Beirut tourists unruffled by recent security incidents

BEIRUT: Seated on a bench at a Beirut cafe, 23-year-old Danish tourist Paw Velling is not bothered by recent security incidents in Lebanon, though that could be partially attributed to his recent travels keeping him away from the news.

Velling arrived in Beirut Monday afternoon to visit a friend studying at the American University of Beirut.

“I figured since my friend has been here for six months it probably isn’t that big of a risk [to visit now],” Velling said, before adding that he was unaware of the recent suicide bombing. “I have been in Greece and didn’t keep up on what was happening.”

Last Friday two security incidents grabbed national headlines as security forces raided hotels in Beirut’s Hamra shopping district and a suicide bomber targeted a well-known police checkpoint.

The fallout led some embassies to call for their citizens to take increased precautions, while others asked their nationals to leave the country immediately.

Abu Ali, 44, a tourist from Iraq, arrived in Lebanon fours days ago right after the security incidents. “There are no problems, hamdullillah,” he told The Daily Star, adding that Lebanon was a beautiful country.

“Daesh [Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria] is [present] in all Arab countries,” Abu Ali said. “All Arab countries are chaotic not just Iraq but inshallah Lebanon and all Arab countries will have peace.”

While tourists and other foreign nationals have taken note of their embassies’ warnings, many told The Daily Star that Friday’s events have not greatly altered their plans.

Three Iraqi men from Baghdad were leaving the Napoleon Hotel in Hamra Monday where the raids took place.

The men said they arrived over the weekend.

“We aren’t worried about any security issues in the hotel or Lebanon in general,” one of them said.

“Embassies have to issue such statements and no one wants to put its population at risk,” said French national Rosalie Berthier, a 20-year old intern at an international nongovernmental organization.

“France always recommends citizens to be careful – except if you go to Switzerland – but I am glad I am not Emirati because I don’t want to leave Lebanon too soon.”

The UAE asked its nationals to leave Lebanon following Friday’s bombing and hotel raids. But despite the UAE travel advisory several tourists from the Arab Gulf were seen on the streets of Beirut, although the majority declined to comment.

“Embassy warnings are always quite exaggerated,” said Will Schomburg, a 25-year old U.K. national, in Lebanon to study Arabic for the summer. “You’ve got to take them with a pinch of salt.”

Friday’s two security instances are the latest in a string of security developments that have hit Lebanon’s tourism sector hard.

Tourism is a significant moneymaker for the Lebanese economy but recent security troubles have caused tourism figures to vastly decline over the last three years. Still, the expats that have chosen to stick around are rather unruffled by the first car bombing since March and the raids on hotels in Hamra, a popular district for tourists.

“What happens doesn’t cross my mind that much or I wouldn’t be here,” Schomburg added. He did, however, maintain that Friday’s incidents altered his travel plans in the country. “We were going to go to Baalbek but were advised against it, and it seems it was good advice,” he said. “We were also going to spend more time in Tripoli but then a few grenades were thrown.”

Seated next to him, fellow U.K. national James Hartley, a 24-year-old here on holiday, said that these events weren’t enough to make him leave ahead of schedule. “My impression as a British foreigner is that I don’t feel like a target, so it is not that much of a threat.”

In fact many foreign nationals from the West said they don’t feel directly in harm’s way and are therefore not deeply disturbed by recent security incidents.

“I didn’t feel it was different than events in the past because bombings are mostly taking place in places I don’t really go,” said 27-year-old Sam Sweeney, an American studying at Université Saint Joseph. Sweeney said he saw the raid in Hamra as positive because it showed that security forces were “catching things before they happen.”

“[Security incidents] don’t affect my decision to live here and I don’t think they will unless kidnapping foreigners happens again like it did in the 80s,” said Steve Brooks, a 31-year-old American who has been living and studying Arabic in Beirut for the last year.

Unlike some Westerners, Brooks followed Friday’s developments closely and said that while they didn’t deeply concern him, it would be easier to hold an opinion if reports weren’t so varied.

“There are mixed stories about who the suspects were,” he said. “I don’t know how to feel. If there are between 17 and 30 [ISIS] operatives in Lebanon and 30 got in [the country] that’s definitely a bad thing.”

Despite concerns, most foreigners interviewed chose to remain calm over such episodes, especially after experiencing a string of incidents earlier in the year.

“Friday’s bombing had little – if any – impact on my behavior,” said Berthier, the intern from France. “When I first arrived in January there were bombings almost every week. It was part of daily life.”

Asiri stresses deep Saudi bonds with Lebanon

BEIRUT: The Saudi Arabian ambassador to Lebanon said Monday that the two countries have profound bonds, condemning the exaggeration of recent events in Lebanon, the National News Agency reported.

“The Lebanese-Saudi links are deep and historical, and what links the kingdom to Lebanon is a human relationship more than a political one,” said Ambassador Ali Awad Asiri, receiving a tourist media delegation of Saudi women at his embassy in Beirut.

He said that recent security events must not be exaggerated, according to NNA’s report.

Asiri praised the delegation’s role and efforts, saying that “it reflects the role of Saudi women and their status in Saudi society, as well as their success in education, commerce and media.”

He also urged the delegation to make the most of its trip to Lebanon. “We hope this visit will enhance cultural communication and commercial trade.”

Comprised of business women and female journalists, the Saudi delegation is currently on a visit to Lebanon to launch the summer tourism season by going on tours across the country and conducting interviews with political figures.

The visit will be broadcast across the kingdom in order to promote tourism in Lebanon.

Prime Minister Tammam Salam told the delegation that the situation in Lebanon was stable and reiterated the readiness of the security forces to handle terror threats.

The delegation visited Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk, who said “the situation in Lebanon is stable and security forces are watchful about maintaining this security.”

Machnouk hailed the Saudi delegation’s decision to stay in Lebanon despite the recent events. “They will project the real image of the stable Lebanese situation,” he said.

The delegation also stopped at the Tourism Ministry, where they met Minister Michel Pharaon. The latter said the Saudi women “will return to the kingdom as Lebanese ambassadors to tell what they will have seen, especially after an internal consensus was achieved to preserve security in Lebanon.”

Pharaon said that individual terrorism exists all over the world, and that “no tourist has ever been threatened [in Lebanon] for the past 20 years.”

“We miss Saudi citizens and we hope to welcome them this summer,” he added.

Hezbollah enters Tfail in search of rebel gunmen

BEIRUT: Hezbollah fighters entered Tfail in east Lebanon over the weekend in search of Syrian opposition fighters reportedly seeking refuge in the embattled village, according to the local mukhtar and residents.

Ali Ashoum, Tfail’s mukhtar, told The Daily Star Hezbollah fighters entered the villageSaturday morning in “a calm and orderly manner.”

“They haven’t arrested anyone, they haven’t taken any gunmen yet, and they aren’t interfering with the families there,” Ashoum said.

The fighters have stationed themselves in three buildings in the village and are “significant in number,” according to resident Omar Saadeddine, who is in direct contact with the Tfail residents that remained in the village after the bulk fled to Arsal.

Ashoum added that he was in talks with the mufti in the region to set up an appointment with Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk to encourage those that fled to return.

For the mukhtar, Hezbollah’s presence in the village was prompted by media reports that opposition fighters were hiding in Tfail.

“Whenever they [the media] talk about Qalamoun, they say the fighters fled to Tfail, and now Hezbollah militants have positioned themselves in abandoned buildings in Tfail.”

While the mukhtar dismissed the notion that there was a Syrian rebel presence in the village, he confirmed they were lying low outside it.

Adopting a neutral stance, the mukhtar said he was relying on the Lebanese government to communicate with Hezbollah and ensure they left the village peacefully so the residents were able to return. He said there were only a handful of locals left that stayed to watch their homes.

“Ramadan is starting this week, and we want to do the best we can to allow families to return to their homes,” he said.

Dozens of Lebanese families fled Tfail last week amid heavy shelling by forces loyal to the Syrian regime and reports that their troops were near.

Tfail is located east of Brital on a promontory of Lebanese territory surrounded on three sides by Syria. There are no paved roads connecting Tfail to the Lebanese interior. The lack of passable routes has discouraged the state from sending forces.

While the mukhtar initiated contact to ensure the safe return of Tfail’s residents, locals from the majority Sunni village of just 3,000, said they were reluctant to go back. In the past day, about 150 families arrived to Arsal from the village, according to Zeinab, a local who fled 15 days ago.

“We cannot go back to the village, the Sunnis are being killed,” said Saadeddine, who fled after his cousin was killed in a regime-led airstrike.

“We are trying to seek refugee status with organizations in Arsal but no one cares about us,” he said.

Authorities on alert to face plans to destabilize Lebanon

Plans by the Al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) to put Lebanon on a fault line that is currently striking the region starting from Iraq have prompted Lebanese authorities to adopt new security arrangements and political steps to shield the country’s internal situation against ISIS threats, security sources said Monday.

ISIS’ plans coincided with the discovery of alleged plots to target the Shiite community’s political, security and popular figures, as evidenced by the reported attempts to assassinate Speaker Nabih Berri and General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, and blow up hospitals in Beirut’s southern suburbs last week, the sources said.

Ibrahim said he narrowly escaped the suicide bomb attack at a police checkpoint in Dahr al-Baidar on the Beirut-Damascus highway in east Lebanon last Friday that killed one police officer and wounded 33 people.

A senior security official said that as a result of efforts and coordination among various security agencies, two men, one Saudi and one French, were arrested during the police raid on a hotel in Hamra last week in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate Berri.

While the Saudi man has been deported to his country in accordance with treaties signed by Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, the Frenchman, still undergoing investigation, has revealed important information about a plan to bomb more than one target with the aim of igniting a Sunni-Shiite conflict in Lebanon, the official said.

He warned of the situation on the northern border with Syria, namely the Wadi Khaled area, where a series of worrisome reports came indicating that ISIS was using this border for its operations after the Bekaa outlets in Arsal had been closed.

Hezbollah’s military operations room, which has been put on alert to cope with the fast-moving developments in Iraq following ISIS’ capture of key Iraqi cities, is keeping mum despite the achievements made to protect the party’s position in Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s political command sees no interest in revealing the results of the work of its security apparatus for the time being. This is as long as the internal situation in Lebanon does not permit further debate over the work of the party’s security and military apparatus, which has extended its activity to Syria and has now entered Iraq on the grounds that aims to protect Shiite holy shrines.

Despite being known for operating in deep secrecy, the sources said Hezbollah’s operations room has kept a close watch on “a key and dangerous figure” from ISIS who was allegedly preparing for a massive bomb attack.

The man has been arrested and investigation with him has led to the discovery of an alleged plot to simultaneously attack the Bahman, Sahel and Al-Rasoul al-Azam hospitals in the southern suburbs, the sources said. They added that the man has been handed over to the relevant security agencies.

In the meantime, authorities are searching for a yellow Volvo truck that entered Lebanon via the Bekaa town of Arsal as well as for suspected terrorist groups and ISIS vehicles that managed to enter Lebanese territory with the aim of carrying out bombings and plunging Lebanon into the region’s turmoil, the sources said.

The Hezbollah command and its security operations room are closely following what is happening in Lebanon, having received reports from abroad indicating that America and Iran are keen on stability in Lebanon.

Everyone knows that Hezbollah has always been apprehensive and suspicious of American intentions and does not trust them.

But the Hezbollah command has read a telegram from the German intelligence to the Lebanese side. The warning of an explosion last Friday and the arrest of a number of terror suspects show that it was more a message of American assurance than a security warning, since the U.S. often resorts to the German or British intelligence agencies to convey messages to parties with whom it does not cooperate, the sources said.

The American assurance message relayed via Germany and Qatar, notwithstanding its significance and symbolism, did not help eliminate Hezbollah’s concerns. The party is anxiously following the situation in Lebanon, while fully realizing that the events in Iraq were the outcome of the U.S. occupation of that country and the U.S. policy in the Middle East aimed at destroying what is in existence now, launching the slogan of “creative chaos.”

Furthermore, Hezbollah blames America for the rise of militant Islamist movements in the region.

“ America is responsible for the consequences of religious extremism in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt,” a senior Hezbollah official told The Daily Star. “It [America] has set off these countries and placed them on the firing line, while the threat of new sectarian wars hangs over Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey as a result of America’s wrong and adventurous policy,” he said.

The official added that Washington has supported what it called the “demands of the Syrian revolution” and installed “a failed opposition that did not enjoy real popular support and was unable to overcome the crisis” that has been hitting Syria for more than three years.

“This situation has led to a vacuum that was exploited by Nusra Front and ISIS. America came today to warn of the dangers of extremist groups in Syria despite the knowledge that this was the result of its random policy in the Middle East,” the Hezbollah official said.

How the Dow Jones industrial average fared Monday

U.S. stock indexes ended slightly below the record levels they reached last week as investors assessed news from big corporations. Wisconsin Energy fell 4 percent and General Electric fell 1 percent after the companies said they had made acquisitions. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell a fraction of a point.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 9.82 points, less than 0.1 percent, to 16,937.26.

The S&P 500 index slipped 0.26 of a point, less than 0.1 percent, to close at 1,962.61.

The Nasdaq composite index added 0.64 of a point, also less than 0.1 percent, to 4,368.68.

For the year:

The Dow is up 360.60 points, or 2.2 percent.

The S&P 500 index is up 114.25 points, or 6.2 percent.

The Nasdaq is up 192.09 points, or 4.6 percent.

Contentious scholar Ajami dies aged 68

BEIRUT: Fouad Ajami, the controversial Lebanese-American author and academic who said the Arab world would “erupt in joy” when the U.S. overthrew Saddam Hussein, died Sunday aged 68 after a battle with cancer.

A Shiite born in the south Lebanon village of Arnoun whose family originated in Iran, Ajami moved to Beirut when he was 4 years old before emigrating to the U.S. in 1963. He won the MacArthur genius award in 1982, becoming a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and later the director of Johns Hopkins University’s Middle East Studies program. He also taught at the American University of Beirut.

Ajami was a staple of American television news networks and penned numerous essays and op-eds for outlets including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs.

But it was Ajami’s support for the Iraq War, his elevation among the ranks of Bush administration advisers and backing of Israel in the latter decades of his life that aroused the most ire among his Arab critics.

In a speech in August 2002, then-U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney cited Ajami in an effort to reassure Americans that their military would be received with jubilation in Iraq if they overthrew Saddam Hussein.

“As for the reaction of the Arab street, the Middle East expert professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation in Basra and Baghdad, the streets are sure to erupt in joy,” Cheney said.

In his book, “The Foreigner’s Gift,” written three years after the Iraq War, Ajami also condemned the Arab world for harboring what he described as a “culture of terrorism” that provoked the U.S. into launching what he said was, in essence, a noble war.

Despite initial apprehension of U.S. involvement in the Middle East, Ajami became increasingly interventionist in the years after the first Gulf War. In a July 2003 article for Foreign Affairs, he said American hegemony in the Middle East must persist.

“No large-scale retreat from those zones of American primacy can be contemplated,” he said. “American hegemony is sure to hold and so, too, the resistance to it, the uneasy mix in those lands of the need for the foreigners order, and the urge to lash out against it, to use it and rail against it all the same.”

Ajami had also criticized the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 as misguided and aimed at intimidating the Palestinian people.

“The invading army that came into Lebanon with such devastating force came with a great delusion: that if you could pound men and women hard enough, if you could bring them to their knees, you could make peace with them,” he said.

But he would later say, in a U.S. News and World Report op-ed at the time of the Madrid peace talks that it was “too late to introduce a new nation between Israel and Jordan.”

Ajami’s growing interventionism and sweeping characterizations of Middle Eastern societies earned him opprobrium.

Adam Shatz, a contributing editor at the London Review of Books, described Ajami in a critical 2003 profile as the “native informant,” whose Arab roots gave him a perceived authority in critiquing Arab society and culture.

Shatz also quotes instances in which Ajami praised Israeli leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu.

“A leftist in the 1970s, a Shiite nationalist in the 1980s, an apologist for the Saudis in the 1990s, a critic-turned-lover of Israel, a skeptic-turned-enthusiast of American empire, he has observed no consistent principle in his career other than deference to power,” Shatz said.

Ajami advised U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and was a friend of Paul Wolfowitz, a senior Pentagon official and key architect of the Iraq War.

“The death of Fouad Ajami this weekend ... deprived this country and the world of a uniquely powerful voice – one that is at the same time both Arab and American – that could have helped guide us, as he has in the past, through the hazards and complications of his native Middle East,” Wolfowitz said in an obituary published on the website of the American Enterprise Institute.

Ajami was a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, which described him in a press release as “truly one of the most brilliant Middle East scholars of our time.”

Ajami authored a series of books about the Middle East, including “The Arab Predicament,” “The Dream Palace of the Arabs,” and “The Vanished Imam,” an account of Imam Musa Sadr, the founder of the Amal Movement.

His writings also include some 400 essays on Arab and Islamic politics, U.S. foreign policy and contemporary international history.

Lebanon unconcerned with rise of HIV/AIDS rates in the region

BEIRUT: Despite the rise in HIV cases in the region, Lebanon has remained at a plateau for the past 10 years in terms of the number of new cases of the infection, largely due to better access to education and protective resources relative to its neighbors, experts said Monday.

“We have been at a plateau for the past 10 years,” Dr. Mostafa al-Nakib, director of Lebanon’s National AIDS Control Program, affiliated with the Health Ministry, told The Daily Star. “The number of new cases has remained between 85-110 new cases annually.”

HIV/AIDS rates have been declining worldwide, but the Middle East and North Africa region is moving in the opposite direction,

At a meeting in Tunisia, bringing together the region’s top experts on HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS chief Michel Sidibe warned over the weekend of a dramatic increase in infections in the MENA region. “In just a few years, we’ve gone from 10,000 people infected to 225,000,” he told AFP.

“The only trend now is an increase in MSM [men having sex with men] and a decrease in age,” said Nakib.

He attributes the rise in HIV/AIDS rates among young people to high risk behavior among 18-25-year-olds. “We have high knowledge about protection, especially among the younger generation, but the practice and behavior do not match the knowledge,” Nakib said.

He added that, while the number of new cases increases slightly each year, this is commensurate with increase in population.

Elie Araj, president of the Regional Arab Network Against AIDS, agreed. Comparing Lebanon with other MENA countries, Araj said, “relatively, we are good, however, since two years, we have seen bigger numbers. This can be attributed to more people who are getting tested at NGOs.”

Health Ministry statistics from 2013 show that 60 percent of the cumulative reported cases in 2013 have HIV, while 12 percent have contracted AIDS. Of the 1,671 new and existing HIV/AIDS cases, 90 percent were sexually transmitted, and 45 percent of those occurred from homosexual behavior. The ratio of men to women with HIV/AIDS is 8:2, said Nakib.

Over the past several years, more NGOs have surfaced in Lebanon to meet its sexual health needs.

One of the most prominent is MARSA sexual health center, located in Hamra.

The center’s team of doctors offer testing and counseling at discounted rates, promotes safe sexual health and offers a safe space for marginalized populations such as Lebanon’s LGBT community.

In cases where medication is needed for patients with HIV/AIDS, clinic doctors provide referrals.

Although HIV/AIDS rates have remained steady, Cynthia al-Khoury, MARSA’s program coordinator, has seen a steady uptick in the detection numbers of those who have tested positive at the clinic.

She said that misconceptions about the spread of HIV are common, and the lack of sexual education in schools and societal shame surrounding sexual activity leaves young people unaware and at risk.

“Young people rely on peers. They miss the details of how HIV is spread. There is so much confusion around a healthy sexual lifestyle,” Khoury said.

The Health Ministry provides free medical treatment to those eligible diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, including citizens and long-term refugees.

While HIV/AIDS numbers have remained steady over the past 10 years, Nakib expects prevalence to become more concentrated among the most vulnerable population: men who have sex with men.

Compared to other countries in the region, he said Lebanon has more resources for those with HIV/AIDS, in the form of psychosocial and medical services.

“We have many NGOs for MSM, for sex workers,” he said.

Over the past two years, Nakib has been working with activists and lawmakers in the country to improve the rights of those living with HIV/AIDS.

“Sometimes there are self-esteem issues or the feeling of being stigmatized,” Nakib said, but with greater media coverage and dialogue in the country, civil society is breaking the barriers of stigma while raising awareness about HIV/AIDS transmission and protection methods.

Araj said that solutions to rising rates across the MENA region should not be limited to the healthcare sphere; they should also address the shortcomings of the social and political environments.

The MENA region is for the third year in a row carrying the highest number of new registered cases, said Araj. Of the region’s MSM population, he said, “This group of people is highly discriminated against,” which contributes to difficulties in seeking help for HIV/AIDS.

Of solutions at the national level, Araj said, “We need to amend some laws to be a more inclusive society. We also need to have a budget for more targeted preventions.”