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Monday, December 24, 2007

Fabulist quits NRO

Via Chris, NRO fabulist W. Thomas Smith Jr. quits doing freelance work for NRO. Kathryn Jean Lopez has this to say in an editor's note.

This is what I had to say about the affair earlier this month when it broke.

Good riddance, I say.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Rosen on Palestinians in Lebanon

Nir Rosen has a piece on Palestinians in Lebanon in the Post. It doesn't mention the economic discrimination against Palestinians here, who make up around 10% of the population in Lebanon. Nor does it go much into the politics of the camps (NGOs, PLO, Damascus and jihadi groups). But it does give a good overview of Palestinian scapegoating, which reminds me of a conversation with a friend during the Nahr el-Bared fighting when we wondered why it is that whenever Lebanon wants to come together as a country, it's usually at the expense of the Palestinians.

Recent lectures

In the last week or two, I've seen talks given by Juan Cole and Bernard Rougier. I wasn't sure what to expect from either, because of the sometimes shrill tone of the former and the sensationalist title of the latter's book. (I've got an aversion to books with the word "Jihad" in them.)

In both instances, I was pleasantly surprised. Cole was well spoken and interesting. And although the first part of his talk, which was just a recapping of the last 6 years, was pretty dry and unnecessary for a Middle Eastern audience, his comments during the Q&A were worth listening to the first part of the lecture. One point kind of bugged me, though. He made a point of pointing out Egypt's success in combating Islamist terrorist groups, even going so far as to imply that authoritarian governments might be as good as democratic ones at fighting terrorism. I'm not sure how I feel about that idea, except that my gut instinct is that while authoritarian governments might have more success at crushing these groups due to their freedom of action (not being tied down by human rights concerns, for example), I'm convinced that authoritarian rule is one of the causes of terrorism in the first place. So Egypt's "success" might be only short-term and might end up biting Cairo in the ass later.

As for Rougier, I found his participation on a panel about Palestinian identity and citizenship very interesting. He was accused of being an orientalist and of ignoring who was obviously to blame in the Nahr el-Bared conflict. (It's hard to know what to say when someone tells you that neither Fatah al-Islam nor the Lebanese Army were to blame for Nahr el-Bared, but that rather it was the Americans' fault. Incidentally, this was a comment made by a participant in the talk, not a random crank who'd wandered in because he heard there'd be food.) In any case, Rougier convinced me to go out and buy his book, despite the horrible weakness of the dollar and thus the Lebanese pound compared to the mighty euro. I'll be reading it as soon as I finish the books that are currently on my plate. 

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Ceci n'est pas un pays

Roger Cohen has an interesting little piece on Belgium in the Times:

In their grumpy way, Belgians — a majority Dutch-speaking, many French-speaking and a few German-speaking — have been posing a delicate question: does postmodern Europe, where even tiny states feel secure, really need a medium-small nation cobbled together in 1830 whose various communities dislike one another?

Moreover, does a country whose economy is largely run by European central bankers in control of the euro really need a government?

Gerrit Six, a teacher, suggested Belgian obsolescence when he put the country, complete with its busy king and ballooning debt, up for sale on eBay. It drew bids of close to $15 million. That was on day 100 of the political crisis. Belgium is now close to day 200. Italian politics suddenly look stable.

Little Belgium has become too conflicted to rule. It has three regions, three language communities that are not congruent with the regions, a smattering of local parliaments, a mainly French-speaking capital (Brussels) lodged in Dutch-speaking Flanders, a strong current of Flemish nationalism and an uneasy history.

Dutch-speakers, long underdogs in a country without a Flemish university until 1922, are tired of subsidizing their now poorer French-speaking cousins. A successful anti-immigrant and separatist party, Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), is the odious expression of a wider desire to go it alone.

Flemish demands for greater decentralization and control (most recently over French-speaking schools in the Brussels periphery) have raised distrust to a poisonous level. “I am pretty sure Belgium will split eventually,” Caroline Sagesser, a political scientist, told me.

If it holds together, it will be because Brussels, with 10 percent of the population and 20 percent of gross domestic product, is too mixed to unravel. Like Baghdad, like Sarajevo, the capital is improbable but unyielding glue. Unlike them, it has avoided bloodshed. It also houses a modern marvel, the E.U. — and there’s the nub.

I often look at Lebanon and think, in the style of the Belgian surrealist: "this is not a country." Or state or nation, for that matter. Belgium has been without a government for almost 200 days, and Lebanon has been without a president since late last month. But who needs a government anyway?

Thursday, December 06, 2007

The Axis of Evil in Beirut

Last night I went to the Casino du Liban to see Showtime's Middle Eastern-American comedy tour, the Axis of Evil.

The venue was packed, and from what I've heard, it also did very well in Jordan. According to Ahmad Ahmad, even King Abdullah went to see the show in Amman. I'd never been to a comedy show before, so the only point of reference I had was what I'd seen on television, and it was pretty much like that. The jokes ranged from average to hilarious and seemed catered to a westernized Middle Eastern crowd. I'm not sure how many people were familiar with Bob Barker, and I'm sure that jokes on the debkeh would have been lost on much of an American audience. Those who were int he position of being familiar with both cultures were able to laugh at both American and Middle Eastern jokes.

Some of the Bush jokes seemed a little bit like pandering and a little hackneyed for an American audience. And some of the Lebanese jokes were pretty facile (bargaining, driving, "hi keefak, ça va," etc.), but people never seem to get tired of that sort of thing here. The message was, overall, a good one: Arabs are normal people who are capable of poking fun of themselves. For the most part, there was also a nice ecumenical message that welcomed Muslims, Christians and Jews. A nice example of this was the half-Palestinian comedian Aron/Haroun who made it a point of pointing out the similarities of Jews and Arabs, saying that "we're pretty much the same fucking people." (There was one disappointing moment, however, that made me cringe. At one point, Egyptian-American Ahmad Ahmad said that Arabs should be doing more in the entertainment business and that Hollywood was run by... Here he paused to let the audience yell in unison: "Jews!" Unfortunately, it didn't seem to be a joke making fun of people who believe in Jews-run-the-world conspiracies.)

Overall, it was a really good time, and I'm glad I went. The Middle East could use some more comedy, and if my hunch is right, this is the sort of thing that's likely start a stand-up fad in Beirut. Let's hope it's funny.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Not knowing Shi'ite from Shinola

I generally try to stay away from the National Review. This explains why I didn't see the inane and meretricious "reporting" done by W. Thomas Smith Jr. until today. I've commented here before on ridiculous and sensationalist accounts of Lebanon, but this guy really takes the cake. Smith wrote last September:

Hezbollah is rehearsing for something big here. Not sure what or when. But a few days ago, between 4,000 and 5,000 HezB gunmen deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling “show of force,” positioning themselves at road intersections and other key points throughout the city.

It just so happens that I live on the East side of town in one of the "Christian areas of Beirut," and I can guarantee that Smith's account is laughably untrue. On the day that Smith says Hezbollah "deployed" to East Beirut, I was doing some shopping. I live on the border of Gemmayzeh and Mar Mkhail and went to Sassine and ABC that day (all of which are Christian neighborhoods), and rest assured, there were no Hezbollah militants, much less armed ones, to be seen anywhere.  Had what he described been true, there would most likely have been a civil war, or at the very least isolated street fighting. As it was, not only was there no fighting, but not a single journalist in Beirut, foreign or Lebanese, picked up on Hezbollah's alleged "show of force." There's a very simple reason for this: it never happened. If Hezbollah were to deploy a dozen armed militants to Achrafieh, that would be crossing one of Lebanon's red lines. Saying that there were 4,000-5,000 gunmen here is beyond farfetched; it's in the realm of the outlandishly comic. 

I've had neither the time, nor the stomach, to wade through all of this guy's Lebanon "coverage," but the few pieces I've opened are risible in their ridiculousness. Here's another example:

Hezbollah are not the only terrorists operating here in Lebanon: There are also Al Qaeda affiliates like Fatah Al Islam (they were not totally wiped out at Nahr al Bared), as well as Jund al Sham (Soldiers of Damascus), Jundallah, Hamas, and — though few Americans are aware of this — operating elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps on the Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Syrian border. These are just a few of the problem groups here: All operating under the auspices of Hezbollah.

Despite his mistranslation of "Sham," which in this context means Greater Syria (Syria, Lebanon and Palestine) and not Damascus, this little excerpt is absurd in that it explicitly says that all of the al-Qaeda-affiliated groups operating in the Palestinian camps, as well as Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are "operating under the auspices of Hezbollah." First of all, no one knows who is connected to the various groups operating in the Palestinian camps. And second of all, anyone who believes that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is "under the auspices" of Hezbollah, and not the other way around, obviously knows nothing about either organization.

Smith's scattergun approach to various armed groups in Lebanon is symptomatic of a larger, mostly American, approach to the Middle East, where al-Qaeda equals Hezbollah equals Hamas equals al Qaeda in Iraq equals Jund al-Sham ,etc. This is the kind of thinking that led most Americans to believe that Baghdad had something to do with 9/11 and leaves the defenders of the free world (see also: Reyes and Sarkozy) incapable of distinguishing between Sunnis and Shi'a.

Another fun read is this post, in which Smith brags about doing "reconnaissance" in the Dahiye, the suburbs where Hezbollah is based in Beirut. Or rather this would be funny if it were a satire and I were reading it to friends in Beirut. This guy seems to think that he's in a Chuck Norris movie, which would be fine except for a couple of things. First, this "journalism," in which Smith writes about spying on Hezbollah for pro-Government groups not only makes him sound like a macho asshole, it also casts a shadow of doubt on legitimate journalism done by actual reporters in a country where foreign correspondents are already viewed with an air of suspicion. Second, it makes Beirut sound like a war zone, which it's clearly not.

And then there's this gem. According to Smith, there were "some 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen — positioned between the parliament and the Serail." As it happens, I've spent a fair amount of time downtown, and this is not the first time I've written about Americans talking about the sit-in protest without knowing what they're talking about. For the last few months, it's been hard to find more than a couple of dozen people at the protest, much less hundreds of armed militants. I have never, I repeat: never, seen any Hezbollah weapons downtown. They may have them down there, but if they do, they're hidden so well that someone who regularly strolls through the camp would not see them. To suggest that he surprised 200 armed militants out in the open while driving over the bridge that connects East and West Beirut is ridiculous.   

Finally, Jack Bauer -- I mean W. Thomas Smith Jr. -- gives us a post from an "undisclosed neighborhood":

Lebanon is extremely dangerous for Americans right now. In fact, some top officials within the 1559 Committee (essentially the heart and soul of the Cedars Revolution ... for a free Lebanon) believe some sort of dramatic terrorist event is going to take place here in Lebanon between now and mid-October. This is not a gut feeling, but a calculation based on intelligence analysis and chatter from the street.

Tony Nissi, the 1559 Committee chief here in Beirut (whom you'll recall from previous entries), has reason to believe Hezbollah knows who I am. So I am deliberately not staying in hotels: Instead, I'm spending nights in friends' houses — safe houses if you will — and always with bodyguards.

This one is the funniest of the bunch. If there are only half of the number of Americans in Lebanon now as there were during the July war, there'd still be over 10,000 Americans here, myself included. Beirut is decidedly not unsafe for Americans, unless of course they decide to go play G.I. Joe by arming themselves and doing "reconnaissance." But even if Smith were to get picked up by Hezbollah or the Army for spying (which is basically what he claims he's doing), they'd immediately recognize him for the  buffoon that he plainly is. He sounds more like a hapless character out of a Harry Mathews novel than an actual spy, or, God forbid, a journalist.

I could go on for pages about the factual inaccuracy of Smith's reports, but it would just be more of the same. It's amazing to me that NRO published any of Smith's "reports." They are so obviously bullshit that someone must have been asleep at the wheel over there. One of my pet peeves is the writing of partisan hacks who only travel for rhetorical flair, and Smith seems to be more of the same. The difference is that his case is so egregious that he's getting called out on it. There are well respected journalists here in Lebanon and elsewhere who not only know the country intimately but are good writers to boot. Anthony Shadid, Annia Ciezadlo and Mohamad Bazzi are only a few of the names that come to mind. So why is there a need to send Chuck Norris wannabe hacks like Smith who evidently don't know anything about the countries they're ostensibly covering? If NRO wants coverage of Lebanon, there's no dearth of talent already here in Beirut. Insisting on publishing Smith's fabrications in order to toe an ideological line that pays no heed of Lebanon's complex politics only makes NRO look stupid and dishonest.

If you're interested in NRO's response to similar allegations, you can see that here and here.



UPDATE: Kathryn Jean Lopez, online editor of the National Review has another statement up about Smith (emphasis mine):

With regard to the two posts in question, it is my belief, based on an investigation in which NRO discussed the matter with three independent sources who live and work in Lebanon (as well as other experts in the area), that Smith was probably either spun by his sources or confused about what he saw.

...the context that Smith was operating in an uncertain environment where he couldn't always be sure of what he was witnessing, and the caveats that he filled in the gaps by talking to sources within the Cedar Revolution movement and the Lebanese national-security apparatus, whose claims obviously should have been been treated with the same degree of skepticism as those of anyone with an agenda to advance.

As one of our sources put it: "The Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies is alive and well among pro-American Lebanese Christians as much as it is with the likes of Hamas." While Smith vouches for his sources, we cannot independently verify what they told him. That's why we're revisiting the posts in question and warning readers to take them with a grain of salt.

So let me get this straight. Lopez publishes Smith's ridiculous posts that betray a fundamental ignorance of Lebanon and the political situation here, posts which were either made up entirely or fed to him by pro-Government forces, and the problem here is the "Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate."

Wow. I almost don't even know where to start with this one. Maybe she should just throw in another couple of lines about America's mission civilisatrice and the white man's burden and be done with it.

In any case, someone should send her message to Tom Harb, a rabid March 14 supporter in the US, who's supporting Smith wholeheartedly (from Florida, no less) and accusing all of the journalists who have contradicted Smith of being on the Hezbollah payroll. Someone should remind him that his neo-conservative comrades in arms at NRO and elsewhere are fair weather friends to whom, at the end of the day, a wog is a wog, regardless of his political usefulness.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Weekend in the Chouf

I spent this past weekend in the Chouf mountain, otherwise known as the personal fiefdom of Walid Jumblatt. I was looking forward to visiting the Moukhtara and its beautiful castle, and given the tense situation, I was surprised when my friend told me that conforming to Druze tradition, I could go have tea with and briefly meet Jumblatt -- or even ask him for something. Saturday morning is the time when the Moukhtara is open, and all are given tea while they wait for an audience with Walid Bek.

My timing was off, though, because it seems that US ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman, was due to arrive shortly for a lunch with Jumblatt and no amount of wasta with Jumblatt's private security detail was going to get us in.

One thing that bothers me about Lebanon is the checkpoints. They're a hassle, but given the situation, they seem necessary. What really gets to me though are those run by militias. Any journalist covering the south or Bekaa, or even parts of the Dahiye, are familiar with Hezbollah's stops, although I've never personally had to show my ID to anyone from Hezbollah, and despite my frequent trips to and through the sit-in downtown, I've never seen a member of the party armed.

Now March 14 and its allies are fond of complaining about the "state within a state" that is Hezbollah, but what you hear less about are their own states within a state. (Incidentally, I'm not fond of the expression, because in order for it to be true, there'd have to be a state within which to have a state -- something that just isn't true here.) While there are army checkpoints all around the Moukhtara, the guys with machine guns at the gate are PSP militia. They've got neither badge nor uniform -- their gun and the confidence of Walid being their only license for checking my ID. But these are the higher ranked guards, down the street, working at the local mechanic and sitting in a little booth are kids with walkie talkies.

When we decided to take a walk around the Moukhtara, we were immediately stopped by a kid who couldn't have been over 20 years old. I think he was intimidated by us, so when we refused to show any ID and only gave our first names, he called someone else as we were walking away. The second guy was only a little older and looked like he should be working second spatula at a saj stand. But there he was, asking for our ID. My friend looked him in the eye, immediately getting angry, and asked him where his ID was. After some prompting, the young and round boy opened his wallet and flashed a normal ID without letting us take it out or look at it too long. When we asked what gave him the authority to stop us, he lifted his shirt and showed us his walkie talkie. The Chouf, it seems, isn't so different from the south after all.

The rest of my trip, barring an embarrassing run-in with the way-too-friendly (and touchy!) tour guide at Beiteddine, was a welcome change from the city. Like true mountain men, we ate heartily and shot guns, and the clean air cleared my persistent cold right up.

Also, the Cedar reserve reminded me of something out of a fairy tale:

Monday, December 24, 2007

Fabulist quits NRO

Via Chris, NRO fabulist W. Thomas Smith Jr. quits doing freelance work for NRO. Kathryn Jean Lopez has this to say in an editor's note.

This is what I had to say about the affair earlier this month when it broke.

Good riddance, I say.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Rosen on Palestinians in Lebanon

Nir Rosen has a piece on Palestinians in Lebanon in the Post. It doesn't mention the economic discrimination against Palestinians here, who make up around 10% of the population in Lebanon. Nor does it go much into the politics of the camps (NGOs, PLO, Damascus and jihadi groups). But it does give a good overview of Palestinian scapegoating, which reminds me of a conversation with a friend during the Nahr el-Bared fighting when we wondered why it is that whenever Lebanon wants to come together as a country, it's usually at the expense of the Palestinians.

Recent lectures

In the last week or two, I've seen talks given by Juan Cole and Bernard Rougier. I wasn't sure what to expect from either, because of the sometimes shrill tone of the former and the sensationalist title of the latter's book. (I've got an aversion to books with the word "Jihad" in them.)

In both instances, I was pleasantly surprised. Cole was well spoken and interesting. And although the first part of his talk, which was just a recapping of the last 6 years, was pretty dry and unnecessary for a Middle Eastern audience, his comments during the Q&A were worth listening to the first part of the lecture. One point kind of bugged me, though. He made a point of pointing out Egypt's success in combating Islamist terrorist groups, even going so far as to imply that authoritarian governments might be as good as democratic ones at fighting terrorism. I'm not sure how I feel about that idea, except that my gut instinct is that while authoritarian governments might have more success at crushing these groups due to their freedom of action (not being tied down by human rights concerns, for example), I'm convinced that authoritarian rule is one of the causes of terrorism in the first place. So Egypt's "success" might be only short-term and might end up biting Cairo in the ass later.

As for Rougier, I found his participation on a panel about Palestinian identity and citizenship very interesting. He was accused of being an orientalist and of ignoring who was obviously to blame in the Nahr el-Bared conflict. (It's hard to know what to say when someone tells you that neither Fatah al-Islam nor the Lebanese Army were to blame for Nahr el-Bared, but that rather it was the Americans' fault. Incidentally, this was a comment made by a participant in the talk, not a random crank who'd wandered in because he heard there'd be food.) In any case, Rougier convinced me to go out and buy his book, despite the horrible weakness of the dollar and thus the Lebanese pound compared to the mighty euro. I'll be reading it as soon as I finish the books that are currently on my plate. 

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Ceci n'est pas un pays

Roger Cohen has an interesting little piece on Belgium in the Times:

In their grumpy way, Belgians — a majority Dutch-speaking, many French-speaking and a few German-speaking — have been posing a delicate question: does postmodern Europe, where even tiny states feel secure, really need a medium-small nation cobbled together in 1830 whose various communities dislike one another?

Moreover, does a country whose economy is largely run by European central bankers in control of the euro really need a government?

Gerrit Six, a teacher, suggested Belgian obsolescence when he put the country, complete with its busy king and ballooning debt, up for sale on eBay. It drew bids of close to $15 million. That was on day 100 of the political crisis. Belgium is now close to day 200. Italian politics suddenly look stable.

Little Belgium has become too conflicted to rule. It has three regions, three language communities that are not congruent with the regions, a smattering of local parliaments, a mainly French-speaking capital (Brussels) lodged in Dutch-speaking Flanders, a strong current of Flemish nationalism and an uneasy history.

Dutch-speakers, long underdogs in a country without a Flemish university until 1922, are tired of subsidizing their now poorer French-speaking cousins. A successful anti-immigrant and separatist party, Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), is the odious expression of a wider desire to go it alone.

Flemish demands for greater decentralization and control (most recently over French-speaking schools in the Brussels periphery) have raised distrust to a poisonous level. “I am pretty sure Belgium will split eventually,” Caroline Sagesser, a political scientist, told me.

If it holds together, it will be because Brussels, with 10 percent of the population and 20 percent of gross domestic product, is too mixed to unravel. Like Baghdad, like Sarajevo, the capital is improbable but unyielding glue. Unlike them, it has avoided bloodshed. It also houses a modern marvel, the E.U. — and there’s the nub.

I often look at Lebanon and think, in the style of the Belgian surrealist: "this is not a country." Or state or nation, for that matter. Belgium has been without a government for almost 200 days, and Lebanon has been without a president since late last month. But who needs a government anyway?

Thursday, December 06, 2007

The Axis of Evil in Beirut

Last night I went to the Casino du Liban to see Showtime's Middle Eastern-American comedy tour, the Axis of Evil.

The venue was packed, and from what I've heard, it also did very well in Jordan. According to Ahmad Ahmad, even King Abdullah went to see the show in Amman. I'd never been to a comedy show before, so the only point of reference I had was what I'd seen on television, and it was pretty much like that. The jokes ranged from average to hilarious and seemed catered to a westernized Middle Eastern crowd. I'm not sure how many people were familiar with Bob Barker, and I'm sure that jokes on the debkeh would have been lost on much of an American audience. Those who were int he position of being familiar with both cultures were able to laugh at both American and Middle Eastern jokes.

Some of the Bush jokes seemed a little bit like pandering and a little hackneyed for an American audience. And some of the Lebanese jokes were pretty facile (bargaining, driving, "hi keefak, ça va," etc.), but people never seem to get tired of that sort of thing here. The message was, overall, a good one: Arabs are normal people who are capable of poking fun of themselves. For the most part, there was also a nice ecumenical message that welcomed Muslims, Christians and Jews. A nice example of this was the half-Palestinian comedian Aron/Haroun who made it a point of pointing out the similarities of Jews and Arabs, saying that "we're pretty much the same fucking people." (There was one disappointing moment, however, that made me cringe. At one point, Egyptian-American Ahmad Ahmad said that Arabs should be doing more in the entertainment business and that Hollywood was run by... Here he paused to let the audience yell in unison: "Jews!" Unfortunately, it didn't seem to be a joke making fun of people who believe in Jews-run-the-world conspiracies.)

Overall, it was a really good time, and I'm glad I went. The Middle East could use some more comedy, and if my hunch is right, this is the sort of thing that's likely start a stand-up fad in Beirut. Let's hope it's funny.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Not knowing Shi'ite from Shinola

I generally try to stay away from the National Review. This explains why I didn't see the inane and meretricious "reporting" done by W. Thomas Smith Jr. until today. I've commented here before on ridiculous and sensationalist accounts of Lebanon, but this guy really takes the cake. Smith wrote last September:

Hezbollah is rehearsing for something big here. Not sure what or when. But a few days ago, between 4,000 and 5,000 HezB gunmen deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling “show of force,” positioning themselves at road intersections and other key points throughout the city.

It just so happens that I live on the East side of town in one of the "Christian areas of Beirut," and I can guarantee that Smith's account is laughably untrue. On the day that Smith says Hezbollah "deployed" to East Beirut, I was doing some shopping. I live on the border of Gemmayzeh and Mar Mkhail and went to Sassine and ABC that day (all of which are Christian neighborhoods), and rest assured, there were no Hezbollah militants, much less armed ones, to be seen anywhere.  Had what he described been true, there would most likely have been a civil war, or at the very least isolated street fighting. As it was, not only was there no fighting, but not a single journalist in Beirut, foreign or Lebanese, picked up on Hezbollah's alleged "show of force." There's a very simple reason for this: it never happened. If Hezbollah were to deploy a dozen armed militants to Achrafieh, that would be crossing one of Lebanon's red lines. Saying that there were 4,000-5,000 gunmen here is beyond farfetched; it's in the realm of the outlandishly comic. 

I've had neither the time, nor the stomach, to wade through all of this guy's Lebanon "coverage," but the few pieces I've opened are risible in their ridiculousness. Here's another example:

Hezbollah are not the only terrorists operating here in Lebanon: There are also Al Qaeda affiliates like Fatah Al Islam (they were not totally wiped out at Nahr al Bared), as well as Jund al Sham (Soldiers of Damascus), Jundallah, Hamas, and — though few Americans are aware of this — operating elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps on the Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Syrian border. These are just a few of the problem groups here: All operating under the auspices of Hezbollah.

Despite his mistranslation of "Sham," which in this context means Greater Syria (Syria, Lebanon and Palestine) and not Damascus, this little excerpt is absurd in that it explicitly says that all of the al-Qaeda-affiliated groups operating in the Palestinian camps, as well as Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are "operating under the auspices of Hezbollah." First of all, no one knows who is connected to the various groups operating in the Palestinian camps. And second of all, anyone who believes that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is "under the auspices" of Hezbollah, and not the other way around, obviously knows nothing about either organization.

Smith's scattergun approach to various armed groups in Lebanon is symptomatic of a larger, mostly American, approach to the Middle East, where al-Qaeda equals Hezbollah equals Hamas equals al Qaeda in Iraq equals Jund al-Sham ,etc. This is the kind of thinking that led most Americans to believe that Baghdad had something to do with 9/11 and leaves the defenders of the free world (see also: Reyes and Sarkozy) incapable of distinguishing between Sunnis and Shi'a.

Another fun read is this post, in which Smith brags about doing "reconnaissance" in the Dahiye, the suburbs where Hezbollah is based in Beirut. Or rather this would be funny if it were a satire and I were reading it to friends in Beirut. This guy seems to think that he's in a Chuck Norris movie, which would be fine except for a couple of things. First, this "journalism," in which Smith writes about spying on Hezbollah for pro-Government groups not only makes him sound like a macho asshole, it also casts a shadow of doubt on legitimate journalism done by actual reporters in a country where foreign correspondents are already viewed with an air of suspicion. Second, it makes Beirut sound like a war zone, which it's clearly not.

And then there's this gem. According to Smith, there were "some 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen — positioned between the parliament and the Serail." As it happens, I've spent a fair amount of time downtown, and this is not the first time I've written about Americans talking about the sit-in protest without knowing what they're talking about. For the last few months, it's been hard to find more than a couple of dozen people at the protest, much less hundreds of armed militants. I have never, I repeat: never, seen any Hezbollah weapons downtown. They may have them down there, but if they do, they're hidden so well that someone who regularly strolls through the camp would not see them. To suggest that he surprised 200 armed militants out in the open while driving over the bridge that connects East and West Beirut is ridiculous.   

Finally, Jack Bauer -- I mean W. Thomas Smith Jr. -- gives us a post from an "undisclosed neighborhood":

Lebanon is extremely dangerous for Americans right now. In fact, some top officials within the 1559 Committee (essentially the heart and soul of the Cedars Revolution ... for a free Lebanon) believe some sort of dramatic terrorist event is going to take place here in Lebanon between now and mid-October. This is not a gut feeling, but a calculation based on intelligence analysis and chatter from the street.

Tony Nissi, the 1559 Committee chief here in Beirut (whom you'll recall from previous entries), has reason to believe Hezbollah knows who I am. So I am deliberately not staying in hotels: Instead, I'm spending nights in friends' houses — safe houses if you will — and always with bodyguards.

This one is the funniest of the bunch. If there are only half of the number of Americans in Lebanon now as there were during the July war, there'd still be over 10,000 Americans here, myself included. Beirut is decidedly not unsafe for Americans, unless of course they decide to go play G.I. Joe by arming themselves and doing "reconnaissance." But even if Smith were to get picked up by Hezbollah or the Army for spying (which is basically what he claims he's doing), they'd immediately recognize him for the  buffoon that he plainly is. He sounds more like a hapless character out of a Harry Mathews novel than an actual spy, or, God forbid, a journalist.

I could go on for pages about the factual inaccuracy of Smith's reports, but it would just be more of the same. It's amazing to me that NRO published any of Smith's "reports." They are so obviously bullshit that someone must have been asleep at the wheel over there. One of my pet peeves is the writing of partisan hacks who only travel for rhetorical flair, and Smith seems to be more of the same. The difference is that his case is so egregious that he's getting called out on it. There are well respected journalists here in Lebanon and elsewhere who not only know the country intimately but are good writers to boot. Anthony Shadid, Annia Ciezadlo and Mohamad Bazzi are only a few of the names that come to mind. So why is there a need to send Chuck Norris wannabe hacks like Smith who evidently don't know anything about the countries they're ostensibly covering? If NRO wants coverage of Lebanon, there's no dearth of talent already here in Beirut. Insisting on publishing Smith's fabrications in order to toe an ideological line that pays no heed of Lebanon's complex politics only makes NRO look stupid and dishonest.

If you're interested in NRO's response to similar allegations, you can see that here and here.



UPDATE: Kathryn Jean Lopez, online editor of the National Review has another statement up about Smith (emphasis mine):

With regard to the two posts in question, it is my belief, based on an investigation in which NRO discussed the matter with three independent sources who live and work in Lebanon (as well as other experts in the area), that Smith was probably either spun by his sources or confused about what he saw.

...the context that Smith was operating in an uncertain environment where he couldn't always be sure of what he was witnessing, and the caveats that he filled in the gaps by talking to sources within the Cedar Revolution movement and the Lebanese national-security apparatus, whose claims obviously should have been been treated with the same degree of skepticism as those of anyone with an agenda to advance.

As one of our sources put it: "The Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies is alive and well among pro-American Lebanese Christians as much as it is with the likes of Hamas." While Smith vouches for his sources, we cannot independently verify what they told him. That's why we're revisiting the posts in question and warning readers to take them with a grain of salt.

So let me get this straight. Lopez publishes Smith's ridiculous posts that betray a fundamental ignorance of Lebanon and the political situation here, posts which were either made up entirely or fed to him by pro-Government forces, and the problem here is the "Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate."

Wow. I almost don't even know where to start with this one. Maybe she should just throw in another couple of lines about America's mission civilisatrice and the white man's burden and be done with it.

In any case, someone should send her message to Tom Harb, a rabid March 14 supporter in the US, who's supporting Smith wholeheartedly (from Florida, no less) and accusing all of the journalists who have contradicted Smith of being on the Hezbollah payroll. Someone should remind him that his neo-conservative comrades in arms at NRO and elsewhere are fair weather friends to whom, at the end of the day, a wog is a wog, regardless of his political usefulness.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Weekend in the Chouf

I spent this past weekend in the Chouf mountain, otherwise known as the personal fiefdom of Walid Jumblatt. I was looking forward to visiting the Moukhtara and its beautiful castle, and given the tense situation, I was surprised when my friend told me that conforming to Druze tradition, I could go have tea with and briefly meet Jumblatt -- or even ask him for something. Saturday morning is the time when the Moukhtara is open, and all are given tea while they wait for an audience with Walid Bek.

My timing was off, though, because it seems that US ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman, was due to arrive shortly for a lunch with Jumblatt and no amount of wasta with Jumblatt's private security detail was going to get us in.

One thing that bothers me about Lebanon is the checkpoints. They're a hassle, but given the situation, they seem necessary. What really gets to me though are those run by militias. Any journalist covering the south or Bekaa, or even parts of the Dahiye, are familiar with Hezbollah's stops, although I've never personally had to show my ID to anyone from Hezbollah, and despite my frequent trips to and through the sit-in downtown, I've never seen a member of the party armed.

Now March 14 and its allies are fond of complaining about the "state within a state" that is Hezbollah, but what you hear less about are their own states within a state. (Incidentally, I'm not fond of the expression, because in order for it to be true, there'd have to be a state within which to have a state -- something that just isn't true here.) While there are army checkpoints all around the Moukhtara, the guys with machine guns at the gate are PSP militia. They've got neither badge nor uniform -- their gun and the confidence of Walid being their only license for checking my ID. But these are the higher ranked guards, down the street, working at the local mechanic and sitting in a little booth are kids with walkie talkies.

When we decided to take a walk around the Moukhtara, we were immediately stopped by a kid who couldn't have been over 20 years old. I think he was intimidated by us, so when we refused to show any ID and only gave our first names, he called someone else as we were walking away. The second guy was only a little older and looked like he should be working second spatula at a saj stand. But there he was, asking for our ID. My friend looked him in the eye, immediately getting angry, and asked him where his ID was. After some prompting, the young and round boy opened his wallet and flashed a normal ID without letting us take it out or look at it too long. When we asked what gave him the authority to stop us, he lifted his shirt and showed us his walkie talkie. The Chouf, it seems, isn't so different from the south after all.

The rest of my trip, barring an embarrassing run-in with the way-too-friendly (and touchy!) tour guide at Beiteddine, was a welcome change from the city. Like true mountain men, we ate heartily and shot guns, and the clean air cleared my persistent cold right up.

Also, the Cedar reserve reminded me of something out of a fairy tale:

Monday, December 24, 2007

Fabulist quits NRO

Via Chris, NRO fabulist W. Thomas Smith Jr. quits doing freelance work for NRO. Kathryn Jean Lopez has this to say in an editor's note.

This is what I had to say about the affair earlier this month when it broke.

Good riddance, I say.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Rosen on Palestinians in Lebanon

Nir Rosen has a piece on Palestinians in Lebanon in the Post. It doesn't mention the economic discrimination against Palestinians here, who make up around 10% of the population in Lebanon. Nor does it go much into the politics of the camps (NGOs, PLO, Damascus and jihadi groups). But it does give a good overview of Palestinian scapegoating, which reminds me of a conversation with a friend during the Nahr el-Bared fighting when we wondered why it is that whenever Lebanon wants to come together as a country, it's usually at the expense of the Palestinians.

Recent lectures

In the last week or two, I've seen talks given by Juan Cole and Bernard Rougier. I wasn't sure what to expect from either, because of the sometimes shrill tone of the former and the sensationalist title of the latter's book. (I've got an aversion to books with the word "Jihad" in them.)

In both instances, I was pleasantly surprised. Cole was well spoken and interesting. And although the first part of his talk, which was just a recapping of the last 6 years, was pretty dry and unnecessary for a Middle Eastern audience, his comments during the Q&A were worth listening to the first part of the lecture. One point kind of bugged me, though. He made a point of pointing out Egypt's success in combating Islamist terrorist groups, even going so far as to imply that authoritarian governments might be as good as democratic ones at fighting terrorism. I'm not sure how I feel about that idea, except that my gut instinct is that while authoritarian governments might have more success at crushing these groups due to their freedom of action (not being tied down by human rights concerns, for example), I'm convinced that authoritarian rule is one of the causes of terrorism in the first place. So Egypt's "success" might be only short-term and might end up biting Cairo in the ass later.

As for Rougier, I found his participation on a panel about Palestinian identity and citizenship very interesting. He was accused of being an orientalist and of ignoring who was obviously to blame in the Nahr el-Bared conflict. (It's hard to know what to say when someone tells you that neither Fatah al-Islam nor the Lebanese Army were to blame for Nahr el-Bared, but that rather it was the Americans' fault. Incidentally, this was a comment made by a participant in the talk, not a random crank who'd wandered in because he heard there'd be food.) In any case, Rougier convinced me to go out and buy his book, despite the horrible weakness of the dollar and thus the Lebanese pound compared to the mighty euro. I'll be reading it as soon as I finish the books that are currently on my plate. 

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Ceci n'est pas un pays

Roger Cohen has an interesting little piece on Belgium in the Times:

In their grumpy way, Belgians — a majority Dutch-speaking, many French-speaking and a few German-speaking — have been posing a delicate question: does postmodern Europe, where even tiny states feel secure, really need a medium-small nation cobbled together in 1830 whose various communities dislike one another?

Moreover, does a country whose economy is largely run by European central bankers in control of the euro really need a government?

Gerrit Six, a teacher, suggested Belgian obsolescence when he put the country, complete with its busy king and ballooning debt, up for sale on eBay. It drew bids of close to $15 million. That was on day 100 of the political crisis. Belgium is now close to day 200. Italian politics suddenly look stable.

Little Belgium has become too conflicted to rule. It has three regions, three language communities that are not congruent with the regions, a smattering of local parliaments, a mainly French-speaking capital (Brussels) lodged in Dutch-speaking Flanders, a strong current of Flemish nationalism and an uneasy history.

Dutch-speakers, long underdogs in a country without a Flemish university until 1922, are tired of subsidizing their now poorer French-speaking cousins. A successful anti-immigrant and separatist party, Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), is the odious expression of a wider desire to go it alone.

Flemish demands for greater decentralization and control (most recently over French-speaking schools in the Brussels periphery) have raised distrust to a poisonous level. “I am pretty sure Belgium will split eventually,” Caroline Sagesser, a political scientist, told me.

If it holds together, it will be because Brussels, with 10 percent of the population and 20 percent of gross domestic product, is too mixed to unravel. Like Baghdad, like Sarajevo, the capital is improbable but unyielding glue. Unlike them, it has avoided bloodshed. It also houses a modern marvel, the E.U. — and there’s the nub.

I often look at Lebanon and think, in the style of the Belgian surrealist: "this is not a country." Or state or nation, for that matter. Belgium has been without a government for almost 200 days, and Lebanon has been without a president since late last month. But who needs a government anyway?

Thursday, December 06, 2007

The Axis of Evil in Beirut

Last night I went to the Casino du Liban to see Showtime's Middle Eastern-American comedy tour, the Axis of Evil.

The venue was packed, and from what I've heard, it also did very well in Jordan. According to Ahmad Ahmad, even King Abdullah went to see the show in Amman. I'd never been to a comedy show before, so the only point of reference I had was what I'd seen on television, and it was pretty much like that. The jokes ranged from average to hilarious and seemed catered to a westernized Middle Eastern crowd. I'm not sure how many people were familiar with Bob Barker, and I'm sure that jokes on the debkeh would have been lost on much of an American audience. Those who were int he position of being familiar with both cultures were able to laugh at both American and Middle Eastern jokes.

Some of the Bush jokes seemed a little bit like pandering and a little hackneyed for an American audience. And some of the Lebanese jokes were pretty facile (bargaining, driving, "hi keefak, ça va," etc.), but people never seem to get tired of that sort of thing here. The message was, overall, a good one: Arabs are normal people who are capable of poking fun of themselves. For the most part, there was also a nice ecumenical message that welcomed Muslims, Christians and Jews. A nice example of this was the half-Palestinian comedian Aron/Haroun who made it a point of pointing out the similarities of Jews and Arabs, saying that "we're pretty much the same fucking people." (There was one disappointing moment, however, that made me cringe. At one point, Egyptian-American Ahmad Ahmad said that Arabs should be doing more in the entertainment business and that Hollywood was run by... Here he paused to let the audience yell in unison: "Jews!" Unfortunately, it didn't seem to be a joke making fun of people who believe in Jews-run-the-world conspiracies.)

Overall, it was a really good time, and I'm glad I went. The Middle East could use some more comedy, and if my hunch is right, this is the sort of thing that's likely start a stand-up fad in Beirut. Let's hope it's funny.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Not knowing Shi'ite from Shinola

I generally try to stay away from the National Review. This explains why I didn't see the inane and meretricious "reporting" done by W. Thomas Smith Jr. until today. I've commented here before on ridiculous and sensationalist accounts of Lebanon, but this guy really takes the cake. Smith wrote last September:

Hezbollah is rehearsing for something big here. Not sure what or when. But a few days ago, between 4,000 and 5,000 HezB gunmen deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling “show of force,” positioning themselves at road intersections and other key points throughout the city.

It just so happens that I live on the East side of town in one of the "Christian areas of Beirut," and I can guarantee that Smith's account is laughably untrue. On the day that Smith says Hezbollah "deployed" to East Beirut, I was doing some shopping. I live on the border of Gemmayzeh and Mar Mkhail and went to Sassine and ABC that day (all of which are Christian neighborhoods), and rest assured, there were no Hezbollah militants, much less armed ones, to be seen anywhere.  Had what he described been true, there would most likely have been a civil war, or at the very least isolated street fighting. As it was, not only was there no fighting, but not a single journalist in Beirut, foreign or Lebanese, picked up on Hezbollah's alleged "show of force." There's a very simple reason for this: it never happened. If Hezbollah were to deploy a dozen armed militants to Achrafieh, that would be crossing one of Lebanon's red lines. Saying that there were 4,000-5,000 gunmen here is beyond farfetched; it's in the realm of the outlandishly comic. 

I've had neither the time, nor the stomach, to wade through all of this guy's Lebanon "coverage," but the few pieces I've opened are risible in their ridiculousness. Here's another example:

Hezbollah are not the only terrorists operating here in Lebanon: There are also Al Qaeda affiliates like Fatah Al Islam (they were not totally wiped out at Nahr al Bared), as well as Jund al Sham (Soldiers of Damascus), Jundallah, Hamas, and — though few Americans are aware of this — operating elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps on the Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Syrian border. These are just a few of the problem groups here: All operating under the auspices of Hezbollah.

Despite his mistranslation of "Sham," which in this context means Greater Syria (Syria, Lebanon and Palestine) and not Damascus, this little excerpt is absurd in that it explicitly says that all of the al-Qaeda-affiliated groups operating in the Palestinian camps, as well as Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are "operating under the auspices of Hezbollah." First of all, no one knows who is connected to the various groups operating in the Palestinian camps. And second of all, anyone who believes that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is "under the auspices" of Hezbollah, and not the other way around, obviously knows nothing about either organization.

Smith's scattergun approach to various armed groups in Lebanon is symptomatic of a larger, mostly American, approach to the Middle East, where al-Qaeda equals Hezbollah equals Hamas equals al Qaeda in Iraq equals Jund al-Sham ,etc. This is the kind of thinking that led most Americans to believe that Baghdad had something to do with 9/11 and leaves the defenders of the free world (see also: Reyes and Sarkozy) incapable of distinguishing between Sunnis and Shi'a.

Another fun read is this post, in which Smith brags about doing "reconnaissance" in the Dahiye, the suburbs where Hezbollah is based in Beirut. Or rather this would be funny if it were a satire and I were reading it to friends in Beirut. This guy seems to think that he's in a Chuck Norris movie, which would be fine except for a couple of things. First, this "journalism," in which Smith writes about spying on Hezbollah for pro-Government groups not only makes him sound like a macho asshole, it also casts a shadow of doubt on legitimate journalism done by actual reporters in a country where foreign correspondents are already viewed with an air of suspicion. Second, it makes Beirut sound like a war zone, which it's clearly not.

And then there's this gem. According to Smith, there were "some 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen — positioned between the parliament and the Serail." As it happens, I've spent a fair amount of time downtown, and this is not the first time I've written about Americans talking about the sit-in protest without knowing what they're talking about. For the last few months, it's been hard to find more than a couple of dozen people at the protest, much less hundreds of armed militants. I have never, I repeat: never, seen any Hezbollah weapons downtown. They may have them down there, but if they do, they're hidden so well that someone who regularly strolls through the camp would not see them. To suggest that he surprised 200 armed militants out in the open while driving over the bridge that connects East and West Beirut is ridiculous.   

Finally, Jack Bauer -- I mean W. Thomas Smith Jr. -- gives us a post from an "undisclosed neighborhood":

Lebanon is extremely dangerous for Americans right now. In fact, some top officials within the 1559 Committee (essentially the heart and soul of the Cedars Revolution ... for a free Lebanon) believe some sort of dramatic terrorist event is going to take place here in Lebanon between now and mid-October. This is not a gut feeling, but a calculation based on intelligence analysis and chatter from the street.

Tony Nissi, the 1559 Committee chief here in Beirut (whom you'll recall from previous entries), has reason to believe Hezbollah knows who I am. So I am deliberately not staying in hotels: Instead, I'm spending nights in friends' houses — safe houses if you will — and always with bodyguards.

This one is the funniest of the bunch. If there are only half of the number of Americans in Lebanon now as there were during the July war, there'd still be over 10,000 Americans here, myself included. Beirut is decidedly not unsafe for Americans, unless of course they decide to go play G.I. Joe by arming themselves and doing "reconnaissance." But even if Smith were to get picked up by Hezbollah or the Army for spying (which is basically what he claims he's doing), they'd immediately recognize him for the  buffoon that he plainly is. He sounds more like a hapless character out of a Harry Mathews novel than an actual spy, or, God forbid, a journalist.

I could go on for pages about the factual inaccuracy of Smith's reports, but it would just be more of the same. It's amazing to me that NRO published any of Smith's "reports." They are so obviously bullshit that someone must have been asleep at the wheel over there. One of my pet peeves is the writing of partisan hacks who only travel for rhetorical flair, and Smith seems to be more of the same. The difference is that his case is so egregious that he's getting called out on it. There are well respected journalists here in Lebanon and elsewhere who not only know the country intimately but are good writers to boot. Anthony Shadid, Annia Ciezadlo and Mohamad Bazzi are only a few of the names that come to mind. So why is there a need to send Chuck Norris wannabe hacks like Smith who evidently don't know anything about the countries they're ostensibly covering? If NRO wants coverage of Lebanon, there's no dearth of talent already here in Beirut. Insisting on publishing Smith's fabrications in order to toe an ideological line that pays no heed of Lebanon's complex politics only makes NRO look stupid and dishonest.

If you're interested in NRO's response to similar allegations, you can see that here and here.



UPDATE: Kathryn Jean Lopez, online editor of the National Review has another statement up about Smith (emphasis mine):

With regard to the two posts in question, it is my belief, based on an investigation in which NRO discussed the matter with three independent sources who live and work in Lebanon (as well as other experts in the area), that Smith was probably either spun by his sources or confused about what he saw.

...the context that Smith was operating in an uncertain environment where he couldn't always be sure of what he was witnessing, and the caveats that he filled in the gaps by talking to sources within the Cedar Revolution movement and the Lebanese national-security apparatus, whose claims obviously should have been been treated with the same degree of skepticism as those of anyone with an agenda to advance.

As one of our sources put it: "The Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies is alive and well among pro-American Lebanese Christians as much as it is with the likes of Hamas." While Smith vouches for his sources, we cannot independently verify what they told him. That's why we're revisiting the posts in question and warning readers to take them with a grain of salt.

So let me get this straight. Lopez publishes Smith's ridiculous posts that betray a fundamental ignorance of Lebanon and the political situation here, posts which were either made up entirely or fed to him by pro-Government forces, and the problem here is the "Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate."

Wow. I almost don't even know where to start with this one. Maybe she should just throw in another couple of lines about America's mission civilisatrice and the white man's burden and be done with it.

In any case, someone should send her message to Tom Harb, a rabid March 14 supporter in the US, who's supporting Smith wholeheartedly (from Florida, no less) and accusing all of the journalists who have contradicted Smith of being on the Hezbollah payroll. Someone should remind him that his neo-conservative comrades in arms at NRO and elsewhere are fair weather friends to whom, at the end of the day, a wog is a wog, regardless of his political usefulness.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Weekend in the Chouf

I spent this past weekend in the Chouf mountain, otherwise known as the personal fiefdom of Walid Jumblatt. I was looking forward to visiting the Moukhtara and its beautiful castle, and given the tense situation, I was surprised when my friend told me that conforming to Druze tradition, I could go have tea with and briefly meet Jumblatt -- or even ask him for something. Saturday morning is the time when the Moukhtara is open, and all are given tea while they wait for an audience with Walid Bek.

My timing was off, though, because it seems that US ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman, was due to arrive shortly for a lunch with Jumblatt and no amount of wasta with Jumblatt's private security detail was going to get us in.

One thing that bothers me about Lebanon is the checkpoints. They're a hassle, but given the situation, they seem necessary. What really gets to me though are those run by militias. Any journalist covering the south or Bekaa, or even parts of the Dahiye, are familiar with Hezbollah's stops, although I've never personally had to show my ID to anyone from Hezbollah, and despite my frequent trips to and through the sit-in downtown, I've never seen a member of the party armed.

Now March 14 and its allies are fond of complaining about the "state within a state" that is Hezbollah, but what you hear less about are their own states within a state. (Incidentally, I'm not fond of the expression, because in order for it to be true, there'd have to be a state within which to have a state -- something that just isn't true here.) While there are army checkpoints all around the Moukhtara, the guys with machine guns at the gate are PSP militia. They've got neither badge nor uniform -- their gun and the confidence of Walid being their only license for checking my ID. But these are the higher ranked guards, down the street, working at the local mechanic and sitting in a little booth are kids with walkie talkies.

When we decided to take a walk around the Moukhtara, we were immediately stopped by a kid who couldn't have been over 20 years old. I think he was intimidated by us, so when we refused to show any ID and only gave our first names, he called someone else as we were walking away. The second guy was only a little older and looked like he should be working second spatula at a saj stand. But there he was, asking for our ID. My friend looked him in the eye, immediately getting angry, and asked him where his ID was. After some prompting, the young and round boy opened his wallet and flashed a normal ID without letting us take it out or look at it too long. When we asked what gave him the authority to stop us, he lifted his shirt and showed us his walkie talkie. The Chouf, it seems, isn't so different from the south after all.

The rest of my trip, barring an embarrassing run-in with the way-too-friendly (and touchy!) tour guide at Beiteddine, was a welcome change from the city. Like true mountain men, we ate heartily and shot guns, and the clean air cleared my persistent cold right up.

Also, the Cedar reserve reminded me of something out of a fairy tale:

Monday, December 24, 2007

Fabulist quits NRO

Via Chris, NRO fabulist W. Thomas Smith Jr. quits doing freelance work for NRO. Kathryn Jean Lopez has this to say in an editor's note.

This is what I had to say about the affair earlier this month when it broke.

Good riddance, I say.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Rosen on Palestinians in Lebanon

Nir Rosen has a piece on Palestinians in Lebanon in the Post. It doesn't mention the economic discrimination against Palestinians here, who make up around 10% of the population in Lebanon. Nor does it go much into the politics of the camps (NGOs, PLO, Damascus and jihadi groups). But it does give a good overview of Palestinian scapegoating, which reminds me of a conversation with a friend during the Nahr el-Bared fighting when we wondered why it is that whenever Lebanon wants to come together as a country, it's usually at the expense of the Palestinians.

Recent lectures

In the last week or two, I've seen talks given by Juan Cole and Bernard Rougier. I wasn't sure what to expect from either, because of the sometimes shrill tone of the former and the sensationalist title of the latter's book. (I've got an aversion to books with the word "Jihad" in them.)

In both instances, I was pleasantly surprised. Cole was well spoken and interesting. And although the first part of his talk, which was just a recapping of the last 6 years, was pretty dry and unnecessary for a Middle Eastern audience, his comments during the Q&A were worth listening to the first part of the lecture. One point kind of bugged me, though. He made a point of pointing out Egypt's success in combating Islamist terrorist groups, even going so far as to imply that authoritarian governments might be as good as democratic ones at fighting terrorism. I'm not sure how I feel about that idea, except that my gut instinct is that while authoritarian governments might have more success at crushing these groups due to their freedom of action (not being tied down by human rights concerns, for example), I'm convinced that authoritarian rule is one of the causes of terrorism in the first place. So Egypt's "success" might be only short-term and might end up biting Cairo in the ass later.

As for Rougier, I found his participation on a panel about Palestinian identity and citizenship very interesting. He was accused of being an orientalist and of ignoring who was obviously to blame in the Nahr el-Bared conflict. (It's hard to know what to say when someone tells you that neither Fatah al-Islam nor the Lebanese Army were to blame for Nahr el-Bared, but that rather it was the Americans' fault. Incidentally, this was a comment made by a participant in the talk, not a random crank who'd wandered in because he heard there'd be food.) In any case, Rougier convinced me to go out and buy his book, despite the horrible weakness of the dollar and thus the Lebanese pound compared to the mighty euro. I'll be reading it as soon as I finish the books that are currently on my plate. 

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Ceci n'est pas un pays

Roger Cohen has an interesting little piece on Belgium in the Times:

In their grumpy way, Belgians — a majority Dutch-speaking, many French-speaking and a few German-speaking — have been posing a delicate question: does postmodern Europe, where even tiny states feel secure, really need a medium-small nation cobbled together in 1830 whose various communities dislike one another?

Moreover, does a country whose economy is largely run by European central bankers in control of the euro really need a government?

Gerrit Six, a teacher, suggested Belgian obsolescence when he put the country, complete with its busy king and ballooning debt, up for sale on eBay. It drew bids of close to $15 million. That was on day 100 of the political crisis. Belgium is now close to day 200. Italian politics suddenly look stable.

Little Belgium has become too conflicted to rule. It has three regions, three language communities that are not congruent with the regions, a smattering of local parliaments, a mainly French-speaking capital (Brussels) lodged in Dutch-speaking Flanders, a strong current of Flemish nationalism and an uneasy history.

Dutch-speakers, long underdogs in a country without a Flemish university until 1922, are tired of subsidizing their now poorer French-speaking cousins. A successful anti-immigrant and separatist party, Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), is the odious expression of a wider desire to go it alone.

Flemish demands for greater decentralization and control (most recently over French-speaking schools in the Brussels periphery) have raised distrust to a poisonous level. “I am pretty sure Belgium will split eventually,” Caroline Sagesser, a political scientist, told me.

If it holds together, it will be because Brussels, with 10 percent of the population and 20 percent of gross domestic product, is too mixed to unravel. Like Baghdad, like Sarajevo, the capital is improbable but unyielding glue. Unlike them, it has avoided bloodshed. It also houses a modern marvel, the E.U. — and there’s the nub.

I often look at Lebanon and think, in the style of the Belgian surrealist: "this is not a country." Or state or nation, for that matter. Belgium has been without a government for almost 200 days, and Lebanon has been without a president since late last month. But who needs a government anyway?

Thursday, December 06, 2007

The Axis of Evil in Beirut

Last night I went to the Casino du Liban to see Showtime's Middle Eastern-American comedy tour, the Axis of Evil.

The venue was packed, and from what I've heard, it also did very well in Jordan. According to Ahmad Ahmad, even King Abdullah went to see the show in Amman. I'd never been to a comedy show before, so the only point of reference I had was what I'd seen on television, and it was pretty much like that. The jokes ranged from average to hilarious and seemed catered to a westernized Middle Eastern crowd. I'm not sure how many people were familiar with Bob Barker, and I'm sure that jokes on the debkeh would have been lost on much of an American audience. Those who were int he position of being familiar with both cultures were able to laugh at both American and Middle Eastern jokes.

Some of the Bush jokes seemed a little bit like pandering and a little hackneyed for an American audience. And some of the Lebanese jokes were pretty facile (bargaining, driving, "hi keefak, ça va," etc.), but people never seem to get tired of that sort of thing here. The message was, overall, a good one: Arabs are normal people who are capable of poking fun of themselves. For the most part, there was also a nice ecumenical message that welcomed Muslims, Christians and Jews. A nice example of this was the half-Palestinian comedian Aron/Haroun who made it a point of pointing out the similarities of Jews and Arabs, saying that "we're pretty much the same fucking people." (There was one disappointing moment, however, that made me cringe. At one point, Egyptian-American Ahmad Ahmad said that Arabs should be doing more in the entertainment business and that Hollywood was run by... Here he paused to let the audience yell in unison: "Jews!" Unfortunately, it didn't seem to be a joke making fun of people who believe in Jews-run-the-world conspiracies.)

Overall, it was a really good time, and I'm glad I went. The Middle East could use some more comedy, and if my hunch is right, this is the sort of thing that's likely start a stand-up fad in Beirut. Let's hope it's funny.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Not knowing Shi'ite from Shinola

I generally try to stay away from the National Review. This explains why I didn't see the inane and meretricious "reporting" done by W. Thomas Smith Jr. until today. I've commented here before on ridiculous and sensationalist accounts of Lebanon, but this guy really takes the cake. Smith wrote last September:

Hezbollah is rehearsing for something big here. Not sure what or when. But a few days ago, between 4,000 and 5,000 HezB gunmen deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling “show of force,” positioning themselves at road intersections and other key points throughout the city.

It just so happens that I live on the East side of town in one of the "Christian areas of Beirut," and I can guarantee that Smith's account is laughably untrue. On the day that Smith says Hezbollah "deployed" to East Beirut, I was doing some shopping. I live on the border of Gemmayzeh and Mar Mkhail and went to Sassine and ABC that day (all of which are Christian neighborhoods), and rest assured, there were no Hezbollah militants, much less armed ones, to be seen anywhere.  Had what he described been true, there would most likely have been a civil war, or at the very least isolated street fighting. As it was, not only was there no fighting, but not a single journalist in Beirut, foreign or Lebanese, picked up on Hezbollah's alleged "show of force." There's a very simple reason for this: it never happened. If Hezbollah were to deploy a dozen armed militants to Achrafieh, that would be crossing one of Lebanon's red lines. Saying that there were 4,000-5,000 gunmen here is beyond farfetched; it's in the realm of the outlandishly comic. 

I've had neither the time, nor the stomach, to wade through all of this guy's Lebanon "coverage," but the few pieces I've opened are risible in their ridiculousness. Here's another example:

Hezbollah are not the only terrorists operating here in Lebanon: There are also Al Qaeda affiliates like Fatah Al Islam (they were not totally wiped out at Nahr al Bared), as well as Jund al Sham (Soldiers of Damascus), Jundallah, Hamas, and — though few Americans are aware of this — operating elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps on the Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Syrian border. These are just a few of the problem groups here: All operating under the auspices of Hezbollah.

Despite his mistranslation of "Sham," which in this context means Greater Syria (Syria, Lebanon and Palestine) and not Damascus, this little excerpt is absurd in that it explicitly says that all of the al-Qaeda-affiliated groups operating in the Palestinian camps, as well as Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are "operating under the auspices of Hezbollah." First of all, no one knows who is connected to the various groups operating in the Palestinian camps. And second of all, anyone who believes that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is "under the auspices" of Hezbollah, and not the other way around, obviously knows nothing about either organization.

Smith's scattergun approach to various armed groups in Lebanon is symptomatic of a larger, mostly American, approach to the Middle East, where al-Qaeda equals Hezbollah equals Hamas equals al Qaeda in Iraq equals Jund al-Sham ,etc. This is the kind of thinking that led most Americans to believe that Baghdad had something to do with 9/11 and leaves the defenders of the free world (see also: Reyes and Sarkozy) incapable of distinguishing between Sunnis and Shi'a.

Another fun read is this post, in which Smith brags about doing "reconnaissance" in the Dahiye, the suburbs where Hezbollah is based in Beirut. Or rather this would be funny if it were a satire and I were reading it to friends in Beirut. This guy seems to think that he's in a Chuck Norris movie, which would be fine except for a couple of things. First, this "journalism," in which Smith writes about spying on Hezbollah for pro-Government groups not only makes him sound like a macho asshole, it also casts a shadow of doubt on legitimate journalism done by actual reporters in a country where foreign correspondents are already viewed with an air of suspicion. Second, it makes Beirut sound like a war zone, which it's clearly not.

And then there's this gem. According to Smith, there were "some 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen — positioned between the parliament and the Serail." As it happens, I've spent a fair amount of time downtown, and this is not the first time I've written about Americans talking about the sit-in protest without knowing what they're talking about. For the last few months, it's been hard to find more than a couple of dozen people at the protest, much less hundreds of armed militants. I have never, I repeat: never, seen any Hezbollah weapons downtown. They may have them down there, but if they do, they're hidden so well that someone who regularly strolls through the camp would not see them. To suggest that he surprised 200 armed militants out in the open while driving over the bridge that connects East and West Beirut is ridiculous.   

Finally, Jack Bauer -- I mean W. Thomas Smith Jr. -- gives us a post from an "undisclosed neighborhood":

Lebanon is extremely dangerous for Americans right now. In fact, some top officials within the 1559 Committee (essentially the heart and soul of the Cedars Revolution ... for a free Lebanon) believe some sort of dramatic terrorist event is going to take place here in Lebanon between now and mid-October. This is not a gut feeling, but a calculation based on intelligence analysis and chatter from the street.

Tony Nissi, the 1559 Committee chief here in Beirut (whom you'll recall from previous entries), has reason to believe Hezbollah knows who I am. So I am deliberately not staying in hotels: Instead, I'm spending nights in friends' houses — safe houses if you will — and always with bodyguards.

This one is the funniest of the bunch. If there are only half of the number of Americans in Lebanon now as there were during the July war, there'd still be over 10,000 Americans here, myself included. Beirut is decidedly not unsafe for Americans, unless of course they decide to go play G.I. Joe by arming themselves and doing "reconnaissance." But even if Smith were to get picked up by Hezbollah or the Army for spying (which is basically what he claims he's doing), they'd immediately recognize him for the  buffoon that he plainly is. He sounds more like a hapless character out of a Harry Mathews novel than an actual spy, or, God forbid, a journalist.

I could go on for pages about the factual inaccuracy of Smith's reports, but it would just be more of the same. It's amazing to me that NRO published any of Smith's "reports." They are so obviously bullshit that someone must have been asleep at the wheel over there. One of my pet peeves is the writing of partisan hacks who only travel for rhetorical flair, and Smith seems to be more of the same. The difference is that his case is so egregious that he's getting called out on it. There are well respected journalists here in Lebanon and elsewhere who not only know the country intimately but are good writers to boot. Anthony Shadid, Annia Ciezadlo and Mohamad Bazzi are only a few of the names that come to mind. So why is there a need to send Chuck Norris wannabe hacks like Smith who evidently don't know anything about the countries they're ostensibly covering? If NRO wants coverage of Lebanon, there's no dearth of talent already here in Beirut. Insisting on publishing Smith's fabrications in order to toe an ideological line that pays no heed of Lebanon's complex politics only makes NRO look stupid and dishonest.

If you're interested in NRO's response to similar allegations, you can see that here and here.



UPDATE: Kathryn Jean Lopez, online editor of the National Review has another statement up about Smith (emphasis mine):

With regard to the two posts in question, it is my belief, based on an investigation in which NRO discussed the matter with three independent sources who live and work in Lebanon (as well as other experts in the area), that Smith was probably either spun by his sources or confused about what he saw.

...the context that Smith was operating in an uncertain environment where he couldn't always be sure of what he was witnessing, and the caveats that he filled in the gaps by talking to sources within the Cedar Revolution movement and the Lebanese national-security apparatus, whose claims obviously should have been been treated with the same degree of skepticism as those of anyone with an agenda to advance.

As one of our sources put it: "The Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies is alive and well among pro-American Lebanese Christians as much as it is with the likes of Hamas." While Smith vouches for his sources, we cannot independently verify what they told him. That's why we're revisiting the posts in question and warning readers to take them with a grain of salt.

So let me get this straight. Lopez publishes Smith's ridiculous posts that betray a fundamental ignorance of Lebanon and the political situation here, posts which were either made up entirely or fed to him by pro-Government forces, and the problem here is the "Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate."

Wow. I almost don't even know where to start with this one. Maybe she should just throw in another couple of lines about America's mission civilisatrice and the white man's burden and be done with it.

In any case, someone should send her message to Tom Harb, a rabid March 14 supporter in the US, who's supporting Smith wholeheartedly (from Florida, no less) and accusing all of the journalists who have contradicted Smith of being on the Hezbollah payroll. Someone should remind him that his neo-conservative comrades in arms at NRO and elsewhere are fair weather friends to whom, at the end of the day, a wog is a wog, regardless of his political usefulness.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Weekend in the Chouf

I spent this past weekend in the Chouf mountain, otherwise known as the personal fiefdom of Walid Jumblatt. I was looking forward to visiting the Moukhtara and its beautiful castle, and given the tense situation, I was surprised when my friend told me that conforming to Druze tradition, I could go have tea with and briefly meet Jumblatt -- or even ask him for something. Saturday morning is the time when the Moukhtara is open, and all are given tea while they wait for an audience with Walid Bek.

My timing was off, though, because it seems that US ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman, was due to arrive shortly for a lunch with Jumblatt and no amount of wasta with Jumblatt's private security detail was going to get us in.

One thing that bothers me about Lebanon is the checkpoints. They're a hassle, but given the situation, they seem necessary. What really gets to me though are those run by militias. Any journalist covering the south or Bekaa, or even parts of the Dahiye, are familiar with Hezbollah's stops, although I've never personally had to show my ID to anyone from Hezbollah, and despite my frequent trips to and through the sit-in downtown, I've never seen a member of the party armed.

Now March 14 and its allies are fond of complaining about the "state within a state" that is Hezbollah, but what you hear less about are their own states within a state. (Incidentally, I'm not fond of the expression, because in order for it to be true, there'd have to be a state within which to have a state -- something that just isn't true here.) While there are army checkpoints all around the Moukhtara, the guys with machine guns at the gate are PSP militia. They've got neither badge nor uniform -- their gun and the confidence of Walid being their only license for checking my ID. But these are the higher ranked guards, down the street, working at the local mechanic and sitting in a little booth are kids with walkie talkies.

When we decided to take a walk around the Moukhtara, we were immediately stopped by a kid who couldn't have been over 20 years old. I think he was intimidated by us, so when we refused to show any ID and only gave our first names, he called someone else as we were walking away. The second guy was only a little older and looked like he should be working second spatula at a saj stand. But there he was, asking for our ID. My friend looked him in the eye, immediately getting angry, and asked him where his ID was. After some prompting, the young and round boy opened his wallet and flashed a normal ID without letting us take it out or look at it too long. When we asked what gave him the authority to stop us, he lifted his shirt and showed us his walkie talkie. The Chouf, it seems, isn't so different from the south after all.

The rest of my trip, barring an embarrassing run-in with the way-too-friendly (and touchy!) tour guide at Beiteddine, was a welcome change from the city. Like true mountain men, we ate heartily and shot guns, and the clean air cleared my persistent cold right up.

Also, the Cedar reserve reminded me of something out of a fairy tale:

Monday, December 24, 2007

Fabulist quits NRO

Via Chris, NRO fabulist W. Thomas Smith Jr. quits doing freelance work for NRO. Kathryn Jean Lopez has this to say in an editor's note.

This is what I had to say about the affair earlier this month when it broke.

Good riddance, I say.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Rosen on Palestinians in Lebanon

Nir Rosen has a piece on Palestinians in Lebanon in the Post. It doesn't mention the economic discrimination against Palestinians here, who make up around 10% of the population in Lebanon. Nor does it go much into the politics of the camps (NGOs, PLO, Damascus and jihadi groups). But it does give a good overview of Palestinian scapegoating, which reminds me of a conversation with a friend during the Nahr el-Bared fighting when we wondered why it is that whenever Lebanon wants to come together as a country, it's usually at the expense of the Palestinians.

Recent lectures

In the last week or two, I've seen talks given by Juan Cole and Bernard Rougier. I wasn't sure what to expect from either, because of the sometimes shrill tone of the former and the sensationalist title of the latter's book. (I've got an aversion to books with the word "Jihad" in them.)

In both instances, I was pleasantly surprised. Cole was well spoken and interesting. And although the first part of his talk, which was just a recapping of the last 6 years, was pretty dry and unnecessary for a Middle Eastern audience, his comments during the Q&A were worth listening to the first part of the lecture. One point kind of bugged me, though. He made a point of pointing out Egypt's success in combating Islamist terrorist groups, even going so far as to imply that authoritarian governments might be as good as democratic ones at fighting terrorism. I'm not sure how I feel about that idea, except that my gut instinct is that while authoritarian governments might have more success at crushing these groups due to their freedom of action (not being tied down by human rights concerns, for example), I'm convinced that authoritarian rule is one of the causes of terrorism in the first place. So Egypt's "success" might be only short-term and might end up biting Cairo in the ass later.

As for Rougier, I found his participation on a panel about Palestinian identity and citizenship very interesting. He was accused of being an orientalist and of ignoring who was obviously to blame in the Nahr el-Bared conflict. (It's hard to know what to say when someone tells you that neither Fatah al-Islam nor the Lebanese Army were to blame for Nahr el-Bared, but that rather it was the Americans' fault. Incidentally, this was a comment made by a participant in the talk, not a random crank who'd wandered in because he heard there'd be food.) In any case, Rougier convinced me to go out and buy his book, despite the horrible weakness of the dollar and thus the Lebanese pound compared to the mighty euro. I'll be reading it as soon as I finish the books that are currently on my plate. 

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Ceci n'est pas un pays

Roger Cohen has an interesting little piece on Belgium in the Times:

In their grumpy way, Belgians — a majority Dutch-speaking, many French-speaking and a few German-speaking — have been posing a delicate question: does postmodern Europe, where even tiny states feel secure, really need a medium-small nation cobbled together in 1830 whose various communities dislike one another?

Moreover, does a country whose economy is largely run by European central bankers in control of the euro really need a government?

Gerrit Six, a teacher, suggested Belgian obsolescence when he put the country, complete with its busy king and ballooning debt, up for sale on eBay. It drew bids of close to $15 million. That was on day 100 of the political crisis. Belgium is now close to day 200. Italian politics suddenly look stable.

Little Belgium has become too conflicted to rule. It has three regions, three language communities that are not congruent with the regions, a smattering of local parliaments, a mainly French-speaking capital (Brussels) lodged in Dutch-speaking Flanders, a strong current of Flemish nationalism and an uneasy history.

Dutch-speakers, long underdogs in a country without a Flemish university until 1922, are tired of subsidizing their now poorer French-speaking cousins. A successful anti-immigrant and separatist party, Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), is the odious expression of a wider desire to go it alone.

Flemish demands for greater decentralization and control (most recently over French-speaking schools in the Brussels periphery) have raised distrust to a poisonous level. “I am pretty sure Belgium will split eventually,” Caroline Sagesser, a political scientist, told me.

If it holds together, it will be because Brussels, with 10 percent of the population and 20 percent of gross domestic product, is too mixed to unravel. Like Baghdad, like Sarajevo, the capital is improbable but unyielding glue. Unlike them, it has avoided bloodshed. It also houses a modern marvel, the E.U. — and there’s the nub.

I often look at Lebanon and think, in the style of the Belgian surrealist: "this is not a country." Or state or nation, for that matter. Belgium has been without a government for almost 200 days, and Lebanon has been without a president since late last month. But who needs a government anyway?

Thursday, December 06, 2007

The Axis of Evil in Beirut

Last night I went to the Casino du Liban to see Showtime's Middle Eastern-American comedy tour, the Axis of Evil.

The venue was packed, and from what I've heard, it also did very well in Jordan. According to Ahmad Ahmad, even King Abdullah went to see the show in Amman. I'd never been to a comedy show before, so the only point of reference I had was what I'd seen on television, and it was pretty much like that. The jokes ranged from average to hilarious and seemed catered to a westernized Middle Eastern crowd. I'm not sure how many people were familiar with Bob Barker, and I'm sure that jokes on the debkeh would have been lost on much of an American audience. Those who were int he position of being familiar with both cultures were able to laugh at both American and Middle Eastern jokes.

Some of the Bush jokes seemed a little bit like pandering and a little hackneyed for an American audience. And some of the Lebanese jokes were pretty facile (bargaining, driving, "hi keefak, ça va," etc.), but people never seem to get tired of that sort of thing here. The message was, overall, a good one: Arabs are normal people who are capable of poking fun of themselves. For the most part, there was also a nice ecumenical message that welcomed Muslims, Christians and Jews. A nice example of this was the half-Palestinian comedian Aron/Haroun who made it a point of pointing out the similarities of Jews and Arabs, saying that "we're pretty much the same fucking people." (There was one disappointing moment, however, that made me cringe. At one point, Egyptian-American Ahmad Ahmad said that Arabs should be doing more in the entertainment business and that Hollywood was run by... Here he paused to let the audience yell in unison: "Jews!" Unfortunately, it didn't seem to be a joke making fun of people who believe in Jews-run-the-world conspiracies.)

Overall, it was a really good time, and I'm glad I went. The Middle East could use some more comedy, and if my hunch is right, this is the sort of thing that's likely start a stand-up fad in Beirut. Let's hope it's funny.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Not knowing Shi'ite from Shinola

I generally try to stay away from the National Review. This explains why I didn't see the inane and meretricious "reporting" done by W. Thomas Smith Jr. until today. I've commented here before on ridiculous and sensationalist accounts of Lebanon, but this guy really takes the cake. Smith wrote last September:

Hezbollah is rehearsing for something big here. Not sure what or when. But a few days ago, between 4,000 and 5,000 HezB gunmen deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling “show of force,” positioning themselves at road intersections and other key points throughout the city.

It just so happens that I live on the East side of town in one of the "Christian areas of Beirut," and I can guarantee that Smith's account is laughably untrue. On the day that Smith says Hezbollah "deployed" to East Beirut, I was doing some shopping. I live on the border of Gemmayzeh and Mar Mkhail and went to Sassine and ABC that day (all of which are Christian neighborhoods), and rest assured, there were no Hezbollah militants, much less armed ones, to be seen anywhere.  Had what he described been true, there would most likely have been a civil war, or at the very least isolated street fighting. As it was, not only was there no fighting, but not a single journalist in Beirut, foreign or Lebanese, picked up on Hezbollah's alleged "show of force." There's a very simple reason for this: it never happened. If Hezbollah were to deploy a dozen armed militants to Achrafieh, that would be crossing one of Lebanon's red lines. Saying that there were 4,000-5,000 gunmen here is beyond farfetched; it's in the realm of the outlandishly comic. 

I've had neither the time, nor the stomach, to wade through all of this guy's Lebanon "coverage," but the few pieces I've opened are risible in their ridiculousness. Here's another example:

Hezbollah are not the only terrorists operating here in Lebanon: There are also Al Qaeda affiliates like Fatah Al Islam (they were not totally wiped out at Nahr al Bared), as well as Jund al Sham (Soldiers of Damascus), Jundallah, Hamas, and — though few Americans are aware of this — operating elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps on the Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Syrian border. These are just a few of the problem groups here: All operating under the auspices of Hezbollah.

Despite his mistranslation of "Sham," which in this context means Greater Syria (Syria, Lebanon and Palestine) and not Damascus, this little excerpt is absurd in that it explicitly says that all of the al-Qaeda-affiliated groups operating in the Palestinian camps, as well as Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are "operating under the auspices of Hezbollah." First of all, no one knows who is connected to the various groups operating in the Palestinian camps. And second of all, anyone who believes that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is "under the auspices" of Hezbollah, and not the other way around, obviously knows nothing about either organization.

Smith's scattergun approach to various armed groups in Lebanon is symptomatic of a larger, mostly American, approach to the Middle East, where al-Qaeda equals Hezbollah equals Hamas equals al Qaeda in Iraq equals Jund al-Sham ,etc. This is the kind of thinking that led most Americans to believe that Baghdad had something to do with 9/11 and leaves the defenders of the free world (see also: Reyes and Sarkozy) incapable of distinguishing between Sunnis and Shi'a.

Another fun read is this post, in which Smith brags about doing "reconnaissance" in the Dahiye, the suburbs where Hezbollah is based in Beirut. Or rather this would be funny if it were a satire and I were reading it to friends in Beirut. This guy seems to think that he's in a Chuck Norris movie, which would be fine except for a couple of things. First, this "journalism," in which Smith writes about spying on Hezbollah for pro-Government groups not only makes him sound like a macho asshole, it also casts a shadow of doubt on legitimate journalism done by actual reporters in a country where foreign correspondents are already viewed with an air of suspicion. Second, it makes Beirut sound like a war zone, which it's clearly not.

And then there's this gem. According to Smith, there were "some 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen — positioned between the parliament and the Serail." As it happens, I've spent a fair amount of time downtown, and this is not the first time I've written about Americans talking about the sit-in protest without knowing what they're talking about. For the last few months, it's been hard to find more than a couple of dozen people at the protest, much less hundreds of armed militants. I have never, I repeat: never, seen any Hezbollah weapons downtown. They may have them down there, but if they do, they're hidden so well that someone who regularly strolls through the camp would not see them. To suggest that he surprised 200 armed militants out in the open while driving over the bridge that connects East and West Beirut is ridiculous.   

Finally, Jack Bauer -- I mean W. Thomas Smith Jr. -- gives us a post from an "undisclosed neighborhood":

Lebanon is extremely dangerous for Americans right now. In fact, some top officials within the 1559 Committee (essentially the heart and soul of the Cedars Revolution ... for a free Lebanon) believe some sort of dramatic terrorist event is going to take place here in Lebanon between now and mid-October. This is not a gut feeling, but a calculation based on intelligence analysis and chatter from the street.

Tony Nissi, the 1559 Committee chief here in Beirut (whom you'll recall from previous entries), has reason to believe Hezbollah knows who I am. So I am deliberately not staying in hotels: Instead, I'm spending nights in friends' houses — safe houses if you will — and always with bodyguards.

This one is the funniest of the bunch. If there are only half of the number of Americans in Lebanon now as there were during the July war, there'd still be over 10,000 Americans here, myself included. Beirut is decidedly not unsafe for Americans, unless of course they decide to go play G.I. Joe by arming themselves and doing "reconnaissance." But even if Smith were to get picked up by Hezbollah or the Army for spying (which is basically what he claims he's doing), they'd immediately recognize him for the  buffoon that he plainly is. He sounds more like a hapless character out of a Harry Mathews novel than an actual spy, or, God forbid, a journalist.

I could go on for pages about the factual inaccuracy of Smith's reports, but it would just be more of the same. It's amazing to me that NRO published any of Smith's "reports." They are so obviously bullshit that someone must have been asleep at the wheel over there. One of my pet peeves is the writing of partisan hacks who only travel for rhetorical flair, and Smith seems to be more of the same. The difference is that his case is so egregious that he's getting called out on it. There are well respected journalists here in Lebanon and elsewhere who not only know the country intimately but are good writers to boot. Anthony Shadid, Annia Ciezadlo and Mohamad Bazzi are only a few of the names that come to mind. So why is there a need to send Chuck Norris wannabe hacks like Smith who evidently don't know anything about the countries they're ostensibly covering? If NRO wants coverage of Lebanon, there's no dearth of talent already here in Beirut. Insisting on publishing Smith's fabrications in order to toe an ideological line that pays no heed of Lebanon's complex politics only makes NRO look stupid and dishonest.

If you're interested in NRO's response to similar allegations, you can see that here and here.



UPDATE: Kathryn Jean Lopez, online editor of the National Review has another statement up about Smith (emphasis mine):

With regard to the two posts in question, it is my belief, based on an investigation in which NRO discussed the matter with three independent sources who live and work in Lebanon (as well as other experts in the area), that Smith was probably either spun by his sources or confused about what he saw.

...the context that Smith was operating in an uncertain environment where he couldn't always be sure of what he was witnessing, and the caveats that he filled in the gaps by talking to sources within the Cedar Revolution movement and the Lebanese national-security apparatus, whose claims obviously should have been been treated with the same degree of skepticism as those of anyone with an agenda to advance.

As one of our sources put it: "The Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies is alive and well among pro-American Lebanese Christians as much as it is with the likes of Hamas." While Smith vouches for his sources, we cannot independently verify what they told him. That's why we're revisiting the posts in question and warning readers to take them with a grain of salt.

So let me get this straight. Lopez publishes Smith's ridiculous posts that betray a fundamental ignorance of Lebanon and the political situation here, posts which were either made up entirely or fed to him by pro-Government forces, and the problem here is the "Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate."

Wow. I almost don't even know where to start with this one. Maybe she should just throw in another couple of lines about America's mission civilisatrice and the white man's burden and be done with it.

In any case, someone should send her message to Tom Harb, a rabid March 14 supporter in the US, who's supporting Smith wholeheartedly (from Florida, no less) and accusing all of the journalists who have contradicted Smith of being on the Hezbollah payroll. Someone should remind him that his neo-conservative comrades in arms at NRO and elsewhere are fair weather friends to whom, at the end of the day, a wog is a wog, regardless of his political usefulness.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Weekend in the Chouf

I spent this past weekend in the Chouf mountain, otherwise known as the personal fiefdom of Walid Jumblatt. I was looking forward to visiting the Moukhtara and its beautiful castle, and given the tense situation, I was surprised when my friend told me that conforming to Druze tradition, I could go have tea with and briefly meet Jumblatt -- or even ask him for something. Saturday morning is the time when the Moukhtara is open, and all are given tea while they wait for an audience with Walid Bek.

My timing was off, though, because it seems that US ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman, was due to arrive shortly for a lunch with Jumblatt and no amount of wasta with Jumblatt's private security detail was going to get us in.

One thing that bothers me about Lebanon is the checkpoints. They're a hassle, but given the situation, they seem necessary. What really gets to me though are those run by militias. Any journalist covering the south or Bekaa, or even parts of the Dahiye, are familiar with Hezbollah's stops, although I've never personally had to show my ID to anyone from Hezbollah, and despite my frequent trips to and through the sit-in downtown, I've never seen a member of the party armed.

Now March 14 and its allies are fond of complaining about the "state within a state" that is Hezbollah, but what you hear less about are their own states within a state. (Incidentally, I'm not fond of the expression, because in order for it to be true, there'd have to be a state within which to have a state -- something that just isn't true here.) While there are army checkpoints all around the Moukhtara, the guys with machine guns at the gate are PSP militia. They've got neither badge nor uniform -- their gun and the confidence of Walid being their only license for checking my ID. But these are the higher ranked guards, down the street, working at the local mechanic and sitting in a little booth are kids with walkie talkies.

When we decided to take a walk around the Moukhtara, we were immediately stopped by a kid who couldn't have been over 20 years old. I think he was intimidated by us, so when we refused to show any ID and only gave our first names, he called someone else as we were walking away. The second guy was only a little older and looked like he should be working second spatula at a saj stand. But there he was, asking for our ID. My friend looked him in the eye, immediately getting angry, and asked him where his ID was. After some prompting, the young and round boy opened his wallet and flashed a normal ID without letting us take it out or look at it too long. When we asked what gave him the authority to stop us, he lifted his shirt and showed us his walkie talkie. The Chouf, it seems, isn't so different from the south after all.

The rest of my trip, barring an embarrassing run-in with the way-too-friendly (and touchy!) tour guide at Beiteddine, was a welcome change from the city. Like true mountain men, we ate heartily and shot guns, and the clean air cleared my persistent cold right up.

Also, the Cedar reserve reminded me of something out of a fairy tale:

Monday, December 24, 2007

Fabulist quits NRO

Via Chris, NRO fabulist W. Thomas Smith Jr. quits doing freelance work for NRO. Kathryn Jean Lopez has this to say in an editor's note.

This is what I had to say about the affair earlier this month when it broke.

Good riddance, I say.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Rosen on Palestinians in Lebanon

Nir Rosen has a piece on Palestinians in Lebanon in the Post. It doesn't mention the economic discrimination against Palestinians here, who make up around 10% of the population in Lebanon. Nor does it go much into the politics of the camps (NGOs, PLO, Damascus and jihadi groups). But it does give a good overview of Palestinian scapegoating, which reminds me of a conversation with a friend during the Nahr el-Bared fighting when we wondered why it is that whenever Lebanon wants to come together as a country, it's usually at the expense of the Palestinians.

Recent lectures

In the last week or two, I've seen talks given by Juan Cole and Bernard Rougier. I wasn't sure what to expect from either, because of the sometimes shrill tone of the former and the sensationalist title of the latter's book. (I've got an aversion to books with the word "Jihad" in them.)

In both instances, I was pleasantly surprised. Cole was well spoken and interesting. And although the first part of his talk, which was just a recapping of the last 6 years, was pretty dry and unnecessary for a Middle Eastern audience, his comments during the Q&A were worth listening to the first part of the lecture. One point kind of bugged me, though. He made a point of pointing out Egypt's success in combating Islamist terrorist groups, even going so far as to imply that authoritarian governments might be as good as democratic ones at fighting terrorism. I'm not sure how I feel about that idea, except that my gut instinct is that while authoritarian governments might have more success at crushing these groups due to their freedom of action (not being tied down by human rights concerns, for example), I'm convinced that authoritarian rule is one of the causes of terrorism in the first place. So Egypt's "success" might be only short-term and might end up biting Cairo in the ass later.

As for Rougier, I found his participation on a panel about Palestinian identity and citizenship very interesting. He was accused of being an orientalist and of ignoring who was obviously to blame in the Nahr el-Bared conflict. (It's hard to know what to say when someone tells you that neither Fatah al-Islam nor the Lebanese Army were to blame for Nahr el-Bared, but that rather it was the Americans' fault. Incidentally, this was a comment made by a participant in the talk, not a random crank who'd wandered in because he heard there'd be food.) In any case, Rougier convinced me to go out and buy his book, despite the horrible weakness of the dollar and thus the Lebanese pound compared to the mighty euro. I'll be reading it as soon as I finish the books that are currently on my plate. 

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Ceci n'est pas un pays

Roger Cohen has an interesting little piece on Belgium in the Times:

In their grumpy way, Belgians — a majority Dutch-speaking, many French-speaking and a few German-speaking — have been posing a delicate question: does postmodern Europe, where even tiny states feel secure, really need a medium-small nation cobbled together in 1830 whose various communities dislike one another?

Moreover, does a country whose economy is largely run by European central bankers in control of the euro really need a government?

Gerrit Six, a teacher, suggested Belgian obsolescence when he put the country, complete with its busy king and ballooning debt, up for sale on eBay. It drew bids of close to $15 million. That was on day 100 of the political crisis. Belgium is now close to day 200. Italian politics suddenly look stable.

Little Belgium has become too conflicted to rule. It has three regions, three language communities that are not congruent with the regions, a smattering of local parliaments, a mainly French-speaking capital (Brussels) lodged in Dutch-speaking Flanders, a strong current of Flemish nationalism and an uneasy history.

Dutch-speakers, long underdogs in a country without a Flemish university until 1922, are tired of subsidizing their now poorer French-speaking cousins. A successful anti-immigrant and separatist party, Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), is the odious expression of a wider desire to go it alone.

Flemish demands for greater decentralization and control (most recently over French-speaking schools in the Brussels periphery) have raised distrust to a poisonous level. “I am pretty sure Belgium will split eventually,” Caroline Sagesser, a political scientist, told me.

If it holds together, it will be because Brussels, with 10 percent of the population and 20 percent of gross domestic product, is too mixed to unravel. Like Baghdad, like Sarajevo, the capital is improbable but unyielding glue. Unlike them, it has avoided bloodshed. It also houses a modern marvel, the E.U. — and there’s the nub.

I often look at Lebanon and think, in the style of the Belgian surrealist: "this is not a country." Or state or nation, for that matter. Belgium has been without a government for almost 200 days, and Lebanon has been without a president since late last month. But who needs a government anyway?

Thursday, December 06, 2007

The Axis of Evil in Beirut

Last night I went to the Casino du Liban to see Showtime's Middle Eastern-American comedy tour, the Axis of Evil.

The venue was packed, and from what I've heard, it also did very well in Jordan. According to Ahmad Ahmad, even King Abdullah went to see the show in Amman. I'd never been to a comedy show before, so the only point of reference I had was what I'd seen on television, and it was pretty much like that. The jokes ranged from average to hilarious and seemed catered to a westernized Middle Eastern crowd. I'm not sure how many people were familiar with Bob Barker, and I'm sure that jokes on the debkeh would have been lost on much of an American audience. Those who were int he position of being familiar with both cultures were able to laugh at both American and Middle Eastern jokes.

Some of the Bush jokes seemed a little bit like pandering and a little hackneyed for an American audience. And some of the Lebanese jokes were pretty facile (bargaining, driving, "hi keefak, ça va," etc.), but people never seem to get tired of that sort of thing here. The message was, overall, a good one: Arabs are normal people who are capable of poking fun of themselves. For the most part, there was also a nice ecumenical message that welcomed Muslims, Christians and Jews. A nice example of this was the half-Palestinian comedian Aron/Haroun who made it a point of pointing out the similarities of Jews and Arabs, saying that "we're pretty much the same fucking people." (There was one disappointing moment, however, that made me cringe. At one point, Egyptian-American Ahmad Ahmad said that Arabs should be doing more in the entertainment business and that Hollywood was run by... Here he paused to let the audience yell in unison: "Jews!" Unfortunately, it didn't seem to be a joke making fun of people who believe in Jews-run-the-world conspiracies.)

Overall, it was a really good time, and I'm glad I went. The Middle East could use some more comedy, and if my hunch is right, this is the sort of thing that's likely start a stand-up fad in Beirut. Let's hope it's funny.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Not knowing Shi'ite from Shinola

I generally try to stay away from the National Review. This explains why I didn't see the inane and meretricious "reporting" done by W. Thomas Smith Jr. until today. I've commented here before on ridiculous and sensationalist accounts of Lebanon, but this guy really takes the cake. Smith wrote last September:

Hezbollah is rehearsing for something big here. Not sure what or when. But a few days ago, between 4,000 and 5,000 HezB gunmen deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling “show of force,” positioning themselves at road intersections and other key points throughout the city.

It just so happens that I live on the East side of town in one of the "Christian areas of Beirut," and I can guarantee that Smith's account is laughably untrue. On the day that Smith says Hezbollah "deployed" to East Beirut, I was doing some shopping. I live on the border of Gemmayzeh and Mar Mkhail and went to Sassine and ABC that day (all of which are Christian neighborhoods), and rest assured, there were no Hezbollah militants, much less armed ones, to be seen anywhere.  Had what he described been true, there would most likely have been a civil war, or at the very least isolated street fighting. As it was, not only was there no fighting, but not a single journalist in Beirut, foreign or Lebanese, picked up on Hezbollah's alleged "show of force." There's a very simple reason for this: it never happened. If Hezbollah were to deploy a dozen armed militants to Achrafieh, that would be crossing one of Lebanon's red lines. Saying that there were 4,000-5,000 gunmen here is beyond farfetched; it's in the realm of the outlandishly comic. 

I've had neither the time, nor the stomach, to wade through all of this guy's Lebanon "coverage," but the few pieces I've opened are risible in their ridiculousness. Here's another example:

Hezbollah are not the only terrorists operating here in Lebanon: There are also Al Qaeda affiliates like Fatah Al Islam (they were not totally wiped out at Nahr al Bared), as well as Jund al Sham (Soldiers of Damascus), Jundallah, Hamas, and — though few Americans are aware of this — operating elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps on the Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Syrian border. These are just a few of the problem groups here: All operating under the auspices of Hezbollah.

Despite his mistranslation of "Sham," which in this context means Greater Syria (Syria, Lebanon and Palestine) and not Damascus, this little excerpt is absurd in that it explicitly says that all of the al-Qaeda-affiliated groups operating in the Palestinian camps, as well as Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are "operating under the auspices of Hezbollah." First of all, no one knows who is connected to the various groups operating in the Palestinian camps. And second of all, anyone who believes that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is "under the auspices" of Hezbollah, and not the other way around, obviously knows nothing about either organization.

Smith's scattergun approach to various armed groups in Lebanon is symptomatic of a larger, mostly American, approach to the Middle East, where al-Qaeda equals Hezbollah equals Hamas equals al Qaeda in Iraq equals Jund al-Sham ,etc. This is the kind of thinking that led most Americans to believe that Baghdad had something to do with 9/11 and leaves the defenders of the free world (see also: Reyes and Sarkozy) incapable of distinguishing between Sunnis and Shi'a.

Another fun read is this post, in which Smith brags about doing "reconnaissance" in the Dahiye, the suburbs where Hezbollah is based in Beirut. Or rather this would be funny if it were a satire and I were reading it to friends in Beirut. This guy seems to think that he's in a Chuck Norris movie, which would be fine except for a couple of things. First, this "journalism," in which Smith writes about spying on Hezbollah for pro-Government groups not only makes him sound like a macho asshole, it also casts a shadow of doubt on legitimate journalism done by actual reporters in a country where foreign correspondents are already viewed with an air of suspicion. Second, it makes Beirut sound like a war zone, which it's clearly not.

And then there's this gem. According to Smith, there were "some 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen — positioned between the parliament and the Serail." As it happens, I've spent a fair amount of time downtown, and this is not the first time I've written about Americans talking about the sit-in protest without knowing what they're talking about. For the last few months, it's been hard to find more than a couple of dozen people at the protest, much less hundreds of armed militants. I have never, I repeat: never, seen any Hezbollah weapons downtown. They may have them down there, but if they do, they're hidden so well that someone who regularly strolls through the camp would not see them. To suggest that he surprised 200 armed militants out in the open while driving over the bridge that connects East and West Beirut is ridiculous.   

Finally, Jack Bauer -- I mean W. Thomas Smith Jr. -- gives us a post from an "undisclosed neighborhood":

Lebanon is extremely dangerous for Americans right now. In fact, some top officials within the 1559 Committee (essentially the heart and soul of the Cedars Revolution ... for a free Lebanon) believe some sort of dramatic terrorist event is going to take place here in Lebanon between now and mid-October. This is not a gut feeling, but a calculation based on intelligence analysis and chatter from the street.

Tony Nissi, the 1559 Committee chief here in Beirut (whom you'll recall from previous entries), has reason to believe Hezbollah knows who I am. So I am deliberately not staying in hotels: Instead, I'm spending nights in friends' houses — safe houses if you will — and always with bodyguards.

This one is the funniest of the bunch. If there are only half of the number of Americans in Lebanon now as there were during the July war, there'd still be over 10,000 Americans here, myself included. Beirut is decidedly not unsafe for Americans, unless of course they decide to go play G.I. Joe by arming themselves and doing "reconnaissance." But even if Smith were to get picked up by Hezbollah or the Army for spying (which is basically what he claims he's doing), they'd immediately recognize him for the  buffoon that he plainly is. He sounds more like a hapless character out of a Harry Mathews novel than an actual spy, or, God forbid, a journalist.

I could go on for pages about the factual inaccuracy of Smith's reports, but it would just be more of the same. It's amazing to me that NRO published any of Smith's "reports." They are so obviously bullshit that someone must have been asleep at the wheel over there. One of my pet peeves is the writing of partisan hacks who only travel for rhetorical flair, and Smith seems to be more of the same. The difference is that his case is so egregious that he's getting called out on it. There are well respected journalists here in Lebanon and elsewhere who not only know the country intimately but are good writers to boot. Anthony Shadid, Annia Ciezadlo and Mohamad Bazzi are only a few of the names that come to mind. So why is there a need to send Chuck Norris wannabe hacks like Smith who evidently don't know anything about the countries they're ostensibly covering? If NRO wants coverage of Lebanon, there's no dearth of talent already here in Beirut. Insisting on publishing Smith's fabrications in order to toe an ideological line that pays no heed of Lebanon's complex politics only makes NRO look stupid and dishonest.

If you're interested in NRO's response to similar allegations, you can see that here and here.



UPDATE: Kathryn Jean Lopez, online editor of the National Review has another statement up about Smith (emphasis mine):

With regard to the two posts in question, it is my belief, based on an investigation in which NRO discussed the matter with three independent sources who live and work in Lebanon (as well as other experts in the area), that Smith was probably either spun by his sources or confused about what he saw.

...the context that Smith was operating in an uncertain environment where he couldn't always be sure of what he was witnessing, and the caveats that he filled in the gaps by talking to sources within the Cedar Revolution movement and the Lebanese national-security apparatus, whose claims obviously should have been been treated with the same degree of skepticism as those of anyone with an agenda to advance.

As one of our sources put it: "The Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies is alive and well among pro-American Lebanese Christians as much as it is with the likes of Hamas." While Smith vouches for his sources, we cannot independently verify what they told him. That's why we're revisiting the posts in question and warning readers to take them with a grain of salt.

So let me get this straight. Lopez publishes Smith's ridiculous posts that betray a fundamental ignorance of Lebanon and the political situation here, posts which were either made up entirely or fed to him by pro-Government forces, and the problem here is the "Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate."

Wow. I almost don't even know where to start with this one. Maybe she should just throw in another couple of lines about America's mission civilisatrice and the white man's burden and be done with it.

In any case, someone should send her message to Tom Harb, a rabid March 14 supporter in the US, who's supporting Smith wholeheartedly (from Florida, no less) and accusing all of the journalists who have contradicted Smith of being on the Hezbollah payroll. Someone should remind him that his neo-conservative comrades in arms at NRO and elsewhere are fair weather friends to whom, at the end of the day, a wog is a wog, regardless of his political usefulness.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Weekend in the Chouf

I spent this past weekend in the Chouf mountain, otherwise known as the personal fiefdom of Walid Jumblatt. I was looking forward to visiting the Moukhtara and its beautiful castle, and given the tense situation, I was surprised when my friend told me that conforming to Druze tradition, I could go have tea with and briefly meet Jumblatt -- or even ask him for something. Saturday morning is the time when the Moukhtara is open, and all are given tea while they wait for an audience with Walid Bek.

My timing was off, though, because it seems that US ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman, was due to arrive shortly for a lunch with Jumblatt and no amount of wasta with Jumblatt's private security detail was going to get us in.

One thing that bothers me about Lebanon is the checkpoints. They're a hassle, but given the situation, they seem necessary. What really gets to me though are those run by militias. Any journalist covering the south or Bekaa, or even parts of the Dahiye, are familiar with Hezbollah's stops, although I've never personally had to show my ID to anyone from Hezbollah, and despite my frequent trips to and through the sit-in downtown, I've never seen a member of the party armed.

Now March 14 and its allies are fond of complaining about the "state within a state" that is Hezbollah, but what you hear less about are their own states within a state. (Incidentally, I'm not fond of the expression, because in order for it to be true, there'd have to be a state within which to have a state -- something that just isn't true here.) While there are army checkpoints all around the Moukhtara, the guys with machine guns at the gate are PSP militia. They've got neither badge nor uniform -- their gun and the confidence of Walid being their only license for checking my ID. But these are the higher ranked guards, down the street, working at the local mechanic and sitting in a little booth are kids with walkie talkies.

When we decided to take a walk around the Moukhtara, we were immediately stopped by a kid who couldn't have been over 20 years old. I think he was intimidated by us, so when we refused to show any ID and only gave our first names, he called someone else as we were walking away. The second guy was only a little older and looked like he should be working second spatula at a saj stand. But there he was, asking for our ID. My friend looked him in the eye, immediately getting angry, and asked him where his ID was. After some prompting, the young and round boy opened his wallet and flashed a normal ID without letting us take it out or look at it too long. When we asked what gave him the authority to stop us, he lifted his shirt and showed us his walkie talkie. The Chouf, it seems, isn't so different from the south after all.

The rest of my trip, barring an embarrassing run-in with the way-too-friendly (and touchy!) tour guide at Beiteddine, was a welcome change from the city. Like true mountain men, we ate heartily and shot guns, and the clean air cleared my persistent cold right up.

Also, the Cedar reserve reminded me of something out of a fairy tale: