This article appears in the Jerusalem Post, 10 August 2021
Lebanon has been without
a government since the massive explosion of August 4, 2020 blew Port Beirut
apart and, with it, Lebanon’s administrative machine. In the aftermath of the blast President
Michel Aoun promised a swift and transparent investigation. A year later no one has been held
responsible, while the inquiry itself has been subject to continuous obstruction,
evasion, and delay.
Judge Fadi Sawan was
appointed to conduct the investigation.
On December 10 he formally charged caretaker prime minister, Hassan
Diab, and three former ministers, with negligence in connection with the blast.
But Diab, who had been supported by the
Hezbollah parliamentary bloc in his bid to become the designated prime
minister, refused to appear for questioning.
So did two of the other former ministers. They were supported by caretaker interior
minister, Mohammed Fahmi, described by the Abu Dhabi-based The National
as “staunchly pro-Hezbollah”. Fahmi declared publicly that even if the
judiciary issued arrest warrants, he would not ask the security forces to detain
them.
President Aoun, a strong supporter of
Hezbollah – which reciprocates the favour – made no comment at the time, but in
February Judge Fadi Sawan was removed from the inquiry.
He was replaced by Judge
Tarek Bitar, who is known to have no strong political affiliations. On July 9, 2021 Judge Bitar applied to
question Major General Abbas Ibrahim, head of the powerful General Security
agency. Fahmi refused the request.
It seems clear that the caretaker
government is deliberately thwarting the investigation, and the suspicion must
arise that prominent figures were involved in the circumstances leading to the
explosion and are being shielded.
Indeed, in a report issued on August 3, Human Rights Watch declares: “The
very design of the port’s management structure was developed to share power
between political elites. It maximized opacity, and allowed corruption and
mismanagement to flourish.”
Questions waiting to be answered include who authorized the detention of the Moldovan-flagged cargo ship, the Rhosus, in November 2013; under whose authority was its load of 2,754 tonnes of ammonium nitrate – which no party has subsequently claimed – off-loaded and stored in unsafe conditions on October 23 and 24; and what has happened to some 2,200 tonnes of that shipment, since – according to a report by the FBI – the blast, massive as it was, involved only around 550 tonnes.
Amnesty International
criticized Lebanon’s judicial process from the start. “Every step, measure or statement taken thus
far,” it declared in September 2020, “particularly by the highest-ranking
officials in the country, have made it clear that the authorities have no
intention whatsoever of fulfilling their responsibilities of conducting an
effective, transparent and impartial investigation… An international fact-finding mechanism is
the only way to guarantee the rights of victims to truth, justice and remedy.”
Human Rights Watch
concurred. Taking into account the undue
influence exercised by Hezbollah, the “state within a state”, as well as the
widespread graft and venality within ruling circles, HRW believes that
Lebanon‘s domestic investigation is incapable of credibly delivering justice,
and has called for an international, independent probe. It believes that the
blast — which killed more than 200 people, wounded thousands and inflicted
billions of dollars in damage — was the starkest example yet of the chronic
corruption and mismanagement that have left the Lebanese with a dysfunctional
state and a collapsing economy.
In October 2020 Saad Hariri was named by the Lebanese parliament as prime minister designate, and charged with forming a new government.
Shortly afterwards a compromise candidate as prime minister designate emerged in the shape of one of the richest men in Lebanon, Najib Mikati.
Doubts must persist as
to whether it will have the ability, let alone the will, to undertake the root
and branch reforms essential to restoring Lebanon‘s economic health. The World
Bank pulls no punches in its criticism of Lebanon’s political elite in which
Hezbollah features so strongly. It accuses
them of deliberately failing to tackle the country’s many problems, which include
the economic and financial crisis, the Covid pandemic and the Beirut Port
explosion. In a recent report it identifies
the inaction as due to a continuing political consensus that defends “a
bankrupt economic system, which benefited a few for so long”.
Given the likely composition of the new administration, there seems no chance of Lebanon freeing itself any time soon from the dominance that Hezbollah has managed to acquire in the nation’s political life, and the consequent malign influence on Lebanese affairs that Iran is able to exercise through its puppet. For example, Hezbollah directly claimed responsibility for a barrage of rockets fired on August 6 toward Israel – an action coinciding with Iranian aggression off the Gulf of Hormuz and the accession of Iran’s new hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi. It is no wonder that some commentators, like the UK’s policy institute Chatham House, are coming to regard Lebanon as a state controlled by Hezbollah.
Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post on-line, 10 August 2021https://www.jpost.com/opinion/lebanon-in-hezbollahs-clutches-opinion-676270
https://www.eurasiareview.com/06082021-lebanon-remains-in-hezbollahs-clutches-oped/
https://mpc-journal.org/lebanon-remains-in-hezbollahs-clutches/
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