward found that that a large majority of citizens believe the administration's belligerent unilateralism had made the United States – as well as the rest of the world – less, rather than more, safe.
Nearly eight in 10 respondents in one survey sponsored by the influential Council on Foreign Relations and designed by legendary pollster Daniel Yankelovich said they thought the world saw the U.S. as "arrogant," and nearly 90 percent said such negative perceptions threaten national security.
"It's not just a matter of (wanting to be) well-loved or nice," said Yankelovich.
Whether the implications of these findings, as well as the elections results – not to mention the foreign policy balance sheet of 2006 – will be absorbed by Bush and his senior policy-makers in 2007, however, remains very much in doubt.
The post-election departure of two arch-unilateralists, former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and U.N. Amb. John Bolton, notwithstanding, nothing fires up the imperial impulse more than multiplying acts of defiance.
(Inter Press Service)