Obama told me so: 02/24/15

Tuesday, 24 February 2015

Jumblatt plays down ISIS expansion into Lebanon

BEIRUT: Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblatt criticized reports Wednesday warning that Syria-based ISIS and Nusra Front militants were gearing up for a major offensive against Lebanon.

“I don’t share the opinion that ISIS and Nusra Front will attack Lebanon,” Jumblatt said in remarks published by pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat. “We have to protect our borders, but I don’t see a threat at this point.”

The Druze leader said he does not believe that “ISIS today has the potential to carry out a comprehensive attack, [especially] since there are multiple fronts open for ISIS.”

Jumblatt, however, admitted that ISIS could attack Lebanon if the Al-Qaeda-inspired group “ has powers that can defy war planes, armies and 60 states ... then we are in front of a strange phenomenon, a global phenomenon.”

He hailed Lebanese security forces for their coordination to “combat the so-called terrorism over the past two years,” while he reaffirmed his rejection to call Nusra Front a terrorist organization.

Turning to the crisis next door, Jumblatt said Syria no longer fits in the Arab world.

“Without Iran’s support for the Syrian regime, this regime would not have endured,” he said. “Syria no longer has an Arab color, but an Iranian color instead.”

According to retired Lebanese Army generals, ISIS and the Nusra Front, entrenched on the outskirts of the northeastern town of Arsal, have been long preparing for an attack on Lebanon, but have been hampered by bad weather conditions, particularly the severe blizzards that hit Lebanon in recent months.

Hezbollah, Berri, Hariri back extending officers’ terms: report

Hezbollah, Speaker Nabih Berri, former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, PSP leader MP Walid Jumblatt as well as March 14...

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel Faces Runoff In Re-Election Bid

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, center, and 8th ward Alderman Michelle Harris, right, join phone bank workers Tuesday on Election Day in Chicago. Emanuel was unable to clear 50 percent in the race, triggering a runoff election against a fellow Democrat in April. M. Spencer Green/AP hide caption

itoggle caption M. Spencer Green/AP

M. Spencer Green/AP

Amid light turnout, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel appears headed for a runoff in his re-election bid, the Associated Press reports.

NPR member station WBEZ reports that, with 81 percent of precincts reporting, the former congressman and chief of staff for President Obama leads with 46 percent of the vote, followed by Democratic Cook County Commissioner Chuy Garcia with 34 percent.

The runoff election is scheduled for April 7.

The AP reports a number of problems that created a drag on Emanuel's campaign:

"On the campaign trail, Emanuel said his first term saw some tough decisions and payoffs, including budgets that didn't rely on property tax increases, drawing business to the city, getting a longer school day and raising the minimum wage.

"But his critics pointed to some of more tumultuous parts of his time in office, including the city's first teachers' strike in 25 years. The following year in 2013, he pushed for the closure of dozens of schools to save money, which angered parents and activists throughout the city's neighborhoods."

Tables Have Turned As Senate Barrels Toward Homeland Security Deadline

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has offered Democrats a Department of Homeland Security funding bill without provisions, but the party still wants a commitment from House Speaker John Boehner. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has offered Democrats a Department of Homeland Security funding bill without provisions, but the party still wants a commitment from House Speaker John Boehner.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The Senate is speeding ahead into the first real deadline it's had since the beginning of the new Congress. In many ways, nothing has changed from past deadlines — lawmakers don't seem interested in resolving the matter with time to spare, rhetoric is hot and angry, and as always, one side is accusing the other of filibustering. Except this time it's the Republicans howling at the Democrats for being the obstructionists.

The script remains the same. The two sides have merely switched parts.

Democrats have adapted quickly in their new role as the Senate minority. Mimicking the solidarity of Senate Republicans in years past, Democrats banded together four separate times this month to block the House-passed Department of Homeland Security funding bill — which unravels the president's immigration policies. It's forced Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to switch gears this week.

"My preference remains with the legislation that's already passed the House. It's still the simplest way forward. But as long as Democrats continue to prevent us from even debating that bill, I'm ready to try another way," said McConnell.

McConnell has offered Democrats a "clean" DHS funding bill — that is, one without policy provisions attached. He'll bring a separate bill to the floor that halts the president's executive action on immigration. This new plan decouples the immigration fight from the issue of funding Homeland Security — a good sign for Democrats. But Democrats aren't biting quite yet.

Reid says he wants a commitment from House Speaker John Boehner that he'll bring the clean funding bill to the House floor and get enough votes in the chamber to pass it. Only then do the two sides have a deal.

"We have to make sure that we get a bill to the president," Reid said. "Unless Boehner's in on the deal, it won't happen."

So just days before DHS runs out of money Friday, Democrats are threatening to block a clean funding bill in the Senate if they don't get the assurance that the bill will actually pass Congress and land on President Obama's desk. Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York says that's because his caucus is interested in solving the problem — not simply bouncing a bill to the House.

"To just toss the hot potato to Boehner — maybe that suits Sen. McConnell's political needs. It doesn't suit the nation's real substantive needs," said Schumer.

And this pushback from Democrats has given Republicans more reasons to keep calling them obstructionists.

"I support funding Homeland Security. The Democrats have repeatedly blocked it, which will be a hard argument for them to make to the American people," said Republican Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.

When he assumed his perch as Senate majority leader, McConnell said his first goal was to get the Senate working again, and to show the country the new Republican majority can get stuff done. But the month-long impasse on DHS funding in the Senate feels like business as usual for a chamber that has seen very few substantive bills pass in recent years. Republican Richard Shelby of Alabama said that doesn't mean his caucus has had a tough start in proving to everyone they can govern.

"I think it shows that what the Democrats are up to is obstructionism. You know, they're the ones filibustering. We've been wanting to vote. Now at times we may have filibustered. We did. But now they are the obstructionists," Shelby said.

Same script. The two sides have just traded lines.

Republicans Hope To Use Homeland Security Budget As Leverage On Immigration

Congress has a Friday midnight deadline to pass a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security. But even though Republicans are now in charge of both chambers, the challenge of getting legislation through remains.

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Little-Known Laws Help Sex-Trafficking Victims Clear Criminal Records

This woman, who has had her prostitution charge wiped away, says she got the lotus tattoo to cover up the brand of a former pimp. "Once they put their name on me, I was their property," she adds. She says she got the word "persist" tattooed as a reminder to keep moving forward. Evie Stone/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Evie Stone/NPR

Evie Stone/NPR

Advocates for women arrested on prostitution charges want the justice system to adopt a different approach. They say instead of being locked up, many prostitutes should actually be considered victims of human trafficking. And they're starting to offer those women a way to clean up the criminal records left behind.

One of them lives in a dark apartment not far from Dallas. Inside, a 24-year-old woman pushes up her sleeve to show off a tattoo of a lotus flower. The deep purple ink covers up an older mark.

"If you look closely, you can still see the diamonds," says the woman, whom NPR is not identifying. "So it said M and a P because that's what his name was, and it had a chain of diamonds around it."

M.P. was her pimp. That earlier tattoo: a brand, to show the world she belonged to him. She has another mark on her back, from a different pimp.

"Once they put their name on me, I was their property," she adds.

The woman says she spent her teenage years forced into prostitution. It was brutal.

"My skull has been cracked, all of my ribs, front, have been broken. Black eyes, you know, regular getting beat up," she says.

Those injuries have healed. But she was a convicted prostitute. And that criminal record was harder to get rid of.

"You know, it's not ever going to be forgotten," she says. "I'm not ever going to forget what I've done and what I've gone through. But, at the same time, I don't want it thrown in my face every time I'm trying to seek employment. I don't want to have to explain myself every time."

Recently, with the help of volunteer lawyers and a little-known law, the woman with the flower tattoo convinced a Maryland judge to help, to wipe away her conviction on prostitution charges.

It's a process known as vacatur. And it's now an option in 20 states for people who can persuade a judge that someone forced or coerced them into selling their bodies.

Jessica Emerson is a lawyer who helped the 24-year-old clear her record.

"This is justice," Emerson says. "It's finally giving these individuals their lives back."

Emerson is leading the way in Maryland, where the vacatur law has been on the books for years but, she says, used just twice.

"If you are not addressing their criminal record, you are sending them back out into the world with a bulls eye on their back," Emerson says. "Because the second they go and try to get a job, the second they try to apply for safe housing, they're going to have a roadblock."

And the pimps use that to their advantage, says Bradley Myles. He leads the Polaris Project, a nonprofit that fights human trafficking.

"Traffickers use the criminalization of a victim as another way to gain power over that victim and remind them of the hopelessness of their road back," Myles says.

Back in Texas, the young woman with the lotus tattoo explains how it all began. She says she was raped by a stranger when she was just 11 years old. For the next two years, she acted out: running away and fighting with her parents. Then one day, she was walking to a friend's house, and a man in a Mercedes waved her over to his car.

"If you are not addressing their criminal record, you are sending them back out into the world with a bulls eye on their back."

- Lawyer Jessica Emerson

"He took me to get my nails done, he took me shopping, I got my hair done, and we partied," she recalls. "And he gave me a pill which was Ecstasy. And then he started giving me more pills, then forcing the pills on me, and told me that I wasn't going to be going home."

Eventually, the girl and her pimp were arrested. But police told her mom she might never get back on track.

"I just kept running away and every time I ran away I'd end up in another pimp's arms," the woman with the tattoo says.

Then, four years ago, a police detective arrived at her hotel room near Baltimore, Md., part of a sting operation targeting pimps and prostitutes working near the airport. It wasn't her first arrest. But it was, she says, the first time a police officer treated her like a person.

"He told me that he saw something in my eyes and started asking me about my life," she says, "and I started telling him."

That man is Detective Dan Dickey in Anne Arundel County, Md. He's a member of a federal task force that finds and prosecutes sex trafficking.

"We actually came across this case by just doing surveillance on a local hotel," Dickey says.

After the arrest, he recalls, "I went and visited her, had a conversation with her, and then actually called [a person at] one of our nonprofits that we work with and told her, 'this girl's in jail, she's willing to hear what you have to say.'"

Someone from that local group talked with the young woman. They gave her a place to stay after she got out of jail and connected her with the help she needed to get away from her pimp for good.

Eventually she moved back to Texas, to be near her family. She had a baby boy last year. Now she's trying to get back into school.

"I want to provide my son with a good life," she says. "It might not be the most extravagant. I don't want to be rich. I just want to live a better life than I have lived."

Taking prostitution charges off her permanent record was a big step in that direction.

Christie Delivers N.J. Budget Address Amid Fiscal Challenges

Audio for this story from All Things Considered will be available at approximately 7:00 p.m. ET.

On Monday, a state court dealt a huge blow to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's administration's plans when it said the state couldn't continue to withhold payments to the state pension plan.

Future bloc calls for consensus to end presidential vacuum

BEIRUT: The Future Movement’s parliamentary bloc pleaded Tuesday with rival political leaders to reach consensus over the election of a new president as the only way to end the 9-month-old presidential vacuum, which has paralyzed Parliament’s legislation and crippled the government’s work.

The bloc also accused the Hezbollah-led March 8 coalition and MP Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement of indirectly contributing to the rise of extremist and terrorist movements in Lebanon by obstructing the presidential vote with their consistent boycott of Parliament sessions over the past nine months.

Yet, the bloc upheld its dialogue with Hezbollah, hoping the talks would lead to breaking the presidential stalemate.

“As more than nine months have passed since the presidential vacancy took hold and 19 attempts to elect a president did not yield any positive result, the bloc again stresses that the main and essential mission of the political parties should be to work to reach a consensus on the election of a new president,” the bloc said in a statement after its weekly meeting chaired by former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

It added that ending the vacuum in the country’s top Christian post was essential to restore balance and order to constitutional institutions and state departments and put an end to the confusion that has crippled the government’s work in the absence of a president who “symbolizes the nation’s unity and safeguards the country’s independence, its territorial integrity and safety.”

“The political parties that have prevented successive electoral sessions with their continued absence and subsequently, blocked the election of a president, are responsible for disrupting the state’s functioning and are behind the deterioration of its authority, its prestige, and eventually its gradual dissolution,” it said.

“They have become responsible for exposing the whole nation to all kinds of threats and indirectly contributing to the growth of extremist and terrorist movements,” it added, in a clear allusion to ISIS and Nusra Front militants who have frequently clashed with the Lebanese Army in areas near the border with Syria. The two groups are still holding 25 Lebanese soldiers and policemen hostage on the outskirts of the northeastern town of Arsal.

The bloc’s statement was referring to MPs from Aoun’s bloc and Hezbollah’s bloc and its March 8 allies who have thwarted a quorum for Parliament sessions since April by consistently boycotting the sessions, demanding an agreement beforehand with their March 14 rivals on a consensus candidate for the presidency.

The bloc stressed the need, until a new president is elected, for commitment to the rules of the Constitution concerning the government’s work “without devising new precedents or norms that would further complicate the functioning of state institutions.” It also referred to the current row among ministers over the Cabinet’s decision-making mechanism, which has also prevented it from meeting for a second consecutive week.

“The government’s work must proceed smoothly without falling into the trap of obstruction and paralysis as is the case now with the current Cabinet’s work,” it said.

The bloc pledged to continue its dialogue with Hezbollah on “the basis of advancing toward the election of a new president and reaching practical steps on the ground to reduce tensions, comfort citizens and protect their interests and the state’s interests in guaranteeing its sovereignty over all its territories and border.”

The two rival parties have so far held six rounds of talks designed to defuse Sunni-Shiite tensions stoked by the war in Syria.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Tammam Salam said bickering and obstruction among ministers were to blame for Cabinet’s lack of productivity.

Speaking during a meeting with the new board of the Press Federation, led by its head Aouni Kaaki, Salam said he was keen on ensuring the smooth functioning of the government, refuting allegations that he was seeking to normalize the presidential vacuum.

“I don’t want anyone to think that I want a government practice that will confirm the [presidential] vacuum. But at the same time, we need to proceed with the work and handle people’s affairs,” Kaaki quoted Salam as saying.

“The government was formed under very difficult conditions, and it was supposed to be a temporary one but it has lived on amid obstruction of a presidential poll and failure to hold general elections,” Salam added.

Asked why he did not call for a Cabinet session this week, Salam said: “When obstruction and bickering are dominant, what is the use of holding unproductive sessions? I have felt over the past seven months that the atmosphere inside the Cabinet did not help much in productivity.”

Salam reiterated calls for electing a president, stressing that “the Lebanese can ultimately resolve their problems by themselves and carry out elections, primarily the presidential poll.”

“Our Constitution is clear, but weakness lies in the application. We only have to implement the Constitution in order to achieve solutions,” Salam said. “The nature of political life in Lebanon does not allow one faction to defeat the other, but consensus should prevail, also over the presidential election.”

Speaking after a weekly meeting of the parliamentary Change and Reform bloc chaired by Aoun, MP Ibrahim Kanaan from the FPM called for the government to continue its work, saying its paralysis is harmful, “but we must not consider the presence or absence of a president as the same thing,” he said.

Workers’ health key to ensuring food safety

Editor’s note: Restaurant workers’ names have been changed upon request to protect their privacy.

BEIRUT: In Lebanon’s dining establishments, it isn’t just food that has been mishandled. Many restaurants fail to provide employees with safe working conditions, which directly impacts food safety, occupational health researchers say. The Health Ministry has campaigned over several months to combat food safety violations across the country, publicly naming restaurants not up to code. Heath Minister Wael Abu Faour has pointed to a need to improve worker training and awareness on food handling but less attention has been given to the conditions of workers.

The Daily Star spoke to several people with experience working in restaurants throughout Lebanon. They explained how food safety extends far beyond proper training, and that treatment by management poses a challenge to serving safe food.

Ahmad came from Syria three years ago. Since then, he’s worked as a chef at several restaurants in Lebanon. Several years ago, he worked under backbreaking conditions in a pizza restaurant.

“I worked for 12 hours a day, with no days off,” he said of the job that was supposed to come with a $400 monthly salary.

On his feet for most of the shift, in the fast-paced kitchen, he said the fatigue of the job left him unable to focus at work. He remembers himself and other workers not keeping meat items separate from vegetables during food preparation, particularly during peak business hours. Moreover, the tiny kitchen space exacerbated the problem of keeping food items separated.

“In a rush, everything goes on the same cutting board,” he said.

After a month, Ahmad quit due to exhaustion. He never saw the salary he was owed, despite repeated attempts to retrieve the money from his supervisor.

Speaking of former employers, Ahmad said that management often tried to save money by keeping staff levels low. “This is a problem because there is no one to cover for us when we get sick,” he said.

Workers, well aware of their expendability, and desperate to not lose wages, feel pressure to come to work, even when they have the flu or a gastrointestinal illness.

Ahmad said that he and his colleagues feared losing their jobs if they called in sick.

Mahmoud, who works at a Beirut-based juice and smoothie shop, said that when fruits and vegetables come in early morning, he and other workers are in such a rush to open that they do not go through the necessary washing procedures for the produce.

“Sometimes, we throw dirty vegetables next to the clean vegetables in the refrigerator without sanitizing them first,” he said.

Worker safety extends beyond the kitchen. Delivery driver Bashir said that delivering food under tight pressure is a dangerous job. On Lebanon’s traffic-filled roads, safe driving is often ignored. On one delivery run, he was hit by a car and broke his hand when thrown from his motorbike. Although his restaurant provided insurance for accidents, he said it was two days before he finally received treatment.

“I went from hospital to hospital, but they said they didn’t accept insurance from ‘cheap’ companies,” he said, adding that after two days of searching, he finally received treatment from a small hospital in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

In uncovering food hygiene horrors, government officials have given the public a gruesome view of labor conditions and their consequences at the Beirut slaughterhouse.

Abu Faour decried the slaughterhouse’s interior, an environment where workers are subject to improper ventilation, and the misuse of harsh cleaning agents. Meat and chicken were being immersed in bleach.

The Labor Ministry oversees implementation of labor standards, through Decree 11802, which includes provisions on worker health and safety, but those who have investigated occupational health in Lebanon say that lax enforcement is rampant.

Further, protections don’t apply to the multitude of workers without permits or in illegal arrangements, which have proliferated over the past three years due to the influx of Syrian refugees looking for work.

Rima Habib, associate professor of environmental health at the American University of Beirut, has extensively researched labor conditions in Lebanon. Drawing from her experience investigating working conditions in bakeries and the food production industry, she said that common risks include slippery floors, harsh cleaning fluids and a lack of protective equipment for workers using sharp machinery.

“For a wholesome product to be prepared, you need a healthy person to prepare it.”

Long and physically demanding hours cause fatigue, which poses a safety threat when exhausted workers use sharp equipment. For example, when cutting vegetables under these conditions, “you are more likely to injure yourself, especially if you are doing it with speed,” Habib said, adding that those who work long shifts or at night are at increased risk.

“When you are tired, you are less likely to operate under safe principles,” Habib said.

She explained that when workers dispose of rotten food, they risk exposure to contaminants that could be passed on to customers. Additionally, Hepatitis A is common in the food industry, and can spread easily when sanitary hand washing and toilet facilities aren’t provided in the workplace.

Habib said that employees who are working outside the law are particularly vulnerable to unsafe conditions, as they are desperate for income and have few employment options. They have no recourse for excessive working hours and are often easily expendable.

“Many are willing to work for much less money, with no benefits,” Habib said.

With regard to protection from injuries and disease, Habib said that restaurant employees working in illegal arrangements may receive insurance, but establishments will not insure each employee by name. “[Employers] get insurance that covers a certain number of accidents, for example 20 accidents per year,” she explained.

The influx of refugees has driven wages down in the service sector, at great cost to Lebanese job-seekers. Restaurants prefer to hire Syrians without work permits because they accept lower wages and aren’t provided with insurance benefits, such as the NSSF insurance that Lebanese employees receive.

A study published in 2014 assessed the effect of the Syrian influx on Lebanon’s fast food sector. It found that an average of only 20 percent of the workforce in locally owned fast food establishments was Lebanese. Internationally owned establishments employed around 80 percent, owing to social security rules.

Rami Chidiac is the head manager of ISO Liban, a local company specializing in training and quality management in the service industry. He said that regardless of worker nationality, those who handle food should have medical screening and legal documentation.

Proper education for employees is an essential component of ensuring food safety, he said.

“Training for food handlers should be provided on food safety and occupational health and safety to ensure that employees are trained to report illness and use appropriate protective clothing.”

He advocated for full integration of the Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series into Lebanese labor law.

OHSAS is an internationally recognized standard to ensure management practices that facilitate occupational health, as well as the health and safety of workers by minimizing workplace risks.

Chidiac stressed the need for better ministerial monitoring of restaurant work conditions.

“They should have inspectors to see if occupational health and safety is implemented,” he said.

ISIS, Nusra Front gearing up for major Lebanon push

BEIRUT: Syria-based jihadi groups are gearing up for a major offensive deep into Lebanese territory along the eastern border with Syria to achieve two main goals: securing new supply routes and establishing a foothold as a prelude to setting up an Islamic emirate in Lebanon, analysts and military experts said.

According to retired Lebanese Army generals, ISIS and the Nusra Front, entrenched on the outskirts of the northeastern town of Arsal, have long been preparing for such an attack, but have been hampered by bad weather conditions, particularly the severe blizzards that hit Lebanon in recent months.

“The two militant groups are just waiting for favorable weather conditions to launch their attack, which could happen in the second half of March,” they said.

Hisham Jaber, a retired Lebanese Army general and an expert on terrorism, said a major attack on Lebanon by Daesh, Arabic acronym for ISIS, and the Nusra Front, Syria’s Al-Qaeda affiliate, was inevitable because the two militant groups weren’t planning to come to Lebanon for tourism purposes.

“Daesh and the Nusra Front have been preparing military plans to attack Lebanon for quite some time. They have been militarily surveying areas on the eastern border in search of a weak belly where the Lebanese Army does not exist,” Jaber told The Daily Star.

“These tafkiri groups are not waiting for the snow to melt. They will strike when they deem the conditions are fit for their attack,” said Jaber, director of the Beirut-based think tank, the Middle East Center for Political Studies and Research.

He said the two groups would try to break through Christian towns or mixed Christian-Sunni towns, such as Ras Baalbek, al-Qaa and Fakiha, areas on the eastern frontier with Syria where Hezbollah does not have any presence.

“The goal of the ISIS-Nusra attack is to undermine stability in Lebanon, strike the Lebanese Army, incite sectarian strife and hit Hezbollah in its stronghold in the Bekaa region,” Jaber said.

Mario Abou Zeid, a research analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said the two sides, the Syrian opposition groups, including ISIS and the Nusra Front, on the one hand and the Syrian Army, Hezbollah and the Lebanese Army on the other, are getting ready for a major battle when winter ends next month.

“All the parties are gearing up for the battle once the snow melts,” Abou Zeid told The Daily Star. He said the fighting would begin as soon as weather conditions improve.

Despite the heavy Army deployment, designed to tighten the noose around the jihadis holed up in caves on the outskirts of Arsal, Abou Zeid said the Nusra Front has managed to survive the siege over the past six months, having stored enough food supplies, ammunition and arms.

“But now because it is running out of supplies and ammunition, the Nusra Front will launch an attack into Lebanese territory whose main target is to have access to new supply routes,” he said.

Abou Zeid said ISIS has a goal totally different from that of the Nusra Front from any possible attack deep into Lebanese territory.

“ISIS will seek to establish a foothold in Lebanese territory as part of their long-term plan to set up an Islamic emirate in Lebanon,” he said.

Asked if the Syrian Army and Hezbollah would launch a pre-emptive strike to forestall possible attacks by ISIS and the Nusra Front, Abou Zeid said: “The Syrian Army and Hezbollah are already locked in fighting Syrian rebels in the south, seeking to capture Deraa. But the attack by the Syrian Army and Hezbollah has been repulsed by a mix of Syrian rebel groups.”

He added that should the Syrian Army and Hezbollah succeed in capturing Deraa, they would then launch a pre-emptive strike against ISIS and the Nusra Front in the Qalamoun region.

Among the options envisaged by the Nusra Front to open new supply routes is the Shebaa-Rashaya area near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, he said.

Given the fact that the Nusra Front is so desperate for a new supply line, Abou Zeid said the Shebaa-Rashaya front carries a high risk of exploding in the face of the Syrian Army and Hezbollah.

Thousands of Nusra Front militants are deployed in the Syrian town of Qunaitra in the Golan Heights.

Amid growing fears of an impending jihadi assault when winter ends, the Lebanese Army, whose pre-emptive strikes against terror cells have already thwarted several suicide bomb attacks, is fully ready to repulse any new assault by ISIS and the Nusra Front, which are still holding 25 soldiers and policemen hostage. They were captured during the two groups’ incursion into Arsal last August.

“The Lebanese Army is always ready to confront any attack by any terrorist group in any area in Lebanon,” a senior military official told The Daily Star.

He recalled the militants’ botched attempt last month to overrun a military outpost near the northeastern town of Ras Baalbek, sparking fierce clashes between the Army and ISIS militants that left eight soldiers dead and 22 others wounded. At least 40 militants, whose bodies were discovered on the outskirts of Ras Baalbek, were killed in the fighting, most of them in Lebanese Army airstrikes.

Asked if the Army was taking extraordinary military measures to face any possible militant attack, the official said: “These are military matters which we cannot disclose.”

In a televised speech earlier this month, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah called on the Lebanese Army to be prepared to face attacks by ISIS and the Nusra Front when the snow melts at the end of winter on Lebanon’s eastern border with Syria.

Retired Army general Amin Hoteit warned of the impending danger posed by ISIS and the Nusra Front, saying he expected the two groups to launch their offensive in Lebanon in the second half of March. He called for coordination between the Lebanese and Syrian armies to forestall any jihadi attack.

“The aim of the attack is to seize territory and secure logistical supply lines,” Hoteit, a supporter of Hezbollah, told The Daily Star.

“On Lebanon’s eastern mountain range near the border with Syria, there are two terrorist groups, the Nusra Front and ISIS. These groups are unable now to carry out massive military operations because of the difficulty of movement and due to the snow,” he said.

“After their failure to occupy any village in the Qalamoun region, these groups will try to expand toward Lebanon, namely toward the towns of Arsal and Brital,” Hoteit said.

“Lebanon is facing a serious threat from these terrorist groups. In order for Lebanon to meet this challenge, the Lebanese Army’s readiness should be raised to a high level to confront any terrorist attack,” Hoteit added.

“Secondly, there should be coordination between the Lebanese and Syrian armies in order to put the terrorists in a pincer grip to restrict their movement toward Lebanon and prevent their return to Syria so that they can be killed,” Hoteit said.

Asked if the Lebanese Army is capable of repulsing a joint ISIS-Nusra Front attack, Hoteit replied: “If provided with the appropriate arms along with logistical and manpower support, the Army can accomplish this mission. But as matters stand now, the Army might need assistance and backing from the resistance [Hezbollah].”

Abou Zeid, the Carnegie researcher, said: “The Lebanese Army has defensive capabilities to repel any attack. But it lacks the needed military equipment for offensive purposes.”

Jaber, the retired Army general, said the Lebanese Army needs helicopters to repel any joint massed ISIS-Nusra attack. “But based on intelligence information, the Army is capable of confronting those terrorist groups and ambushing them,” he said.

According to Jaber, if ISIS and the Nusra Front attacked Lebanon, Hezbollah would intervene to help the Lebanese Army in repelling these groups.

Jaber lamented the fact that despite increased talk on the need to equip the Army with weapons to enable it to face jihadi groups, “the Army, except for the U.S. military assistance which is insufficient, has not received even a screw from French arms funded by the $3 billion Saudi grant.”

Earlier this month, the United States delivered $25 million worth of weapons, including heavy artillery, to the Lebanese Army, while France promised to send the first batch of Saudi-funded arms in April.

The Future Movement and Hezbollah, alarmed by the security threats posed to the country by Islamist militants, have been meeting to defuse sectarian tensions and last week began discussing a joint national strategy to fight terrorism.

The move came days after former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri called on Lebanese parties, especially Hezbollah, to hammer out a national strategy to fight terrorism.

Hariri’s call has been welcomed by Hezbollah leader Nasrallah, who has voiced support for an anti-terror strategy against Islamist incursions into Lebanon.