I know, bad blogger. I haven’t posted for a few days and consistency is key. Oh well.
I wanted to write an article about journalism in Lebanon, both local and foreign correspondants operating in Lebanon, partly out of curiosity and partly because of the fall out over Lisa and Rinats recent visits. The trouble with this is that even doing some perfunctory research, the topic just becomes larger and larger so I will break it up into a series and start by focusing on recent reporting about Lebanon and Hizbollah.
I’ll start with a recent Charles Has an article up about the revelation that Hizbollah is apparantly building what appears to be a superbase and long range missile firing center above the Litani (and out of the watchfulish gaze of UNIFIL troops in Hizbollahs traditional stomping grounds).
The area that is widely believed to be the focal point of Hezbollah’s rebuilding project is a system of steep, wooded wadis east of the Shiite staunchly pro-Hezbollah village of Rihane (Find it in the center near the top of the map spelled Ar Rayhan). Obviously, this is not the only place Hezbollah is working, but it does appear to be one of the most ambitious and visible. One line of speculation goes that this is where Hezbollah’s heavy weapons, long range rockets, and intricate underground bunkers, etc., could be concentrated, while south of the Litani Hezbollah would focus its preparations on lighter arms in urban centers, where they can more easily escape the notice of UN peacekeepers.
In order to do this they have been buying up blocks of land from Christian and Druze villages and moving in their own people.
All around this wadi system to the north and east are Christian and Druze villages, but Hezbollah seems to be intent on buying the land and repopulating it with Shiites. Directly east of Rihane is the Christian village of Qotrani (spelled Al Qatraneh on the map). South of Qotrani, find the once-Christian village of Shbayl. Northeast of Shbayl find the Druze village of Al Sreiri (spelled As Suraryri on the map). South of As Surayri find another Druze farmstead Burghoz.
All these villages are poor, in a state of general decline, and were thus unable to resist when a wealthy Shiite businessman named Ali Tajeddine offered to buy their land for two and four times its estimated value. Tajeddine is originally from the village of Hanaouay outside Tyre. He made his money trading diamonds in Sierra Leone before moving back to Lebanon and starting a successful contracting business. It’s said he’s funded by Iran and he’s widely believed to have strong ties to Hezbollah. He is reportedly a key player in Jihad al Binna (the Building Jihad), Hezbollah’s post-war reconstruction outfit.
Just as an aside, while the blog contains quite useful information, the comments leave a lot to be desired. There are many there who seem to be working very hard to fetishize Hizbollah. What really amuses is that there are people there who are quite happy to defend the displacement of the Druze and Christian populations by Shia who, I would bet serious money on it, probably rant endlessly about “ethnic cleansing” in Israel. Just another example of the hypocracy exhibited by proponents of the “sides” in the conflict, the same selective amnesia.
Surprising as this news was to me, it appears I am late to the party. Charles report is pretty much a retread of one written by Nic Blanford for the Christian Science monitor in February and reprinted in the London Times.
While analysts say the military buildup does not necessarily signal any intention by the Iranian-supported militants to launch a fresh round of fighting, they say it is a troubling sign that Hizbullah is rearming just out of sight of the United Nations.
…Hizbullah has chosen to abandon its former stronghold in Lebanon’s UN-patrolled southern border district where its fighters withstood Israel’s month-long onslaught last summer.
In that area, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has swelled to six times its former size with reinforcements from NATO countries such as France, Italy, and Spain. They have been joined by some 20,000 Lebanese troops and together they man around 100 checkpoints and conduct 500 patrols day and night, UNIFIL officials say.
Of course Hizbollah has a history of building secret military installations.
Still, the extent of the military buildup in these “security pockets” north of the Litani is unclear given the ingenuity of Hizbullah’s engineers and the strict secrecy under which the group operates. Before the war last summer, Hizbullah spent six years secretly building bunkers, tunnels, and firing positions along the border with Israel.
In one case, a bunker complex 100 feet underground covering an area of almost a square mile was built within 300 yards of a UNIFIL observation post and an Israeli army position on the border, but its existence remained hidden until after the war.
“They let us see certain things like their observation posts along the border fence, but all the time they were building an underground city in the south that we never knew existed,” says Timur Goksel, who retired as UNIFIL’s senior adviser in 2003.
And it seems that in May, the Ms Levantine was reporting rumours about this in January.
All of this suggests that regardless of last years war, Hizbollah is continuing its policy of deciding Lebanons foreign policy for it with facts on the ground.
And what does this say about Lebanon and journalists?
Well, it suggests that Hizbollah is extremely well organized, and has something substantial to hide. The question is how much information are these journalists really able to uncover, how much stays hidden from them and how open is Lebanon really?
