Embargo d’armes US sur le Liban

Poll submitted by Zogbi International to the Arab American Institute.

Sixième rapport de l’enquête sur l’assassinat du Premier Ministre libanais Rafic Hariri. Version complète en format PDF.

Document de 5 pages – déclassifié par la CIA

Lebanese Sunni-dominated security forces swellBy Megan K. Stack, Times Staff Writer
6:40 PM PST, November 30, 2006  Beirut — The Lebanese government has nearly doubled the size of its security forces with some 11,000 mostly Sunni Muslim and Christian troops in recent months, and armed them with donated weapons and vehicles from the United Arab Emirates, aSunni
Gulf state.

The dramatic increase in interior ministry troops, including the creation of a controversial new intelligence unit and the rapid expansion of a commando force, is meant to counter the growing influence of Iran and its ally here, Hezbollah, Cabinet minister Ahmed Fatfat said in an interview this week.

The quiet, speedy troop build-up indicates that Lebanon’s anti-Syria ruling majority, led by Premier Fouad Siniora, has been bracing itself for armed sectarian conflict since the withdrawal of Syrian forces in the spring of 2005. It also reflects growing tensions across the region between U.S.-allied Sunnis who hold power in most Arab nations and the growing influence of Shiite-ruled Iran and Hezbollah.

Over the past week, government officials have moved some 8,000 additional troops — 5,000 from the army and 3,000 from the expanded Internal Security Force — into Beirut in preparation for a massive, Hezbollah-led demonstration set to begin Friday, Fatfat said. Hezbollah chief Sayed Hassan Nasrallah has summoned his loyal followers to flock into the capital from all over the country — and to stay in the streets until the government collapses.

About a month ago, the new ISF troops were outfitted with weapons and equipment donated by the United Arab Emirates, an opulent confederation of Sunni states, said Fatfat, a Sunni Cabinet member who brokered the deal while serving as Lebanon’s interior minister.

Fatfat spoke this week from within the prime minister’s offices, where he and other Cabinet ministers have been sleeping and working under tight guard of gunmen and armored personnel carriers. With talk of civil war weighing heavily on the capital and threats of bloodshed flying, the pro-Western ministers fear for their lives.

“In Lebanon, it is dangerous to make politics. When I went into politics in 1991, I paid off (my pension) and took out an American life insurance policy,” Fatfat said. “But now it is more serious . . . (Hezbollah and its allies) are trying to make a coup d’etat.”

Even now, the military capability of the ISF is inferior to both Hezbollah and the Lebanese army, analysts say. But the ISF is the only Lebanese armed force that is devoted, analysts say, to protecting the embattled, Sunni-led coalition now struggling to cling to power.

Nasrallah, who has declared Fatfat and the rest of the government illegitimate tools of American interests, controls a heavily armed, openly religious militia of Shiite guerrillas. The mixed-sect Lebanese army, which has at least 60,000 ground forces, is overseen by Christians, but is believed to have no strong political allegiances overall.

The role of the United Arab Emirates in the reinvention of the ISF illustrates the broader, regional implications of tensions between Lebanon’s Sunnis and their Christian and Druze allies on one side, and Shiite Hezbollah, which has tight ties to both Iran and Syria.

“All of the Arab governments . . . are afraid of the big strength of Iran in all the Middle East,” Fatfat said. “In Lebanon, it seems we are an arena between Syria and Israel, but there’s a new role for Iran.”

The U.S.-led toppling of Iraq’s Sunni-dominated regime in 2003, along with the growing power and ambition of Shiite-led Iran, has dramatically fed tensions and fears between Islam’s two major sects, analysts say. Sunnis around the region, especially the U.S.-backed Sunni governments of the oil-rich Arab Gulf, have grown increasingly fearful of Shiite power. That animosity has seeped into Lebanon, especially since the strong military performance of Hezbollah against Israel in the summer war.

“After the coming of Americans to Iraq and the revival of the Shiites, everybody is talking along confessional lines,” said Elias Hanna, a military analyst and retired Christian general in the Lebanese army.

The U.S. refused earlier this year to donate weaponry to the Lebanese interior ministry, Fatfat said. Still, the U.S. administration is friendly with the United Arab Emirates, and the creation and arming of anti-Hezbollah forces in Lebanon are widely seen to be in Washington’s interest.

“Part of the U.S. strategy there is predicated on building the capability of Lebanese forces,” said Dan Byman, director of security studies program at
Georgetown University and a former Middle East analyst at the CIA.

The U.S. government would like to see Lebanon capable of defeating Hezbollah militarily if need be, he said, “which right now, is not the reality.”

Until Damascus was forced to withdraw its soldiers from Lebanon last year, the Interior Ministry was in the hands of Suleiman Franjieh, a Christian with lifelong ties to the Syrian regime. Back then, about 13,000 ISF troops were stationed in Beirut. Most of them had no guns.

In those days, about a quarter of the ISF troops were Shiite, said Amin Hoteit, a military analyst and retired Shiite general in the Lebanese army. Through contacts in military circles and the ISF, Hoteit says he has mapped the sectarian evolution of the ISF troops.

Under de facto Syrian administration, the Interior Ministry didn’t have a large enough budget to arm its troops, who were deliberately marginalized in the face of a powerful, Syrian-run Lebanese army, Fatfat said.

That changed shortly after the Syrian withdrawal, when Siniora’s government, heady with anti-Syria and independence slogans, was swept to power in national elections. The ministry was taken over by pro-Western Sunnis. A flurry of recruitment rapidly grew the ranks of the ISF to 24,000 troops. To the dismay of many Shiites, the government poured millions of dollars into a new intelligence agency and increased five-fold the black-clad commando unit known as the Panthers.

“The Shiites are very upset. They don’t understand why there’s this new intelligence agency and they’re not represented in it,” said Timur Goksel, a Lebanese military analyst and longtime U.N. negotiator. “They feel things are going on, but they don’t know what.”

At the same time, the proportion of Shiite recruits to the ISF has dropped drastically, shifting the sectarian balance to favor Sunnis and Christians, Hoteit said. Under Siniora, only about 1,000 of the 11,000 new troops were Shiites, he said. More than 4,000 were Sunnis, he said.

Although Lebanon already had three intelligence agencies, last December’s assassination of anti-Syria lawmaker Gibran Tueni convinced the government that Lebanon needed a new, anti-Syria intelligence group, Fatfat said. The charge was led by Saad Hariri, head of the parliament’s majority bloc and communal leader of the Sunni sect. Hariri’s father, former premier Rafik Hariri, was also assassinated last year in a bombing attack widely blamed on Syria.

The move to equip the intelligence agency and to install surveillance cameras on the streets of Beirut met tremendous political resistance from Hezbollah and Amal, the two Shiite parties, Fatfat said. Fatfat acknowledged that Sunnis and Christians dominate the ISF, but said that Shiites also have a more sizable presence than Hoteit’s figures indicate.

Whatever the exact proportion of Shiites, popular perception writes off the ISF an armed wing of the Sunni sect and a staunch backer of Siniora’s government. Both on the street and among analysts, there is a conviction that Siniora, Hariri and Fatfat developed the ISF to protect Sunni, pro-Western interests in Lebanon.

“There is no trust of the (ISF) here, they are seen as a sectarian, Sunni force,” Goksel said. “Not just the Shiites say it, but the Christians too: That it’s to make up for the lack of a Sunni militia.”

With Hezbollah vowing to drive the government out of office in coming days, there is growing trepidation among many Lebanese over whether the ISF will become involved in street fighting.

There are also worries over what the ISF would do in case of civil war. Lebanon has a complicated history of official, armed forces dividing along sectarian lines, or devolving into militias, during religious strife.

“The ISF is now perceived as a threat by the Shiites,” said Patrick Haenni, a Beirut-based analyst for the International Crisis Group. “The fear of the ISF is because it’s very close the government.”

Times staff writer Greg Miller in Washington contributed to this report.  

CARTE – HEZBOLLAH

“…American-French draft project to place all of Lebanon under chapter 7″ Al Akhbar, an independent newspaper, reported in its November 3 issue about the latest developments in the Lebanese political situation. The newspaper wrote: “The head of the executive committee of the Lebanese Forces Samir Geagea scrapped any remaining hopes about a positive outcome from the [upcoming] negotiations. He announced yesterday on behalf of the majority team his rejection of any governmental change that would give the opposition forces the debilitating third. He reiterated his accusations of those preparing for protests against the political situation that they are working to implement a coup in Syria’s favour. These announcements were made following communications between Geagea and MP Sa’d Al-Hariri who is currently in Paris and who is going to meet today with MP Walid Jumblatt to coordinate their attitudes regarding the dialogue table…” The newspaper added: “Meanwhile, the Al Akhbar reporter in Paris quoted a high ranking official as saying that there ‘are ideas being discussed directly by think tanks in Britain, France, and the United States and they are at a very advanced stage’. According to the source, who refuses strongly to reveal his identity, if matters get worse in Lebanon then the United States, which doesn’t want to ‘lose the battle of democracy in Lebanon’ in any form, will work with Paris to issue a new United Nations resolution ‘to protect the Lebanese Prime Minister Fu’ad Al-Sanyurah’. This means that the Security Council will issue a binding resolution under ‘chapter seven’ ‘which tasks Fu’ad Al-Sanyurah with fulfilling the mission of the Prime Minister which are specified by the resolution’ thus overstepping all the political hurdles that might hinder his rule.” The newspaper continued: “Thus the United Nations would have ‘temporarily frozen the Lebanese constitution and Lebanon would come under the direct rule of the council through the government empowered by this resolution’. The source added: ‘This solution must not be discarded, look at what happened in the Ivory Coast. The country there lost its independence and is governed by a Prime Minister who takes his legitimacy from the United Nations and is backed by 17,000 troops from the United Nations’. ..” – Al Akhbar Lebanon, Lebanon.

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