Obama told me so: 09/22/14

Monday, 22 September 2014

Soldier shot dead, 2 wounded in north Lebanon

Soldier shot dead in north Lebanon

Gunmen in a speeding car opened fire at Lebanese soldiers near the northern city of Tripoli, killing one and wounding...

Lebanon's Arabic press digest – Sept. 23, 2014

Saudi Arabia appeals for Lebanon unity

audi Arabia appeals to Lebanon to unite and elect a new president to protect the country against looming dangers and...

Why Did Congress Kick The Can On Funding Islamic State Mission?

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President Obama signs H.J. Res 124, which includes appropriations to train and arm moderate Syrian rebels. For now, the effort will be paid for from an account meant to wind down the war in Afghanistan. Evan Vucci/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Evan Vucci/AP

Evan Vucci/AP

President Obama now has the approval he sought from Congress to train and arm trusted Syrian rebel forces.

What he didn't get from Congress was the money to pay for the mission.

Lawmakers — who've skipped town for the campaign trail — also didn't approve any new money to pay for the broader air campaign against the group that calls itself the Islamic State.

So where will the money come from?

For a while, at least, combat in Iraq and Syria will probably be paid for from a special account meant to wind down the war in Afghanistan.

Vermont's Peter Welch is one of the 85 House Democrats who voted last week against training and arming Syrian rebels. One reason he did so, he says: Congress did not come up with the money for it.

"If it's so important for us to do," he says, "a lot of us are asking the question: Why don't we pay for it?"

What Congress essentially said was, we'll get to that later, after the November elections. Texas Republican Pete Sessions, chairman of the House Rules Committee, says the agreement on the House side was to "allow the president to reprogram money as he chooses."

"We will look at the plan, and when we get back we will then offer a chance to change the Defense Authorization Act or any appropriations that we need to," he adds.

That "kick the can down the road" funding strategy got buy-in from both sides of the aisle. New York's Nita Lowey, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, wants other countries to kick money in first. "I'm going to focus on the Saudi money, the Qatar money, the Emirate money, and all the other money that's in that region that is there to help pay for this before we consider our part and our appropriations," she says.

Money will be needed not only for training and arming Syrian rebels, but also for some 60 intelligence flights daily and the ever-widening aerial bombardment campaign. In a speech at West Point in May, before ISIS had seized any territory in Iraq, President Obama urged lawmakers to approve funds specifically for fighting terrorism.

"I am calling on Congress to support a new Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund of up to $5 billion, which will allow us to train, build capacity, and facilitate partner countries on the front lines," he said.

But legislation that would grant much of Obama's request is now stalled in the Senate. Congress has instead given the Pentagon permission to tap what's known as the Overseas Contingency Operations account. Its funds had been earmarked for the war in Afghanistan. John Cornyn, the Senate's No. 2 Republican, says this "funny money," as he calls it, distracts from the larger issue:

"A strategy to actually succeed in destroying ISIL and to pay for it, I mean, this is the debate we should be having that we're not," he says.

The cost of the entire military effort could well exceed $200 million a week, says Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "The tricky thing about this is it's too soon to tell precisely how much this is going to cost," he says.

That war-fighting account Congress plans to tap, Harrison says, was supposed to shrink by $2 billion a month starting in October. But lawmakers just approved continuing all current funding levels through mid-December.

Harrison says they're going to be able to stay at that higher level "at least until Congress gets around to passing a regular appropriations bill."

That means in the meantime, "they're going to have more money than they were even requesting, much more than they would even need for operations against ISIS in Iraq," he says.

Rep. Welch, the Vermont Democrat, says what it all adds up to is one big punt. "I think the real enemy here is Congress. Because there's a non-willingness on the part of Congress to pay for things, so we think there's this magic offset. But then we completely ignore our responsibility to come up with the funds."

Still, in the weeks following the elections, Congress likely will have to vote on appropriating more money for war. How much is still unknown.

Army tightens siege on militants

BEIRUT: The Lebanese Army has beefed up its positions in and around Arsal and tightened the siege on the Bekaa town’s outskirts in an attempt to cut supply lines to Islamist militants entrenched there, a senior military official said Monday.

“The Army is taking precautionary measures to prevent the infiltration of terrorists inside Arsal following last week’s bombing,” the official told The Daily Star, referring to a roadside blast that targeted a military truck in Arsal last Friday, killing two soldiers and wounding three others.

The official said the military has set up additional checkpoints in and around Arsal in an attempt to stop the infiltration of Islamist militants who are still holding at least 21 Lebanese soldiers and policemen hostage on the outskirts of the northeastern town.

Stressing that Arsal was not under Army siege, the official said: “The Army is tightening the siege on the outskirts of the town in order to prevent supplies reaching the terrorists.”

He added that the Army Monday pounded militants’ hideouts on Arsal’s outskirts with artillery fire.

Asked to comment on allegations that the Army was arbitrarily arresting Syrians in refugee camps in Arsal in response to the militants’ abduction of the soldiers and policemen, he said: “The Army is arresting only those suspected of belonging to terrorist groups.”

The military’s reinforced measures came amid a standoff in a Qatari-sponsored mediation to secure the release of at least 21 Lebanese soldiers and policemen held captive by ISIS and Nusra Front militants since last month’s deadly clashes with the Lebanese Army in and around Arsal.

Earlier, a security source acquainted with the militants said camps near the new Army checkpoints have been removed and the refugees were told to go, “because the Army wants to avoid infiltration by gunmen.”

“There were just two checkpoints between Labweh and Arsal before Friday’s blast, now there are five,” the source said. “Arsal is now a totally militarized zone.”

Prime Minister Tammam Salam said that the government could not guarantee the safety of the kidnapped soldiers. He assured the soldiers’ families that the government was working hard to secure the release of their loved ones.

“The government did not neglect the file of the hostage soldiers and is deploying all possible efforts to secure their release. But we cannot give firm guarantees to the soldiers’ families because there is no guarantee with terrorism,” Salam told reporters at the Grand Serail before leaving for New York to attend the U.N. General Assembly’s sessions.

Salam said that negotiations with the militants from the Nusra Front and ISIS were ongoing, though “they were disrupted because of the slaying of soldiers and use of blackmail.”

Salam said Lebanon had sought Turkey’s help in the negotiations with the militants, but the latter was preoccupied by working for the release of Turkish hostages who were detained by ISIS in Mosul, Iraq. “Now that they have been freed, we can talk with it [Turkey],” he said.

Nusra Front shot one of its captive soldiers Friday, and two soldiers had earlier been beheaded by ISIS militants. The two groups have threatened to execute more soldiers unless the government meets their demands. The groups are said to be demanding the release of Islamist detainees held in Roumieh Prison.

However, according to Rana Fliti, the wife of captive soldier Ali Bazal, the Nusra Front is not seeking the release of any Roumieh inmates. Fliti, who met some the militants herself Monday, told The Daily Star that Nusra has three demands: The creation of a “humanitarian corridor” that would allow refugees living on the outskirts of Arsal to enter and exit the town freely; the suspension of all crackdowns on Syrian refugees “and the Sunnis of Lebanon;” and the release of those arrested in the wake of the Arsal clashes last month.

Meanwhile, the Muslim Scholars Committee implicitly accused Hezbollah of responsibility for stalling the negotiations with the militants. The committee, which had suspended its mediation efforts with the militants, called on the government to release all Islamist detainees in Roumieh as part of a general amnesty.

Addressing the families of the captured soldiers, Sheikh Malek Jadida, the committee’s head, told a news conference in al-Tariq al-Jadideh neighborhood in Beirut: “The solution is neither with the Lebanese government nor with the Qatari government. The solution is with those inside the Cabinet who are obstructing the negotiations.”

In a clear reference to Hezbollah, which has sent fighters to aid President Bashar Assad’s forces, he said: “A political party whose hands have been stained in local and regional blood is dragging the Army into a confrontation with the people.” He called on mosques in all Lebanese provinces to observe next Friday as “No to slaughtering Arsal” day.

Meanwhile, the hostages’ families blocked a vital highway linking Beirut with the Bekaa Valley with burning tires for more than four hours to press for government action to secure the release of their loved ones.

The families and supporters of the captured soldiers said they decided to allow the reopening of the Dahr al-Baidar highway for the sake of the people who were trapped for hours.

“If the hostages’ file is not handled quickly we will cut off roads all over Lebanon, and will not balk at criminal activity,” a spokesman for the families said.

In the area of Qalamoun, in north Lebanon, the main road was also blocked briefly by the hostages’ relatives.

Separately, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah will make a televised address 8:30 pm Tuesday to discuss the “latest political and security developments in Lebanon and the region,” according to a statement released by Hezbollah’s media office Monday. The speech will be broadcast by Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV station.

Parliamentary session to elect president set to fail, again

BEIRUT: In the absence of an accord between the rival factions on a consensus candidate to break the four-month-long presidential deadlock, a parliamentary session set for Tuesday to elect a president is doomed to fail, like previous ones, over a lack of quorum, political sources said.

There have been 11 sessions in the past five months that were aborted because of the lack of a quorum, raising fears of a prolonged vacancy in the country’s top Christian post.

Lawmakers from MP Michel Aoun’s parliamentary Change and Reform bloc, Hezbollah’s bloc and its March 8 allies have thwarted a quorum since April by consistently boycotting parliamentary sessions, demanding an agreement beforehand with their March 14 rivals over a consensus candidate.

The failure to pick a successor to former President Michel Sleiman, whose six-year tenure came to an end May 25, has plunged the country into a presidential impasse that has paralyzed Parliament and is threatening to cripple much of the work of the government.

A number of MPs said that Speaker Nabih Berri’s repeated calls for parliamentary sessions to elect a president despite his previous knowledge that they were destined to fail came in response to Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai’s demands that the speaker keep on inviting the lawmakers to meet and choose a successor to Sleiman.

In the view of some Lebanese politicians, the presidential election is no longer linked to external developments, like the war in Syria or the outcome of the negotiations between Western states and Iran over Tehran’s nuclear program.

The various political blocs’ stances on the presidential election have not changed, despite the March 14 coalition’s initiative earlier this month to break the deadlock that has left Lebanon without a president for nearly four months.

The March 14 coalition offered to hold talks with the Hezbollah-led March 8 parties to reach agreement on a consensus candidate.

However, this was quickly dismissed by Aoun’s bloc as an “old and meaningless initiative,” while Berri said it offered nothing new.

During his recent meeting with Hezbollah’s leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, Aoun, who is the March 8 bloc’s preferred candidate for the presidency, received strong support.

The March 14 parties are against him as a candidate and accuse him of acting under the motto: “It’s me or no one else.”

Following his meeting with Nasrallah, Aoun’s visitors quoted him as saying that he was not in a hurry to hold a presidential election that would not achieve a real partnership for the Christians in government.

Aoun, according to visitors, considers that the prolonged presidential vacuum could eventually serve the Christians if it leads to a president who truly represents them, the sources said.

If this does not happen, Aoun considers that the current political system might have to be reconsidered, the sources said.

However, parliamentary sources in the March 8 camp see in the developments in Yemen and the quick rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which led to a political solution in Sanaa, as “a good beginning” that could reflect positively on the presidential election in Lebanon.

The sources say that in the same way that pressure was applied on former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to step down, Hezbollah could try to convince Aoun to stand aside.

“This is the most likely possibility because it will be difficult for Tehran to convince Saudi Arabia to back Aoun’s candidacy for the presidency,” the sources said.

Jaber: Army says elections can be held safely

BEIRUT: MP Yassin Jaber said Monday that the Lebanese Army gave assurances that parliamentary elections could be held in November in a safe atmosphere, adding that organizing general elections on time could break the country’s political impasse.

“As long as the government has called [for elections], it means they know what they’re doing,’” Jaber said during an interview with The Daily Star at his office in Beirut.

“The interior minister convened a security meeting and the news came out that the Army expressed its willingness and readiness to keep the peace for having elections,” added Jaber, a member of Speaker Nabih Berri’s parliamentary bloc.

Jaber said that his bloc believed that timely elections could help bring an end to the country’s presidential deadlock.

He added that in 2013, Parliament was only able to meet once to elect members of its committees, and barely convened in the following year and is now unable to elect a president.

“Usually when countries live with such an impasse, they dissolve Parliament and call for new elections to be able to really find solutions,” Jaber said.

“Let’s have elections, maybe we’ll have a new balance of power inside Parliament that will help things move forward,” Jaber said. “Maybe the new Parliament will elect a new president ... maybe then you will have more pressure on all parties to come up with a president.”

Despite assurances by the Army, Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk said that security services have advised against holding parliamentary polls, given deteriorating security. Parliament extended its term in May 2013 for 17 months due to the security situation.

Jaber said that resuming legislative sessions, expected to take place next week after more than four months of paralysis, was “a step in the right direction.”

“All the necessary things have to be addressed [during the sessions] because there are so many issues that will affect Lebanon’s financial credibility, economy and social situation,” Jaber said. “If there is a political impasse in electing the president, we should not be accepting that the country collapses.”

Topping the agenda of the expected sessions would be a salary raise for the public sector, a draft law allowing the government to issue Eurobonds to finance state expenditure among other vital draft laws.

Asked whether energizing Parliament’s activity was part of a deal to extend the legislature’s term for another time, Jaber said extension would only take place if there was a majority supporting it.

“There is a law which has been presented by MP [Nicholas] Fattoush proposing to extend Parliament’s term ... we are going to vote against it,” he said.

Jaber said that a breakthrough between the Future Movement and the Free Patriotic Movement was needed to end the presidential deadlock. “They started a dialogue. We were hoping that this dialogue would work. It has stalled and then it actually stopped. This is the situation at the moment.”

But he added that a Saudi-Iranian rapprochement, the signs of which emerged after a meeting in New York between Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his Saudi counterpart Prince Saud al-Faisal Sunday, could help ease the presidential deadlock.

“I am hopeful that this rapprochement will address many issues and one of them is really helping Lebanon to empower itself by having a president and having active constitutional establishments.”

“But of course I again repeat that the problems we have are there and they are realities. They can only be resolved by hard work and by national unity and really working together to address these issues in depth.”

Jaber said that the country was facing an “existential threat” posed by terrorist groups and the presence of over a million Syrian refugees on its territory.

The Nabatieh lawmaker said he opposed swapping at least 21 Lebanese Army soldiers and policemen held by ISIS and the Nusra Front in the outskirts of the northeastern town of Arsal with convicted terrorists. He said that hastening the trials of detainees could be the solution.

“Exchanging prisoners, especially the convicted ones, is a very dangerous step to take,” Jaber said. “Once you do it once, every day they will capture more people, capture more soldiers and think it is a profitable way of doing things.”

“The best course is really to try to let the government work and the security agencies do what they can do,” Jaber said.

The government refuses to exchange the captives with Islamist prisoners, a key demand by the militants to release the kidnapped.

Jaber highlighted the importance of providing the Army with what it needs as it deploys in Arsal and other areas to confront terrorist groups, pointing to a draft plan to provide the Army with $1.6 billion approved by Parliament’s Finance and Budget committee Monday. It still needs endorsement by Parliament’s General Assembly.

“Now for example we have new posts for the Army all over the mountains and the borders. ... Do you know that the Army does not have the funds even to buy mobile homes or places to house the soldiers?” Jaber said.

“Winter is coming what would they do?”

Jumblatt aims to pre-empt sectarian strife

SIDON: Lebanon: Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt’s weekend tour of the West Bekaa area is aimed at pre-empting any possible threats posed to the Druze community in Lebanon, according to political sources. Those familiar with the Druze leader and his way of tackling regional developments said that whenever Jumblatt sensed his people were in danger, he would take the initiative and leave behind his Mukhtara castle to tour around the Druze towns and villages in the Chouf, Aley, Rashaya and Hasbaya.

On this tour, he met with residents and gave them perspective on the threats facing the religious group, articulating his recommendations and asking them to prepare for the future.

“The Druze are in danger, we are the minority and minorities are threatened,” Jumblatt repeated during his visit, pointing to the persecution of minorities such the Christians and Yazidis in Syria and Iraq.

And it doesn’t take much for locals to take him at his word, the sources said, because at the end of the day they owe him absolute fealty.

Nevertheless, political sources explained that Jumblatt believed it was his duty to continue to raise awareness among his community. Other tools of persuasion include the leader recalling the days he spent with late comrade Anwar Fatayri, who was his military official during the brutal Mountain War between Christians and Druze. Fatayri was assassinated in the Chouf in 1989.

The black leather jacket Jumblatt donned for the tour also carries connotations, as it is the one he wears during times of conflict and wars. The Druze, sources said, are convinced that Jumblatt’s fears are spot on.

His tour began Saturday in Hasbaya and Shebaa in the south and continued Sunday in the eastern towns of Ain Ata and Rashaya.

According to sources following-up on his visits, the Druze leader is concerned about the situation of the Druze. He is particularly afraid for those living in areas near the border with Syria and those on the other side of the Shebaa and Ain Ata mountains, including the Syrian Druze village of Arnah in Rif Damascus.

Most of the Sunni, Christian and Druze towns in that part of Syria have been controlled by rebel groups, either the radical Nusra Front or the more moderate Free Syrian Army.

Jumblatt is also concerned about the Druze areas on the Lebanese side of Mount Hermon. These towns, which extend from Rashaya to West Bekaa, are in the heart of a Sunni-dominated region.

The sources said Jumblatt’s visit to such religiously mixed places was to help maintain stability. Although Jumblatt received reassurances from Shebaa’s Sunnis that the dangers affected both communities equally, the sources expressed fear about a possible spillover of the Syrian crisis into the outskirts of the town.

They explained that around two months ago tensions soared between the residents of Shebaa and PSP members after a number of wounded Syrians were taken across the border into the town before being transported to a hospital in Jub Jennin. The disagreement escalated to such an extent that there was a shoot-out in Shebaa.

Prior to Jumblatt’s visit to the town, according to security sources, the Druze leader tasked Health Minister Wael Abu Faour with communicating with Future MP Bahia Hariri to make sure the tour there would be calm.

Hariri was invited to join Jumblatt on his trip to Shebaa, but she declined, instead praising his visit in a meeting with a delegation from the village of Arqoub in her Majdalyoun residence over the weekend.

“Walid [Jumblatt] is visiting the area and there’s no need to tell you that meeting with leaders is a must and reducing any strife is our duty,” Hariri said.

She explained that during this sensitive time it was important to maintain unity among the citizens of the area and that protecting the historical Druze-Sunni relationship was vital.

“This [tour] is the starting point,” she said. “We will continue meeting with our brothers in the PSP until we reach a plan to prevent any descent into Druze-Sunni strife.”

The Nusra Front is now present near the southern strip of rugged mountains that separate Lebanon from Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Nusra now controls the Qunaitra crossing, a key Syrian crossing into the Golan Heights that used to be controlled by U.N. peacekeepers. The sources said the estimated distance between Nusra troops and Lebanon is just 25 kilometers.

This growing geographical expansion of extremists, according to the sources, has intensified Jumblatt’s fears that Druze areas are at threat of being wiped out.

For example, in Iqlim al-Kharroub, a previously Jumblatt-friendly Sunni area in the southern part of the Chouf, a growth in the strength of more hostile Islamists made the Druze leader forgo his visit there.

According to those living in bordering Lebanese villages, putting an end to religious and sectarian strife is crucial, particularly in Hasbaya and the Western Bekaa.