How the Bush White House Seeks to Destroy Lebanon

Death Squads and Planned Disintegration

By CLANCY CHASSAY
(Guardian's Beirut correspondent)
CounterPunch

"A year on from last summer's bloody conflict between Israel and Hizbullah, Lebanon's fragile society, paralyzed by a tense standoff between the U.S.-backed government and the Hizbullah-led opposition, teeters on the brink of calamity.....

U.S. policy in Lebanon- focused largely on efforts to disarm Hizbullah and pressure Syria to cooperate on Iraq - has encouraged the division, and propelled the tiny country into the forefront of the Bush administration's campaign to counter the growing regional influence of Iran--which stands as Syria's strongest ally in the Middle East and Hizbullah's primary benefactor.

Intent on diminishing the Shiite militants' powerful role in Lebanese politics, the Whitehouse has authorised a covert CIA fund to support anti-Hizbullah groups through the depleted Lebanese government while seeking to reconfigure the army and security services to more effectively serve American interests: Shiites now constitute less than 10 per cent of new recruits to the Interior Ministry-run police force.....

The anti-Syrian camp's dependence on Washington has exposed Lebanon to the contradiction of being simultaneously in open confrontation with Israel, and yet supported by America. This is reflected in a divided society and last July's war revealed the extent of the gulf between those in Lebanon who are willing to make discreet but unconditional peace with Israel in exchange for western aid and protection from Syria, and those who are compelled to remain in confrontation with Israel and the Bush administration's project for a "New Middle East.".....

Lebanon's competing dangers reflect a wider regional schism, which pits the Western backed regimes of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, against Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas--an alliance sometimes referred to in the Arab world as the Jabhaa al Momana'a or 'the rejection front,' but more commonly known to the American public as the "Axis of Terror". The U.S. and its client states, nervous about an ascendant Iran, have worked hard to push the theory of a sinister Shiite Crescent, encompassing Iran Hizbullah and the Alawi regime in Syria, seeking Shiite cultural domination. In reality, the divide is based not along sectarian lines, but on competing ideological positions concerning the Palestinian cause and America's role in the region......

The more the daily horror in Iraq worsens, the more the Bush administration clings to the purported success of Lebanon, once the poster boy for its now redundant "democratization" campaign. But, by allowing the build up of armed groups by its allies, and obstructing compromise in a vain effort to empower an unpopular government, the White House is pushing Lebanon down a dangerous path toward civil conflict, and ultimately disintegration."