Despite the chaos surrounding the case of the captured servicemen, to date no marked progress has been made on this tough issue. The reasons are various: from the behavior of the government, which does not know how to manage the crisis; to the interference of political parties, each of which has its opinion about how to resolve the problem; to the contradictory positions of the captors themselves, who do not seem to have issued a clear list of their demands.
The file is now frozen, according to a security source, with no initiatives put forward except for the government’s attempts to secure a guarantee that no more captives will be killed. So far four security personnel have been murdered, two by Nusra Front and two by ISIS, with the most recent taking place earlier this month.
They have also sought to keep the negotiations secret, which has proven largely impossible in the face of heavy pressure from the captives’ frustrated families.
However, there has recently been a noticeable difference, which is the decision of the miitants to announce their position on social media, the security source said. This is unusual, he added, because normally such people keep their demands quiet and protect them. This has been buoyed by the desire of the captives themselves to ensure that their file is kept at the forefront of people’s minds.
The Qatari withdrawal from negotiations and the Turkish disdain for the issue does not mean the Lebanese government no longer has any cards to play, the source said. In fact, the arrest of Suja al-Dulaimi – the ex-wife of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – has turned out to be a huge coup, he added, because it has emerged that she was actively involved in the funding of radical groups in Syria. The country also has other cards to play which cannot currently be revealed, the source said.
The whole issue is complicated by the total lack of cohesion in the government and the ongoing negative repercussions of the Syrian conflict, which is close to entering its fourth year.
There have been a number of rumors about who the Lebanese negotiator is, but one of the members of the Cabinet’s crisis committee, set up to deal with the captives’ case, confirmed that the head of General Security, Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, is still the official negotiator for the country.
He also said that the committee was still following up on the file, and noted that ISIS and the Nusra Front were blackmailing the government by using the families’ anger and threatening to kill the personnel, then backing down again. These ploys are an attempt to weaken the government’s position and put more pressure on it.
It seems that ISIS and the Nusra Front’s demands for a prisoner release are not real, and they are not planning to actually release the 25 soldiers and policemen they are holding hostage. Rather, they are looking to establish control of more territory in Qalamoun, a mountainous region of Syria just on the other side of the Lebanese border near Arsal where rebel groups have been battling the Syrian army and Hezbollah for the last few years.
If they free the hostages, ISIS and the Nusra Front would lose their advantage in this issue.
“The kidnappers have brought up the issue of trading detainees from Syrian prisons and Roumieh [prison] but they have not offered up a clear or precise list of who they want, only how many they want,” the security source said. “This is what confuses us. How can we give the Syrian side numbers without clear names?”
This hints at the fact that there is some sort of discussion with the Syrian government on the issue of a detainee swap, but the crisis committee member denied that such talks were happening, saying that their involvement could make things worse.
“We cannot ask Syria [for a detainee swap] with only numbers for every kidnapped soldier,” said the committee member. “There is a difference between media reports and the real positions revealed at the last minute by the kidnappers.”
“It’s now clear that the Lebanese government is not working with just one lot of kidnappers, but with many different sides, and this is what is causing major problems in the management of this file.”
The same source revealed that ISIS, not the Lebanese government, sabotaged the Muslim Scholars Committee’s initiative due to a lack of trust in Sheikh Salem Rafei, whom they accused of being loyal to Saudi Arabia, whose involvement the group will never accept.
This made things more complicated still.
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